Bertram Kostant, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at MIT, on an object discussed in this week's New Yorker:

Hermann Weyl on the hard core of objectivity:

Steven H. Cullinane on the symmetries of a 4x4 array of points:

The Diamond 16 Puzzle

This puzzle shows
that the 4x4 array can
also be viewed in
thousands of ways.

"You can make 322,560
pairs of patterns. Each
 pair pictures a
different
symmetry of the underlying
16-point space."

-- Steven H. Cullinane,
July 17, 2008

For other parts of the tale,
see Ashay Dharwadker,
the Four-Color Theorem,
and Usenet Postings.

My comment on a discussion of elliptic curves and modular forms at Secret Blogging Seminar, about 10 PM tonight:

Update of about 10:45 PM tonight:

A reply by the author of the discussion, Scott Carnahan:

I don’t think anyone doubted that there is a connection between
elliptic curves and modular forms on the level I described above.
However, the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture refers to a more advanced idea
about a deeper connection.

Carnahan then gives a one-paragraph summary, definitely not popularized, of the deeper connection.

C. P. Snow in A Mathematician's Apology:

FOREWORD

"It was a perfectly ordinary night at Christ's high table, except that Hardy was dining as a guest. He had just returned to Cambridge as Sadleirian professor, and I had heard something of him from young Cambridge mathematicians. They were delighted to have him back: he was a real mathematician, they said, not like those Diracs and Bohrs the physicists were always talking about: he was the purest of the pure. He was also unorthodox, eccentric, radical, ready to talk about anything. This was 1931, and the phrase was not yet in English use, but in later days they would have said that in some indefinable way he had star quality."

Perhaps now also at Christ's high table-- Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister, Evelyn Keyes, who died on July 4, 2008:

"... the memory of Evelyn Keyes looking at herself on the screen, exclaiming: 'There's star quality! Look at those tits!'"

Evelyn Keyes in 99 River Street

Footprint

O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

 	-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

"I say high, you say low,
you say why,
and I say I don't know.
Oh, no.
You say goodbye
and I say hello."

-- Hello Goodbye *

Thanks to NBC Nightly News tonight for a story on the following:

Manhattanhenge is an evening when "the Sun sets in exact alignment with the Manhattan grid, fully
illuminating every single cross-street...."

Full Sun on grid:
Friday, July 11--
8:24 PM EDT

Related material from the late
Tom Disch on St. Sarah's Day:

* Stanley Cavell, in The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, has a note on the song "Hello Goodbye"--

"189. The extra-long coda... was referred to as the 'Maori finale' from the start...."