Harder Matter

[A] lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright,
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1st Baron Tennyson) (1809 - 1892), Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, "The Grandmother", st. 8 (1864)

Unchanged On Tuesday

You wouldn't have known the stock market was open on Tuesday just by looking at the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The 30-stock average closed flat going out to at least six decimal places.  It's rare for trading to be this futile.  The last time the Dow closed perfectly unchanged was April 24, 2014.  It's the third time the Dow has closed perfectly unchanged since 2000.

The unchanged close came despite some action during the trading day.  The Dow flirted with a record high, rising as much as 79.37 points to trade about 4 points below its all-time high of 27,774.67.  President Donald Trump gave a big economic speech in New York but traders by the end of the day determined they had heard most of what he said on trade and the Federal Reserve before.

-- Fred Imbert, "The Dow was perfectly unchanged on Tuesday", CNBC, 12 November 2019

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/12/the-dows-move-was-so-small-you-had-to-go-out-six-decimal-points-to-see-it.html

Armistice Day

I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day.  When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another.  I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute.  They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God.  So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (11 November 1922 - 11 April 2007), American novelist known for works blending satire, black comedy, and science fiction, Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Officium Officialium

Officium officialium, quorum te numero aggregasti, hodie est, jura confundere, suscitare lites, transactiones rescindere, innectere dilationes, suprimere veritatem, fovere mendacium, quaestum sequi, aeqitatem vendere, inhiare exactionibus, versutias concinnare.

The role of officials today is to upset the laws, to stir up lawsuits, to annul agreements, to devise delays, to suppress the truth, to encourage falsehood, to follow profit, to sell justice, to attend closely to exacting money, to practise cunning.

-- Peter of Blois or Petrus Blesensis, Archdeacon of Bath (c. 1130 - 1211 or 1212), French theologian, diplomat and poet, Letter 25, to the Judicial Vicar of the Bishop of Chartres, in J. A. Giles (ed.) Petri blesensis bathoniensis archidiaconi opera omnia (Oxonii: J. H. Parker, 1846-7) vol. 1, p. 91

Favorite Hobby

Not everyone enjoys baseball or even fishing, but every person is obsessed with himself.  You're your own favorite hobby.

-- Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk (1962 -), American satirical novelist and freelance journalist, Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey (2007)

Sip Only Little

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

-- Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784), French philosopher and chief editor of the historic project to produce L'Encyclopédie, Rameau's Nephew (1762)

Nirmal Purja

14 highest peaks in 189 days

I often feel bad about how I don't exercise enough, but Nirmal Purja's ambition was clearly a little bit higher.  He smashed the record for climbing the world's 14 highest peaks in 189 days, or a little over six months.  The Nepalese former British army soldier's speedy itinerary included climbing Everest, Lhotse and Makalu back-to-back in only 48 hours and summiting Shishapangma, his last climb, at 8:58 a.m. local time on Tuesday.  South Korean climber Kim Chang-ho held the previous record of seven years, 11 months, and 14 days.

-- From Significant Digits, 30 October 2019, based on an article in The Guardian

This Is Halloween

Boys and girls of every age
Wouldn't you like to see something strange?
Come with us and you will see
This, our town of Halloween

This is Halloween, this is Halloween
Pumpkins scream in the dead of night
This is Halloween, everybody make a scene
Trick or treat till the neighbors gonna die of fright
It's our town, everybody scream
In this town of Halloween

I am the one hiding under your bed
Teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red
I am the one hiding under yours stairs
Fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair
This is Halloween, this is Halloween
Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!

-- "This is Halloween" lyrics, Danny Elfman (1993)

Double Double Toil And Trouble

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

-- William Shakespeare, Song of the Witches: "Double, double toil and trouble", Macbeth: IV.i 10-19; 35-38, The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (1983)

A Lantern On The Stern

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us!  But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834), English poet, critic and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets, Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T. Coleridge 1821-1834 by Henry N. Coleridge (1835), 18 December 1831

Deep Sadness

Dear Friends and Community Partners of the Art Theater,

It is with deep sadness that the Art Film Foundation announces it has stopped showing films and that it will cease operations at the Art Theater on October 31, 2019.

We thank you for your donations, your volunteer hours, your memberships, and your attendance. While the Art Film Foundation and the Art Theater have come to an end, we truly believe that this incredible community of cinema-lovers in the local area will carry on.

With gratitude,
The Art Film Foundation

-- Farewell email from the Art Film Foundation, announcing the closing of The Art Theater in downtown Champaign, 25 October 2019

Intent

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

-- Stephen R. Covey (1932 - 2012), American author, The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People, p. 239 (1989)

Reality Check

One of life's joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks ... who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.

-- Glen David Brin (1950 -), American science fiction author, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, former NASA consultant and physics professor, Earth Part VI (p. 311) (1990)

Functional Anonymity

Let's begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion.  The approved reference now is to the market system.  This shift minimizes -- indeed, deletes -- the role of wealth in the economic and social system.  And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx.  Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces.  It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power.  They have now a functional anonymity.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006), Canadian-American economist and author, "Free Market Fraud", The Progressive (January 1999)

Basic Equipment

Thing is: the internet's made of IP addresses, opinions, and assholes.  It's what's there.  That's the basic equipment.

-- Merlin Dean Mann III (26 November 1966 -), author, speaker, and productivity consultant, "kung fu grippe" blog post, ~2010

Never Friendless Ever

Thorns may hurt you, men desert you, sunlight turn to fog;
but you're never friendless ever, if you have a dog.

-- Douglas Malloch (5 May 1877 - 2 July 1938), American poet, short-story writer and Associate Editor of American Lumberman, a trade paper in Chicago

Angie

For my 50th birthday (10 years ago), my kids got me an Australian Shepherd by the name of Angie (short for Evangeline). She was about 9 months old when I got her from a rescue place in St Louis.

A little under 3 hours ago, I had to let her go.

She was diagnosed with congestive heart failure (and pulmonary hypertension) in January, but the meds (lots of meds) were keeping it in check. Today things suddenly went south.

Her super power was that she didn't need a leash on walks. She had no interest in squirrels or rabbits, and only passing interest in other dogs while out walking.

There were a lot of walks.

She was the calmest, most laid-back Australian Shepherd I've encountered.

I'd like to go on one more walk, please.

RIP Elijah Cummings

My mission is one that comes out of a vision that was created long, long ago.  It is a mission and a vision to empower people. ... to make people realize that the power is within them, that they too can do the things that they want to do.

There's a poem that Parren Mitchell said many many years ago that I say sometimes 20 times a day, and it's a very simple poem, but it's one that I live by.

    I only have a minute.
    Sixty seconds in it.
    Forced upon me, I did not choose it.
    But I know that I must use it,
    give account if I abuse it,
    suffer if I lose it.
    Only a tiny little minute,
    but eternity is in it.

-- Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) (18 January 1951 - 17 October 2019), in his first speech from the floor of the House of Representatives, shortly after he was sworn into Congress by then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on 25 April 1996, citing a poem written by Civil Rights pioneer Dr. Benjamin Mays, which he credited Mitchell as reciting many times.

No Reasonable Man

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?  This question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be asked.  When we have realized the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we shall be well launched on the study of philosophy -- for philosophy is merely the attempt to answer such ultimate questions, not carelessly and dogmatically, as we do in ordinary life and even in the sciences, but critically, after exploring all that makes such questions puzzling, and after realizing all the vagueness and confusion that underlie our ordinary ideas.

-- Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (1872 - 1970), British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic, 1950 Nobel laureate in Literature, The Problems of Philosophy (1912)

Lust

Lust brings with it a feeling of moral compromise.