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[ by Charles Cameron — classification, impropriety, and a concept pretty much unique to Meister Eckhart ]
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First, here’s what I call a DoubleTweet, juxtaposing two tweets for the resonance between them — and juxtaposing two thoughts for the resonance between them is about as simple a way of demonstrating the whole being greater than the sum of its parts as I can think of.

Take 1, Obama is slippery with words:

In Playbook: Obama, re Hillary email: ‘There’s classified, and then there’s classified’: https://t.co/CTp8Hn8X5l pic.twitter.com/bvRdwxmwmj

— Mike Allen (@mikeallen) April 10, 2016

Take 2, the Europeans outbid and finesse him:

Best excuse ever for failing to respond to a terrorist threat that you were literally emailed about in advance. pic.twitter.com/vHASPbCSD7

— Gartenstein-Ross (@DaveedGR) April 15, 2016

I don’t actually know if you can outbid and finesse while playing Bridge, but you can in metaphor.

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There was also a DoubleQuote that sprang to mind, but Patti Brown got to it first, so I’ll just copy her tweet here:

.@POTUS "There's classified and then there's classified." .@billclinton ""It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

— Patti Brown (@pattibrown) April 12, 2016

Lawyers — the Clintons & POTUS.

Compare philosophers, poets, native speakers, natural language processors.

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Also worth taking into consideration here:

Mark Stout, War on the Rocks, Were Hillary Clinton’s emails classified? Where you stand depends on where you sit:

the uproar about the Clinton email server ignores the reality that, for very good reasons, the CIA and the State Department have different approaches to classification and classified information. These different approaches result from the different functions of the agencies.

Cory Bennett, The Hill, Clinton emails reveal murky world of ‘top secret’ documents:

The watchdog [IG] said it found a number of Clinton’s emails that currently contained “classified intelligence community information.” But the State Department has said it did not consider that language classified at the time those emails were sent.

Both sides can be correct, said several former officials.

And that’s enough hipbonish excitement for one post.

[ by Charles Cameron — paging birds and fishes, Chuang Tzu and Wm Blake ]
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Dwight Furrow, Wine Tasting and Objectivity:

The question is whether flavors are “in the wine” or “in the mind”. On the one hand, there are objectively measurable chemical compounds in wine that reliably affect our taste and olfactory mechanisms—pyrazines cause bell pepper aromas in Cabernet Sauvignon, malic acid explains apple aromas in Chardonnay, tannins cause a puckering response, etc. But we know that human beings differ quite substantially in how they perceive wine flavors. Even trained and experienced wine critics disagree about what they are tasting and how to evaluate wine. This disagreement among experts leads many to claim that wine tasting is therefore purely subjective, just a matter of individual opinion. According to subjectivism, each person’s response is utterly unique and there is no reason to think that when I taste something, someone else ought to taste the same thing. Statements about wine flavor are statements about one’s subjective states, not about the wine. Thus, there are no standards for evaluating wine quality.

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Is each mind inherently closed to every other, much as the bird’s mind is closed to ours in Blake‘s aphorism —

How do you know but every bird that cuts the airy way, is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?

— albeit not always so joyful?

In more contemporary terms — Is there encryption of the mind?

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I ask this in light of the DoubleQuote I posted a few days ago comparing Hesse and Hitchcock in terms of their metaphoric uses of “organ” — in, I hasten to add, the Bach sense of the word:

Here’s what I’m thinking. Hesse’s game influences the mind, as does art, but it is non-invasive; Hitchcock applauds the potential for art to move in a more invasive direction, as if by force rather than by enticement.

“”

Humans — or at least the philosophers and philosopher tagalongs among them — can’t even tell if what one human sees as “red” is what another sees as “red” — let alone what a given Burgundy tastes like on another’s palate.

If this means, more generally, that minds are effectively encrypted by virtue of their differences in wiring acquired with parentage, age and experience, then our communications media -– language, the arts, literature, number — would appear to be the available decryption keys, selectively available to the minds in question.

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Chuang-Tsu has this tale to tell:

Men claim that Mao-ch’iang and Lady Li were beautiful, but if fish saw them they would dive to the bottom of the stream, if birds saw them they would fly away, and if deer saw them they would break into a run. Of these four, which knows how to fix the standard of beauty for the world?

And this..

Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu were strolling along the dam of the Hao River when Chuang Tzu said, “See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That’s what fish really enjoy!”

Hui Tzu said, “You’re not a fish – how do you know what fish enjoy?”

Chuang Tzu said, “You’re not I, so how do you know I don’t know what fish enjoy?”

Hui Tzu said, “I’m not you, so I certainly don’t know what you know. On the other hand, you’re certainly not a fish – so that still proves you don’t know what fish enjoy!”

Chuang Tzu said, “Let’s go back to your original question, please. You asked me how I know what fish enjoy – so you already knew I knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here beside the Hao.”

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Chuang Tzu said, “You’re not I, so how do you know I don’t know what fish enjoy?”

Blake said, “How do you know but every bird that cuts the airy way, is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?”

[ by Charles Cameron — on visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning styles ]
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If you didn’t get it when Sharro posted his visual explanation:

Following recent event, updated diagram of geopolitical relationships in the Middle East pic.twitter.com/3QmDxZtnSn

— Karl Sharro (@KarlreMarks) March 26, 2015

maybe his verbal version will make things simpler:

You want the simple one-sentence explanation for what caused ISIS? pic.twitter.com/S7u9iOXdPH

— Karl Sharro (@KarlreMarks) December 1, 2015

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Sources & resources:

The Atlantic, The Confused Person’s Guide to Middle East Conflict

Washington Post, The chaos in the Middle East, explained in one (long) sentence

Vox, This one-sentence explanation of ISIS is brilliant

Some people are neither verbal nor visual but kinesthetic — I dread to think how Sharro will explain all this simplicity to their nervous systems.

[ by Charles Cameron — the bell just tolled 72 for me, so it’s no longer Thanksgiving, it’s Psalm 90, still early in the “labour and sorrow” zone ]
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A propos, then, of nothing in particular — and because it is a glorious work of art, here in a tweet is Marcel Duchamp‘s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2:

@fadesingh "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2", Marcel Duchamp, 1912. pic.twitter.com/0P9dAR3f6S

— LapsusLima (@LapsusLima) November 25, 2015

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And because it shows the paucity by comaparison, not just of language but of constructed languages — and also how finely tuned such languages can be, as in this extraordinary translation into the Ithkuil:

Aukkras êqutta ogvëu?a tnou’elkwa pal-lši augwaikštülnàmbu.. pic.twitter.com/wIb1MzSYvd

— 1 / ?(x) (@fadesingh) November 25, 2015

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Now — how many words are worth a picture?

[ by Charles Cameron — once again learning the language i already speak ]
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Okay, now the humor:

Pursuant to my interest in learning the language which is now my mother tongue — including such terms as sperg out and edgelord —– Adam Elkus today updated me on the concept of the Dank Meme —

Dank meme? It’s another of those serpent eats tail things:

— scrambling my mind in time for breakfast by introducing me to Thomas the Dank Engine:

I must admit I’m more used to his Tank Engine cousin:

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I’m a big fan of Gordon, the fictional anthropomorphic tender locomotive, by the way — it’s a clan thing.