Thursday, February 15, 2007 6:25 AM
For St. Richard Feynman
Yesterday, Valentine's Day, Hollywood released a romantic comedy, "Music and Lyrics," based on a fictional reality-TV show called "Battle of the 80's Has-Beens."
This, along with the Feb. 13 Log24 entry touching on both pop science and pop music, and the fact that today is the anniversary of the 1988 death of physicist Richard Feynman, suggests the following exercise:
Compare and contrast the lives and works of Feynman (May 11, 1918 - Feb. 15, 1988) and the late Carl Sagan (Nov. 9, 1934 - Dec. 20, 1996).
(Being dead, both are, in a sense, has-beens, and both were popular in the 1980's.)
I personally regard Feynman as one of science's saints, and Sagan as, shall we say, a non-saint. For some related reflections on pop science and pop music, see the five Log24 entries ending on Michaelmas 2002. And then there is popcorn--
Click on picture for details.
through the popcorn...
Tears for Fears'
'Everybody Wants to
Rule the World' ramps up
on the soundtrack...."
Credits.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007 5:24 AM
Hexagram 13: Fellowship with Men
Bob Dylan Wins a Folk Grammy
"Modern Times, his first album since Love and Theft, debuted at No. 1 on the US pop charts last September. At 65, Dylan became the oldest living person to achieve this feat." --New Zealand Herald, Feb. 12
October 29, 2004:
"Each epoch has its singer." "Anything
but the void. And so we keep hoping to luck into a winning combination,
to tap into a subtle harmony, trying like lock pickers to negotiate a
compromise with the 'mystery tramp,' as Bob Dylan put it...." With the mystery tramp, but now you realize He's not selling any alibis As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes And ask him do you want to make a deal?" -- Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone |
"Climbing up on
In today's meditation for
the Church of Peter Gabriel,
Dennis Overbye plays
the role of Jack Horner.
(See Overbye on Sagan in today's
New York Times, Sagan on Pi,
and Pi Day at Harvard.)
For more on Jack Horner, see
The Rise and Fall
of Popular Music,
by Donald Clarke,
Chapter One.
For two contrasting approaches
to popular music, see two artists
whose birthdays are today:
In other Grammy news--
At the end of Sunday's awards,
"Scarlett Johansson and Don Henley
put themselves in the pole position
to star in a remake of 'Adam's Rib'
with the following exchange:
Henley: So you're recording
your first album?
Johansson: Yeah. Do you
have any advice for me?
Henley: No."
she gets 'em one by one...."
Monday, February 12, 2007 5:24 AM
Harvard at the Grammys
(Illustrated)
"The communication
of the dead is tongued with fire
beyond the language of the living."
-- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Photo by Mark J. Terrill / AP
Above: Christina Aguilera performs "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" in tribute to the late James Brown during the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday, February 11, 2007.
This morning's New York Times:
Coming of Age in a Changed World
CAMBRIDGE,
Mass., Feb. 11-- Recalling her coming of age as the only girl in a
privileged, tradition-bound family in Virginia horse country, Drew
Gilpin Faust, 59, has often spoken of her "continued confrontations"
with her mother "about the requirements of what she usually called
femininity." Her mother, Catharine, she has said, told her repeatedly,
"It's a man's world, sweetie, and the sooner you learn that the better
off you'll be."....
... Asked Sunday whether her appointment signified the end of sex inequities at the university, Dr. Faust said: "Of course not. There is a lot of work still to be done, especially in the sciences."
What would her mother, who never went to college and died in 1966, have to say about her appointment? "I've often thought about that," she said. "I've had dialogues with my dead mother over the 40 years since she died."
Then she
added with a rueful smile, "I think in many ways that comment-- 'It's a
man's world, sweetie'-- was a bitter comment from a woman of a
generation who didn't have the kind of choices my generation of women
had."
"But it wouldn't mean
nothin' ... nothin' ...
without a woman or a girl."
-- James Brown,
who died last year
on Christmas Day
Sunday, February 11, 2007 11:00 AM
Today's Sermon
"And what the dead hadno speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead:
the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire
beyond the language of the living."
-- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Sunday, February 11, 2007 2:56 AM
ART WARS: But seriously...
George Sadek, 78,
Graphic Design Educator,
Dies
Graphic Design Educator,
Dies
Related material:
"Harvard Design" (Feb. 6),
"Geometry and Death"
(entries of December 2006),
"Release Date"
in "Immortal Diamond"
(Feb. 5 four years ago).
The design over Sadek's
head is a St. Bridget's cross.
(See the "Release Date"
link above.)
Saturday, February 10, 2007 10:00 AM
"Joined with art, resistless"--
Willard Van Orman Quine on the title of his book From A Logical Point of View (Harvard University Press): "Henry Aiken and I were with our wives in a Greenwich Village nightspot when I told him of the plan, and Harry Belafonte had just sung the calypso 'From a logical point of view.' Henry noted that this would do nicely as a title for the volume, and so it did."
From this morning,
eight consecutive Xanga
footprints from Great Britain:
| /524459252/item.html | newsdor.com | 8:25 AM |
| /490604390/item.html | newsdor.com | 8:25 AM |
| /426273644/item.html | newsdor.com | 8:25 AM |
| /569157082/annals-... | newsdor.com | 8:25 AM |
| /524081776/item.html | newsdor.com | 8:25 AM |
| /446066083/item.html | newsdor.com | 8:24 AM |
| /522299668/item.html | newsdor.com | 8:24 AM |
| /447354678/item.html | newsdor.com | 8:24 AM |
Saturday, February 10, 2007 2:00 AM
Class Warfare:
From this morning's
New York Times:
Richardson died yesterday,
Friday, Feb. 9, 2007.
He seems well qualified
to be patron saint of
the "icily sardonic."
-- Campbell Robertson in today's New York Times
Related material: Log24 yesterday, the date of Richardson's death.
Friday, February 9, 2007 3:24 PM
Annals of Scholarship
of Mathematics
On teachers of "core mathematics classes for non-majors, mathematics appreciation courses, and other lower level courses":
"We are accustomed to being marginalized by society, our political leaders, and even our college and university administrations who often fail to see the scholarship involved in teaching. But how dare the Notices ignore us?"Let us examine Fleron's alleged scholarship:
-- Complaint in the March 2007 Notices of the American Mathematical Society by "Julian F. Fleron, Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics, Westfield State College"
"Before each of my classes I put a quote on the board. The quote is either related to the mathematics we are studying, related to mathematics more generally, or related to learning and education. Student response has been tremendous, and I have found it to be very beneficial." --Julian Fleron
Fleron offers us, without specifying an exact source, the following quotation:
"Mighty is geometry; joined with art, resistless. Euripides."
A search for the source leads us to a quotation from 1914, a time when teaching did sometimes involve scholarship:
"1568. Mighty are numbers, joined with art resistless. EURIPIDES. Hecuba, Line 884."
-- Memorabilia Mathematica, by Robert Edouard Moritz, The Macmillan Company, 1914
But even in 1914, the scholarship, if one can call it that, was misleading. The 1914 quotation (which at least refers accurately to numbers, not geometry) is blatantly taken out of context to imply a connection with the mathematical art of number theory (as practiced by, say, G. H. Hardy) that is certainly not found in Euripides. The details:
HECUBA Sheltered beneath these tents is a host of Trojan women.
AGAMEMNON Dost mean the captives, the booty of the Hellenes?
HECUBA With their help will I punish my murderous foe.
AGAMEMNON How are women to master men?
HECUBA Numbers are a fearful thing, and joined to craft a desperate foe.
AGAMEMNON True; still I have a mean opinion of the female race.
This dialogue may have some relevance to today's rumored selection at Harvard of a woman (Drew Gilpin Faust as Hecuba) to replace a man (Larry Summers as Agamemnon) in the president's office. The dialogue's only relevance to mathematics is in its reference to the perennial conflict between the sexes. Perhaps that conflict will serve to illustrate the title given by the Notices to Fleron's complaint: "Teaching the Romance of Mathematics."
Wednesday, February 7, 2007 3:00 AM
His Kind of Town, continued
 "Times when I know you'll be lonesome, times when I know you'll be sad Don't let temptation surround you, don't let the blues make you bad" -- "We'll Be Together Again," Frankie Laine, March 30, 1913 -- February 6, 2007 |
Tuesday, February 6, 2007 8:00 AM
Harvard Design:
The title is from Bachelard.
I prefer Stevens:
The rock is the habitation of the whole,-- Wallace Stevens,
Its strength and measure, that which is near, point A
In a perspective that begins again
At B: the origin of the mango's rind.
It is the rock where tranquil must adduce
Its tranquil self, the main of things, the mind,
The starting point of the human and the end,
That in which space itself is contained, the gate
To the enclosure, day, the things illumined
By day, night and that which night illumines,
Night and its midnight-minting fragrances,
Night's hymn of the rock, as in a vivid sleep.
"The Rock," 1954
Joan Ockman in Harvard Design Magazine (Fall 1998):
"'We are far removed from any reference to simple geometrical forms,' Bachelard wrote...."
No, we are not. See Log24, Christmas 2005:
(Click on pictures for details.)
"The project of discerning a loi des quatre éléments would preoccupy him until his death...."
For such a loi, see Theme and Variations and...
(Click on design for details.)
Thought for Today:
"If you can talk brilliantly
about a problem, it can create
the consoling illusion that
it has been mastered."
-- Stanley Kubrick, American
movie director (1928-1999).
(AP, "Today in History,"
February 6, 2007)
Sunday, February 4, 2007 9:00 AM
Sunday Morning
Seven consecutive Xanga footprintsthis morning:
| United States | Weblog | 2/4/2007 4:31 AM |
| United States | Weblog | 2/4/2007 4:32 AM |
| United States | Weblog | 2/4/2007 4:32 AM |
| United States | Weblog | 2/4/2007 4:32 AM |
| United States | Weblog | 2/4/2007 4:32 AM |
| United States | Weblog | 2/4/2007 4:32 AM |
| United States | Weblog | 2/4/2007 4:32 AM |
Related material:
Footprints of Dec. 13, 2006
Saturday, February 3, 2007 11:07 PM
American Pie Day...
Jan. 28 - Feb. 3, 2007,
concludes:
For 373, see
Miracle.
For 401, see 4/01:
April 1 at Noon.
"Feel lucky?
Well, do you?"
Friday, February 2, 2007 7:11 AM
Philosophy Wars continued:
The Night WatchFor Catholic Schools Week
(continued from last year)--
Last night's Log24 Xanga
footprints from Poland:
Poland 2/2/07 1:29 AM
/446066083/item.html
2/20/06: The Past Revisited
(with link to online text of
Many Dimensions, by Charles Williams)
Poland 2/2/07 2:38 AM
/426273644/item.html
1/15/06 Inscape
(the mathematical concept, with
square and "star" diagrams)
Poland 2/2/07 3:30 AM
nextdate=2%252f8%252f20...
2/8/05 The Equation
(Russell Crowe as John Nash
with "star" diagram from a
Princeton lecture by Langlands)
Poland 2/2/07 4:31 AM
/524081776/item.html
8/29/06 Hollywood Birthday
(with link to online text of
Plato on the Human Paradox,
by a Fordham Jesuit)
Poland 2/2/07 4:43 AM
/524459252/item.html
8/30/06 Seven
(Harvard, the etymology of the
word "experience," and the
Catholic funeral of a professor's
23-year-old daughter)
Poland 2/2/07 4:56 AM
/409355167/item.html
12/19/05 Quarter to Three (cont.)
(remarks on permutation groups
for the birthday of Helmut Wielandt)
Poland 2/2/07 5:03 AM
/490604390/item.html
5/29/06 For JFK's Birthday
(The Call Girls revisited)
Poland 2/2/07 5:32 AM
/522299668/item.html
8/24/06 Beginnings
(Nasar in The New Yorker and
T. S. Eliot in Log24, both on the 2006
Beijing String Theory conference)
Poland 2/2/07 5:46 AM
/447354678/item.html
2/22/06 In the Details
(Harvard's president resigns,
with accompanying "rosebud")
Friday, February 2, 2007 6:00 AM
Happy Groundhog Day
"Then put your little hand in mine...."Friday, February 2, 2007 5:00 AM
Dream
A way a lone a last a loved a long theThursday, February 1, 2007 7:59 AM
For Jim Gray
Commencement Address (doc)
to Computer Science Division,
College of Letters and Science,
University of California, Berkeley,
by Jim Gray,
May 25, 2003:
"I was part of Berkeley's class of 1965. Things have changed a lot since then....
So, what's that got to do with you? Well, there is going to be MORE change.... Indeed, change is accelerating-- Vernor Vinge suggests we are approaching singularities when social, scientific and economic change are so rapid that we cannot imagine what will happen next. These futurists predict humanity will become post-human. Now, THAT! is change-- a lot more than I have seen.
If it happens, the singularity will happen in your lifetime-- and indeed, you are likely to make it happen."
sci-fi tales, click on
the above hexagram.
More from Gray's speech:
"I am an optimist. Science is a Faustian bargain-- and I am betting on mankind muddling through. I grew up under the threat of atomic war; we've avoided that so far. Information Technology is a Faustian bargain. I am optimistic that we can have the good parts and protect ourselves from the worst part-- but I am counting on your help in that."
Thursday, February 1, 2007 2:00 AM
Turing Winner Missing at Sea
for data wizard
Gray was last heard from on
Sunday, Jan. 28, at about 10 AM.
His sailboat was reported missing
on Sunday evening.
He is known for, among other things,
work on the SkyServer program
and on the data cube operator.