zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — a pmarca tweet, a ducal quote DoubleQuoted ]
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[ by Charles Cameron — another reason to value Twitter ]
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These images were brought to my attention on Twitter via Ali Soufan:

Syria: 2011 and 2015. pic.twitter.com/ZjHOAF1EtZ

— The Int'l Spectator (@intlspectator) March 26, 2016

The Guardian has larger versions 0f these images — and several more pairs of them — in a piece titled Syria’s heritage in ruins: before-and-after pictures posted in January 2014.

[ by Charles Cameron — various angles on graphical thinking in two Republican presidential campaigns ]
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To start with, here is presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeting a humorous, tasteless and wildly unfair DoubleQuote in the Wild against his rival for the Republican nomination, Ted Cruz — evidence for the pervasiveness and persuasiveness of this mode of thinking & linking, if any such were needed:

"@Don_Vito_08: "A picture is worth a thousand words" @realDonaldTrump #LyingTed #NeverCruz @MELANIATRUMP pic.twitter.com/5bvVEwMVF8"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2016

The tweet comes from Trump’s verified Twitter account, and might as well feature the words, “I’m Donald Trump, and I approve this message”. Ugly, and thus sad.

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Once you get me started DoubleQuoting Trump and Cruz, though, it’ll be hard to rein me in.

The Trump logo below was, I believe created for a graphic design contest unaffiliated with the Trump Campaign, but has since been tweeted at least once by the verified “Real Donald Trump” account, while the cruz logo is undoubtedoy official.

Both, you’ll note, feature the American flag and a lone star, though Trump is triumphantly New Yorkan, while Cruz is junior senator for the Lone Star State.

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While some have compared the Cruz logo with such secular analogs as the Al Jazeera logo and the Onion‘s onion, the Washington Post comes closer to the point, trumping them with a variety of pentacostal-themed logos —

— a matter of some significance given Ted Cruz’s anointing to a kingship role within his father’s “Seven Mountains” pentecostal faith tradition.

And Donald Trump? Here the hair is significant, and Trump himself seems to have a good-humored attitude, as evidenced by the upper panel below. If this seems superficial, however, the lower panel demonstrates beyond question that Trump follows the Golden Mean —

— though whether the emphasis is placed on “golden” or “mean” would seem to be a matter of personal and political preference.

[ by Charles Cameron — Sun Tzu meets Willie Pep ]
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Sun Tzu‘s fightless victory is like the Platonic pearl, ideal, perfectly spherical. Pep‘s blowless round is like a cut diamond, multifaceted — some claim the tale is true, some that he fabricated the tale years later, some that it was a boast he made before the fight — one version suggests Pep told St. Paul sports writer Don Riley, who was covering the fight for Minnesota radio station WMIN:

Pick a round, I’ll throw punches, but I’ll never hit him. Check the scorecards after, and see if the judges fall for it.

Who knows? A good tale frays into a thousand fugal strands in the Ocean of Story.

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The curiosity:

The more facets a diamond built to approximate a sphere has, the closer it comes to the Platonic sphere.. Quite what the analogy with narrative variants would be, currently escapes me.

[ by Charles Cameron — passion, love, sacrifice, eucharist ]
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H/t Ingrid Mattson:

Surely Asad Shah is a martyr who died for witnessing the truth of God's love for all: https://t.co/wN3GKj9rCo via @MailOnline

— Ingrid Mattson (@IngridMattson) March 25, 2016

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