Trance of the Red Queen

In memory of playwright George Axelrod, who died Saturday, June 21, 2003.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

"In 1987, Mr. Axelrod was saluted at the New York Film Festival. He told the admiring crowd: 'I always wanted to get into the major leagues, and I knew my secret: luck and timing. I had a small and narrow but very, very sharp talent, and inside it, I'm as good as it gets.'

'The Manchurian Candidate,' in 1962, based on Richard Condon's novel about wartime brainwashing and subversive politics, may have been Mr. Axelrod's best achievement. He declared in 1995 that the script 'broke every rule. It's got dream sequences, flashbacks, narration out of nowhere . . . Everything in the world you're told not to do.'

He considered 'The Manchurian Candidate' a comedy...."

"Don't you draw the queen of diamonds,
     boy, she'll beat you if she's able.
You know the queen of hearts
     is always your best bet."

— The Eagles, "Desperado"

Another quotation that seems relevant:

"The hypnosis was performed by
the good and pious nuns...."

For the Diocese of Phoenix 

See entries of June 4 and June 15.

See also two items from Tuesday, June 17, 2003:

A 6/17 Arizona Daily Star article on Phoenix bishop Thomas O'Brien, and the 6/17 cartoon below.

Tony Auth, Philadelphia Inquirer,
June 17, 2003

For background, see Frank Keating in the New York Times, 6/17/03.

My entry of 5 PM EDT Saturday, June 14, 2003, which preceded the death involving Bishop O'Brien, may also be of interest.

The Real Hogwarts

is at no single geographical location; it is distributed throughout the planet, and it is perhaps best known (apart from its disguises in the fiction of J. K. Rowling, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and other Inklings) as Christ Church.  Some relevant links:

Christ Church College, Oxford

• Harry Potter at Christ Church, Oxford

Christchurch, New Zealand

• University of Canterbury
  Physical Sciences Library:
  
  Keeping Current with the Web:
  Maths & Statistics, June 2002
  
  
  

  Diamond Theory:
  Symmetry in Binary Spaces
  http://m759.freeservers.com/
  The author of this site is Steven Cullinane, who has also written booklets on the subject.  The web site provides detailed discussions of Diamond Theory, and is intended for college math students or mathematicians.  According to Cullinane, Diamond Theory is best classified in the subject of "finite automorphism groups of algebraic, geometric, or combinatorial structures." The site also includes links to other resources.    From the NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering and Technology, Volume 1, No. 9, 7 June 2002, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2002.  http://scout.cs.wisc.edu
  

Christ Church, Christchurch Road,
Virginia Water, England

• The Vicar of Christ Church has written a scathing attack on white-trash religion, "Christian Zionism," that should be required reading for all prospective U. S. demagogues.

Finally, on this Sunday in June, with The New York Review of Books of July 3, 2003, headlining the religion of Scientism (Freeman Dyson reviewing Gleick's new book on Newton), it seems fitting to provide a link to an oasis of civilisation in the home town of mathematician John Nash -- Bluefield, West Virginia.

Christ Church,
Bluefield, West Virginia

The Order of the Phoenix

Some links of interest
on this day of Potter-mania:

The Royal Order of the Phoenix

Knight's Gold Cross
 With Swords

awarded to
Arthur Edmonds,
Royal New Zealand Engineers,
attached to Special Operations Executive and parachuted into occupied Greece
1 October 1941,
serving with Greek guerrillas.

St. James Church Cemetery,
Kerikeri, New Zealand

In Loving Memory of
 Arthur Edmonds
who died June 20th,
1914, aged 88 years:

Logos

 Logo,
Anglican Diocese
of Auckland


Logo,
Catholic Diocese
of Phoenix

See also Cullinane College.

— Me and Frodo Down by the Schoolyard

Claves Part II

http://www.skytopia.com/project/scale.html

http://www.tunesmithy.connectfree.co.uk/
musical_note_intervals.htm

http://www.kirnberger.fsnet.co.uk/

Claves Regni Caelorum

On actor Gregory Peck, who died Thursday, June 12, 2003:

"He had early success in 'The Keys of the Kingdom,' in which he played a priest."

As Peck noted in a videotape played at his memorial service June 16,

"As a professional," he added, "I think I'd like to be thought of as a good storyteller; that's what's always interested me."

June 16, besides being the day of Peck's memorial, was also Bloomsday.  My entry for 1 PM on Bloomsday, a day celebrating the Ulysses of James Joyce, consists of the three words "Hickory, Dickory, Dock."  A comment on that entry:

"I prefer the Wake."

The following, from the Discordian Scriptures, provides a connection between the Bloomsday mouse and the Wake of patriarch Gregory Peck.

Hickory Dickory Dock

Hickory, dickory, dock!

Here we are on higher ground at once. The clock symbolizes the spinal column, or if you prefer it, Time, chosen as one of the conditions of normal consciousness. The mouse is the Ego; "Mus", a mouse, being only "Sum", "I am", spelt Qabalistically backwards.  This Ego or Prana or Kundalini force being driven up the spine, the clock strikes one, that is, the duality of consciousness is abolished. And the force again subsides to its original level. "Hickory, dickory, dock!" is perhaps the mantra which was used by the adept who constructed this rime, thereby hoping to fix it in the minds of men; so that they might attain to Samadhi by the same method. Others attribute to it a more profound significance -- which is impossible to go into at this moment, for we must turn to:
 
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall....

The Bloom of Ulysses has a certain philosophical kinship with Yale literary critic Harold Bloom.  For material related to the latter Bloom's study of Gnosticism, see Chaos Matrix.  For the conflict between Gnostic and Petrine approaches to religion, see Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos.

From an account of Peck's memorial service:

"Mourners included... Piper Laurie...."

OK, he's in.

Bloomsday, 1 PM

Hickory Dickory Dock.

Bloomsday.

See Bloom and Midsummer Eve's Dream.

Readings for Trinity Sunday

1. Triune knot:
   Problems in Combinatorial Group Theory, 7 and 8, in light of the remark in Section 8.3 of Lattice Polygons and the Number 12 
   
2. Cardinal Newman:
   Sermon 24
   
3. Simon Nickerson:
   24=8x3.

For more on the structure
discussed by Nickerson, see

Raiders of the Lost Matrix:

For theology in general, see

Jews Telling Stories.

The Irish Cliffs of Moher
by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Who is my father in this world,
    in this house,
At the spirit's base?

My father's father,
    his father's father, his --
Shadows like winds

Go back to a parent before thought,
    before speech,
At the head of the past.

They go to the cliffs of Moher
    rising out of the mist,
Above the real,

Rising out of present time
    and place, above
The wet, green grass.

This is not landscape,
    full of the somnambulations
Of poetry

And the sea. This is my father
    or, maybe,
It is as he was,

A likeness, one of
    the race of fathers: earth
And sea and air.

(Collected Poems, 501-02)

Indiana Jones and the Hidden Coffer

In memory of Bernard Williams,

Oxford philosopher, who died Tuesday, June 10, 2003. 

"...in... Truth and Truthfulness [September, 2002], he sought to speak plainly, and took on the post-modern, politically correct notion that truth is merely relative..."

-- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

"People have always longed for truths about the world -- not logical truths, for all their utility; or even probable truths, without which daily life would be impossible; but informative, certain truths, the only 'truths' strictly worthy of the name. Such truths I will call 'diamonds'; they are highly desirable but hard to find....

A new epistemology is emerging to replace the Diamond Theory of truth. I will call it the 'Story Theory' of truth: There are no diamonds. People make up stories about what they experience. Stories that catch on are called 'true.' The Story Theory of truth is itself a story that is catching on. It is being told and retold, with increasing frequency, by thinkers of many stripes.... My own viewpoint is the Story Theory...."

-- Richard J. Trudeau, The Non-Euclidean Revolution, Birkhauser Boston, 1987

Today is the feast day of Saint Jorge Luis Borges (b. Buenos Aires, August 24, 1899 - d. Geneva, June 14, 1986).

From Borges's "The Aleph":

"The Faithful who gather at the mosque of Amr, in Cairo, are acquainted with the fact that the entire universe lies inside one of the stone pillars that ring its central court.... The mosque dates from the seventh century; the pillars come from other temples of pre-Islamic religions.... Does this Aleph exist in the heart of a stone?"

("Los fieles que concurren a la mezquita de Amr, en el Cairo, saben muy bien que el universo está en el interior de una de las columnas de piedra que rodean el patio central.... la mezquita data del siglo VII; las columnas proceden de otros templos de religiones anteislámicas.... ¿Existe ese Aleph en lo íntimo de una piedra?")

From The Hunchback of Notre Dame:

Un cofre de gran riqueza
Hallaron dentro un pilar,
Dentro del, nuevas banderas
Con figuras de espantar.*

* A coffer of great richness
In a pillar's heart they found,
Within it lay new banners,
With figures to astound.

See also the figures obtained by coloring and permuting parts of the above religious symbol.

Lena Olin and Harrison Ford
in "Hollywood Homicide"