February | 2007 | m759's Xanga Site

Month: February 2007

Proposed book title:

The Judas Seat

Janet Maslin in today's New York Times:

Dear Dan Brown, All Eyes Are on You

"The much-borrowed Brown formula involves some very specific things.
The name of a great artist, artifact or historical figure must be in
the book’s story, not to mention on its cover. The narrative must start
in the present day with a bizarre killing, then use that killing as a
reason to investigate the past. And the past must yield a secret so
big, so stunning, so saber-rattling that all of civilization may be
changed by it. Probably not for the better.

This formula is neatly summarized...."

Cover illustration
for
The Judas Seat:

Norton Anthology of
Children's Literature

The Narrative:

Princeton Scholar
and Bible Translator
Dies at 93

The Secret:

Part I

"Little 'Jack' Horner was actually Thomas Horner, steward to the Abbot
of Glastonbury during the reign of King Henry VIII.... Always keen to
raise fresh funds, Henry had shown a interest in
Glastonbury (and other abbeys). Hoping to appease the royal appetite,
the nervous Abbot, Richard Whiting, allegedly sent Thomas Horner to the
King with a special gift. This was a pie containing the title deeds to
twelve manor houses in the hope that these would deflect the King from
acquiring Glastonbury Abbey. On his way to London, the not so loyal
courier Horner apparently stuck his thumb into the pie and extracted
the deeds for Mells Manor, a plum piece of real estate. The attempted
bribe failed and the dissolution of the monasteries (including
Glastonbury) went ahead from 1536 to 1540. Richard Whiting was
subsequently executed, but the Horner family kept the house, so the
moral of this one is: treachery and greed pay off, but bribery is a bad
idea." --Chris Roberts, Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme

Part II

"The Grail Table has thirteen seats, one of which is kept vacant in memory of Judas Iscariot who betrayed Christ." --Symbolism of King Arthur's Round Table

"In medieval romance, the grail was said to have been brought to
Glastonbury in Britain by Joseph of Arimathea and his followers. In the
time of Arthur, the quest for the Grail was the highest spiritual
pursuit." --The Camelot Project

Part III

The Log24 entry for the date--
February 13, 2007--
of the above Bible scholar's death,

and the three entries preceding it:

"And what the dead had no speech for, when living, they can tell you, being dead: the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living."

-- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
For St. Richard Feynman

From "Music and Lyrics" (2007)

Yesterday, Valentine's Day, Hollywood released a romantic comedy,
"Music and Lyrics," based on a fictional reality-TV show called "Battle
of the 80's Has-Beens."

This, along with the Feb. 13 Log24 entry touching on both pop science and pop music, and the fact that today is the anniversary of the 1988 death of physicist Richard Feynman, suggests the following exercise:

Compare and contrast the lives and works of Feynman (May 11, 1918 - Feb. 15, 1988) and the late Carl Sagan (Nov. 9, 1934 - Dec. 20, 1996).

(Being dead, both are, in a sense, has-beens, and both were popular in the 1980's.)

I personally regard Feynman as one of science's saints, and Sagan as,
shall we say, a non-saint. For some related reflections on
pop science and pop music, see the five Log24 entries ending on Michaelmas 2002. And then there is popcorn--

A 1980's Hollywood ending
that Feynman may have liked:

Click on picture for details.

"... slow-motion romp
through the popcorn...
Tears for Fears'
'Everybody Wants to
Rule the World' ramps up
on the soundtrack...."

Credits.

Hexagram 13: Fellowship with Men

Modern Times

Bob Dylan Wins a Folk Grammy
"Modern Times, his first album since Love and Theft,
debuted at No. 1 on the US pop charts last September. At 65, Dylan
became the oldest living person to achieve this feat." --New
Zealand Herald, Feb. 12

From an entry of
October 29, 2004:

"Each epoch has its singer."
-- Jack London,
Oakland, California, 1901

"Anything
but the void. And so we keep hoping to luck into a winning combination,
to tap into a subtle harmony, trying like lock pickers to negotiate a
compromise with the 'mystery tramp,' as Bob Dylan put it...."
-- Dennis Overbye,
   Quantum Baseball,
   New York Times,
   Oct. 26, 2004

"You said you'd never compromise

With the mystery tramp,
but now you realize

He's not selling any alibis

As you stare into
the vacuum of his eyes

And ask him do you want to
make a deal?"

-- Bob Dylan,
Like a Rolling Stone

"Climbing up on

Solsbury Hill ..."

In today's meditation for

the Church of Peter Gabriel,
Dennis Overbye plays
the role of Jack Horner.

(See Overbye on Sagan in today's
New York Times, Sagan on Pi,
and Pi Day at Harvard.)

For more on Jack Horner, see
The Rise and Fall
of Popular Music,
by Donald Clarke,
Chapter One.

For two contrasting approaches
to popular music, see two artists
whose birthdays are today:

In other Grammy news--
At the end of Sunday's awards,

"Scarlett Johansson and Don Henley
put themselves in the pole position
to star in a remake of 'Adam's Rib'
with the following exchange:

Henley: So you're recording
your first album?

Johansson: Yeah. Do you
have any advice for me?

Henley: No."

-- David Marchese, Salon.com

"Her wallet's filled with pictures,
she gets 'em one by one...."

Harvard at the Grammys

Tongued with Fire
(Illustrated)

"The communication
of the dead is tongued with fire
beyond the language of the living."

-- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Photo by Mark J. Terrill / AP

Above: Christina Aguilera performs "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" in tribute
to the late James Brown during the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday, February 11, 2007.

This morning's New York Times:

Woman in the News

Drew Gilpin Faust:
Coming of Age in a Changed World

By SARA RIMER

Published: February 12, 2007

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 11-- Recalling
her coming of age as the only girl in a privileged, tradition-bound
family in Virginia horse country, Drew Gilpin Faust, 59, has often
spoken of her "continued confrontations" with her mother "about the
requirements of what she usually called femininity." Her mother,
Catharine, she has said, told her repeatedly, "It's a man's world,
sweetie, and the sooner you learn that the better off you'll be."....

... Asked Sunday whether her appointment signified the end of sex
inequities at the university, Dr. Faust said: "Of course not. There is
a lot of work still to be done, especially in the sciences."

What
would her mother, who never went to college and died in 1966, have to
say about her appointment? "I've often thought about that," she said.
"I've had dialogues with my dead mother over the 40 years since she
died."

Then she added with a rueful smile, "I think in many
ways that comment-- 'It's a man's world, sweetie'-- was a bitter
comment from a woman of a generation who didn't have the kind of
choices my generation of women had."

"But it wouldn't mean
nothin' ... nothin' ...
without a woman or a girl."

-- James Brown,
who died last year
on Christmas Day
Today's Sermon

"And what the dead had
   no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead:
   the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire
   beyond the language of the living."

-- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
ART WARS: But seriously...

George Sadek, 78,
Graphic Design Educator,
Dies

Sadek died on Feb. 5.

Related material:

"Harvard Design" (Feb. 6),

"Geometry and Death"
(entries of December 2006),

"Release Date"
in "Immortal Diamond"
(Feb. 5 four years ago).

The design over Sadek's
head is a St. Bridget's cross.

(See the "Release Date"
link above.)

"Joined with art, resistless"--

NUMB3RS

Willard Van Orman Quine on the title of his book From A Logical Point of View (Harvard University Press): "Henry Aiken and I were with our wives in a Greenwich Village nightspot when I told him of the plan, and Harry Belafonte had just sung the calypso 'From a logical point of view.' Henry noted that this would do nicely as a title for the volume, and so it did."

"Come, Mister Tally Man..."

From this morning,
eight consecutive Xanga
footprints from Great Britain:

8:25 AM

8:25 AM

8:25 AM

/569157082/annals-...

8:25 AM

8:25 AM

8:24 AM

8:24 AM

8:24 AM

Class Warfare:

The Graduate

From this morning's
New York Times:

Richardson died yesterday,
Friday, Feb. 9, 2007.

He seems well qualified
to be patron saint of

the "icily sardonic."

"... it was his portrayal of the alluringly evil Francis Urquhart, a
scheming, icily sardonic Tory member of Parliament, that finally made
him a household name in Britain and a celebrity abroad."

-- Campbell Robertson in today's New York Times

Related material: Log24 yesterday, the date of Richardson's death.
Annals of Scholarship

The Romance
of Mathematics

On teachers of "core mathematics classes for non-majors, mathematics appreciation courses, and other lower level courses":

"We are accustomed to being marginalized by society, our
political leaders, and even our college and university administrations
who often fail to see the scholarship involved in teaching. But how
dare the Notices ignore us?"

-- Complaint in the March 2007 Notices of the American Mathematical Society by "Julian F. Fleron, Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics, Westfield State College"

Let us examine Fleron's alleged scholarship:

"Before each of my classes I put a quote on the board. The quote is
either related to the mathematics we are studying, related to
mathematics more generally, or related to learning and education.
Student response has been tremendous, and I have found it to be very
beneficial." --Julian Fleron

Fleron offers us, without specifying an exact source, the following quotation:

"Mighty is geometry; joined with art, resistless.
Euripides."

A search for the source leads us to a quotation from 1914, a time when teaching did sometimes involve scholarship:

"1568. Mighty are numbers, joined with art resistless. EURIPIDES. Hecuba, Line 884."

-- Memorabilia Mathematica, by Robert Edouard Moritz, The Macmillan Company, 1914

But even in 1914, the scholarship, if one can call it
that, was misleading. The 1914 quotation (which at least refers
accurately to numbers, not geometry) is blatantly taken out of
context to imply a connection with the mathematical art of number
theory (as practiced by, say, G. H. Hardy) that is certainly not found
in Euripides. The details:

HECUBA Sheltered beneath these tents is a host of Trojan women.

AGAMEMNON Dost mean the captives, the booty of the Hellenes?

HECUBA With their help will I punish my murderous foe.

AGAMEMNON How are women to master men?

HECUBA Numbers are a fearful thing, and joined to craft a desperate
foe.

AGAMEMNON True; still I have a mean opinion of the female race.

This dialogue may have some relevance to today's rumored
selection at Harvard of a woman (Drew Gilpin Faust as Hecuba) to
replace a man (Larry Summers as Agamemnon) in the president's office.
The dialogue's only relevance to mathematics is in its reference to the
perennial conflict between the sexes. Perhaps
that conflict will serve to illustrate the title given by the Notices to Fleron's complaint: "Teaching the Romance of Mathematics."