"From the grave, Albert Einstein poured gasoline on the culture wars between science and religion this week.

A letter the physicist wrote
in 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, in which he described the
Bible as 'pretty childish' and scoffed at the notion that the Jews
could be a 'chosen people,' sold for $404,000 at an auction in London.
That was 25 times the presale estimate."

A less controversial Einstein-related remark:

"The relativity problem is one of central significance throughout geometry and algebra and has been recognized as such by the mathematicians at an early time."

-- Hermann Weyl, "Relativity Theory as a Stimulus in Mathematical Research," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society,
Vol. 93, No. 7, Theory of Relativity in Contemporary Science: Papers
Read at the Celebration of the Seventieth Birthday of Professor Albert
Einstein in Princeton, March 19, 1949 (Dec. 30, 1949), pp. 535-541

In memory of poet May Swenson and sports novelist Rozanne Ruth "Zan" Knudson:

Maureen Dowd in today's New York Times:

"It's a similar syndrome to the one Katharine Hepburn's star athlete and her supercilious fiancé have in 'Pat and Mike.'

The fiancé is always belittling Hepburn, so whenever he's in the
stands, her tennis and golf go kerflooey. Finally, her manager, played
by Spencer Tracy, asks the fiancé to stay away from big matches,
explaining, 'You are the wrong jockey for this chick.'

'You
know, except when you're around, we got a very valuable piece of
property here,' he says, later adding, 'When you're around, she's no
good, she's dead, see?'"

"Then she has a vision of herself,
enclosed by an unfolded hypercube,
and then an immense screen
behind it covered by complex,
     ever-shifting
patterns...."

"Does the word 'tesseract'
mean anything to you?"
-- Robert A. Heinlein

"... the startling thesis of Mr. Brosterman's
new book, 'Inventing Kindergarten' (Harry N. Abrams, $39.95): that
everything the giants of modern art and architecture knew about
abstraction they learned in kindergarten, thanks to building blocks and
other educational toys designed by Friedrich Froebel, a German
educator, who coined the term 'kindergarten' in the 1830's."

-- "Was Modernism Born
     in Toddler Toolboxes?"
     by Trip Gabriel, New York Times,
     April 10, 1997

RELATED MATERIAL

Figure 1 --
Concept from 1819:


(Footnotes 1 and 2)

Figure 2 --
The Third Gift, 1837:

Froebel's Third Gift

Froebel, the inventor of
kindergarten, worked as
an assistant to the
crystallographer Weiss
mentioned in Fig. 1.

(Footnote 3)

Figure 3 --
The Third Gift, 1906:

Figure 4 --
Solomon's Cube,
1981 and 1983:

Figure 5 --
Design Cube, 2006:

The above screenshot shows a
moveable JavaScript display
of a space of six dimensions
(over the two-element field).

(To see how the display works,
try the Kaleidoscope Puzzle first.)

For some mathematical background, see

•  Finite Geometry of the Square and Cube,
•  The Eightfold Cube, and
•  Block Designs.

Footnotes:

1. Image said to be after Holden and Morrison, Crystals and Crystal Growing, 1982
2. Curtis Schuh, "The Library: Biobibliography of Mineralogy," article on Mohs
3. Bart Kahr, "Crystal Engineering in Kindergarten" (pdf), Crystal Growth & Design, Vol. 4 No. 1, 2004, 3-9