…Integument..l..Integument…
c h p……………e……………c h p
o o h……………m……………o o h
l p y…………….e…………….l p y
o p l…………….n…………….o p l
n o l…………….t…………….n o l
u l i…………….n…………….u l i
s e s…………….e…………….s e s
…………………..un trato denigrante Alek Wek hamzuzim
…………………..Berners Street hoax HyperloopClovis no
…………………..Scrunchie attemptive mens rea Naqada
…………………..swift jewel cowboys “Frost & Glow” cbic
…………………..Julio Camba [*;*] MR. WALT WHITMAN.
…………………..rheumatoid arthritis Clark Street tunnel
…………………..suppediate, Open outcry—comma splice
…………………..Archibald Lampman…. carkmma splicee
…………………..stupe…///.………………………gma splicee
…………………..Owens Valley ………………. ea splicet
…………………..…..///.Omertà ……………….o splices
…………………..oriel…///…all over paintingsplicep
…………………..hatikvah…///.cantatrice .aplicel
…………………..La ……………………………….. glicei
…………………..La ……………………………….. nlicec
…………………..Llorona….syncope………. nicec
…………………..inedia………Porlock …….. e
…………………..DalekINTP Merrill Gilfillancee

Couple (1) (2) interesting tweets from Krugman describing the familiar and curious sight of thriving retail districts with lots of vacant store fronts.

(Boswell, Life of Johnson.) “He said, ‘It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them. There must be an external impulse; emulation, or vanity, or avarice. The progress which the understanding makes through a book, has more pain than pleasure in it. Language is scanty, and inadequate to express the nice gradations of mixtures of our feelings. No man reads a book of science from pure inclination. The books that we do read with pleasure are light compositions which contain a quick succession of events.”

Brexit belongs to this era in one quintessential way. It is an act of the imagination, inspired by an imaginary past, carried along by misdirected grievances, borne aloft by an imaginary future. The age of impunity is also the age of illusion turbocharged by social media…. Roger Cohen from last month quoted by Ishaan Tharoor today.

Saw more frisky geese this morning, and the surprise of it today was how well Mingus had captured the sound of their honks in the opening measures of his Bird Calls (1959) –spot on!

Had forgotten to mention this band name to interested parties — foulkerchief — portmanteau of ‘foul’ and ‘handkerchief’ (with alternate spelling foulkerkiech). For one your less popular bands probably.

*

Potentially disorienting question occurred to me while watching Hidden Fortress the other night– the ‘rebels’ of Star Wars — are these CSA confederates? Is Abe Lincoln, Dark Lord? Yoda, Stonewall Jackson? Why hadn’t I thought of this before? For some reason the rebels of Star Wars have been entirely detached from those other rebels that are foremost in my consciousness until now.

Idea too — that liberal-conservative split is a thing of the past in American politics and so what we have now is a conservative-populist split — with, however, the difference that this new conservatism is actually comprised of policies that were once considered liberal: toward high-tax, high service, Scandanavian-style states; while populism directs toward autocratic, oligarchic Russia-style states.

(Related or implied idea that what was once considered conservative in U.S. politics, namely, limited government, is no longer a viable political philosophy and probably hasn’t been for some time.)

ngrams viewer: complexifier,complicator. Looking at ngrams, it seems complexifier arose in the 1960’s and overtopped complicator in usage in the early 2000’s.

Word comes up because of a Jeff Bezos Medium post to the National Enquirer about a year ago (“No Thankyou, Mr. Pecker“, 2/7/19), in which he says that ownership of the Washington Post was a “complexifier” for him. I didn’t like the newfangled sound of complexifier, yet had to admit the more established complicator sounded outmoded or, for other reasons, not quite right. Would myself probably have said that owning the Post “made things complicated for me.”

Trying to process the fact tonight (because of this news item) that the sun is not made of fire.. but of hydrogen and helium undergoing nuclear fusion, thus producing light and heat

also, that I do not know what fire is (fire). ngrams: earth,air,fire,water

Oxidation state… “The term oxidation was first used by Antoine Lavoisier to signify reaction of a substance with oxygen. Much later, it was realized that the substance, upon being oxidized, loses electrons, and the meaning was extended to include other reactions in which electrons are lost, regardless of whether oxygen was involved.”

here is heraclitus on the sun:

3. The sun is the width of a human foot.
6. The sun is new every day.
94. The sun will not overstep his measures; if he does, the Erinyes, the handmaids of Justice, will find him out.
99. If there were no sun it would be night, for all the other stars could do.

Some of his more interesting mentions of fire:

30. This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living Fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.

31. The transformations of Fire are, first of all, sea; and half of the sea is earth, half whirlwind. . .

76. Fire lives the death of air, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of earth, earth that of water.

90. All things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares for gold and gold for wares.

(Reminded of the Winesburg, Ohio character who thought the world was on fire — on fire with decay.)