Month: March 2003

  • Letter


    On this date in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel
    "The Scarlet Letter" was first published.







    "Ye see how large a letter
      I have written...."
      — St. Paul, Galatians
      Chapter 6, Verse 11



    Einstein and Oppenheimer
    at the Institute for
    Advanced Study, Princeton


    Einstein wrote a rather
    famous letter to FDR;
    Oppenheimer is known as
    the father of the A-bomb.

    Song of God


    From the Hindu holy scripture Bhagavad Gita (Song of God):


    "Of orators, I am the speech; of letters the first one, A; I am imperishable time; the Creator whose face is everywhere; death that devours all things."
     — Bhagavad Gita 10.32-33,
     tr. by Stephen Mitchell,
     Harmony Books, 2000


    "... "


    — Suzan-Lori Parks,
    playwright,
    in today's New York Times 



    Suzan-Lori Parks


    See also my note of two years ago,



    "Random Thoughts for St. Patrick's Eve."


    For more on Oppenheimer and the Bhagavad Gita, see


    "Fat Man and Dancing Girl."

  • The Producers, Part Deux:


    The Consumers







    Sidney Lippman, Hit Songwriter,
    Dies at 89


    From THE NEW YORK TIMES


    Sidney Lippman, the composer and songwriter who wrote the music for "A — You're Adorable," died on Tuesday, March 11, 2003, in New Jersey.  He was 89.


    He teamed up with lyricists Buddy Kaye and Fred Wise to write


    "A — You're Adorable (The Alphabet Song)"


    which became a No. 1 hit in 1949 as an RCA Victor recording with Perry Como and the Fontane Sisters.


    See also my Tuesday, March 11, entry,


    The Producers,


    and my entry from 2001,


    Random Thoughts for St. Patrick's Eve.


    The illustration above, a tribute to Meg Ryan on Einstein's birthday, may serve as a counterpoint to the "Producers" entry of March 11, the date of Lippman's death.


    The St. Patrick's Eve note contains a rather different meditation on the letter "A."  See too


    The Alphabet Versus the Goddess,


    an intriguing speculation by Leonard Shlain, who claims to show that "patriarchy and misogyny have moved contrapuntually to goddess veneration."


    Well, maybe not quite yet; but blessed are the peacemakers.

  • ART WARS:


    From The New Yorker, issue of March 17, 2003, Clive James on Aldous Huxley:


    “The Perennial Philosophy, his 1945 book compounding all the positive thoughts of West and East into a tutti-frutti of moral uplift, was the equivalent, in its day, of It Takes a Village: there was nothing in it to object to, and that, of course, was the objection."


    For a cultural artifact that is less questionably perennial, see Huxley's story "Young Archimedes."






    Plato, Pythagoras, and
    the diamond figure


    Plato's Diamond in the Meno
    Plato as a precursor of Gerard Manley Hopkins's "immortal diamond." An illustration shows the ur-diamond figure.


    Plato's Diamond Revisited
    Ivars Peterson's Nov. 27, 2000 column "Square of the Hypotenuse" which discusses the diamond figure as used by Pythagoras (perhaps) and Plato. Other references to the use of Plato's diamond in the proof of the Pythagorean theorem:

    Huxley:


    "... and he proceeded to prove the theorem of Pythagoras -- not in Euclid's way, but by the simpler and more satisfying method which was, in all probability, employed by Pythagoras himself....
    'You see,' he said, 'it seemed to me so beautiful....'
    I nodded. 'Yes, it's very beautiful,' I said -- 'it's very beautiful indeed.'"
    -- Aldous Huxley, "Young Archimedes," in Collected Short Stories, Harper, 1957, pp. 246 - 247


    Heath:


    Sir Thomas L. Heath, in his commentary on Euclid I.47, asks how Pythagoreans discovered the Pythagorean theorem and the irrationality of the diagonal of a unit square. His answer? Plato's diamond.
    (See Heath, Sir Thomas Little (1861-1940),
    The thirteen books of Euclid's Elements translated from the text of Heiberg with introduction and commentary. Three volumes. University Press, Cambridge, 1908. Second edition: University Press, Cambridge, 1925. Reprint: Dover Publications, New York, 1956.


    Other sites on the alleged
    "diamond" proof of Pythagoras


    Colorful diagrams at Cut-the-Knot

    Illustrated legend of the diamond proof

    Babylonian version of the diamond proof


    For further details of Huxley's story, see


    The Practice of Mathematics,


    Part I, by Robert P. Langlands, from a lecture series at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.


    From the New Yorker Contributors page for St. Patrick's Day, 2003:

    "Clive James (Books, p. 143) has a new collection, As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002, which will be published in June."

    See also my entry "The Boys from Uruguay" and the later entry "Lichtung!" on the Deutsche Schule Montevideo in Uruguay.

  • Death Knell


    In memory of Howard Fast, novelist and Jewish former Communist, who died yesterday, a quotation:







    "For many of us, the geometry course sounded the death knell for our progress — and interest — in mathematics."


    — "Shape and Space in Geometry"


    © 1997-2003 Annenberg/CPB. All rights reserved.
    Legal Policy


    See also
    Geometry for Jews.







    Added March 16, 2003: See, too, the life of
    John Sanford, blacklisted Jewish writer,
    who died on March 6, 2003 —
    Michelangelo's birthday and the date of
    "    Geometry for Jews."

  • Birthday Song


    Today is the birthday of the late Jewish media magnate and art collector Walter H. Annenberg, whose name appears on a website that includes the following text:







    Shape and Space in Geometry


    "Making quilt blocks is an excellent way to explore symmetry. A quilt block is made of 16 smaller squares. Each small square consists of two triangles. Study this example of a quilt block:



    quilt

    This block has a certain symmetry. The right half is a mirror image of the left, and the top half is a mirror of the bottom."


    © 1997-2003 Annenberg/CPB. All rights reserved.
    Legal Policy


    Symmetries of patterns such as the above are the subject of my 1976 monograph " Diamond Theory," which also deals with "shape and space in geometry," but in a much more sophisticated way.  For more on Annenberg, see my previous entry, "Daimon Theory."  For more on the historical significance of March 13, see Neil Sedaka, who also has a birthday today, in " Jews in the News."


    Sedaka is, of course, noted for the hit tune "Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen," our site music for today.


    See also Geometry for Jews and related entries.


    For the phrase "diamond theory" in a religious and philosophical context, see

    Pilate, Truth, and Friday the Thirteenth.


    "It's quarter to three...." — Frank Sinatra

  • Daimon Theory


    Today is allegedly the anniversary of the canonization, in 1622, of two rather important members of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits):


    Ignatius Loyola...
      Click here for Loyola's legacy of strategic intelligence.


    Francis Xavier...
      Click here for Xavier's legacy of strategic stupidity.


    We can thank (or blame) a Jesuit (Gerard Manley Hopkins) for the poetic phrase "immortal diamond."  He may have been influenced by Plato, who has Socrates using a diamond figure in an argument for the immortality of the soul.  Confusingly, Socrates also talked about his "daimon" (pronounced dye-moan).  Combining these similar-sounding concepts, we have Doctor Stephen A. Diamond writing about daimons — a choice of author and topic that neatly combines the strategic intelligence of Loyola with the strategic stupidity of Xavier.



    The cover illustration is perhaps not of Dr. Diamond himself.


    A link between diamond theory and daimon theory is furnished by the charitable legacy of the non-practicing Jew Walter Annenberg.


    For Annenberg and diamond theory, see this site on the elementary geometry of quilt blocks, which credits the Annenberg Foundation for support.


    For Annenberg and daimon theory, see this site on Socrates, which has a similar Annenberg support credit.

    Advanced disciples of Annenberg can learn much from the Perseus site about daimon theory. Let us pray that Abrahamic religious bigotry does not stand in their way.  Less advanced disciples of Annenberg may find fulfillment in teaching children the beauty of elementary 4x4 quilt-block symmetry.  Let us pray that academic bigotry does not prevent these same children, when they have grown older, from learning the deeper, and more difficult, beauties of diamond theory.








     
    Daimon Theory


     
    Diamond Theory

  • ART WARS:


    The Producers










    Broadway City Arcade


    "Aryan Christ"
    Carl G. Jung



    Bloomberg & Bernstein,
    Mayor & Producers' Head


    Simon and Garfunkel's Tribute to Synchronicity:










    Fools, said I,
       you do not know
    Silence like
       a cancer grows.
    Hear my words
       that I might teach you.
    Take my arms
       that I might reach you....

    Dummköpfe, sagte ich,
       ihr wißt nicht,
    daß die Stille wie
       ein Krebs wächst.
    Hört meine Worte,
       die ich euch sage.
    Nehmt meine Hände,
       die ich euch reiche....

    And the people
       bowed and prayed
    To the neon god
       they made.

    Und die Menschen
       verbeugten sich vor dem
    Neon-Gott, den sie schufen,
       und beteten zu ihm.


                       — Paul Simon


    For more on Jung, see



    See also the Synchronicity album of The Police,
    inducted last night into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.




  • ART WARS:


    Art at the Vanishing Point


    Two readings from The New York Times Book Review of Sunday,

    March 9,

    2003 are relevant to our recurring "art wars" theme.  The essay on Dante by Judith Shulevitz on page 31 recalls his "point at which all times are present."  (See my March 7 entry.)  On page 12 there is a review of a novel about the alleged "high culture" of the New York art world.  The novel is centered on Leo Hertzberg, a fictional Columbia University art historian.  From Janet Burroway's review of What I Loved, by Siri Hustvedt:


    "...the 'zeros' who inhabit the book... dramatize its speculations about the self.... the spectator who is 'the true vanishing point, the pinprick in the canvas.'''


    Here is a canvas by Richard McGuire for April Fools' Day 1995, illustrating such a spectator.



    For more on the "vanishing point," or "point at infinity," see


    "Midsummer Eve's Dream."


    Connoisseurs of ArtSpeak may appreciate Burroway's summary of Hustvedt's prose: "...her real canvas is philosophical, and here she explores the nature of identity in a structure of crystalline complexity."


    For another "structure of crystalline
    complexity," see my March 6 entry,

    "Geometry for Jews."


    For a more honest account of the
    New York art scene, see Tom Wolfe's
     
    The Painted Word.

  • Symbols —


    Broadway:
    The Sound of Silence









    Hello darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again.


    (See previous entry, Mar. 7, "Lovely, Dark and Deep.) 


    And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made.


    (See CNN.com   Broadway City Arcade club story of Mar. 9)


    The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.


    (See picture in NY Times Book Review, Mar. 9, page 31.)


    See also the footnote on the Halmos "tombstone" symbol in the previous entry, the entry "Dustin in Wonderland" of Feb. 24, the film "Marathon Man," and the entry "Geometry for Jews" of March 6.

  • Lovely, Dark and Deep

    On this date in 1923, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," by Robert Frost, was published.  On this date in 1999, director Stanley Kubrick died.  On this date in 1872, Piet Mondrian was born.

    "....mirando il punto
    a cui tutti li tempi son presenti"

    -- Dante, Paradiso, XVII, 17-18 

    Chez Mondrian
    Kertész, Paris, 1926 

    6:23 PM Friday, March 7:

    From Measure Theory, by Paul R. Halmos, Van Nostrand, 1950:

    "The symbol
    is used throughout the entire book in place of such phrases as 'Q.E.D.'
    or 'This completes the proof of the theorem' to signal the end of a
    proof."