Month: October 2006

  • ART WARS continued

    To Announce a Faith

    From 7/07, an art review from The New York Times:

    Endgame Art?
    It's Borrow, Sample and Multiply
    in an Exhibition at Bard College

    "The show has an endgame, end-time mood....

    I
    would call all these strategies fear of form.... the dismissal of
    originality is perhaps the oldest ploy in the postmodern playbook. To
    call yourself an artist at all is by definition to announce a faith,
    however unacknowledged, in some form of originality, first for
    yourself, second, perhaps, for the rest of us.

    Fear of form above
    all means fear of compression-- of an artistic focus that condenses
    experiences, ideas and feelings into something whole, committed and
    visually comprehensible."

    -- Roberta Smith

    It is doubtful that Smith
     would consider the
    following "found" art an
    example of originality.

    It nevertheless does
    "announce a faith."

    The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061031-PAlottery2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    "First for yourself"

    Today's mid-day
    Pennsylvania number:
    707

    See Log24 on 7/07
    and the above review.

    "Second, perhaps,
    for the rest of us"

    Today's evening
    Pennsylvania number:
    384

    This number is an
    example of what the
    reviewer calls "compression"--

    "an artistic focus that condenses
     experiences, ideas and feelings
    into something
    whole, committed
     and visually comprehensible."

    "Experiences"

    See (for instance)

    Joan Didion's writings
    (1160 pages, 2.35 pounds)
    on "the shifting phantasmagoria
    which is our actual experience."

    "Ideas"

    See Plato.

    "Feelings"

    See A Wrinkle in Time.

    "Whole"

    The automorphisms
    of the tesseract
    form a group
    of order 384.

    "Committed"

    See the discussions of
    groups of degree 16 in
    R. D. Carmichael's classic
    Introduction to the Theory
    of Groups of Finite Order
    .

    "Visually comprehensible"

    See "Diamond Theory in 1937,"
    an excerpt from which
    is shown below.

    The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/Carmichael440abbrev.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    The "faith" announced by
    the above lottery numbers
    on All Hallows' Eve is
    perhaps that of the artist
    Madeleine L'Engle:

    "There is such a thing
    as a tesseract.
    "


  • For William Thurston's birthday:

    Religion at Harvard

    From The Harvard Crimson,
    Monday, October 30, 2006  6:09 AM

    "Why is the Task Force on General Education afraid of teaching religion?
    True, their report did recommend a reason and faith requirement, but
    the committee has clearly shied away from teaching religious principles
    and has treated the study of religion itself with contempt....

    In the general education report... there is no mention
    of the fundamental principles of religious thought, even though the
    general education report stresses that students are affected by
    religion and should think critically about it."

    Here is one approach
    to religious thought--

    Scientism
    -- exemplified
    by Harvard's
    Emperor of Math.

    The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061029-Yau.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
    Screenshot of doctoryau.com

    Here is a rather different
    approach to religious thought--

    Yesterday's numbers

    in the Empire State:

    The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061029-NYlottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    These suggest the

    religious contemplation of

    Log24, 6/16--

    Hero of His Own Story--

    and of

    Log24, 6/30--

    Summers Revels Ended.

    For more on Harvard's
    real religion, Scientism,
    and the political background
    in which it thrives,
    click on the picture below.

    The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061029-docyau.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
    .

  • For Halloween at Harvard

    Decrease

    (Readings for the


    Halloween season)




    In 1692 on July 31, at the time of the Salem witchcraft trials, Increase Mather reportedly "delivered a sermon... in Boston in which he posed the question...
    'O what makes the difference between the devils in hell and the angels
    of heaven?'"

    Increase
    , the father of Cotton Mather, was president of Harvard from June 27, 1692, to Sept. 6, 1701.  His name is memorialized by Harvard's Mather House.


    From Log24 on Jan. 15, 2003
    :

    Locating Hell

    "Noi siam venuti al loco ov' i' t'ho detto
                che tu vedrai le genti dolorose
        c'hanno perduto il ben de l'intelletto
    ."

    -- Dante, Inferno, Canto 3, 16-18

    "We have come to where
                  I warned you we would find
    Those wretched souls
                  who no longer have 
    The intellectual benefits of the mind."

    Dante, Hell, Canto 3, 16-18

    From a Harvard student's weblog:

    Heard in Mather  I
    hope you get gingivitis You want me to get oral cancer?! Goodnight
    fartface Turd. Turd. Turd. Turd. Turd. Make your own waffles!! Blah
    blah blah starcraft blah blah starcraft blah starcraft. It's da email
    da email. And some blue hair! Oohoohoo Izod! 10 gigs! Yeah it smells
    really bad. Only in the stairs though. Starcraft blah blah Starcraft
    fartface. Yeah it's hard. You have to get a bunch of battle cruisers.
    40 kills! So good! Oh ho ho grunt grunt squeal.  I'm getting sick
    again. You have a final tomorrow? In What?! Um I don't even know. Next
    year we're draggin him there and sticking the needle in ourselves. 

    " ... one more line/ unravelling from the dark design/ spun by God and Cotton Mather"

    -- Robert Lowell

     

    To honor Harvard's Oct. 28 founding,
    here are yesterday's numbers from
    the state of Grace (Kelly, of Philadelphia):

    The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061028-PAlottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    Related material:

    Log24 on 1/16,
    and Hexagram 41,

    The image “http://www.log24.com/images/IChing/hexagram41.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    Decrease

    The Image

    At the foot of the mountain, the lake:
    The image of Decrease.
    Thus the superior man controls his anger
    And restrains his instincts.

    This suggests thoughts of
    the novel Cold Mountain
     (see yesterday morning)
    and the following from
    Log24 on St. Luke's Day
    this year:

    The image �http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050511-Montreat-logo.jpg� cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    Lucero as portrayed by Megan Follows
    Established in 1916,
    Montreat College
    is a private,
    Christian
    college located in a
    beautiful valley in the
    Blue Ridge
    Mountains
    of North Carolina.

    From Nell:

    The image �http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050511-Nell-valleyview.jpg� cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    "The valley spirit never dies..."

    See also St. Luke's Day, 2004,
    as well as a journal entry
    prompted by both
    the ignorant religion
    of Harvard's past
    and the ignorant scientism
    of Harvard's present--
     Hitler's Still Point:
    A Hate Speech for Harvard
    .

    This last may, of course, not
    quite fit the description of
    the superior man
    controlling his anger
    so wisely provided by
    yesterday's lottery and
    Hexagram 41.
    Nobody's perfect.

  • New Instauration, continued

    Shem the Penman

    Excerpt from Harvard Magazine:

    "The people who intermediate between lunatics and the world used to be
    called alienists; the go-betweens for mathematicians are called
    teachers. Many a student may rightly have wondered if the terms
    shouldn't be reversed."

    -- Review of The Magic of Numbers, a book by Benedict H. Gross, Leverett Professor of Mathematics and Dean of Harvard College

    For the full review, see

    On Mathematical Imagination--
    Harvard Magazine
    (January-February 2004):


    ... part of a New Instauration
    that will bring mathematics, at last, ...


    Wednesday, December 31, 2003,
    7:00pm EST
    •  26.1k •

    http://www.harvardmagazine.com/

    on-line/010442.html

    From today's Harvard Crimson:

    Leverett resident in
    critical condition, 'improving'

    Published On
    Friday,
    October 27, 2006  4:35 AM

    An undergraduate fell from a ninth-floor window in Leverett House Tower
    F yesterday morning, suffering serious injuries, according to
    University officials.

    The 25-year-old student, Steven R. Snyder '04-'08, was in critical
    condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center as of yesterday....

    Rooms in the Leverett Towers typically have one large window that
    doesn't open and at least one smaller window that can be cranked open.
    The smaller windows are each about two feet wide and four feet high....

    Snyder-- who is from Avon Lake, Ohio-- is a mathematics concentrator....

    Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross '71, in an e-mail sent to
    undergraduates at about 12:30 p.m. yesterday, said a student
    "apparently fell from a window," and an "investigation is underway."

    "A
    time like this can be very difficult for everyone, especially those who
    live in Leverett. I would like to remind all students and staff that
    there are many people on campus who can help you through this difficult
    time," Gross added. He directed students to the University's Mental
    Health Services and the Bureau of Study Counsel.

    Related material:

    The Crimson Passion,

    the previous entry,
    Hall of Shem,

    and the link, in the
    Ash Wednesday, 2006,
    entry, Deaconess,

    The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060301-Hospital2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    to The House of God,
    a novel by
    Samuel Shem.

    Shem is the pen-name
    of Stephen J. Bergman,
    Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry
    at Harvard Medical School.

  • Hall of Shem:

    Hardy & Wright 
    The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061025-Wright.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    "When he was taken to church
    he amused himself by factorizing
    the numbers of the hymns."

    -- C. P. Snow, foreword to
    A Mathematician's Apology,
    by G. H. Hardy

    An application of
    lottery hermeneutics:

    420 --> 4/20 -->

    Hall of Shame,
    Easter Sunday,
    April 20, 2003;

    145 --> 5*29 --> 5/29 -->

    The Shining of May 29.

    The Rev. Wright may also
    be interested in the following


    Related material:

    "Shem was a sham...."
    (FW I.7, 170 and Log24 Oct. 13),
    and The Hebrew Word Shem:


    "When I teach introductory Hebrew, the first word I typically teach is the
    common noun SHEM.
    It's pronounced exactly like our English word 'shame,' means almost
    exactly the opposite, and seems to me to be a key...." -- Glen Penton

    This word occurs, notably, in Psalm (or "hymn") 145.

    See http://scripturetext.com/psalms/145-1.htm:

    thy name
    shem  (shame)
    an
    appellation, as a mark or memorial of individuality; by implication
    honor, authority, character -- + base, (in-)fame(-ous), named(-d),
    renown, report.

    Update of 12:25 PM 10/26

    from the online Crimson:

    Related material:
    The Crimson Passion

  • The Deceivers (10/2/05), continued

    Conceit
    at Harvard

    conceit (See definition.)
    "c.1374, from conceiven (see conceive). An Eng. formation based on deceit and receipt. Sense evolved from 'something formed in the mind,' to 'fanciful or witty notion' (1513), to 'vanity' (1605)...."

    -- Online Eytmology Dictionary

    "... there is some virtue in tracking cultural trends in terms of their relation
    to the classic Trinitarian framework of Christian thought."

    -- Description of lectures
    to be given Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week (on Father,
    Son, and Holy Spirit, respectively, and their relationship to "cultural
    trends") at Harvard's Memorial Church

    I prefer more-classic trinitarian frameworks-- for example,

    the classic Pythagorean
    trinity of 4, 3, and 5



    The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061025-Pyth2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    and the structural trinity
    underlying
    classic quilt patterns:

    The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/TradBlocks.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    Click on pictures for further details.

    These mathematical trinities are
    conceits in the sense of concepts
    or notions; examples of the third
    kind of conceit are easily
    found, especially at Harvard.

    For a possible corrective to
    examples of the third kind,
    see
    To Measure the Changes.

  • Two-part invention:

    Another illustration
    of the previous entry's concept of
    a "critical mass" of weblog entries,
    a concept reflected in
    the saying
    "You can't win the lottery
        if you don't buy a ticket." 

    Mathematics and Narrative:
    A Two-Part Invention

    Here are today's
    numbers from the
    Keystone State:

    The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061024-PAlottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    Here is an interpretation
    of those numbers:

    "The
    geometrization conjecture, also known as Thurston's geometrization
    conjecture, concerns the geometric structure of compact 3-manifolds. The geometrization conjecture can be considered an analogue for 3-manifolds of the uniformization theorem for surfaces. It
    was proposed by William Thurston in the late 1970s. It 'includes' other
    conjectures, such as the Poincaré conjecture and the Thurston
    elliptization conjecture."

    The second sentence, in bold
    type, was added on 8/21 by yours truly. No deep learning or
    original thought was required to make this important improvement in the
    article; the sentence was simply copied from the then-current version
    of the article on Grigori Perelman (who has, it seems, proved the geometrization conjecture).

    This
    may serve as an example of the "mathematics" part of the above phrase
    "Mathematics and Narrative" -- a phrase which served, with associated
    links, as the Log24 entry for 8/21.

    7/23 -- Narrative:

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

    This quotation appeared in the Log24 entry for 7/23,
    "Dance of the Numbers."  What Dyson calls a "story" or "drama" is
    in fact mathematics. (Dyson calls the "steps" in the story "works of
    art," so  it is clear that Dyson (a former student of G. H. Hardy)
    is discussing mathematical steps, not paragraphs in someone's
    account-- perhaps a work of art, perhaps not-- of mathematical
    history.)  I personally regard the rhetorical trick of calling the
    steps leading to a mathematical result a "story" as contemptible
    vulgarization, but Dyson, as someone whose work (pdf) led to the particular result he is discussing, is entitled to dramatize it as he pleases.

    For related material on mathematics, narrative, and vulgarization, click here.

    The
    art of interpretation (applied above to a lottery) is relevant to
    narrative and perhaps also, in some sense, to the arts of mathematical
    research and exposition (if not to mathematics itself).  This art
    is called hermeneutics.

    For more on the subject, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Hans-Georg Gadamer, "the decisive figure in the development of twentieth-century hermeneutics."


    See also the work of Msgr. Robert Sokolowski of the Catholic University of America, which includes

    "Foreword" in Gian-Carlo Rota,

     Indiscrete Thoughts,
     Boston: Birkhäuser Verlag,

     1996, xiii-xvii, and

    "Gadamer's Theory of Hermeneutics" in
     The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer,
     edited by Lewis E. Hahn,
     The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. 24,
     Chicago: Open Court Publishers,
     1997, 223-34.