Angels of Empire

Monday, March 31, 2003, 11:30 AM

Divine Right of Empire
and the

Sunday Lottery 

New York Sunday, March 30, 2003 Winning number for the midday Empire State lottery: 007	Operation James From The Glasgow Daily Record: Monday, March 31, 2003 - Simon Houston; Near Basra, Iraq Commando raiders tightened the Allies' grip on Basra yesterday by storming a key suburb of Iraq's besieged second city. The raid was named Operation James, after James Bond. Targets were codenamed Goldfinger, Blofeld and Pussy Galore.
Pennsylvania Sunday, March 30, 2003 Winning number for the midday Keystone State Lottery: 256 "All or Nothing at All" — Frank Sinatra The PA lottery number on the night Sinatra died was 256.	Operation Playmate From Yahoo News: Friday, March 28, 2003 - During the Gulf War, Playboy magazine's celebrated Centerfolds reached out to U.S. military men and women... with their "Operation Playmate" project.... Those...  efforts... had their roots in the Vietnam War, when 1966 Playmate of the Year Jo Collins traveled to the combat zone and flew aboard a helicopter gunship.... Now, in light of the war in Iraq, "Operation Playmate" has returned.
See also The Bhagavad Gita 10:36.

Wednesday, April 2, 2003, 2:30 PM

The following journal note, from the day after Sinatra died, was written before I heard of his death.  Note particularly the quote from Rilke.  Other material was suggested, in part, by Alasdair Gray's Glasgow novel 1982 Janine.  The "Sein Feld" heading is a reference to the Seinfeld final episode, which aired May 14, 1998.  The first column contains a reference to angels -- apparently Hell's Angels -- and the second column provides a somewhat more serious look at this theological topic.

Sein Feld                            1984 Janine "But Angels love their own And they're reaching out     for you Janine... Oh Janine — Kim Wilde lyric,     Teases & Dares album,     1984, apparently about     a British biker girl   "Logos means above all relation." — Simone Weil,     Gateway to God,     Glasgow, 1982 "Gesang ist Dasein....  Ein Hauch um nichts.  Ein Wehn im Gott.  Ein Wind." — Not Heidegger but Rilke: Sonnets to Orpheus, I, 3

Geometry and Theology PA lottery May 14, 1998: 256     S8  The group of all projectivities and correlations of PG(3, 2). The above isomorphism implies the geometry of the Mathieu group M24. "The Leech lattice is a blown-up version of S(5,8,24)." — W. Feit "We have strong evidence that the creator of the universe loves symmetry." — Freeman Dyson "Mackey presents eight axioms from which he deduces the [quantum] theory." — M. Schechter "Theology is about words; science is about things." — Freeman Dyson, New York Review of Books, 5/28/98 What is "256" about?

Tape purchased 12/23/97: Django Reinhardt       Gypsy Jazz

"In the middle of 1982 Janine there are pages in which Jock McLeish is fighting with drugs and alcohol, attempting to either die or come through and get free of his fantasies. In his delirium, he hears the voice of God, which enters in small print, pushing against the larger type of his ravings.  Something God says is repeated on the first and last pages of Unlikely Stories, Mostly, complete with illustration and the words 'Scotland 1984' beside it. God's statement is 'Work as if you were in the early days of a better nation.'  It is the inherent optimism in that statement that perhaps best captures the strength of Aladair Gray's fiction, its straightforwardness and exuberance." — Toby Olson, "Eros in Glasgow," in Book World, The Washington Post, December 16, 1984

For another look at angels, see "Winging It," by Christopher R. Miller, The New York Times Book Review Bookend page for Sunday, May 24, 1998. May 24 is the feast day of Sara (also known by the Hindu name Kali), patron saint of Gypsies.

For another, later (July 16, 1998) reply to Dyson, from a source better known than myself, see Why Religion Matters, by Huston Smith, Harper Collins, 2001, page 66.

Saturday, March 29, 2003, 9:26 AM

The Ideology of Empire and
Springtime for Vishnu

There has been much talk lately of the establishment of a new American Empire.  An empire needs an ideology. The Bush family, which has strong ties to various right-wing Christian organizations, may favor an ideology best described as "Christian Zionism."  For an excellent overview of this ideology, see the following Christ Church website:

Christian Zionism:
Its History, Theology, and Politics

In view of the strong influence of Christian Zionism on the United States government, the following festival should perhaps be known as "Springtime for Jesus" —

The National Cherry Blossom Festival,
Washington, DC.

A Christian Zionist haiku
celebrating this festival:

Cherry blossoms bloom.
Sure, it's beautiful, but
Is it good for the Jews?

Personally, I side with Henry David Thoreau, Aldous Huxley, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Andre Weil in preferring the Hindu Holy Scripture The Bhagavad-Gita to any Abrahamic religious text.

The Gita deals, at one level, with a particular incarnation of the Aryan god Vishnu.  Holi 2003, a springtime festival associated with Vishnu, will be celebrated tonight in Carteret, New Jersey.

"The old Aryan god, Vishnu, was portrayed as coming to Earth periodically in the form of Krishna, the embodiment of Spring...."

— The Classical Empires, a website of the University of Kansas at Lawrence, Kansas (final home of William S. Burroughs)

Burroughs fans at the University of Kansas might appreciate the following website related both to the classical Athenian Empire and to Lawrence, Kansas: Politics of Hell.

Follow-up of Sunday, March 30, 2003:

See With God on His Side, by Garry Wills,
in the Sunday New York Times.