Readings for
Yom Kippur
The film Pi is, in part, about an alleged secret name of God that can be uttered only on Yom Kippur. This is my personal version of such a name-- not an utterance, but instead a picture:
6:49:32 PM
Sept. 24, 2004
The Details:
Synthemes and Spreads (pdf)
(Appendix A of
"Classification of
Partial Spreads in PG(4,2),"
by Leonard H. Soicher et al.)
Time and Chance
"Time and chance happeneth to them all."
-- Ecclesiastes 9-11
"With the passage of time, everyone participated in the ever-increasingly secret lottery."
-- Summary of Borges's Lottery
The winning evening lottery number for Sunday, September 19, 2004, and for Thursday, September 23, 2004, in the State of Grace (Kelly) was
408.
See a 9/20/04 story about 408
and a 1/4/03 story about Grace and jazz.
From the latter:
Now you has jazz.
— Cole Porter, lyric for "High Society,"
set in Newport, Rhode Island, 1956
Note that yesterday's entries dealt with "the jazz church" and that Sunday, Sept. 19, 2004-- the first of the "408" days above-- was the date of death of Ellis Marsalis Sr., patriarch of a family of jazz musicians. The second of the "408" days above-- yesterday-- was Ray Charles's birthday.
In Ray We Trust
June 28, 2004 cover
by Eric Palma
Aluminum, Your Shiny Friend
(Continued)
|
Vital Statistics: |
 for larger image. |
"From
the very beginning, the Citicorp Center (today, the Citigroup Center)
in New York City was an engineering challenge. When planning for the
skyscraper began in the early 1970s, the northwest corner of the
proposed building site was occupied by
The
church allowed Citicorp to build the skyscraper under one condition: a
new church would have to be built on the same corner, with no
connection to the Citicorp building and no columns passing through it.
How
did the engineers do it? They set the 59-story tower on four massive
columns, positioned at the center of each side, rather than at the
corners. This design allowed the northwest corner of the building to
cantilever 72 feet over the new church."
Source: PBS, Building BIG.
Citigroup (NYSE:C) is said to be the largest financial services conglomerate in the world.
For
more on the close relationship between churches and banks, see the
works of T. S. Eliot and a description of the City of London,
For more on Eliot, architecture, and another Harvard man, use links in the previous entry.
Church Architecture
In memory of Harvard-trained
architect Edward Larrabee Barnes
From Martha Cooley's The Archivist,
April 1999 paperback, page 301:
For related design issues
at Harvard, click here.
Tribute
In memory of Russ Meyer, who "made industrial films for Standard Oil and lumber companies before making his own films," a picture that might aptly (see Pi continued) be titled
.
By the same designer:
Click on picture for details.
Object of game:
Connect the devils
with their tail ends.
Manufacturer:
Click on logo for details.
Related material:
The Crimson Passion
Norman F. Cantor on Christianity:
"Christianity itself
was a Jewish enterprise, and not simply because Jesus was a Jew; Cantor
points out, in his characteristically flippant way, that 'the Church
of Rome is officially dedicated to Peter and Paul-- two good Jewish boys,
Simon Rocky and Saul of Tarsus.'"
-- Lawrence Grossman, review of The Sacred Chain: The History of the Jews, by Norman F.
Cantor
See also a Palm Sunday, 2003, entry on
First Idea and Last Night
In memory of Saint Norman Cantor, an author of "stunning
a link to Log24.net entries of that date.
Give 'em Hell, Norman.
Above: recommended videos
from the date of Cantor's death
"Dante's hell was intended to be a shocking literary device. The Divine Comedy is not a work of theology or a spiritual treatise any more than James Joyce's Ulysses is a sociological study of Dublin."
-- Norman F. Cantor
Hollywood, Florida
Pi continued:
(see 9/15/04)
Renegade mathematician Max Cohen (Sean Gullette, left) and the leader of the Kabbalah sect, Lenny Meyer (Ben Shenkman) have a chance encounter on a Chinatown street corner.
The Magic Schmuck
"Confucius is said to have received only one inappropriate answer, i.e., hexagram 22, GRACE -- a thoroughly aesthetic hexagram. This is reminiscent of the advice given to Socrates by his daemon -- 'You ought to make more music' -- whereupon Socrates took to playing the flute. Confucius and Socrates compete for first place as far as reasonableness and a pedagogic attitude to life are concerned; but it is unlikely that either of them occupied himself with 'lending grace to the beard on his chin,' as the second line of this hexagram advises. Unfortunately, reason and pedagogy often lack charm and grace, and so the oracle may not have been wrong after all."
-- Carl Jung, Foreword to the I Ching
Yesterday, class, in keeping with our morning German lesson, our evening (5:01:22 PM ET) entry was Hexagram 22, Pi (pronounced "bee"). The Chinese term pi may be translated in various ways... As ornament, as adornment, or as in a German web page:
| I-Ching 22 | Pi | Der Schmuck |
The Wilhelm translation of pi is "grace." This suggests we examine yesterday's evening lottery number in the State of Grace, Pennsylvania:
408.
As kabbalists know, there are many ways of interpreting numbers. In keeping with the viewpoint of Ecclesiastes -- "time and chance happeneth" -- let us interpret this instance of chance as an instance of time... namely, 4/08. Striving for consistency in our meditations, let us examine the lessons for...
4/08 2003 -- Death's Dream Kingdom --
and 4/08 2004 -- Triple Crown.
From the former:
"When smashing monuments, save the pedestals; they always come in handy."
From the latter:
"The tug of an art that unapologetically sees itself as on a par with science and religion is not to be underestimated.... Philosophical ambition and formal modesty still constitute Minimalism's bottom line."
In keeping with the above, from
this year's Log24.net
Rosh Hashanah service...
A Minimalist
Pedestal:
|
For a poetic interpretation
of this symbol, see
Hexagram 20,
Contemplation (View).
Sunday Shul
From this date last year:
Today's Hebrew lesson:
From Wikipedia--
"In the Bible, Gershom (גרשם "Expulsion"...) was the firstborn son of Moses and Zipporah."
He was circumcised by Zipporah, hence saving Moses from God's wrath.
This article is a stub."
A search for information on circumcision by zipper yields the following gem:
"Doctor Paul M. Fleiss, MD, MPH, is assistant clinical professor of Pædiatrics at the University of Southern California Medical Center. He is the author of numerous scientific articles published in leading national and international medical journals. Paul M. Fleiss is a Jewish Intactivist — one who promotes genital integrity of children while opposing genital mutilation of children. He is also a convicted felon, having been convicted in connection with his daughter Heidi Fleiss's activities in running a prostitution ring."
-- Wikipedia
Today's German lesson:
Properties of an image
on a German web page:
| Location: | |
| Width: | 160px |
| Height: | 220px |
| Size of File: | 12.5 KB |
| Alternate text: | Schmuck |
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