{"id":20125,"date":"2013-03-21T05:42:03","date_gmt":"2013-03-21T05:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=20125"},"modified":"2013-03-21T18:04:50","modified_gmt":"2013-03-21T18:04:50","slug":"in-between-the-big-bang-and-the-heat-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=20125","title":{"rendered":"In between Big Bang and Heat Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — a terrific example of the DoubleQuote form, drawing on Obama at Ben Gurion Airport and Palmerston in the House of Commons, and why the form is useful ]
\n.<\/p>\n

Some time in between t-zero and t-aleph-null, some time between the First Day of Creation and Judgment Day, some time in between the Big Bang and the Heat Death of the Universe, there’s a stretch of time known as always. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

What does juxtaposing the two statements allow us to understand?<\/p>\n

\n
  • That times have changed?\n
  • That what you tell a foreign government is not what you tell your own?\n
  • That Brits are more understated and Americans more plainspoken?\n
  • That President Obama <\/strong>is showing specific support for Israel, while Palmerston was expressing the general rule which covers all such utterances?\n
  • That the word “always” doesn’t necessarily mean “for ever”, “unto the ages of ages” as the Eastern Church has it? <\/blockquote>\n

    Perhaps “for the foreseeable future” would be a better phrase to use, if it didn’t sound so iffy. I’d say it means something closer to “in continuity” than to “in perpetuity”. <\/p>\n

    **<\/p>\n

    The great thing about DoubleQuotes<\/strong> as a form is that they jump-start you into thinking about samenesses and differences, without demanding which particular implications you will select, thus giving rise to multiple possibilities and enlarging the scope of narrative or discussion.<\/p>\n

    And while I’ve sharpened the pairing of quotes — or graphics — into a tool for repeated use, it’s already a habitual form of thinking, as we can see from the fact that these two particular quotes were juxtaposed by Sam Roggeveen<\/strong> in his post, America’s BFF: Obama calls it<\/a>, in the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter<\/em> today.<\/p>\n

    **<\/p>\n

    We naturally pair similars to contrast and compare<\/strong> them: it may be the most basic device that human memory affords us — this reminds me of that<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    Here are a few of my own old favorites…<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    **<\/p>\n

    You can read Obama’s speech, from which the excerpt above was taken, on this Israel Times<\/a> page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    [ by Charles Cameron — a terrific example of the DoubleQuote form, drawing on Obama at Ben Gurion Airport and Palmerston in the House of Commons, and why the form is useful ] . Some time in between t-zero and t-aleph-null, some time between the First Day of Creation and Judgment Day, some time in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[361,53,526,497,760,627,45,753,717,817,676,687,792,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-britain","category-charles-cameron","category-christianity","category-counterterrorism","category-doublequotes","category-iraq","category-islam","category-judaism","category-rhetoric","category-scriptures","category-specs","category-time","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20125"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20155,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20125\/revisions\/20155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}