Serpent logics: the marathon

[ by Charles Cameron — oh, the sheer delightful drudgery of finding patterns everywhere ]

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I’ll start this post, as I did the previous one to which this is a sort of appendix, with a (deeply strange, tell me about it) example of the…

Matrioshka pattern:

Truly weird Matrioshka Barbie image http://t.co/Dt6NcY4xWa

— hipbonegamer (@hipbonegamer) October 2, 2013

That’s a piece of jewelry made out of disembodied pieces of Barbies from the extraordinary designer’s mind of Margaux Lange, FWIW.

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This post is the hard core follow up to my earlier piece today, Serpent logics: a ramble, and offers you the chance to laugh and groan your way through all the other “patterns” I’ve been collecting over the last few months. My hope is that repeated (over)exposure to these patterns will make the same patterns leap out at you when you encounter them in “real life”.

Most of the examples you run across may prove humorous — but if you’re monitoring news feeds for serious matters, my hunch is that you’ll find some of them helpful in grasping “big pictures” or gestalts, noting analomalies and seeing parallels you might otherwise have missed.

Have at it!

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Here’s another Matrioshka, from the structural end of lit crit that my friend Wm. Benzon attacks with gusto over at New Savannah:

I wonder if any work has been done to map the stories-within-stories structure of the Mahabharata as a tree or graph?

— Abhinav (?????) (@abhinavagarwal) September 15, 2013

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Enantiodromia:

You’ll recall this is the pattern where something turns into its opposite… as described in this quote from the movie Prozac Nation:

I dream about all the things I wish I’d said.

The opposite of what came out of my mouth.

I wish I’d said

“Please forgive me. Please help me.

I know I have no right to behave this way?”

Here are a few examples…

Ahmed Akkari Repents Violent Opposition to Danish Cartoons Lampooning Islam:

After a Danish newspaper published cartoons satirizing the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, Ahmed Akkari spearheaded protests that ultimately cost the lives of 200 people. Now he says he’s sorry. Michael Moynihan on what changed Akkari’s mind.

That’s impressive!

That one’s run of the media mill…

After over-hyping cyberwar in story after story – media now runs story after story about cyberwar being over-hyped.

— Ali-Reza Anghaie (@Packetknife) September 20, 2013

And this one’s from my delightful, delicious boss, Danielle LaPorte:

What if the opposite were true? #truthbomb

— Danielle LaPorte (@DanielleLaPorte) September 20, 2013

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A friend sent me this:

RT On the topic of things you shouldn't do, but can: pic.twitter.com/KCeCtPbAYa (via @wesbos) -> @hipbonegamer for your serpentine logic series?

— Callum Flack (@callumflack) September 28, 2013

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Let’s just plough ahead…

Nominalism:

Nominalism is the category where the distinction between a word and what it represents gets blurry — a very significant distinction in some cases —

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