Log24.com Journal Archives of Steven H. Cullinane Music for Pegasus   My RSS Feed ARCHIVES The most recent entries may be found at right or here or here. 2009 2009 May 16-31 2009 May 01-15 2009 Apr 16-30 2009 Apr 01-15 2009 Mar 16-31 2009 Mar 01-15 2009 Feb 16-28 2009 Feb 01-15 2009 Jan 16-31 2009 Jan 01-15 2008 2008 Dec 16-31 2008 Dec 01-15 2008 Nov 01-30 2008 Oct 01-31 2008 Sep 01-30 2008 Aug 16-31 2008 Aug 01-15 2008 Jul 16-31 2008 Jul 01-15 2008 Jun 16-30 2008 Jun 01-15 2008 May 16-31 2008 May 01-15 2008 Apr 16-30 2008 Apr 01-15 2008 Mar 01-31 2008 Feb 16-29 2008 Feb 01-15 2008 Jan 01-31 2007 2007 Dec 01-31 2007 Nov 01-30 2007 Oct 16-31 2007 Oct 01-15 2007 Sep 16-30 2007 Sep 01-15 2007 Aug 16-31 2007 Aug 01-15 2007 Jul 16-31 2007 Jul 01-15 2007 Jun 16-30 2007 Jun 01-15 2007 May 16-31 2007 May 01-15 2007 Apr 16-30 2007 Apr 01-15 2007 Mar 16-31 2007 Mar 01-15 2007 Feb 16-28 2007 Feb 01-15 2007 Jan 16-31 2007 Jan 01-15 2006 2006 Dec 16-31 2006 Dec 01-15 2006 Nov 16-30 2006 Nov 01-15 2006 Oct 16-31 2006 Oct 01-15 2006 Sep 16-30 2006 Sep 01-15 2006 Aug 16-31 2006 Aug 01-15 2006 Jul 16-31 2006 Jul 01-15 2006 Jun 16-30 2006 Jun 01-15 2006 May 01-31 2006 Apr 16-30 2006 Apr 01-15 2006 Mar 16-31 2006 Mar 01-15 2006 Feb 16-28 2006 Feb 01-15 2006 Jan 16-31 2006 Jan 01-15 2005 2005 Dec 16-31 2005 Dec 01-15 2005 Nov 16-30 2005 Nov 01-15 2005 Oct 01-31 2005 Sep 01-30 2005 Aug 16-31 2005 Aug 1-15 2005 Jul 16-31 2005 Jul 1-15 2005 Jun 16-30 2005 Jun 10-15 2005 Jun 1-9 2005 May 16-31 2005 May 1-15 2005 Apr 16-30 2005 Apr 1-15 2005 Mar 1-31 2005 Feb 1-28 2005 Jan 1-31 2004 2004 Dec 1-31 2004 Nov 1-30 2004 Oct 16-31 2004 Oct 1-15 2004 Sep 16-30 2004 Sep 1-15 2004 Aug 16-31 2004 Aug 1-15 2004 Jul 16-31 2004 Jul 1-15 2004 Jun 17-30 2004 Jun 01-16 2004 May 16-31 2004 May 01-15 2004 Apr 16-30 2004 Apr 01-15 2004 Mar 16-31 2004 Mar 01-15 2004 Feb 16-28 2004 Feb 01-15 2004 Jan 16-31 2004 Jan 01-15 2003 2003 Dec 16-31 2003 Dec 01-15 2003 Nov 16-30 2003 Nov 01-15 2003 Oct 16-31 2003 Oct 01-15 2003 Sep 16-30 2003 Sep 01-15 2003 Aug 16-31 2003 Aug 08-15 2003 Aug 01-07 2003 Jul 24-31 2003 Jul 16-23 2003 Jul 01-15 2003 Jun 16-30 2003 Jun 01-15 2003 May 16-31 2003 May 01-15 2003 Apr 16-30 2003 Apr 01-15 2003 Mar 16-31 2003 Mar 01-15 2003 Feb 16-28 2003 Feb 01-15 2003 Jan 16-31 2003 Jan 08-15 2003 Jan 01-07 2002 2002 Dec 16-31 2002 Dec 01-15 2002 Nov 16-30 2002 Nov 01-15 2002 Oct 16-31 2002 Oct 01-15 2002 Sep 16-30 2002 Sep 01-15 2002 Aug 16-31 2002 Aug 01-15 2002 Jul 16-31 June-July 2002 Before June 2002 Related Sites Three Days of the Saint, 2002 12/6: Santa vs. the Volcano 12/7: Satori at Pearl Harbor 12/8: Architecture of Eternity Some may feel that the Saint in question is Philip Berrigan, who joined Saburo Ienaga and Ivan Illich on Dec. 6, 2002. Others may feel that the Saint is Don Ameche, who died on Dec. 6, 1993. "Things change." -- SHC 12/9/02 Sequel Stan Rice died on Dec. 9, 2002. A poem of his tells what happened next. Eight is a Gate Hollywood producer dies Dec. 14, meets Bach at Heaven's Gate. Realistic comedy. The Diamond Project Notes on dance, mortality, and "the still point" on the date of Irene Diamond's death. Immortal Diamond, or NASA Meets Jesus Thoughts on John O'Hara and G. M. Hopkins for James Joyce's birthday. Blackbird Singing The Fred Rogers memorial koan. Art Wars LeWitt vs. Witt Stone, not Wood best describes St. Peter The Word in the Desert O'Hara's Crucifixion Art Wars: Fahne Hoch and Thorny Crown Unity and Reciprocity in mathematics The Quality of Diamond Da Vinci Code , Crimson Passion, Cubist Crucifixion. Truth and Style The Line Bush Mutiny Symmetry and Change A Shot at Redemption Mathematics and Narrative The Judas Seat My other sites Finitegeometry.org Finitegeometry.org/sc The Diamond 16 Puzzle Notes on Finite Geometry The Diamond Theorem The Geometry of Qubits Diamond Theory Diamond Theory in 1937 Galois Geometry A Four-Color Theorem Latin-Square Geometry Walsh Functions The Fano Plane Revisualized The MOG Inscapes The Diamond Theory of Truth Logos and Logic Literary-Philosophical Puzzle Notes A Mathematician's Aesthetics Reflection Groups in Finite Geometry A Reflection Group of Order 168 Reflection Groups: The Missing Link Geometry of the I Ching The Diamond Archetype Modal Theology The Eightfold Way and Solomon's Seal Crystal and Dragon in Diamond Theory Poetry's Bones Time Fold War of Ideas The Proof and the Lie Lemniscate to Langlands Symmetry Groups Block Designs Finite Relativity Cognitive Blending Geometry of the 4x4 Square Visualizing GL(2,p) Pattern Groups Ideas and Art Jung's Imago Theme and Variations The Geometry of Logic Space-Time and a Finite Model Quilt Geometry Duality and Symmetry Polster on Pictures Kaleidoscope The Dharwadker Files Certified Crank Favorite Books The Practical Cogitator Style The Reader Over Your Shoulder The Oxford Book of English Prose Fancies and Goodnights Other Online Commonplace Books David Lavery Peter J. Cameron A. M. Kuchling Constant Reader Identity Theory J. Jacobs M. Magnus Anonymous Sites I Read: Bloglines list Some Recent Entries (These may not be the most recent entries. If there are more recent entries, they may be found here or here.) Tuesday, June 30, 2009  4:16 PM Annals of Aesthetics: Totentanz Adapted from this afternoon's New York Times: Related material: "And then we'll see...." Background: The five Log24 entries from 6:29 PM Tuesday, June 23, to 1:00 AM Sunday, June 28. Monday, June 29, 2009  6:29 PM Annals of Religion and Politics: Calvinist Epiphany for St. Peter's Day "Have your people   call my people." -- George Carlin  Diamond life, lover boy; we move in space with minimum waste  and maximum joy. -- Sade, quoted here on  Lincoln's Birthday, 2003 This is perhaps suitable for the soundtrack of the film "Blockheads"   (currently in development)-- Diamond Life -- Related material from Wikipedia: "Uta Frith, in her book Autism: Explaining the Enigma,[5] addresses the superior performance of autistic individuals on the block design [link not in Wikipedia] test. This was also addressed in [an] earlier paper.[6] A particularly interesting article demonstrates the differences in construction time in the performance of the block design task by Asperger syndrome individuals and non-Asperger's individuals. An essential point here is that in an unsegmented version of the task, Asperger's individuals performed dramatically faster than non-Asperger's individuals: [7]." 5. Frith, Uta (2003). Autism: explaining the enigma (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Pub. ISBN 0-631-22901-9. 6. Shah A, Frith U (Nov 1993). "Why do autistic individuals show superior performance on the block design task?". J Child Psychol Psychiatry 34 (8): 1351–64. PMID 8294523.  7. Caron MJ, Mottron L, Berthiaume C, Dawson M (Jul 2006). "Cognitive mechanisms, specificity and neural underpinnings of visuospatial peaks in autism". Brain 129 (Pt 7): 1789–802. doi:10.1093/brain/awl072. PMID 16597652. "Fig 3". Lover Boy -- Related material from a film (see Calvinist Epiphany, June 17): Related material from another film: For the relevance of this maxim to autism, see Markoff Process (March 4, 2009). Monday, June 29, 2009  11:02 AM Annals of Entertainment: Sunday Egyptians "And what is it  you're going to do?" -- Eddie Murphy as Pharaoh   See also Reba at Heaven's Gate and  The Seventh Symbol: "Jackson's identified     the seventh symbol." -- Stargate Sunday, June 28, 2009  3:48 PM Happy Birthday, Mel Brooks: Sunday Jews  by Hortense Calisher* "Sunday Jews ... [2002] explores issues of identity in an eclectic family, which includes an art expert, an atheistic rabbi, an anthropologist, and an agnostic Irish Catholic." --Encyclopaedia Britannica One definition   of "uh"-- Strange Bedfellows: For some background,  see Jefferson's Birthday. * Pictured next to John Updike in "Multimedia" at the top of  today's NY Times obituaries  (pdf, 1 megabyte). Sunday, June 28, 2009  4:28 AM Today's Sermon:   Hell Path "...right through hell      there is a path..."     -- Malcolm Lowry  Related material:   This morning's    New York Times obituaries... ...and The Restaurant Quarré in Berlin,    with a view of the Brandenburg Gate: Sunday, June 28, 2009  1:00 AM Hieron Grammaton, Part II: Raven Steals the Light     Thanks for a reference to this story go to Robert Bringhurst, in his own way a  Cleric of the Grammaton. Saturday, June 27, 2009  2:56 PM Hieron Grammaton, Part I: Dark Materials Before thir eyes in sudden view appear The secrets of the hoarie deep, a dark Illimitable Ocean without bound, Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth, And time and place are lost; where eldest Night And Chaos, Ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal Anarchie, amidst the noise Of endless warrs and by confusion stand. For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring amidst the noise Thir embryon Atoms.... ... Into this wilde Abyss, The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave, Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire, But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain His dark materials to create more Worlds, Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while, Pondering his Voyage.... -- John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II Friday, June 26, 2009  3:48 PM Heaven's Gate continues: Apocatastasis Now I give you the end of a golden string, Only wind it into a ball: It will lead you in at Heavens gate, Built in Jerusalems wall. -- WILLIAM BLAKE "In 'Apocatastasis Now: A Very Condensed Reading of William Blake's Jerusalem' (JBSSJ [Journal of the Blake Society at St James's] 6 [2001] 18–25), Susanne Sklar argues that Blake is not apocalyptic but apocatastatic, that is (following a doctrine of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa) he believes that all free creatures will be redeemed by God's universal love." -- The Year's Work in English Studies, 2003: Vol. 82, No. 1, pp. 493-547 Related material: Thriller From the website of Philip Pullman, president of The Blake Society: "I must create a System…" The Blake Society, 25 October 2005: St James’s Church, Piccadilly I see that the title of this lecture is given as BLAKE'S DARK MATERIALS. Now in the lecturer's handbook, the second rule says "You need take no obsessive notice of the title that has been announced in advance." Whether Blake's materials are dark or not I couldn't really say, but I am going to talk about Blake, partly, and partly about religion. Appropriate, perhaps, in a place like this, but you might think not appropriate from someone whose reputation is that of a scoffer or mocker or critic of religion; but I haven't come here to scoff or mock. Nor have I come here to recant, as a matter of fact. I'm profoundly interested in religion, and I think it's extremely important to understand it. I've been trying to understand it all my life, and every so often it's useful to put one's thoughts in order; but I shall never like God. Download the full lecture (pdf format, 155.62 KB) For more dark materials from the Halloween season of 2005 -- in fact, from the   very date of Pullman's lecture-- see Darkness Doubled. Thursday, June 25, 2009  12:00 PM A Word for AntiChristmas: Apocatastasis "... T. S. Eliot tried to recompose,    in Four Quartets, the fragments    he had grieved over     in The Waste Land." -- "Beauty and Desecration,"   Roger Scruton  (link at aldaily.com today) "The formula reproduces exactly the essential features of the symbolic process of transformation. It shows the rotation of the mandala, the antithetical play of complementary (or compensatory) processes, then the apocatastasis, i.e., the restoration of an original state of wholeness...." -- Carl G. Jung in Aion Related material: this journal one year ago today. Tuesday, June 23, 2009  6:29 PM Fiction and History, continued: Picture This The death of the character Mary O'Brien in the 2002 film "Equilibrium," broadcast in the U.S.A. Saturday evening, paralleled the reported death of Iran's Neda Soltan on the same day (June 20). The reported last words of Soltan would also have been fitting for O'Brien. (Any such resemblance between a fictional character and a real person is, of course, purely coincidental.) Tuesday, June 23, 2009  10:10 AM Medium and Message: You May Already  Have Won. Adapted from Google News of about 9:30 AM EDT Monday, June 22, 2009  4:00 AM The Pleasures of the... Text Today's birthday: Kris Kristofferson Heaven's Gate One year ago today George Carlin died. Online Etymology Dictionary text 1369, "wording of anything written," from O.Fr. texte, O.N.Fr. tixte (12c.), from M.L. textus "the Scriptures, text, treatise," in L.L. "written account, content, characters used in a document," from L. textus "style or texture of a work," lit. "thing woven," from pp. stem of texere "to weave," from PIE base *tek- "make" (see texture). "An ancient metaphor: thought is a thread, and the raconteur is a spinner of yarns-- but the true storyteller, the poet, is a weaver. The scribes made this old and audible abstraction into a new and visible fact. After long practice, their work took on such an even, flexible texture that they called the written page a textus, which means cloth." [Robert Bringhurst, "The Elements of Typographic Style"] Text-book is from 1779. "Discuss the geometry underlying the above picture." -- Log24, June 11, 2009   "There is such a thing as a tesseract." -- A Wrinkle in Time Sunday, June 21, 2009  12:00 PM ART WARS continued: Abstraction From Mitchell Stephens, author of a website mentioned here yesterday: "This paper is designed to be a conversation.... The ideas are organized loosely around a single theme: the Roman leader Pompey's forced entry into the most sacred place of the Jewish temple. At issue are the origins and prevalence of doubt, even at the heart of religion.... The paper will be initially presented, with comments and additions, to the working group on 'Secularism, Religious Authority, and the Mediation of Knowledge' of the Center for Religion and Media at New York University on December 8, 2006." From the paper itself: "All Pompey's intrusion into the Holy of Holies will leave behind is one sentence in Tacitus; still, it is not hard to imagine it as a media show. As he enters this hidden room in the Temple of those weird, unGreek, Asian, tribal Jews, this cosmopolitan, sophisticated Roman is not just the insensitive anthropologist. He wants, to continue our imagining, to display the lack of contents of the Holy of Holies in a museum, to take them, like the treasures of Tutankhamen's tomb, on tour. This all-powerful Roman wields klieg lights; he brings the press. He exposes. His expedition is something of an exposé. The whole scene feels as if it might have been filmed: like Dorothy's peek behind the curtain at the diminutive Wizard of Oz. It feels as if it might have been televised: like Geraldo Rivera's opening of Al Capone's 'secret vault.' Pompey has in common with all journalists a desire to shove a microphone in God's face. He wants to rant about what he has learned on his blog. In his desecration of the Holy of Holies, Pompey has with him, in other words, what Jacques Derrida, in his essay 'Faith and Knowledge,' calls the 'powers of abstraction': 'deracination, delocalization, disincarnation, formalization, universalizing schematization, objectification, telecommunication etc.'" Related material: Log24 entries of  June 9-11, 2009. Et cetera, et cetera. Saturday, June 20, 2009  3:54 PM Musical Accompaniment: Strange Bedfellows The above excerpt from Google News was suggested by David Lavery's June 19 weblog entry "Future Books," by an example of this sort of book-- "The Holy of Holies: The Constituents of Emptiness," by the June 19 NY Lottery midday number 354 (the name of an empty page in Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose, Library of America, 1997), and by the musical meaning of the numbers 3, 5, 4-- the frequency ratios of the notes G, E, C and hence the numerical equivalent of the NBC chimes. "We have heard   the chimes at midnight." -- William Shakespeare    and Orson Welles Saturday, June 20, 2009  4:00 AM Poem for Saturday: A Symbol of the Self "Turn the page." "Unsheathe your dagger definitions." -- Ulysses  Friday, June 19, 2009  11:59 PM Motley Metaphysics: Midnight in the Garden   continued... See  Juneteenth through Midsummer Night and  Juneteenth Revisited. Friday, June 19, 2009  11:07 PM Annals of Religion, continued: "He wasn't there again today" Today's New York Times: And then there are gemlike numbers    set free from words... Today's New York lottery: Elsewhere:  354, 431 These numbers also name parts of a book cited here Nov. 6, 2007:                    ... The actor is A metaphysician in the dark.... -- Wallace Stevens in     Parts of a World, 1942 Wednesday, June 17, 2009  1:06 PM Annals of Religion: Calvinist Epiphany The above ad leads to... ... which in turn suggests a picture linked to in yesterday's Bloomsday for Carlin: Related material: Hilbert vs. Pascal (Jan. 23, 2009) Wednesday, June 17, 2009  4:30 AM Fiction and History: Back to the Real Colum McCann on yesterday's history: "Fiction gives us access  to a very real history." The Associated Press thought for today: "Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it."  -- John Hersey, American author (born on this date in 1914, died 1993). From John Hersey's The Child Buyer (1960): "I was wondering about that this morning... About forgetting. I've always had an idea that each memory was a kind of picture, an insubstantial picture. I've thought of it as suddenly coming into your mind when you need it, something you've seen, something you've heard, then it may stay awhile, or else it flies out, then maybe it comes back another time.... If all the pictures went out, if I forgot everything, where would they go? Just out into the air? Into the sky? Back home around my bed, where my dreams stay?" "We keep coming back and coming back  To the real: to the hotel instead of the hymns...." -- Wallace Stevens Postcard from eBay From Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry, 1947, Chapter I: Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall -- Shaken, M. Laruelle replaced the book on the table... he reached to the floor for a folded sheet of paper that had fluttered out of it. He picked the paper up between two fingers and unfolded it, turning it over. Hotel Bella Vista, he read. There were really two sheets of uncommonly thin hotel notepaper.... I sit now in a little room off the bar at four-thirty in the morning drinking ochas and then mescal and writing this on some Bella Vista notepaper I filched the other night.... But this is worst of all, to feel your soul dying. I wonder if it is because to-night my soul has really died that I feel at the moment something like peace. Or is it because right through hell there is a path, as Blake well knew, and though I may not take it, sometimes lately in dreams I have been able to see it? ...And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell. It is not Mexico of course but in the heart. Tuesday, June 16, 2009  10:00 PM Bloomsday for Carlin: V. "Actualmente Maju estudia Publicidad en la Universidad de Ciencias Aplicadas de Lima, es modelo de la agencia Elite Model Management y viaja por varios paises realizando campañas de publicidad, y es imagen publicitaria exclusiva de varias empresas en su país." Related material: "His and Hers: Something" (Log24 entry last year for the anniversary of the births of John Calvin and of Maria Julia Mantilla.) See also Andrew Cusack's weblog for 8:09 PM today-- "The Order of Malta in Peru." “V. is whatever lights you to the end of the street:  she is  also the dark annihilation waiting at the end of the street.” (Tony Tanner, page 36,  "V. and V-2," in Pynchon: A Collection of Critical Essays,  ed. Edward Mendelson. Prentice-Hall, 1978. 16-55). Sunday, June 14, 2009  11:00 AM Today's Sermon: And the ruby slippers go to... Thomas Pynchon! "For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross." -- Pynchon Saturday, June 13, 2009  2:09 PM ART WARS continued: For the late    Lee Nagrin -- The Passion of the Children continued from    February 25, 2008 --   Abstract classicism illustrated: Performance art illustrated: The Amish Project Friday, June 12, 2009  11:07 PM The Two-Cultures War continues... New York Times Friday, June 12, 2009, 4:14 PM The Physics of Nothing By John Tierney At the World Science Festival Thursday night [June 11, 2009], four physicists offered an answer to the question that has plagued philosophers and scientists: Why is there something rather than nothing at all? Sure they did. Two years ago: "A strange thing  then happened." -- L. Frank Baum   Related material: Introduction to Abstract Classicism Thursday, June 11, 2009  7:11 PM Art and Man at Yale: Geometry for Jews (continued from Michelangelo's birthday, 2003) "Discuss the geometry underlying the above picture." -- Log24, March 6, 2003   Abstraction and the Holocaust (Mark Godfrey, Yale University Press, 2007) describes one approach to such a discussion: Bochner "took a photograph of a new arrangement of blocks, cut it up, reprinted it as a negative, and arranged the four corners in every possible configuration using the serial principles of rotation and reversal to make Sixteen Isomorphs (Negative) of 1967, which he later illustrated alongside works by Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse in his Artforum article 'The Serial Attitude.' [December 1967, pp. 28-33]" Bochner's picture of "every possible configuration"-- Compare with the 24 figures in Frame Tales (Log24, Nov. 10, 2008) and in Theme and Variations. Thursday, June 11, 2009  2:28 AM Design Theory, continued: Epigraph     (http://www.scrapbookpages.com/USHMM/Exterior.html) Wednesday, June 10, 2009  6:29 PM Annals of Literature: Hello, Columbus continued from the two entries of October 12, 2003: Part I -- October 12, 2003 -- Above, an image from Spinnin' Wheel, Spinnin' True Part II --   October 12, 2003 -- Above, an image from Hello, Columbus Part III -- June 10, 2009 -- Below, images from a website:   "They all laughed at     Christopher Columbus..." -- Ira Gershwin   Wednesday, June 10, 2009  2:02 AM For the Talented: Death of an Abstract Classicist "It's going to be accomplished in steps, this establishment of the Talented in the scheme of things." -- Anne McCaffrey, Radcliffe '47   Click on images to enlarge. Related material: Naturalized Epistemology and Zero Factorial. Tuesday, June 9, 2009  2:56 PM A Sermon About Nothing: Recessional "I know what  nothing means." -- Joan Didion,  Play It As It Lays Faust President Faust of Harvard on Joan Didion: "She was referring to life as a kind of improvisation: that magical crossroads of rigor and ease, structure and freedom, reason and intuition. What she calls being prepared to 'go with the change.'" Bippity Boppity Boo. Didion's own words: "I think about swimming with him into the cave at Portuguese Bend, about the swell of clear water, the way it changed, the swiftness and power it gained as it narrowed through the rocks at the base of the point. The tide had to be just right. We had to be in the water at the very moment the tide was right. We could only have done this a half dozen times at most during the two years we lived there but it is what I remember. Each time we did it I was afraid of missing the swell, hanging back, timing it wrong. John never was. You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that." From the same book: "The craziness is receding but no clarity is taking its place." -- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking For a magical crossroads at another university, see the five Log24 entries ending on November 25, 2005: This holy icon appeared at N37°25.638' W122°09.574' on August 22, 2003, at the Stanford campus. Also from that date, an example of clarity   in another holy icon -- -- in honor of better days  at Harvard and of a member of the Radcliffe Class of 1964. Saturday, June 6, 2009  2:02 PM ART WARS continued: Excerpts from Log24, with commentary by Wilhelm and Mather Thursday, June 4, 2009  1:24 PM Honorary Degree: The Grasshopper Lies Heavy "'Oracle, why did you write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy?    What are we supposed to learn?'" -- Philip K. Dick "She began throwing the coins." Click on image for further details. Thursday, June 4, 2009  10:30 AM First-Draft Theater continues... A Passage to Egypt The First Draft: Reviews flood in after Obama's Cairo speech The conclusion: a tribute to E. M. Forster-- (Image only; not for use.) Those who prefer spam scripts to persons may consult the entry from midnight. Thursday, June 4, 2009  12:00 AM ART WARS continued: Steps continued from October 16, 2008 New collection release: Pattern in Islamic Art from David Wade October 16, 2008 David Wade has partnered with ARTstor to distribute approximately 1,500 images of Islamic art, now available in the Digital Library. These images illustrate patterns and designs found throughout the Islamic world, from the Middle East and Europe to Central and South Asia. They depict works Wade photographed during his travels, as well as drawings and diagrams produced for publication. Reflective of Wade's particular interest in symmetry and geometry, these images analyze and break down common patterns into their basic elements, thereby revealing the underlying principles of order and balance in Islamic art. Islamic artists and craftsmen employed these intricate patterns to adorn all types of surfaces, such as stone, brick, plaster, ceramic, glass, metal, wood, and textiles. The collection contains examples of ornamentation from monumental architecture to the decorative arts. To view the David Wade: Pattern in Islamic Art collection: go to the ARTstor Digital Library, browse by collection, and click "David Wade: Pattern in Islamic Art;" or enter the Keyword Search: patterninislamicart. For more detailed information about this collection, visit the David Wade: Pattern in Islamic Art collection page. The above prose illustrates the institutional mind at work. Those who actually try to view the Wade collection will encounter the following warning: To access the images in the ARTstor Digital Library you need to be affiliated with a participating institution (university, college, museum, public library or K-12 school). You say "go to the ARTstor Digital Library," I say "theatlantic.com/doc/200305/lewis." Wednesday, June 3, 2009  4:00 AM Maximus and the Star-- Epigraphs to Four Quartets: The Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius, translated from the Greek by Thomas Taylor, printed by C. Whittingham, London, for the translator, 1804, Vol. II, p. 55: "You see the mutation of bodies, and the transition of generation, a path upwards and downwards according to Heraclitus; and again, as he says, one thing living the death, but dying the life of another. Thus fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, and earth lives the death of water. You see a succession of life, and a mutation of bodies, both of which are the renovation of the whole." For an interpretation of the above figure in terms of the classical four elements discussed in Four Quartets, in Dissertations, and in Angels & Demons, see Notes on Mathematics  and Narrative. For a more entertaining interpretation, see Fritz Leiber's classic story "Damnation Morning." Tuesday, June 2, 2009  11:30 AM Science, Faith, & Bad Movies continued: Get Quotes Okay... "Calling the Corners (or Quarters) is something you will always do." "Points all her own" "Here's a quarter, call someone who cares." Monday, June 1, 2009  10:31 AM Mathematics and Narrative, continued: "What's going on" -- Marvin Gaye "The action is in the plot, inaccessible to introspection, and only the characters know what's going on." -- James Hillman, quoted at David Lavery's weblog. See also Into the Dark, Easter 2009 (with Lavery and the Monster from the Id), and Church of the Forbidden Planet. Click on image  for further details.