Swany’s Whey

Chinese fire drill – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “The term is alleged to have originated in the early 1900s, during a naval incident wherein a ship manned by British officers and a Chinese crew set up a fire drill for fighting a fire in the engine room. In the event of a fire the crew [...]

“We may here close our review of medieval cosmology. Dante died in the year 1321, almost exactly a thousand years after the Emperor Constantine had made the Christian faith the state religion of the Roman Empire. It had been a long and perfectly stationary period, at the end of which mankind occupied exactly the same [...]

The old pond, ah A frog jumps in The water’s sound

Montaigne, XVI: Let the sailor content himself with talking of the winds; —Propertius, ii. i, 43

Clusterstock: “Better fire up the coffee pots over at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. Citi started this morning by crashing through the $2 level, trading for the first time ever with a $1 handle. It will, of course, bounce upward later this morning, as shorts cover and those smoking the Hopium decide that [...]

Letting the days go by let the water hold me down Letting the days go by water flowing underground Into the blue again after the money’s gone Once in a lifetime water flowing underground.

Montaigne, Essay 13: Of Liars: “But, above all, old men who retain the memory of things past, and forget how often they have told them, are dangerous company; and I have known stories from the mouth of a man of very great quality, otherwise very pleasant in themselves, become very wearisome by being repeated a [...]

Montaigne, Essay VIII: Of Idleness: “When I lately retired to my own house, with a resolution, as much as possibly I could, to avoid all manner of concern in affairs, and to spend in privacy and repose the little remainder of time I have to live, I fancied I could not more oblige my mind [...]

DailyLit: But, in good earnest, as the arm when it is advanced to strike, if it miss the blow, and goes by the wind, it pains us; and as also, that, to make a pleasant prospect, the sight should not be lost and dilated in vague air, but have some bound and object to limit [...]