Category: General Page 115 of 783

Obiter Dictum

The title is both a legal phrase and a phrase used by Tom Wolfe in his writings on art. See, too, the pattern of nine triangular half-squares arranged…

Art Wars

Frederick Hart’s 1982 sculpture “Ex Nihilo” for Washington’s National Cathedral— Related material — Tom Wolfe on Frederick Hart, said to have been published in The New York Times Magazine…

Dark Fields of the Republic

This post was suggested by today's previous post, Depth, by Plato's Diamond, and by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's recent fanciful fiction about Plato. Plato, Republic , Book II, Paul…

Depth

"… this notion of ‘depth’ is an elusive one even for a mathematician who can recognize it…." — G. H. Hardy,  A Mathematician's Apology Part I:  An Inch…

Strategic Hamlets

From an obituary for a Kennedy advisor who reportedly died at 94 on February 23, 2014*— “He favored withdrawing rural civilians into what he called ‘strategic hamlets’ and…

God's Architecture

Part I: The sermon, “God’s Architecture,” at Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton on Sunday, Feb. 23, 2014.  (This is the “sermon” link in last Sunday’s 11 AM ET Log24…

The Story Creeps Up

For Women’s History Month — Conclusion of “The Storyteller,” a story by Cynthia Zarin about author Madeleine L’Engle— See also the exercise on the Miracle Octad Generator (MOG) at the…

Hesse's Table

From “Quartic Curves and Their Bitangents,” by Daniel Plaumann, Bernd Sturmfels, and Cynthia Vinzant, arXiv:1008.4104v2  [math.AG] 10 Jan 2011 — The table mentioned (from 1855) is… Exercise: Discuss the relationship,…

At Play in the Fields of Brazil

From Facebook, a photo from the Feast of St. Francis, 2013: Neantro Saavedra-Rivano, author of the 1976 paper  “Finite Geometries in the Theory of Theta Characteristics,”  in Brasilia— On…

Sermon

On Theta Characteristics — From Zentralblatt-math.org.  8 PM ET update:  See also a related search. Some may prefer a more politically correct— and simpler— sermon. Background for the…