Popcorn Theology,
Part II:
Justice at
the Supremes' Court
LeRoy Myers, tap dancer and
road manager for the original Supremes,
died April 26, 2004.
From a log24 entry of April 26, 2004:
"This Way to the Egress" -- Sign supposedly written A Google search on this phrase |
Popcorn Theology
Today is the birthday of Star Wars director George Lucas and also the date of Frank Sinatra's death.
Two notes that may be
suitable for the occasion —
From All Saints' Episcopal Church in Atlanta:
POPCORN THEOLOGY
"On Friday, May 14 at 7:00 p.m. in Ellis Hall, Popcorn Theology is pleased to present Chicago. This is a cautionary tale set during the Great Depression of the 1930s, told with sharp satire and black humor."
From Chicago photographer Art Shay:
His Kind of Town
"We are not saints"
— Alcoholics Anonymous
Moral Hazard —
The Devil and Wallace Stevens,
continued from May 1-2 entries:
Law Day,
Readings for Law Day,
Fallen from Heaven, and
The Script
University of Southern California, Department of
Professor Jean-Jacques Laffont
(September 4 - October 21):
"The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to modern contract and organization theory. Part 1 of the course focuses upon models with moral hazard and adverse selection."
From the insurance page at
http://ingrimayne.saintjoe.edu/:
"The size of the insurance industry indicates that people are eager to pay to avoid risk. They pay and get nothing if fortune smiles on them, whereas if misfortune strikes, they break even because the insurance should just pay back the value lost in the misfortune.
Sometimes, however, people do better than break even when misfortune strikes, and this possibility has greatly interested economists. If, for example, the misfortune costs a person $1000, but insurance will pay $2000, the insured person has no incentive to avoid the misfortune and may act to bring it on. This tendency of insurance to change behavior is called moral hazard.
Sometimes moral hazard is dramatic....
People who know that they face large risks are more likely to buy insurance than people who face small risks. Insurance companies try to minimize the problem that only the people with big risks will buy their product, which is the problem of adverse selection ...."
From today's New York Times:
"Jean-Jacques Laffont, an economist known for developing mathematical models to estimate what something is worth in situations of deep uncertainty, died on May 1 in Toulouse, France. He was 57....
...Jerry R. Green of Harvard said he was 'an architect of systems' and 'a very original figure.'
Eric Maskin, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., called Dr. Laffont 'simply one of the major figures of our time.'
'Many people would say he was the leading economist in Europe,' he added, 'and that wouldn't be an unfair judgment.'
Although Dr. Laffont's models were abstruse enough to satisfy the most theoretical economists, Dr. Green said they were adapted for practical purposes by companies, as well as by public television for scheduling programs."
The Wind and the Lion
Pat Buchanan
as A Mighty Wind —
Fallujah: High Tide of Empire?
For more about The Wind as a religious symbol, see Adolf Holl's Biography of The Holy Spirit.
For more about The Lion as a religious symbol, see
Charles Krauthammer
as The Lion of Zion —
Acceptance Speech, Guardian of Zion Award.
For passionate views of the conflict between The Wind and The Lion, see
The Passion and Its Enemies
by The Wind, and
Gibson's Blood Libel,
by The Lion.
Slab!
Aphorism 2 from Wittgenstein's
Philosophical Investigations
with commentary on the right
by Lois Shawver
| Let us imagine a language ...The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones; there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words 'block', 'pillar', 'slab', 'beam.' A calls them | ... this passage describes the prototypic primitive language-game.... There are piles of pillars, slabs, blocks and beams. The supervisor calls out "Slab!" and the worker brings a slab and sets it at the supervisor's feet. Pretty simple. Wittgenstein puts forth [this] language-game in order to try to envision a language in which Augustine's picture of language works. |
Click on pictures for details.
Royal Roads
"Here were assertions, as for example the intersection of the three altitudes of a triangle in one point,
-- Albert Einstein
on his "holy geometry book"
(entry of 3/14/04)
"We'll try to understand
how people decide what is true."
-- Nathaniel Miller
on his geometry course
"People make up stories
about what they experience.
Stories that catch on are called 'true.' "
-- Richard J. Trudeau
on his geometry course
"There is no royal road to geometry." -- Saying attributed to Euclid "The royal road to knowledge, -- Nathaniel Miller's Prison-Abuse Panel is Third -- Headline from today's "The royal road to ruin -- George W. Bush's |
Religion of the Lottery:
Ground Zero Revisited
The midday New York lottery number for Thursday, May 6, 2004, the National Day of Prayer, was
000.
Since the log24 entry for the preceding day (Wednesday) was written in gratitude for a new transcription of Bach, and the log24 entry for the following day (today) has the time 11:11, signifying peace, the following seems as good a religious interpretation of yesterday's lottery as any:
"In the Mass in B-Minor, Bach constructs a twenty-one-movement symmetry in which the Crucifixus is placed precisely between the Gratias and the Dona Nobis Pacem."
-- Timothy A. Smith,
Intentionality and Meaningfulness
in Bach's Cyclical Works
"Nothing is random."
-- Mark Helprin,
Winter's Tale
Midnight in the Garden of
Good and Evil, continued
By MARK PURDY
San Jose Mercury News
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Once the out-of-towners stopped talking, the people from San Jose were allowed to speak. And the honesty erupted.
"Thank you for coming," said Richard Tillman, the younger brother of Pat Tillman. "But with all respect to those who have been up here before me, Pat's not with God. He's not religious. He's dead. It was amazing to be his little brother. He was the biggest champion I've ever seen."
Commentary:
Maybe God doesn't like religious people.
See The Four Last Things (6/4/03),
With Honors (6/5/03), and
Directions Out (4/26/04).
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