zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — for all those who worry about the state of the world ]
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Ideologies? It really doesn’t matter who wins or who loses, so long as the butler brings me breakfast in bed with a neatly ironed copy of The Times.

Except, that is, for the Oxford and Cambridge boat race.

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Oh, I don’t really mean it — as Logan Pearsall Smith once said:

I got up with Stoic fortitude of mind in the cold this morning: but afterwords, in my hot bath, I joined the school of Epicurus. I was a Materialist at breakfast; after that an Idealist; and as I smoked my first cigarette I transcendentally turned the world to vapor. But when I began to read The Times I had no doubt of an externally existing world…

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Sources:

• upper: The Youngest Billionaire
• lower: Khalifah is Coming
• Thanks to Aymenn Al-Tamimi for yet another instructive tweet!

[ by Charles Cameron — a popular catch-phrase fumbled ]
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TE Lawrence was an original. The “second senior official” either has a poor memory for quotations, or wishes he were an original, sad in either case.

Hat-tip to the Small Wars Journal editors, who noted the combo — they referenced John Nagl, who borrowed his book title from Lawrence, while I prefer to attribute the spoon to Lawrence directly, but no matter.

What comes next? Chewing Qat with a spork?

[ by Charles Cameron — and I didn’t know serpents even had feet, cf Genesis 3.14 ]
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Unsealed, open source, unclassified, and for public release! — a great catch from Carol Rosenberg, whose reporting from Guantanamo is unsurpassed:

Recently unsealed at #Guantanamo warcourt: "Open Source Guide For Central Intelligence Memo." http://t.co/x2jRkIILJA pic.twitter.com/kbboaExDbX

— Carol Rosenberg (@carolrosenberg) September 3, 2013

[ by Charles Cameron — yet another example of my funky approach to pattern seeking ]
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Following in the footsteps of St Matthew and Lord Chief Justice Hewart, and like all arts and humanities folk aching desperately for the credibility a dusting of math and sciences might give me, I’ve claimed two functions as my own:

Sarah Kendzior‘s piece Snowden and the paranoid state posted on Al Jazzera a week ago includes what I can only term the plain text formulation (upper panel, below) of Kendzior’s Function (lower panel, below):

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Last time I posted here about my two alleged functions, various ZP readers had entertaining times sharpening my wits — this time my question would be: is Kendzior’s function the same as either (or both) of mine, and if so, can you suggest / show me / prove it / QED?

[ by Charles Cameron — humor — it’s all Abu Muqawama’s fault, plus Dune ]
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Playwar has been around for ever, so it’s not surprising that Lego has joined the fray. I’m inclined to think — based on approximately zero evidence — that Andrew Exum started it with his Abu Muqawama masthead:

It’s a nice touch, that, but it has been around for a while and I’m pretty much used to it.

In the last few days, though, Lego and Jihad have cropped up twice in my news feeds:

First there was the Abbottabad compound (above), featured at the Chantilly, VA “Brick Fair:

And today there was a host of jihadists (above) — or latter-day Lawrences of Arabia? — atop the latest post from PaxSims.

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Child’s play?

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For desert warfare with a touch of spice and Mahdism, give me Dune…