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Turkey  

Joshua Micah Marshall has it right.

“The more I think about this Turkish rejection of US troops the bigger a deal it looks like. Perhaps it can be salvaged next week, though that seems unclear. But if you want some evidence of this administration’s diplomatic incompetence, consider this. We publicly sold out the Kurds to get this deal. We really should have made sure we had a deal before we tipped our hands to the Kurds about the price we were willing to pay for it. Now we have no deal and no Kurds.”

Incidentally, I think the current lead story in The New York Times, Turkey will seek a second decision, seems unlikely. Far more probable is the line suggested by a quote from The Guardian: “The motion has been postponed indefinitely, there is no motion in the foreseeable future.” The relatively new ruling Justice and Development party absolutely wants to avoid losing a second vote on such an important matter, which in a parliamentary system would look an awful like a vote of no confidence.

History of graphs 

Via Richard Gayle, I came across this wonderful study of the history of graphs. I’m surprised by how recent an invention they seem to be. “Graphs began to appear around 1770 and became common only around 1820. They appeared in three different places, probably independently. These three places were the statistical atlases of William Playfair, the indicator diagrams of James Watt, and the writings of Johann Heinrich Lambert.”

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