Month: February 2008

  • Review:

    Big Time

    Log24 on Feb. 13:

    New York Times today--
    "Plot Would Thicken, if the
    Writers Remembered It
    "

    "We've lost the plot!"
    -- Slipstream


    Nicole Kidman in 'The Human Stain' at VideoSpider.tv

    Excerpt from Fritz Leiber's
    "Damnation
    Morning," 1959

    Time traveling, which is not quite the good clean boyish fun
    it's cracked up to be, started for me when this woman with the sigil on
    her forehead looked in on me from the open doorway of the hotel bedroom
    where I'd hidden myself and the bottles and asked me, "Look, Buster, do
    you want to live?"....

    Her right arm was raised and bent, the elbow touching the
    door frame, the hand brushing back the very dark bangs from her forehead
    to show me the sigil, as if that had a bearing on her question.

    Fritz Leiber's 'Spider' symbol

    Bordered version
    of the sigil

    The sigil was an eight-limbed asterisk made of fine dark
    lines and about as big as a silver dollar.  An X superimposed on a
    plus sign.  It looked permanent....

    ... "Here is how it stacks up:  You've bought your way
    with something other than money into an organization of which I am an
    agent...."

    "It's a very big organization," she went on, as if warning
    me.  "Call it an empire or a power if you like.  So far as you
    are concerned, it has always existed and always will exist.  It has
    agents everywhere, literally.  Space and time are no barriers to
    it.  Its purpose, so far as you will ever be able to know it, is to
    change, for its own aggrandizement, not only the present and the future,
    but also the past.  It is a ruthlessly competitive organization and
    is merciless to its employees."

    "I. G. Farben?" I asked grabbing nervously and clumsily at
    humor.

    She didn't rebuke my flippancy, but said, "And it isn't the
    Communist Party or the Ku Klux Klan, or the Avenging Angels or the Black
    Hand, either, though its enemies give it a nastier name."

    "Which is?" I asked.

    "The Spiders," she said.

    That word gave me the shudders, coming so suddenly.  I
    expected the sigil to step off her forehead and scuttle down her face and
    leap at me-- something like that.

    She watched me.  "You might call it the Double Cross,"
    she suggested, "if that seems better."

    Related material:
    the previous entry.

  • Mathematics and Narrative continued:

    Bridges
    Between Two Worlds


    From the world of mathematics...


    "... my advisor once told me, 'If you ever find yourself drawing one of
    those meaningless diagrams with arrows connecting different areas of
    mathematics, it’s a good sign that you’re going senile.'"

    -- Scott Carnahan at Secret Blogging Seminar, December 14, 2007

    Carnahan's remark in context:

    "About five years ago, Cheewhye Chin gave a great year-long seminar on Langlands correspondence for GLr
    over function fields.... In the beginning, he drew a diagram....

    If we remove all of the explanatory text, the diagram looks like this:

    CheeWhye Diagram

    I was a bit hesitant to draw this, because my advisor once told me, 'If you ever find yourself drawing one of those meaningless diagrams
    with arrows connecting different areas of mathematics, it’s a good sign
    that you’re going senile.' Anyway, I’ll explain roughly how it works.

    Langlands correspondence is a 'bridge between two worlds,' or more specifically, an assertion of a bijection...."

    Compare and contrast the above...

    ... to the world of Rudolf Kaehr:

    Rudolf Kaehr on 'Diamond Structuration'

    The above reference to "diamond theory" is from Rudolf Kaehr's paper titled Double Cross Playing Diamonds.

    Another bridge...

    Carnahan's advisor, referring to "meaningless diagrams with arrows connecting different areas of
    mathematics," probably did not have in mind diagrams like the two above, but rather diagrams like the two below--

    From the world of mathematics...

    Relationship of diamond theory to other fields

    "A rough sketch of
    how diamond theory is
    related to some other
    fields of mathematics"
    -- Steven H. Cullinane

    ... to the world of Rudolf Kaehr:

    Relationship of PolyContextural Logic (PCL) to other fields

    Related material:

    For further details on
    the "diamond theory" of
    Cullinane, see

    Finite Geometry of the
    Square and Cube
    .

    For further details on
    the "diamond theory" of
    Kaehr, see

    Rudy's Diamond Strategies.

    Those who prefer entertainment
    may enjoy an excerpt
    from Log24, October 2007:

    "Do not let me hear
    Of the wisdom
    of old men,
    but rather of
    their folly"
     
    -- Four
    Quartets
      

    Anthony Hopkins in 'Slipstream'

    Anthony Hopkins
    in the film
    "Slipstream"

    Anthony Hopkins  
    in the film "Proof"--

    "Goddamnit,
    open
    the goddamn book!
    Read me the lines!
    "

  • ART WARS continued:

    Door

    Black monolith, 1x4x9
     
    Step:

    "Many dreams have been
    brought to your doorstep.

    They just lie there
     and they die there."

    -- Lyricist Ray Evans,
    who died at 92
       one year ago today

    Associated Press -
    Today in History -
    Thought for Today:

    "Like all dreamers I confuse
     disenchantment with truth."
    --Jean-Paul Sartre

    The Return of the Author, by Eugen Simion:

    On Sartre's Les Mots --

    "Writing helps him find his own place within this vast comedy. He does not take to writing seriously yet, but he is eager to write books in order to escape the comedy he has been compelled to take part in.
    The craft of writing appeared to me as an adult activity, so ponderously serious, so trifling, and, at bottom, so lacking in interest that I didn't doubt for a moment that it was in store for me. I said to myself both 'that's all it is' and 'I am gifted.' Like all dreamers, I confused disenchantment with truth."

    This is given in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999) as

    Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

    Also from the AP's
    Today in History --

    Today's Birthdays:
    Actor Kevin McCarthy is 94.

    Related material:

    Hopkins at Heaven's Gate
      (In context: October 2007)--

    Anthony Hopkins at Dolly's Little Diner in Slipstream

    "Dolly's Little Diner--
    Home from Home"

  • Valentine to a Dark Lady:

    The Fab Four
    Meet Ken Kesey

    "Hanging from the highest limb of the apple tree are the three God's Eyes Quiston and Caleb made out of yarn at Camp Nebo. The eyes aren't moving a wink in the thick hot air, but they likely see the world spinning around as well as any Fool's."

    -- Ken Kesey,
      "Last Time the Angels Came Up,"
       in Demon Box

  • Where Entertainment is God:

    New York Times today--
    "Plot Would Thicken, if the
    Writers Remembered It
    "

    Gala Premiere:

    FOUR FOR
    HEAVEN'S GATE

    PA Lottery Monolith (Feb. 13, 2008)

    "My God, it's
    full of numbers!"

    Roger Ebert:

    "This movie is....
    the most scandalous
    cinematic waste I have
     ever seen, and remember,
    I've seen Paint Your Wagon."

  • For Lincoln's Birthday:

    Centerpiece

    "Kirk Browning... television director of 'Live* From Lincoln Center,' died on Sunday [Feb. 10, 2008] in Manhattan. He was 86.

    The cause was a heart attack, his son, David, said.

    Kirk Browning, TV director of 'Live from Lincoln Center'

    ... In addition to his 'Live From Lincoln Center' programs, 10 of which won
    Emmy Awards, Mr. Browning... directed, among other productions...
    the first TV show with Frank Sinatra as host (1957); and 'Hallmark Hall of Fame' music and drama specials (1951 to 1958)."

    -- The New York Times

    In Memoriam:

    Shoe: 'Mort's Mortuary,' Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008

    * The timestamp of this entry is, however, not live. The entry was actually produced at about 5:55 AM on Feb. 13.  The timestamp of the entry, 5:01 PM on Lincoln's Birthday, is a veiled reference to Cemetery Ridge, to the meadow in "Readings for Candlemas" (see also the previous two entries) and to a Gettysburg address.

  • Philosophy Wars continued:

    First Lesson

    Keys and Sinatra in 'Learnin the Blues'

    "That's the beginning -
     just one of those clues.
    You've had your first lesson
     in learnin' the blues."

    Related material:
    All That Jazz
    (previous entry)

  • ART WARS continued:

    At the Still Point...

    Roy Scheider in 'All That Jazz'

    The Lives of Jazz, by Gerald Early: Feb. 12 premiere of Rhapsody in Blue

    "Rhapsody in Blue was commissioned in January of 1924 by Paul Whiteman for an experimental concert of popular music. It was... premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York City on February 12, 1924 with the composer at the piano." --Matthew Naughtin

    "Whiteman's concept of the 'true form of jazz,' even as late as 1924,
    was the original Dixieland Jazz Band's 1917 recording of... Livery Stable Blues, with which he
    opened the program." --The New York Times

    For another sort of livery stable blues, see Readings for Candlemas (Log24, Feb. 2, 2008).

  • Epiphany for Roy, Part III

    Monolith

    "A shape of some kind
    for something that
      has no shape."

    The black monolith from '2001'

    -- Roy Scheider
      in "2010"

    For further details,
     click on the monolith.

    See also the Keystone State's
    lottery numbers for Sunday--
    Grammy night and the
    date of Scheider's death:

    PA  Lottery Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008: Mid-day 234, Evening 617

    These numbers suggest
    the following links.

    For further details related
    to death and religion, see
    a version of the cheer
    "1234, who are we for?"

    For further details related
    to Grammy night, see
    6/17, 2007:

    A selection from the
     
    Stephen King Hymnal

    Alicia Keys and Scatman Crothers - 'If you could read my mind, love...'


    "... it's going to be
    accomplished in steps,
    this establishment
    of the Talented in
     
    the scheme of things."

    -- Anne McCaffrey, 
    Radcliffe '47,
    To Ride Pegasus

  • Epiphany for Roy, Part II

    The timestamp of this entry, 7:59 AM, may be regarded as a reference to the Log24 entry of July 17, 2003 "A Constant Idea: 759."

    The word "idea" in that entry is a reference to Plato-- who,
    along with Shakespeare, appears in a Chesterton quote in "An Epiphany
    for Roy, Part I."


    (This entry, on the other hand, was written, along with parts I and III of "An Epiphany for Roy," on the morning of Monday, Feb. 11, 2008.)