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[ by Charles Cameron — Mad Scientist asks, John Robb responds]
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Today’s call and response comes to me via two blog posts that followed one another in my RSS feed — in the reverse order to the one I read them in. I’ve straightened that out so response now follows call for your convenience.

From Max Brooks (World War Z) lecturing for the Army’s 2016 “Mad Scientist” initiative:

One of the US government’s biggest challenges today, particularly in the context of military issues, is its inability to communicate big ideas to the American people .. This has caused a significant portion of the population to disengage from government, including and especially from the military .. It may take several decades to reverse the trend ..

There’s more there in the report at the Atlantic Council‘s Art of the Future blog, as Brooks discusses particular big ideas that need communicating — but it’s the communication issue itself that caught my eye.

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So how does communication happen most powerfully in todays media environment?

Here are a few points from John Robb‘s thoughts on that very question, posted today at Global Guerrillas. First, a sample of what’s commonly known as an internet meme, but which John would prefer to call a MediaGlyph — his candidate for the punchiest mode of delivery:

And now his comments under the header All Hail The MediaGlyph, The New King of Political Communications:

Successful mediaglyphs blanket social networks, often going viral to reach tens of millions of viewers in days as they are rapidly with an ever expanding network of friends.

Collectively, mediaglyphs generate tens of millions of impressions an hour. Several orders of magnitude (100x) more than any other form of political communication.

Unlike TV, Print, and most forms of online communication, mediaglyphs are built for consumption on smartphones and visual modes of social networking. They are also built for speedy consumption, providing a quick emotional hit in comparison to a long winded article with an uncertain payoff.

Nothing other form of political communications compare.

Mediaglyphs are one of ways online conflict, in this case political conflict, is being fought. These online wars are occurring everywhere, all the time, at every level. They are deciding the future.

That’s why I’m writing a new book called as a natural follow on to my previous book: Brave New War:

The War Online: How Conflicts are Fought and Won on Social Networks

I look forward to reviewing John’s book, which will no doubt get into some detail not easily stated in a single MediaGlyph — my guess, however, is that John’s text will itself be a terrific mine for glyphs, given his obvious delight in short, quotable one-sentence paragraphs.

[by Mark Safranski / “zen“]

The Clausewitz Roundtable edited by Michael J. Lotus, Mark Safranski and Lynn C. Rees

It is a common observation that Clausewitz is more often quoted than read. It could also be said with equal probability that Clausewitz is more often read than he is understood. In 2008 a group of bloggers, military officers, scientists, lawyers, professors, computer programmers, world travelers, Clausewitzian experts and Clausewitz skeptics came together online at Chicago Boyz blog to read and discuss On War together.

Founded by alumni of the University of Chicago,  Chicago Boyz seemed a good place to read On War in “the Chicago Way”, methodically, deeply and with attention to the original text discussing and debating each chapter in detail. For many of us it was a rich learning experience; some were reading On War for the first time, others had read it many times but all had insights to contribute, all found something in Clausewitz that was new. It was really blogging at it’s intellectual best and an experience that is now somewhat lost and forgotten in the rapid-fire era of 144 character tweets and Facebook memes.

We decided the discussions were interesting and profitable to merit being edited into an e-book for more convenient reading than leaving these discussions to gather digital dust in the archives. What do you get if you plunk down a mere $2.99 for The Clausewitz Roundtable?

A methodical and erudite chapter by chapter analysis and debate over On War and Clausewitz’s ideas

553  pages of discussion of strategy, strategic theory and military history including Napoleon, Ludendorff, Svechin, von Moltke, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Jomini, Herman Kahn, Ehud Barak, William Slim, John Boyd, Richard Nixon, Thomas Schelling, Vo Nguyen Giap,  Frantz Fanon and many others.

The original comments made on the posts, some of which were fine essays in their own right

If you are reading On War for the first time or are a master Clausewitzian, you will find The Clausewitz Roundtable to be a useful and engaging supplement.

Order a copy for the war nerd in your life!

[ by Charles Cameron — a voyage into nondualism via the coincidentia oppositorum ]
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Here from Dr Emily Steiner may be the widest rigorous gap-bridging DoubleQuotes I’ve ever seen:

"[Ervin] discovered a passion for medieval texts. And finally, in 2011, he wanted to swim again" (People Mag) pic.twitter.com/qGcWNvQzM6

— Emily Steiner (@PiersatPenn) August 15, 2016

Kudos to Anthony Ervin for his gold!

I’m not entirely sure there’s gold leaf in the image Dr Steiner uses to represent medieval manuscripts, though it certainly works for the genre as a whole, and I think I detect some gold leaf in the hearts of the flowers depicted..

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It would be foolish for me to claim to follow JL Usó-Doménech et al’s Paraconsistent Multivalued Logic and Coincidentia Oppositorum: Evaluation with Complex Numbers, but the general notions of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus), “That in God opposites coincide” and “That God is beyond the coincidence of opposites” rae pretty basic (with appropriate variations) to Carl Jung‘s psychology — and to my own thinking.

Here, in Dr Steiner’s tweet, we have something that comes delightfully, playfully close to a coincidence of opposites. Indeed it is that possibility of evoking and annotating opposites in a manner than allows us to transcend them — as we could be said to transcend the two streams of vision in binocular vision, the two streams of hearing in stereophonic audition — that lies at the heart of my focus on DoubleQuoting.

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If the “new atheists” were a little more widely read, they might find themselves perplexed by the trans-logical implications of a God described thus by Cusanus:

When we attempted to see Him beyond being and not-being, we were unable to understand how He could be visible. For He is beyond everything plural, beyond every limit and all unlimitedness; He is completely everywhere and not at all anywhere; He is of every form and of no form, alike; He is completely ineffable; in all things He is all things, in nothing He is nothing, and in Him all things and nothing are Himself; He is wholly and indivisibly present in any given thing (no matter how small) and, at the same time, is present in no thing at all.

That’s a far harder concept — if it can even be called a concept — to deal with than the “seven day creator” God that is their usual mark. And yet there is no great logical space between Cusanus’ “He is completely ineffable” and the Athanasian Creed‘s ” The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible .. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal .. And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal .. As also there are not three uncreated nor three incomprehensible, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible.”

Jasper Hoskins proposes [Jasper Hopkins, A concise introduction to the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa] that in Cusanus’ view, “no finite mind can comprehend God, since finite minds cannot conceive of what it is like for God to be altogether undifferentiated.”

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There’s an exchange in Cusanus’ Trialogus de possest (“On actualized-possibility”) in Hoskins’ op. cit.., that sets forth instructions for reading propositions about God — which also make interesting reading in terms of the flexibility ofmmind andimagination necessary for reading poetry, myth, and scriptures:

Bernard: I am uncertain whether in similar fashion we can fittingly say that God is sun or sky or man or any other such thing.

Card. Nicholas of Cusa: We must not insist upon the words. For example, suppose we say that God is sun. If, as is correct, we construe this [statement] as [a statement] about a sun which is actually all it is able to be, then we see clearly that this sun is not at all like the sensible sun. For while the sensible sun is in the East, it is not in any other part of the sky where it is able to be. [Moreover, none of the following statements are true of the sensible sun:] “It is maximal and minimal, alike, so that it is not able to be either greater or lesser”; “It is everywhere and anywhere, so that it is not able to be elsewhere than it is”; “It is all things, so that it is not able to be anything other than it is”— and so on. With all the other created things the case is simnilar. Hence is does not matter what name you give to God, provided that in the foregoing manner you mentally remove the limits with respect to its possible being.

We’re close here, to the zen notion of the finger pointing at the moon — except that here is is the moon pointing at what cannot even be located in either physical spacetime or conceptual space..

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and that’s the touch of gold in the heart of all flowers..

[ by Charles Cameron — is the universe geocentric? — a movie question ]
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Okay, last Sunday I talked about the opening credits for Damages and House of Cards: in this post I turn to studio logos.

It has long bugged me that the universe is portrayed by Universal as consisting of one planet, with the occasional space-y feel behind it —

— so I thought I’d mention how much I prefer the Orion logo —

— which doesn’t even claim to be universal, but is certainly nebular, nebulous.

Okay, I feel better already.

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If you want to dig more deeply into the Universal logo, there are eighty or so screenshot versions here, of which one at least suggests awareness of other worlds —

— although it’s a bit strange to see the Amblin bicycle with ET in the basket traversing the earth, when we’re more accustomed to it crossing the moon.

And okay, I have to admit this one is more cosmic than most. I warn you though — it will play itself full-blast if you click on the link.

[ by Charles Cameron — in India, cows are a vigilantism issue, in California it’s manure, flatulence, & methane ]
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Behold:

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In India:

Indian police have launched a “cow protection” force and a 24-hour hotline after a spate of attacks related to laws governing consumption of beef and the religious status of cattle.

The 300-strong team in Haryana will enforce some of the toughest laws in the country shielding cows. Haryana imposes jail terms of up to ten years for illegal slaughter and smuggling but Hindu officials in the northern state are concerned about a rise in cow-related crime and are determined to protect the animals.

In California:

First they came after the oil producers, then manufacturers, and now they’re coming for the cows. Having mandated emissions reductions from fossil fuels, California’s relentless progressives are seeking to curb the natural gas emanating from dairy farms. [ .. ]

“If dairy farms in California were to manage manure in a way to further reduce methane emissions,” the board explains, “a gallon of California milk might be the least GHG intensive in the world.” And the most expensive. Many California dairy farms have already been converted into nut farms, which are more economical amid the state’s high regulatory costs.

Around the globe:

Cows are still chewing the cud.

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Sources:

The Sunday Times, Holy cow! Police protect sacred cattle

The Wall Street Journal, California’s Cow Police