Joke

From July 28:

The Guardian, July 26,

on a work by the
late playwright
 George Tabori:

“… inspired satire, laced with Jewish and Christian
polemics, sparkling wit and dazzlingly simple effects. For Golgotha a
stagehand brings on three crosses. ‘Just two,’ says Jay. ‘The boy is
bringing his own.’ Tabori often claimed that the joke was the most
perfect literary form.”

“When may we expect to have
something from you on the
  esthetic question? he asked.”

– A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man

 July 11, 2003
New York State
Lottery

7-11 Evening
Number: 000.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: July 31, 2007

Filed with The New York Times at 5:14 a.m. ET

“ROME
(AP) — Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, best known for his
movies ‘Blow-Up’ and ‘L’Avventura,’ has died, officials and news
reports said Tuesday. He was 94.

The ANSA news agency said that Antonioni died at his home on Monday evening.

‘With
Antonioni dies not only one of the greatest directors but also a master
of modernity,’ Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni said in a statement.

In
1995, Hollywood honored Antonioni’s career work– 25 films and several
screenplays– with a special Oscar for lifetime achievement.”

Related material:

1. “Zabriskie Point” (1970), a film by Antonioni.

   “The name refers to Zabriskie Point
   in Death Valley, the location of the film’s famous desert love scene,
   in which members of the Open Theatre simulate an orgy.” –Wikipedia

2. Play It As It Lays (1970), a novel by Joan Didion

     

   

3. Log24: The Word in the Desert

Some fear that the Harry Potter books introduce children to the occult; they are not entirely mistaken.

According to Wikipedia, the “Deathly Hallows” of the final Harry Potter novel are “three fictional magical objects that appear in the book.”

The vertical line, circle, and triangle in the symbol pictured above are said to refer to these three magical objects.

One fan relates the “Deathly Hallows” symbol
above, taken from the spine of a British children’s edition of the
book, to a symbol for “the divine (or sacred, or secret) fire” of
alchemy. She relates this fire in turn to “serpent power” and the
number seven:

Kristin Devoe at a Potter fan site:

“We know that seven is a powerful number in the novels.
Tom Riddle calls it ‘the most powerfully magic number.‘ The
ability to balance the seven chakras within oneself allows the person
to harness the secret fire. This secret fire in alchemy is the same as
the kundalini or coiled snake in yogic philosophy. It is also known as
‘serpent power’ or the ‘dragon’ depending on the tradition. The
kundalini is polar in nature and this energy, this internal fire, is
very powerful for those who are able to harness it and it purifies the
aspirant allowing them the knowledge of the universe. This secret fire
is the Serpent Power which transmutes the base metals into the Perfect
Gold of the Sun.

It is interesting that the symbol of the caduceus in alchemy is
thought to have been taken from the symbol of the kundalini. Perched
on the top of the caduceus, or the staff of Hermes, the messenger of
the gods and revealer of alchemy, is the golden snitch itself! Many
fans have compared this to the scene in The Order of the Phoenix where Harry tells Dumbledore about the attack on Mr. Weasley and says, ‘I was the snake, I saw it from the snake’s point of view.‘

The chapter continues with Dumbledore consulting ‘one of the fragile
silver instruments whose function Harry had never known,’ tapping it
with his wand:

The instrument tinkled into life at once with rhythmic
clinking noises. Tiny puffs of pale green smoke issued from the
minuscule silver tube at the top. Dumbledore watched the smoke closely,
his brow furrowed, and after a few seconds, the tiny puffs became a
steady stream of smoke that thickened and coiled into he air… A
serpent’s head grew out of the end of it, opening its mouth wide. Harry
wondered whether the instrument was confirming his story; He looked
eagerly at Dumbledore for a sign that he was right, but Dumbledore did
not look up.

“Naturally, Naturally,” muttered Dumbledore apparently to himself,
still observing the stream of smoke without the slightest sign of
surprise. “But in essence divided?”

Harry could make neither head not tail of this question. The smoke
serpent, however split instantly into two snakes, both coiling and
undulating in the dark air. With a look of grim satisfaction Dumbledore
gave the instrument another gentle tap with his wand; The clinking
noise slowed and died, and the smoke serpents grew faint, became a
formless haze, and vanished.

Could these coiling serpents of smoke be foreshadowing events to come in Deathly Hallows where
Harry learns to ‘awaken the serpent’ within himself? Could the snake’s
splitting in two symbolize the dual nature of the kundalini?”

In The Garden of Allah

 ”But not, perhaps,
in the Garden of Apollo”:

– “Garden Party” –
Log24, April 9, 2007

Related material:

“When,
on the last day of February 1953 Francis told her excitedly of the
double helix discovery, she took no notice: ‘He was always saying that
kind of thing.’ But when nine years later she heard the news of the
Nobel Prize while out shopping, she immediately rushed to the
fishmonger for ice to fill the bath and cool the champagne: a party was
inevitable.”

– Matt Ridley on Odile Crick (The Independent, July 20, 2007), who drew what “may be the most famous [scientific] drawing of the 20th century, in that it defines modern biology,” according to Terrence J. Sejnowski, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla quoted by Adam Bernstein in The Washington Post, July 21, 2007

See also “Game Boy“
(Log24 on the Feast
of the Transfiguration–
August 6, 2006):

“Her
graceful drawing of the double-helix structure of DNA with intertwined
helical loops has become a symbol of the achievements of science and
its aspirations to understand the secrets of life. The image
represents the base pairs of nucleic acids, twisted around a center
line to show the axis of the helix. Terrence J. Sejnowski, a
neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La
Jolla, where Francis Crick later worked, said: ‘Mrs. Crick’s drawing
was an abstract representation of DNA, but it was accurate with regard
to its shape and size of its spacing.

‘The models you see now
have all the atoms in them,’ Sejnowski said. ‘The one in Nature was the
backbone and gave the bare outline. It may be the most famous
[scientific] drawing of the 20th century, in that it defines modern
biology.’”

This morning’s previous entry featured contemptibly mediocre Jewish
fiction.  In contrast, here is a passage from first-rate Jewish
fiction– the little boy and little girl of E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime:

“Their desire for each other’s company was unflagging.  This was
noted with amusement by the adults.  They were inseparable until
bedtime but uncomplaining when it was announced.  They ran off to
their separate rooms with not a glance backward.  Their sleep was
absolute.  They sought each other in the morning.  He did not
think of her as beautiful.  She did not think of him as
comely.  They were extremely sensitive to each other, silhouetted
in a diffuse excitement, like electricity or a nimbus of light, but
their touching was casual and matter-of-fact.  What bound them to
each other was a fulfilled recognition which they lived and thought
within so that their apprehension of each other could not be so
distinct and separated as to include admiration for the other’s
fairness.  Yet they were beautiful, he in his stately blond
thoughtfulness, she a smaller, darker, more lithe being, with flash in
her dark eyes and an almost military bearing.  When they ran their
hair lay back from their broad foreheads.  Her feet were small,
her brown hands were small.  She left imprints in the sand of a
street runner, a climber of dark stairs; her track was a flight from
the terrors of alleys and the terrible crash of ashcans.  She had
relieved herself in wooden outhouses behind the tenements.  The
tails of rodents had curled about her ankles.  She knew how to sew
with a machine and had observed dogs mating, whores taking on customers
in hallways, drunks peeing through the wooden spokes of pushcart
wheels.  He had never gone without a meal.  He had never been
cold at night.  He ran with his mind.  He ran toward
something.  He was unencumbered by fear and did not know there
were beings in the world less curious about it than he.  He saw
through things and noted the colors people produced and was never
surprised by a coincidence.  A blue and green planet rolled
through his eyes.”