Cullinane Journal 2009 August 01-15

From the journal of Steven H. Cullinane... 2009 August 01-15

Saturday, August 15, 2009 1:00 PM

Annals of Philosophy--

For St. Willard
Van Orman Quine

 " ... to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless 
With time, is an occupation for the saint"
-- Four Quartets

http://www.log24.com/log/pix09A/090815-QuineKyoto.gif

Quine receives
Kyoto Prize

The Timeless:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix09A/090815-Grid8x8.gif

Time

(64 years,
and more):

Today in History

By The Associated Press (AP)

Today is Saturday, Aug. 15, the 227th day of 2009. There are 138 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On Aug. 15, 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced to his subjects in a prerecorded radio address that Japan had accepted terms of surrender for ending World War II.

On this date:

In 1057, Macbeth, King of Scots, was killed in battle by Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had slain.

Macbeth:

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Quine:

"I really have nothing to add."
-- Quine, quoted
on this date in 1998.

Saturday, August 15, 2009 11:09 AM

Annals of Religion--

An Honest Question:

"Did the Catholic Church just jump the shark by electing Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger? This is an honest question... not a slam."

-- Anonymous user at an online forum on April 19, 2005

A Munificent Answer:

No. That leap of faith was taken long before, on November 1, 1950. See the note below.

Catholic Encyclopedia:

"The Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 15 August....
...has a double object: (1) the happy departure of Mary from this life; (2) the assumption of her body into heaven. It is the principal feast of the Blessed Virgin....
Note: By promulgating the Bull Munificentissimus Deus, 1 November, 1950, Pope Pius XII declared infallibly that the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was a dogma of the Catholic Faith."

Also on today's date (AP, Today in History)--

"In 1998, 29 people were killed by a car bomb that tore apart the center of Omagh, Northern Ireland; a splinter group calling itself the Real IRA claimed responsibility."

On the same day in 1998, The New York Times published Sarah Boxer's century-end summary:

"Think Tank: At the End of
a Century of Philosophizing,
the Answer Is Don't Ask"

Friday, August 14, 2009 10:31 AM

Zen and the Art: A Chautauqua--

Week Seven – Imagine…

Friday, August 14, 2009 @ 10:45 a.m.

"Amphitheater – George Kembel –

George Kembel is a co-founder and currently the executive director of the Stanford d.school, also known as the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University...."

Background:

"Plattner is said to be the 11th richest man in Germany with an estimated fortune of 5 billion USD, according to Forbes....

Plattner is a major owner of the San Jose Sharks hockey team...."

Related material:

Jumping
the Shark

San Jose Sharks logo

VS.

Gleaming
the Cube

Skateboard grandmaster Andy Kessler on May 22, 2007

Andy Kessler,
May 22, 2007

See also recent Log24 entries.
Kessler died of a wasp sting
on Monday, August 10, 2009.

Some philosophical background
for those who prefer Native American
religions to the Abrahamic religions
promoted at Chautauqua:

On the Gleaming Way,
by John Collier.
Chapter One:
"Native American Time."

Friday, August 14, 2009 10:10 AM

Review:

Endgame

Metaphor for Morphean morphosis,
Dreams that wake, transform, and die,
Calm and lucid this psychosis,
Joyce's nightmare in Escher's eye.

-- Steven H. Cullinane, Nov. 7, 1986

Wednesday, August 12, 2009 12:00 PM

Naturalized Epistemology, continued:

Exegesis

Text:

The Shining,
1977, page 162:

"A new headline, this one
dated April 10...."

"The item on the next page
was a mere squib, dated
four months later...."

Exegesis:

April 10-- Good Friday-- See
The Paradise of Childhood.

Four months later-- Aug. 10--

"When he thought of the old man
he could see him suddenly
in a field in the spring,
trying to move a gray boulder."

"... the poem makes
meanings of the rock...."

Tuesday, August 11, 2009 11:07 AM

For Stephen King, continued:

Online NY Times
at 10:10 AM today:
"Founder of
Special Olympics was 88"

Ask a Stupid Question...
______________________

Details, online NY Times front page-- Death of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and 'Oh, Sting, Where Is Thy Death?'

Details, online NY Times front page-- Death of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and 'Oh, Sting, Where Is Thy Death?'

Related material from
this journal, July 30:

'There's a small hotel....'

"In the room the women come and go"

-- Stephen King, The Shining:
"The Wasps' Nest"

NY Times today:

NY Times, Aug. 11, 2009-- Wasps' nest illustrating humorous essay 'Oh, Sting, Where Is Thy Death?'

Related material:

Actual Being
(Oct. 25, 2008)

and The Shining
(reissue, 1977 1st ed.),
page 162:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix09A/090811-TheShining162sm.gif

Monday, August 10, 2009 9:29 PM

Annals of Religion:

For Maine Preacher
Stephen King

Union colonel Joshua Chamberlain, on the way to the battle at Gettysburg, remembers his boyhood.

"Maine... is silent and cold.

Maine in the winter: air is darker, the sky is a deeper dark. A darkness comes with winter that these Southern people don't know. Snow falls so much earlier and in the winter you can walk in a snowfield among bushes, and visitors don't know that the bushes are the tops of tall pines, and you're standing in thirty feet of snow. Visitors. Once long ago visitors in the dead of winter: a preacher preaching hell-fire. Scared the fool out of me. And I resented it and Pa said I was right.

Pa.

When he thought of the old man he could see him suddenly in a field in the spring, trying to move a gray boulder. He always knew instinctively the ones you could move, even though the greater part was buried in the earth, and he expected you to move the rock and not discuss it. A hard and silent man, an honest man, a noble man. Little humor but sometimes the door opened and you saw the warmth within a long way off, a certain sadness, a slow, remote, unfathomable quality as if the man wanted to be closer to the world but did not know how. Once Chamberlain had a speech memorized from Shakespeare and gave it proudly, the old man listening but not looking, and Chamberlain remembered it still: 'What a piece of work is man... in action how like an angel!' And the old man, grinning, had scratched his head and then said stiffly, 'Well, boy, if he's an angel, he's sure a murderin' angel.' And Chamberlain had gone on to school to make an oration on the subject: Man, the Killer Angel. And when the old man heard about it he was very proud, and Chamberlain felt very good remembering it."

-- Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War

Monday, August 10, 2009 12:00 PM

Annals of Aesthetics, continued:

Pictures Within Pictures

"The Chinese language is written in ideograms, pictures. Think of a DO NOT ENTER pictogram, a circle with a diagonal slash, a type of ideogram. It tells you what to do or not do, but not why. The why is part of a larger context, a bigger picture. Such is the nature of the Chinese language. Simple yet complex. Pictures within pictures."

-- Customer review at Amazon.com

See also the pictures in this journal on today's date five years ago.

Sunday, August 9, 2009 4:00 PM

Today's Sermon, continued:

WIVB TV Buffalo, 2:56 PM ET Aug. 9, 2009, Severe Weather Statement accompanied by Instant Action 'Ace of Aces' aerial dogfight game

See also "Chautauqua"
at Stormfront.org and
the five entries ending with
"Unfriendly Persuasion"
this morning.

Background:
"Today's Sinner"

Sunday, August 9, 2009 9:11 AM

Today's Sermon:

Unfriendly Persuasion

"What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand...."

-- Frank Rich in today's New York Times

Franz Liebkind (played by Kenneth Mars) in 'The Producers,' with helmet and pigeon

Author! Author!

Sunday, August 9, 2009 2:45 AM

Quarter to Three, continued:

On the Waterfront

"On the Hoboken waterfront, people scattered as pieces of debris fell from the sky. A wheel from one of the aircraft lay on Hoboken's Sinatra Drive." --Associated Press, August 8, 2009

So set 'em up, Joe...

Friday, August 7, 2009 9:29 PM

Annals of Aesthetics, continued:

Angel and Beast

Screenwriter Frank Pierson spoke at
Chautauqua Institution this morning.

The gist of his remarks may be found
in an undated graduation speech
at WarnerSisters.com.

His suggested motto for filmmakers:
"To reach and touch
the angel in the beast."

The Chautauquan Daily,
Friday, August 7, 2009
by Sara Toth, staff writer --

"Pierson listed his favorite movies as
the Italian and French films that, after
World War II, captivated him and his
friends.
'Those movies were overwhelmingly
fascinating to us, and changed the way
in which we saw movies, and the way we
saw our lives and what we wanted to do
with ourselves,' he said. 'There were so
many that were absolutely marvelous.'
Such movies are not made any
more, Pierson said, and the quality
of the movies now pale in comparison
to those of the 1970s and 1980s.
About once a year, the Coen brothers
release a movie, and Woody Allen
'occasionally' makes a good film,
Pierson said. But the mainstream movies
that are shown in the multiplexes now
are geared toward only one audience:
young men with disposable incomes.
'That's really catering so extensively
to a rather limited audience-- a mentally
retarded and emotionally stunted
audience at that-- that there's not a lot left
over for the rest of us,' Pierson said."

Thursday, August 6, 2009 1:44 PM

Block that Metaphor:

A Fisher of Men

Cover, Schulberg's novelization of 'Waterfront,' Bantam paperback

Update: The above image was added
at about 11 AM ET Aug. 8, 2009.

From a webpage of the First United Methodist Church of Bloomington, Indiana--

Dr. Joe Emerson, April 24, 2005--

"The Ultimate Test"

-- Text: I Peter 2:1-9Dr. Emerson falsely claims that the film "On the Waterfront" was based on a book by the late Budd Schulberg (who died yesterday). (Instead, the film's screenplay, written by Schulberg-- similar to an earlier screenplay by Arthur Miller, "The Hook"-- was based on a series of newspaper articles by Malcolm Johnson.)

"The movie 'On the Waterfront' is once more in rerun. (That’s when Marlon Brando looked like Marlon Brando. That’s the scary part of growing old when you see what he looked like then and when he grew old.) It is based on a book by Budd Schulberg."

Emerson goes on to discuss the book, Waterfront, that Schulberg wrote based on his screenplay--

"In it, you may remember a scene where Runty Nolan, a little guy, runs afoul of the mob and is brutally killed and tossed into the North River. A priest is called to give last rites after they drag him out."

Hook on cover of Budd Schulberg's novel 'Waterfront' (NY Times obituary, detail)

New York Times today

Dr. Emerson flunks the test.

Dr. Emerson's sermon is, as noted above (Text: I Peter 2:1-9), not mainly about waterfronts, but rather about the "living stones" metaphor of the Big Fisherman.

My own remarks on the date of Dr. Emerson's sermon--

The 4x6 array used in the Miracle Octad Generator of R. T. Curtis

Those who like to mix mathematics with religion may regard the above 4x6 array as a context for the "living stones" metaphor. See, too, the five entries in this journal ending at 12:25 AM ET on November 12 (Grace Kelly's birthday), 2006, and today's previous entry.

Thursday, August 6, 2009 6:00 AM

Kind of Blue:

The Running

"Budd Schulberg, who wrote the award-winning screenplay for 'On the Waterfront' and created a classic American archetype of naked ambition, Sammy Glick, in his novel What Makes Sammy Run?, died on Wednesday. He was 95...."

Log24, Dec. 16, 2003:

See, too, Blue Matrices, and
a link for Beethoven's birthday:

Song for the
Unification of Europe

Wednesday, August 5, 2009 11:30 PM

Annals of Aesthetics, continued:

Word and Image

NYT obituary summaries for Charles Gwathmey and Edward Hall, morning of Aug. 5, 2009

From Hall's obituary:

"Edward T. Hall, a cultural anthropologist
who pioneered the study of nonverbal
communication and interactions between
members of different ethnic groups,
died July 20 at his home in
Santa Fe, N.M. He was 95."

NY Times piece quoted here on
the date of Hall's death:

"July 20, 1969, was the moment NASA needed, more than anything else in this world, the Word. But that was something NASA's engineers had no specifications for. At this moment, that remains the only solution to recovering NASA's true destiny, which is, of course, to build that bridge to the stars."

-- Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff, an account of the Mercury Seven astronauts.

Commentary --

The Word according to St. John:

Jill St. John, star of 'Diamonds are Forever'

From Hall's obituary:

"Mr. Hall first became interested in
space and time as forms of cultural
expression while working on
Navajo and Hopi reservations
in the 1930s."

Log24, July 29:

Changing Woman:

"Kaleidoscope turning...

Juliette Binoche in 'Blue' The 24 2x2 Cullinane Kaleidoscope animated images

Shifting pattern within
unalterable structure..."
-- Roger Zelazny,
Eye of Cat

"We are the key."
-- Eye of Cat

Update of about 4:45 PM 8/5:

Paul Newall, "Kieślowski's Three Colours Trilogy"--

"Julie recognises the music of the busker outside playing a recorder as that of her husband's. When she asks him where he heard it, he replies that he makes up all sorts of things. This is an instance of a theory of Kieślowski's that 'different people, in different places, are thinking the same thing but for different reasons.' With regard to music in particular, he held what might be characterised as a Platonic view according to which notes pre-exist and are picked out and assembled by people. That these can accord with one another is a sign of what connects people, or so he believed."

The above photo of Juliette Binoche in Blue accompanying the quotations from Zelazny illustrates Kieślowski's concept, with graphic designs instead of musical notes. Some of the same designs are discussed in Abstraction and the Holocaust (Mark Godfrey, Yale University Press, 2007). (See the Log24 entries of June 11, 2009.)

Related material:

"Jeffrey Overstreet, in his book Through a Screen Darkly, comments extensively on Blue. He says these stones 'are like strands of suspended crystalline tears, pieces of sharp-edged grief that Julie has not been able to express.'....

Throughout the film the color blue crops up, highlighting the mood of Julie's grief. A blue light occurs frequently, when Julie is caught by some fleeting memory. Accompanied by strains of an orchestral composition, possibly her husband's, these blue screen shots hold for several seconds while Julie is clearly processing something. The meaning of this blue light is unexplained. For Overstreet, it is the spirit of reunification of broken things."

-- Martin Baggs at Mosaic Movie Connect Group on Sunday, March 15, 2009. (Cf. Log24 on that date.)

For such a spirit, compare Binoche's blue mobile in Blue with Binoche's gathered shards in Bee Season.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009 7:59 PM

Meet Mr. Black, or:

Due Deference

The New York Times today
on architect Charles Gwathmey,
who died Monday:

"Mr. Gwathmey's Astor Place
condominium tower drew
criticism from those who
said it was insufficiently
deferential to its
surroundings."

Astor Place tower
(click to enlarge):

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix09A/090804-GwathmeyTowerSm.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Surroundings:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix09A/090804-GwathmeyTowerDetail.jpg

The above sculpture,
popularly known as
The Borg Cube,
appeared here on
Saturday:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix09A/090801-CooperCube2.jpg

Photo by Jesse Chan-Norris

The Borg Cube, with
Cooper Union at left

For deferential remarks, see
Annals of Collective Consciousness.

See also the link
from noon today to
Nobel Prize Day, 2006,
and the link there to
J. G. Ballard on modernism.

"So, there is one place
where modernism triumphs.
As in the cases of the pyramids
and the Taj Mahal, the Siegfried line
and the Atlantic wall, death always
calls on the very best architects."

-- J. G. Ballard,
"A Handful of Dust"

Tuesday, August 4, 2009 12:25 PM

Show and Tell:

High Noon

Images from Log24 on
December 10, 2006 --
Nobel Prize Day, and
the day after
Kirk Douglas's birthday--

Kirk Douglas promoting his film 'Diamonds'

Kirk Douglas promoting his film 'Diamonds'

Kirk Douglas ad for
the film "Diamonds"
(2000)

Motto of Plato's Academy: 'Let no one ignorant of geometry enter'

Images from
Google News
at noon today --

(Click for details.)

3x3 array of Cameron Douglas images from Google News, August 4, 2009

"The serpent's eyes shine
as he wraps around the vine..."

-- Don Henley on a California hotel

Tuesday, August 4, 2009 8:00 AM

Annals of Narrative:

Just What We Need

Thomas Pynchon's new novel
Inherent Vice comes out today.

Title of a review in
The New York Times:

Another Doorway to the
Paranoid Pynchon Dimension

More interesting doorways:

Doorway to 'The Aleph Sanctuary,' by Mati Klarwein

An Aleph for Pynchon (July 9)

Click on the doorway for details.

Rabbi Ephraim Oshry
Rabbi

Aleph

The Aleph (July 8)

Click on the aleph for details.

Monday, August 3, 2009 7:11 AM

ART WARS continued:

For Your Consideration--

The Police, 'Synchronicity' album, detail of cover

LA Times yesterday:

Steven Miessner, keeper
of the Academy's Oscars,
died of a heart attack at 48
on Wednesday, July 29, 2009:

LA Times obit for Steven Miessner, 'Keeper of the Oscars,' who died July 29, 2009

Click the above to enlarge.

Steve Miessner, keeper of the Oscars, on Feb. 21, 2009

Steve Miessner, the keeper of the Oscars,
packages the statues for transport
to Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles
in preparation for the 81st
Academy Awards ceremony held
on Sunday, Feb. 22, 2009
(Chris Carlson/AP).

From the date of
Miessner's death:

Adam and God (Sistine Chapel), with Jungian Self-Symbol and Ojo de Dios (The Diamond Puzzle)

Adam and God (Sistine Chapel), with Jungian Self-Symbol and Ojo de Dios (The Diamond Puzzle)

From the following day:

Log24 on Thursday, July 30, 2009

Annals of Aesthetics, continued:

Academy Awards
for Cambridge

"First of all, I'd like
to thank the Academy."
-- Remark attributed to Plato

Arrest of Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in Cambridge, Mass.

Arrest of Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in Cambridge, Mass.

"A poem cannot exhaust reality,
but it can arrest it."

-- At War with the Word:
   Literary Theory and
   Liberal Education,
   by R. V. Young,
   Chapter One

"Who knows where madness lies?"

-- Quoted here July 29, 2009
(the day the keeper of
the Oscars died)

Possible clues:

From Google News at about
7 AM ET Mon., Aug. 3, 2009:

Henry Louis Gates Jr. mulls moving over death threats

Boston Herald - Susan Milton, Jessica Van Sack - ‎6 hours ago‎

CHILMARK - Black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. has received numerous death threats since he accused a white officer of ...

Death threats may make Gates move

The Daily Inquirer - ‎4 hours ago‎

Henry Louis Gates Jr. said yesterday that Harvard University suggested he move after receiving numerous death threats since he accused a white officer of ...

Gates: I've received death threats

NECN - ‎9 hours ago‎

... Gates spoke at a book signing on Martha's Vineyard. He also said that he has received death and bomb threats after the incident at his Cambridge home. ...

Black scholar says he's able to joke about arrest

The Associated Press - Denise Lavoie - ‎17 hours ago‎

Gates said he received numerous threats after the incident, including an e-mail that read, "You should die, you're a racist." Gates has changed his e-mail ...

Gates grateful for island haven

Cape Cod Times - Susan Milton - ‎4 hours ago‎

As a result of death threats and bomb threats, he hasn't returned to his Cambridge home, leased from Harvard University. The university has encouraged him ...

Gates makes public appearance after race debate

Worcester Telegram - Denise Lavoie - ‎20 hours ago‎

Gates, who spoke at a book signing on Martha's Vineyard Sunday, says there also have been some serious moments. He says he received death and bomb threats ...

Sunday, August 2, 2009 8:20 PM

A Tale and Its Moral:

Spider Girl

"The 'magico-religious' tarantella
is a solo dance performed
supposedly to cure...
the delirium and contortions
attributed to the bite of a spider
at harvest (summer) time."

-- Wikipedia

Mira Sorvino in 'Tarantella,' with film's motto-- 'Life's a dance'

Garfield on Sunday, August 2, 2009: Spider gets tail-slap learned from Jersey cow, says 'Those Jersey girls are TOUGH.'

Moral:

Life's a dance
(and Jersey girls
are tough).

http://www.log24.com/images/asterisk8.gif

For Mira Sorvino, star of "Tarantella,"
who was raised in Tenafly, New Jersey--

Bull on sacred cows:

"Poor late nineteenth-century, poor early twentieth-century! Oh, brave new world that had such people in it: people like Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Gödel. Seven people who did more than all the machine-guns and canons of the Somme Valley or the Panzer divisions of Hitler to end the old world and to create-- if not the answers-- at least the questions that started off the new, each one of them killing one of the sacred cows on which Western consciousness had fed for so long...."

-- Apostolos Doxiadis, "Writing Incompleteness-- the Play" (pdf). See also Mathematics and Narrative.

Sunday, August 2, 2009 11:32 AM

From Tinker Shuffle to...

The Dance
at Lughnasa

Jean Butler dances 'On Dangerous Ground'

Related material:

Actual Being
and
Happy Mate Change,
Nicole.

Saturday, August 1, 2009 9:26 AM

Annals of Collective Consciousness:

And the Tony
goes to...

The New York Times today:

"Tony Rosenthal, who created 'Alamo,' the eternally popular revolving black cube in Astor Place in the East Village, and many other public sculptures, died on Tuesday [July 28, 2009] in Southampton, N.Y. He was 94."

The Astor Place sculpture, near Cooper Union, is also known as The Borg Cube:

The Borg Cube, with
Cooper Union at left

Wikipedia on The Borg Queen:

"The Borg Queen is the focal point within the Borg collective consciousness."

Possible Borg-Queen candidates:

Helen Mirren, who appeared in this journal on the date of Rosenthal's death (see Monumental Anniversary), and Julie Taymor, who recently directed Mirren as Prospera in a feminist version of "The Tempest."

Both Mirren and Taymor would appreciate the work of Anita Borg, who pioneered the role of women in computer science. "Her colleagues mourned Borg's passing, even as they stressed how crucial she was in creating a kind of collective consciousness for women working in the heavily male-dominated field of computer technology." --Salon.com obituary

Anita Borg

Borg died on Sunday, April 6, 2003. See The New York Times Magazine for that date in Art Wars: Geometry as Conceptual Art--

http://www.log24.com/log/pix09A/090801-NYT_Magazine030406.jpg

(Cover typography revised)

I would award the Borg-Queen Tony to Taymor, who seems to have a firmer grasp of technology than Mirren.

See Language Game,
Wittgenstein's birthday, 2009.