Blame it on Toby
"We are in awar of ideas."
-- Defense SecretaryDonald Rumsfeld,Oct. 24, 2003
Toby Zieglerof West Wing
THE WEST WING"NIGHT FIVE"
WRITTEN BYAARON SORKIN
Original Airdate:Feb. 6, 2002...
…
Misunderstandingin the Theory of Design
"Whether or not we can follow the theorist in his demonstrations, there is one misunderstanding we must avoid at all cost. We must not confuse the analyses of geometrical symmetr…
Axis of Flim-Flam
Recommended reading from Axis of Logic --
On outgoing weapons-of-mass-destruction hunter David Kay:
"... instead of drawing the logical conclusion that he's been duped and played for a fool, he chos…
Sequel to previous entry:
The Subject Par Excellence
The previous entry connected the mad Marxist Althusser with Mount Sinai; this connection is not as whimsical as it may seem.
From Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" (La …
Language Game
More on "selving," a word coined by the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. (See Saturday's Taking Lucifer Seriously.)
"... through the calibrated truths of temporal discipline such as timetabling, serial…
High Society
An Introduction to the Society of Jesus.
Taking Lucifer Seriously:
Michael SprinkerversusThe Society of Jesus
As the previous entry indicates, I do not take Christian poetry too seriously. The Prince of Darkness is another matter. I encountered him this mor…
Requiem
Perichoresis, or Coinherence
Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter XXI --
Gibbon, discussing the theology of the Trinity, defines perichoresis as
"... the internal connection and spiritual penet…
Diamonds
This is the first anniversary of the death of Irene Diamond, patron of the arts, for whom the New York City Ballet's Diamond Project is named. (See last year's entries for January 20-23.)
Since tomorrow is th…
Time and Chance,Part II:
Proposition Players
Texas
Click onpictures andcaptionsfor details.Tennessee
"Gimme a T for Texas, T for Tennessee."
(See previous entry.)
Song of the Father
The death of Max D. Barnes (previous entry) and the opening of the first Tennessee lottery suggested the following meditations.
Wikipedia on Jimmie Rodgers, known as the father of country music:
"Fu…
In Memory of Max D. Barnes:
Time and Chance
Barnes, a songwriter,died on 1/11/04.
Related material:
Fearful Meditation (8/1/03),
Time is a Weapon (9/26/03), and
In Summary (1/11/04).
Screenshot
A search on "vult decipi" at about3:40 AM today yielded the following, from http://www.sacklunch.net/Latin/P/populusvultdecipidecipiatur.html
The ad for "Geometry of Latin Squares,"my own. is in direct com…
A Living Church
"Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still li…
Go Leonards
Yesterday's entry may be viewed as honoring Saint Leonard Eugene Dickson, who died on January 17, 1954. Dickson was the author of the three-volume classic
History of the Theory of Numbers.
Yesterday's ent…
Math History
This morning's web notes:
From Lemniscate to Langlands.
Forum
The annual World Social Forum started Jan. 16 in Bombay ("Mumbai"), India.
Background Essays:
From the right,
The Fifth International?
From the left,
Towards a New International?
Related Material:
From the …
Language Game
Ludwig Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations:
373. Grammar tells what kind of object anything is. (Theology as grammar.)
Related material:
See this date last year, and
Zen and Language Games
(M…
Games
On this date —
Alfred Tarski was bornin 1902 in Warsaw, and
Kurt Friedrich Gödel diedin 1978 in Princeton.
From last year's entry on this date:
What is Truth?
"What is called 'losing' in chessmay constitute w…
At Last, Some Veritas
From the Harvard Crimson, 1/12/04:
College Faces Mental Health Crisis
"An overwhelming majority of Harvard undergraduates struggle with mental health problems, a recent Crimson poll found."
Rela…
Deeply Deep
"Remember your epiphanies on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria?"
-- James Joyce, Ulysses, "Proteus"
James Joyce may…
In Summary
To sum up the last two entries:
"I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to me…
Two-Dimensional Time
The following is from the Prime Quotes page at the website of Matthew R. Watkins...
"I have sometimes thought that the profound mystery which envelops our conceptions relative to prime numbers de…
The Lottery
New YorkJan. 10, 2004
Midday: 720
Evening: 510
PennsylvaniaJan. 10, 2004
Midday: 616
Evening: 201
What these numbers mean to me:
720: See the recent entries
Music for Dunne's Wake,
720 i…
String Theory
Phil Sweetland of the New York Times on Gospel singer St. Jake Hess, who died on Sunday, January 4, 2004 -- also the feast day of saints T. S. Eliot, T.S. Matthews, and Joan Aiken --
"Mr. Hess was the str…
Report to theJoint Mathematics Meetings
"What was the lecture about,Cosmo wanted to know.
'It's about solving equationsof the fifth degree,which are supposed to be insoluble.'"
-- Chapter 2 ofThe Shadow Guests,by Joan…
HURRY UP PLEASEIT'S TIME
-- T. S. Eliot,The Waste Land, II"A Game of Chess"
"Make the white Queen run so fast she hasn't got time to make you wise, 'cause it's time, it's time in time with your time …
Natasha's Dance
"... at the still point, there the dance is...."
"... to apprehend The point of intersection of the timeless With time, is an occupation for the saint.... "
-- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
It se…
720 in the Book
Searching for an epiphany on this January 6 (the Feast of the Epiphany), I started with Harvard Magazine, the current issue of January-February 2004.
An article titled On Mathematical Imagination conclu…
"Shining Forth"
Room 1010
Continuing the hotel theme of the previous entry....
John Gregory Dunne has a letter in the New York Review of Books of December 20 (St. Emil's Day in the previous entry), 1990. In this letter, he reveals th…
2:17
"... both a new worldAnd the old made explicit, understoodIn the completion of its partial ecstasy,The resolution of its partial horror."
-- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Speaking of horror, today's noon entry has …
Noon
"These fragments I have shored against my ruins" -- T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Music for Dunne's Wake
"Heaven was kind of a hat on the universe,a lid that kept everything underneath itwhere it belonged."
— Carrie Fisher,Postcards from the Edge
"720 in the Book" and"Parad…
Dunne's Wake:
What, and Give Up Show Biz?
"Dying is easy. Comedy is hard."
-- Saying attributed to Edmund Gwenn, star of "Miracle on 34th Street," and also attributed to "Noel Coward, David Garrick, William Holden, …
The Dark Lady
"... though she has been seen by many men, she is known to only a handful of them. You'll see her -- if you see her at all -- just after you've taken your last breath. Then, before you exhale for the fin…
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