"Mistakes
are inevitable and may be either in missing a true signal or in
thinking there is a signal when there is not. I am suggesting that
believers in the paranormal (called 'sheep' in psychological parlance)
are more likely to make the latter kind of error than are disbelievers
(called 'goats')."

-- "Psychic Experiences:
     Psychic Illusions,"
     by Susan Blackmore,
     Skeptical Inquirer, 1992

Jung's Birthday, 5 AM:

Jung's Birthday, 4 AM:

Jung on the Trinity

and Quaternity

Jung's Birthday, 3 AM:

The Shape of God:
Deepening the Mystery
of the Trinity

Discourse Analysis

Edward Rothstein in today's New York Times, reviewing Evil Incarnate (Princeton University Press):

"... the most decisive aspect of the myth is that it is, literally, a myth.
Every single example of evil he gives turns out to be evil imagined:
there is, he says, no evidence for any of it. Evil, he argues, is not
something real, it is a 'discourse,' a 'way of representing things and
shaping our experience, not some force in itself.'"

Related material:

A review (pdf) by Steven G. Krantz of Charles Wells's A Handbook of Mathematical Discourse (Notices of the American Mathematical Society, September 2004):

"Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary is a remarkable and
compelling piece of writing because of its searing wit and sardonic
take on life. Bierce does not define any new words. He instead gives
deadly interpretations of very familiar words. Wells's book does not
fit into the same category of literary effort."

For literary efforts perhaps more closely related to Bierce's, see Mathematics and Narrative and the five Log24 entries ending on this date last year.

Dance of the Numbers, continued:

Partitions

Freeman Dyson on the role of the "crank" in the theory of partitions:

"'Each step in the story is a work of art,' Dyson says, 'and the
story as a whole is a sequence of episodes of rare beauty, a drama
built out of nothing but numbers and imagination.'"

-- Erica Klarreich in
    Science News Online, week of
    June 18, 2005, quoted in
   "In Honor of Freeman Dyson's Birthday:
    Dance of the Numbers"
    (Log24, Dec. 15, 2005)

Paraphrase of Freeman Dyson's remarks in The New York Review of Books, issue dated May 28, 1998:

"Theology is about words; science is about things."

"What is 256 about?"

-- Reply to Freeman Dyson,

    (May 15, 1998)

A partial answer to that rhetorical question: 256 is the cardinality of the power set of an 8-set.

For the role played by 8-sets and by 23 (today's date) in partitions of a different sort, see Geometry of the 4x4 Square.

For Hemingway's birthday:

Mathematics and Narrative, continued

"We know many little things about the relation between mathematics
and narrative, but lack one big comprehensive insight."

-- John Allen
Paulos (pdf)

"On Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2002-- 9/11/02-- the New York State lottery
numbers were 911, an eerie coincidence that set many people to thinking
or, perhaps more accurately, to not thinking."

--  John Allen Paulos

"Time and chance happeneth to them all."

-- Ecclesiastes 9:11

Bead Game

Those who clicked on Rieff's concept in the previous entry will know about the book that Rieff titled Sacred Order/Social Order: My Life among the Deathworks.

That entry, from Tuesday, July 18, was titled "Sacred Order," and gave as an example the following figure:

(Based on Weyl's Symmetry)

For the use of this same figure to represent a theatrical concept--

"It's
like stringing beads on a necklace. By the time the play ends, you have
the whole necklace."

-- see Ursprache Revisited (June 9, 2006).

Of course, the figure also includes a cross-- or "deathwork"-- of
sorts.  These incidental social properties of the figure (which is
purely mathematical in origin) make it a suitable memorial
for a theatre critic
who died on the date of the previous entry-- July 18-- and for whom the
American Theatre Wing's design awards, the Henry Hewes Awards, are
named.

"The annual awards
honor designers... recognizing
not only the traditional design categories of sets, costumes and
lighting, but also 'Notable Effects,' which encompasses sound, music,
video, puppets and other creative elements." --BroadwayWorld.com

For more on life among the deathworks, see an excellent review of the Rieff book mentioned above.