Eeek! What a place!

A locus focus, and Oh! what a scary place it is, too. For today we are serving

Detention with Dolores

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

[Harry Potter] had known this office under three of its previous occupants. [...]

Now, however, it looked totally unrecognisable. The surfaces had all been draped in lacy covers and cloths. There were several vases of dried flowers, each one residing on its own doily, and on one of the walls was a collection of ornamental plates, each decorated with a large technicolor kitten wearing a different bow around its neck. These were so foul that Harry stared at them transfixed, untill Professor Umbridge spoke again.

I'm already shivering!

I also thought about mentioning this locus back in September, for "educational" settings. Indeed, Harry learns much about the nature of evil --- as well as something of the heroic --- in this particular office room between his second and fifth year.

In its fifth-volume avatar, the Defence Against the Dark Arts Proffessor's Office shows us just how ugly good things like kittens can be made, with just the wrong sort of twist; in an interesting parallel, the same room highlights just how ugly such a good thing as devotion to the Truth can become when twisted into "devotion to what I say the Truth is" --- which is an idolatry.

I don't want to say too much more because I believe Enbrethiliel hasn't read this book yet.

That Bat also known as some guy on the street

WHAT ON EARTH?

UPDATED

What has happened to Orbis Catholicus II??? Is the illustrious Mr. Sonnen in some strange unpublished need? Has his server been compromised? Or (weirder) has someone flooded a DNS cache with this sham site?

Bloggians! To the rescue!

UPDATE: it seems to be here now.

Whence 4?

Time for some more math! At my (new! yay!) supervisor's behest I've been trying like a primordial lungfish to breath the fresh air called spectral sequences --- how they ever managed to acclimate to such thin and rarefied reference to anything tangible is beyond me; but then, the calculations themselves are thick as water to my more-terrestrial brain.

Today is not about spectral sequences, but back to geometric measure theory. Some time ago I got as far as to outline the proportion of surface areas vs. angles

$$ S(\triangle qrs):S(\mathbb{S})::\angle qrs + \angle rsq + \angle sqr - \pi:4\pi $$

for a spherical triangle $qrs$ --- although for reasons of presentation, that tale refered to the hemispheres $A,B,C$ described by the arcs $qr,$ $rs,$ $sq$ and containing the triangle $\triangle qrs$. (Do you see some ambiguity creeping into the tale? Don't worry: make your choices and then show that they aren't important!)

So, our task today is to improve the proportionality by establishing, for a unit sphere $\mathbb{S}$, an equality $S(\triangle qrs) = \angle qrs + \angle rsq + \angle sqr - \pi$, which by the complementary proportion will give $S(\mathbb{S})=4\pi$.

Fun with TeX and paper

echo <<eof >>/dev/null

We have calling cards!

That is, these are the sort of card you leave on a silver tray under the eyes of a lady's Mother or their doorman, when said lady isn't home or disposed to receive you, to say that you did, in fact, come to "call" --- without the bother or nuissance to your neighbors of actually calling out with voice to see if she answers. Some folk call them business cards these days, what with the advent of the inescapable mobile phone, in principle allowing men to pester decent ladies with person-to-person "calls" at any hour of night or day. Since precious little business gets done here (thank goodness) to call these cards "business cards" would be farcical beyond even our usual fare.

The obverse face is a tweaked version of this TeX file --- it took some doing, too, may I say. I was quite worn-out by the end of it. The reverse are filled with a rhombic variation of those famous Penrose tilings, one of several impressively economical files here exhibiting the illegible efficiency of Adobe's postscript virtual machine.

Another picture:

eof

Is it scary here? Or is it just me?

I seem to linger on one or two authors; this time I feel like another Tolkien spot, not far from last time's locus.

After stumbling along for some way along the stream, they came quite suddenly out of the gloom. As if through a gate, they saw the sunlight before them. Coming to the opening they found that they had made their way down through a cleft in a high steep bank, almost a cliff. At its feet was a wide space of grass and reeds; and in the distance could be glimpsed another bank almost as steep. A golden afternoon of late sunshine lay warm and drowsy upon the hidden land between. In the midst of it there wound lazily a dark river of brown water, bordered with ancient willows, blocked with fallen willows, and flecked with thousands of faded willow-leaves. The air was thick with them, fluttering yellow from the branches; for there was a warm and gentle breeze blowing softly in the valley, and the reeds were rustling, and the willow-boughs were creaking.

`Well, now I have at least some notion of where we are!' said Merry. `... This is the River Withywindle!...'

I suppose there's not much frightening about that, as far as it goes --- but you have to read the book! I love the way that "willow" note recurs, like an ostinato counterpoint. Or perhaps it's a flatted dominant? For myself, "willow" is one of my "cellar door"s, quite apart from how I admire willow-trees in person. But here...

... There were armies of flies of all kinds buzzing around their ears, and the afternoon sun was burning on their backs. At last they came suddenly into a thin shade; great grey branches reached across the path. Each step forward became more reluctant than the last. Sleepiness seemed to be creeping out of the ground and up their legs, and falling softly out of the air upon their heads and eyes.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Go read the book, now, if you don't remember it. But it's worth noting that willows, while lovely and graceful, are not the trustiest of trees; their wood is rather too soft for structural uses, and they tend to fall apart as they get older. A venerable old specimen in one of my favourite boyhood parkly haunts was dismantled recently, to forestall it's falling down on unsuspecting visitors. Tolkien's rather more willful Old Man Willow character, who very much defines this place, is an alarming extrapolation of my poignant beloved trees.

--Some Guy on the Street, for

The River Withywindle
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
J.R.R. Tolkien

Something a little more Aedifying?

Dear Exegete,

I gave myself to LifeChain for an hour today; and whilst standing there the hymn occurred to me that, for no good reason, I know best in the Russian chant setting. Not that I could tell you which words mean what, nor how they fit together...

Anyways, I thought it made a nice contrast to the more commonly-referenced De Profundis; which is apposite, of course, but has so many other uses, as well. The latter is good for commemorating those lives already cut short; but Save, O Lord, Thy people is looks from the present to the future, and recalls souls that thrive still on Earth and for whom there is hope.

awaiting your reply,
he would be more sad, if not for life

Parce Domine populo tuo
et ne des hereditatem tuam in obprobrium
ut dominentur eis nationes
quare dicunt in populis "ubi est Deus eorum"?
zelatus est Dominus terram suam et pepercit populo suo

I need to fill my horrid writing fix somehow!

Dear Strongbad,

Its seems to like be a long tim you hasnt write email ansers. why is that? do you not get emailz anymor? Are you cant think to smart way of write back them? when do you write agane?

yores truly
guido quiscumque
INTERNETS.