zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — a grumpy grammatical plaint, plus Proclus for poet’s delight ]
.

You know me, maybe — I’m not a quant, if anything I’m a qualit, but even so..

CEOs at the top 50 U.S. charities, including Samaritan’s Purse, earn in the $350,000 to $450,000 range, which makes Graham’s $622,000 salary from his aid organization alone about 40 percent to 50 percent higher than average, according to a Forbes story. He receives the rest of his $258,000 compensation as CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

That’s straight out of the Washington Post, who got it whole cloth from Religion News Service.

**

OK, we know what the writer means to say, but.

If top US charity CEOs including Franklin Graham earn between $350,000 to $450,000, and Graham earns $622,000 as his CEO’s salary, then — bzztzz — top US chatioty CEOs earn in the $350,000 to $622,000 range, , not “in the $350,000 to $450,000 range” period.

Further, if Graham earns $622,000 from Samaritan’s Purse — which purse it seems I shall not be filling any time soon, and which might want to change its name to Sadducee’s Purse — the “rest of his $258,000 compensation” doesn’t make any sense at all — bzztzz. How can $622,000 plus an additional fee possibly sum to $258,000?

There is a language, English, and a numerical method, Arithmetic, and this paragraph is lacking in one, the other, or both.

**

Or is Franklin Graham paid in irrational numbers?

Proclus, as quoted by Danziger:

It is told that those who first brought out the irrationals from concealment into the open perished in shipwreck, to a man. For the unutterable and the formless must needs be concealed. And those who uncovered and touched this image of life were instantly destroyed and shall remain forever exposed to the play of the eternal waves.

Play of the eternal waves?

Perhaps Graham’s expefrience is not unlike that of George Boole, who wrote a sonnet on the Trinity, and of whom Margaret Masterman wrote:

Towards mathematical truth he had indeed a consciously religious attitude, which he sometimes expressed to himself by the phrase, ‘For ever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven.’ Boole’s behaviour during his last illness was characteristic of the man… When his mind had been wandering in fever, he told his wife that the whole universe seemed to be spread before him like a great black ocean, where there was nothing to see and nothing to hear, except that at intervals a silver trumpet seemed to sound across the waters, ‘For ever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven.’ And as he lay in bed on the borders of delirium, all the little sounds of the house, such as the creaking of doors, resolved themselves into a chant of these words, which expressed for him the excellence of mathematical truth.

**

Ah, but I drift.

[ by Charles Cameron — or if not, a single sentence paragraph about politics that Levi-Strauss would have loved to diagram, plus Yikes ]
.

Orin Kerr, writing in WaPo today for the Volokh Conspiracy, in a piece titled If I understand the history correctly… wrote:

If I understand the history correctly, in the late 1990s, the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair, who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair, which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy.

Yikes.

**

I’ve provided the full text of the piece so you’ll get the links Prof. Kerr included.

What interests me here, though, is the elegant concision of the piece, with its four parallels and various antitheses or oppositions.

Consider:

It begins with a frame:

If I understand the history correctly,

It then offers its prime example of an errant politician:

in the late 1990s, the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair

followed by its reversal, as the antagonist takes on the protagonist’s role:

by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair

followed by a third exemplar of political purity, his ascent to power aborted under parallel circumstances:

who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair,

and a fourth, parallel both by succession and similarity of (alleged) conduct:

which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy.

— with the frame closing on the one-word paragraph:

Yikes.

**

Between the careful formality of “If I understand the history correctly” and the squeal of “Yikes” we see the distance this recital of, yes, historical events has taken our good professor: from mind to emotion, observation to morality, head to heart.

Bravo!

And the (non-partisan) moral of this story is?

[ by Charles Cameron — and Furnish pwns Sowell — corrected version ]
.

First there’s Cheryl Rofer‘s piece on Nuclear Diner, The Iran Framework Agreement: The Good, the Bad, and TBD. Then that gets quoted by Alexander Montgomery in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage for April 6. Note: I has originally quoted Montgomery but attributed the quote to Cheryl, see her comment below. I have now removed the quote in question. And now Cheryl has a piece in Mother Jones titled Never Mind the Doubters: The Iran Deal Is Good Enough:

The final deal remains to be negotiated. The fact sheet is only an outline, and some issues will be easier to solve than others. Still to be worked out: Sanctions, particularly the schedule on which they are to be lifted. A list of research and development activities that Iran is allowed to pursue may or may not have been drawn up in Lausanne. Details on how Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile will be reduced and the redesign of the Arak reactor are missing.

The extent of Iran’s past activity on nuclear weapons was relegated to the IAEA by the P5+1 throughout the negotiations, and is a lesser provision in the fact sheet. Do we have to know all Iran’s dirty secrets to police a future agreement? Probably not.

The Supreme Leader issued a tweet stream that seems to give his blessing for a deal to go forward, but his words were unclear enough that domestic hardliners could seize on them in an attempt to scuttle the deal. Iran’s President Rouhani has voiced his support. In Israel, even the general who bombed the Osirak reactor thinks it’s a good deal.

Methinks kudos are in order — and I personally am thankful for a voice of informed and informative nuance on so hotly contested and significant a topic.

**

In other Iranian nuclear deal news, blog friend Tim Furnish has taken on his fellow-conservative Tom Sowell‘s NRO piece on the topic, There’s No Deterring an Apocalyptic Nuclear Iran:

Fellow #Conservatives: PLEASE read my 2011 paper on #Iran & #WMD before (ignorantly) opining: http://t.co/K8QPbCdCZ4 pic.twitter.com/WLBSUOOQU3

— Timothy Furnish, PhD (@Occidentaljihad) April 11, 2015

That’s the extended analytic piece which Tim concludes with this paragraph:

While in Iran for the 2008 Mahdism Conference, I heard both President Ahmadinejad and Prime Minister Ali Larijani speak. Ahmadinejad said, regarding Israel and Shi`i eschatology, that “the problem of the+ false, fabricated Zionist regime” would not be solved “in the absence of the Perfect Man, the Mahdi” — effectively dousing the alarmist, and inaccurate, view that the IRI’s chief executive wishes to “hotwire the apocalypse.” Islamic fervor for lighting that eschatological detonation cord exists among certain Sunnis groups (including, quite possibly, al-Qa`idah) — but it is not characteristic of Twelver Shi`ism. Larijani, in the closing speech of that same conference, proclaimed that “Mahdism has three pillars: spirituality, rationalism and jihad.” It is admittedly possible, despite all the aforementioned reasoning, that “their own vitriolic rhetoric could conceivably run away with the leaders of the Islamic Republic, and an Iranian nuclear weapon find its way to Tel Aviv.” But the preponderance of evidence — Islamic history in general, specific Shi`i traditions and teachings as well as modern religio-political discourse in Iran — indicates, rather, that the rationality and spirituality of Iranian Mahdism is holding at bay its undeniable jihad aspect. Tehran thus, ironically, finds its potential nuclear policy fettered by Qom: mainstream Shi`i theology does not support violence (nuclear or conventional) in order to precipitate the return of the 12th Imam; furthermore, employing nuclear weapons is verboten in the Mahdi’s absence — except, perhaps, under the rubric of defensive jihad, were Iran itself to be attacked or invaded. Seen in this light, the Islamic Republic’s pursuit of nuclear weapons falls from the overly-alarmist apocalyptic register into a more mundane, and manageable, geopolitical one.

If that was so duing the presidency of Ahmadinejad, it is doubly so now, with Rouhani in his place.

[  by Charles Cameron — this time, the New Testament — this is last of the posts recovered from our down time ]
.

In a previous post I described the release of two white doves from the Papal balcony the other day, and the swift response of two other birds, a crow and a seagull, which attacked them.

In that earlier post I chose a quote from Heraclitus by way of contextualizing the event — this time I would like to offer one quote from St Matthew‘s gospel and one from that of St Luke. 

In the circumstances, the quote from Matthew [upper panel] would make it just a tad difficult for Pope Francis to argue, as the secular-minded can, that this was simply the playing out of nature’s way, and not to be interpreted as a sign from God.

I offer the second quote [lower panel], from Luke’s account of Mary and Joseph bringing the infant Jesus to be circumcized, by way of contrast, since the concept of sacrificing birds to God is now as improbable to the secular mind as the concept that God takes separate and particular care over the life of every bird that flies…

The Pope was not, I am sure, intending to offer the two doves as sacrifices. Nor did he see them as symbolic of the future fate of the Ukraine to the point of prophecy: the attack was not an omen, a mark of fate, as some have interpreted it.

From which it follows that the gesture was a gesture of peace, of hope — and that the Pope takes his Master’s words, “not a sparrow falls” as a metaphor for the ubiquity of divine grace and mercy, not as a proposition in dogmatic logic.

**

The Washington Post, in a piece titled The papal peace doves are the perfect metaphor for Pope Francis’s first year, offers us both the gentle gesture and the harsh response, reporting:

Pope Francis called for peaceful dialogue in Ukraine on Sunday, concluding his remarks by having adorable Italian children release two white doves from the window of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. The magical and touching symbol was quickly attacked by the harsh reality of bird-on-bird violence, with one seagull and one black crow attacking the doves. The crowd, inspired and blessed only moments earlier, watched in helpless horror as the crow and gull pecked and pulled at the doves.

National Geographic, in a piece titled Why Birds Attacked the Peace Doves in Rome and subtitled “A crow and a gull targeted the freakish doves, bred to be unnaturally white”, added insight from the natural sciences:

Are doves really peaceful? Not particularly. They have weak feet and small bills and mostly mind their own business, walking around eating seeds and the occasional tiny bug. But they’re just as likely to fight each other over territory (with lots of wing-slapping) as any other species. I once saw a mourning dove chase a blue jay away from a bird feeder. No wimpy bird gets the best of a blue jay.

Why were these doves white? Because white symbolizes peace, purity, serenity, and other good stuff. But here’s the thing: There are no pure-white doves in the natural world. The ones that were released were the result of hundreds of years of domestication and breeding, creating these freakishly white birds for use as pets, and for release at weddings and other ceremonies.

and:

So this wasn’t a sign of the Apocalypse? Hey, I write about nature, not theology. But if I had to bet on whether this is the End of Times or just a couple of predatory birds doing what they do naturally, I’d choose the second as more likely.

**

But it would be churlish of me to leave you on such a note. Instead, I invite you to recall this story of St Francis, whose name the present Pope took, from the Little Flowers of St Francis, an early compendium of hagiographical tales about the saint:

A certain young man having caught one day a great number of doves, as he was to sell them he met St Francis, who always felt a great compassion for such gentle animals; and, looking at the doves with eyes of pity, he said to the young man: “O good man, I entreat thee to give me those harmless birds, emblems in Scripture of humble, pure, and faithful souls, so that they may not fall into cruel hands, which would put them to death.”

And the young man, inspired by God, immediately gave them to St Francis, who, placing them in his bosom, addressed them thus sweetly: “O my little sisters the doves, so simple, so innocent, and so chaste, why did you allow yourselves to be caught? I will save you from death, and make your nests, that you may increase and multiply, according to the command of God.”

Then St Francis made nests for them all, and they began to lay their eggs and hatch them in presence of the brethren, and were as familiar and as tame with St Francis and the friars as if they had been hens brought up amongst them, nor did they ever go away until St Francis had given them his blessing.

[ by Charles Cameron — Syria, yes, but with a focus on networks, tensions, mapping, and understanding ]
.

Binary logic is a poor basis for foreign policy, as Tukhachevskii said on Small Wars Council’s Syria under Bashir Assad: crumbling now? thread, pointing us to the work of The Big Pharaoh. Here are two of the Big Pharaoh’s recent (before Obama‘s “undecided” speech) tweets:

US will bomb a mass murderer and indirectly help a cannibal. #strangedays

— The Big Pharaoh (@TheBigPharaoh) August 27, 2013

Al Qaeda jihadists will cry Allahu Akbar when US cruise missiles fall on Assad. #strangedays

— The Big Pharaoh (@TheBigPharaoh) August 27, 2013

Each of those tweets is non-linear in its own way, but via its implications — we “complete the loop” by knowing that the “mass murderer” is the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad and the “cannibal” is the Syrian rebel, Abu Sakkar, and that Al-Qaeda typically cries “allahu Akbar” after killing Americans, while Americans typically rejoice after killing Al-Qaeda operatives. So these two tweets are already non-linear, but not as complex as what comes next>

**

The Big Pharaoh also put this diagram on his blog, and Max Fisher picked it up and blogged it at the Washington Post as The Middle East, explained in one (sort of terrifying) chart:

I’d have some questions here, of course — one about the directionality of the arrows, which only seem to go in one direction — okay for the “supports” and “has nu clue” arrows, perhaps, but surely the “haters” would mostly be two-way, with AQ hating US as well as US hating AQ? There’s no mention of Jordan, I might ask about that… And there are no arrows at all between Lebanese Shias and Lebanese Sunnis — hunh?

**

What really intrigues me here, though, is that while this chart with fifteen “nodes” or players captures many more “edges” or connections between them than either or even both of the two tweets above, the tweets evoke a more richly human “feel” for the connections they reference, by drawing on human memories of the various parties and their actions.

Thus on the face of it, the diagram is the more complex representation, but when taken into human perception and understanding, the tweets offer a more immediuate and visceral sense of their respective situations.

And scaled down and in broad strokes, that’s the difference between “big data” analytic tools on the one hand, and HipBone-Sembl approach to mapping on the other. A HipBone-Sembl board may offer you two, or six, ten, maybe even a dozen nodes, but it fills them with rich anecdotal associations, both intellectual and emotional — a very different approach from — and one that I feel is complementary to — a big data search for a needle in a global needlestack…

**

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t also point you to Kerwin Datu‘s A network analysis approach to the Syrian dilemma on the Global Urbanist blog. He begins:

A chart by The Big Pharaoh doing the rounds of social media shows just how much of a tangled mess the Middle East is. But if we tease it apart, we see that the region is fairly neatly divided into two camps; it’s just that one of those camps is divided amongst itself. Deciding which of these internal divisions are fundamental to the peace and which are distractions in the short term may make the diplomatic options very clear.

and goes on from there, offering a series of network graphs of which is the fourth:

from which he draws the following observation:

What can we do from this position? If the US decides to pursue a purely military route to remove Assad from power, it will incur the ire of Russia, Iran and Lebanese Shias, but it can do so with a broad base of support including the Syrian rebels themselves, Israel, Qatar, Turkey, Lebanese Sunnis, and even Al Qaeda. However if it chooses a diplomatic route to curry support to remove Assad it must isolate him in the above graph by making an ally out of Russia and/or Iran (assuming that making an ally out of Lebanese Shias would have little impact). Russia doesn’t hate the US but it does hate the Syrian rebels, making it an unpromising ally against Assad. Iran hates the Syrian rebels and the US hates Iran, but the Al Qaeda is a thorn in both their sides, making it a potential though unlikely source of cooperation.

Really, you and I should read the whole piece, and draw our own conclusions.

**

Or lack thereof. I’ll give the last tweet to Teju Cole, who articulates my own thoughts, too:

Grieved by Syria, but finding it hard to formulate an opinion about solutions. And that's OK, admitting the complexity in complex things.

— Teju Cole (@tejucole) August 28, 2013