Fisherman in Yemen haul in a dead sperm whale and discover, inside it, ambergris worth $1.5 million.

 

On the topic of ambergris, there is this from Herman Melville's "Moby Dick":

"He grew up in Bethel, Connecticut, a poor rural village in which survival demanded cunning, wit, and ruthlessness—traits known collectively at the time as 'Yankee cuteness.'"

"Barnum was proud of his upbringing, which encouraged in him an insatiable appetite for wealth from the moment he learned to count.... At Barnum’s christening in 1810, [his maternal grandfather] 'gravely handed over' a gift deed to 'Ivy Island,' five remote acres that his grandson was to inherit upon reaching his majority. For the next decade, as Barnum tells it, he was 'continually hearing' about how he owned 'one of the most valuable farms in the State'—from his grandfather, parents, even his neighbors, all of whom warned him against the perils of immodest wealth. 'Now Taylor,' said his mother, 'don’t become so excited when you see your property as to let your joy make you sick.' When Barnum finally treks to his inheritance at the age of ten, he discovers that Ivy Island is a waste of muddy bogs plagued by hornets and snakes. He shrieks and runs home."

From "American Humbug" (NY Review of Books).

This is a review of a book called "Barnum: An American Life." The review ends:

The great danger to democracy today comes not from marks slow to spot a humbug but from a public made cynical to the point of believing that everything, and everyone, is a humbug, especially the humorless class of credentialed experts whom Barnum took such joy in ridiculing. In the end, though, it’s a distinction without a difference. Too credulous or too incredulous—you’re a sucker either way.

So... I guess... in a world of uncertainty, you've got to get your credulousness somewhere in the middle. That made me think — vaguely — of a famous quote that appeared in my head as He who will believe in anything believes in nothing. Google understood my groping and set me straight. It's the other way around! Those who believe in nothing believe in anything. I considered believing that it's one of those A = B so B = A situations, but that's the kind of mistake you can only make if you dabble in logic.

I kind of like my version. What's the bigger problem — believing in nothing or believing in anything? I say it's believing in anything. Nothing is a good start. (Better than nothing is a high standard.)

Anyway, the famous quote is about a specific belief in nothing: "When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything." The quote tends to be misattributed to G.K. Chesterton.

Yesterday, I was listening to the car radio and this came on — Chris Cornell singing the old Prince song "Nothing Compares to You":



The singer's love interest is comparable only to nothing. It's intended as the supreme compliment.

Because we are stronger together...

"9 Ways to Oppose Donald Trump," by John Cassidy in The New Yorker.

I'm giving this my Trump derangement syndrome tag, even though I don't think it's precisely deranged. I just don't want too much tag proliferation.

When Trump first made noise about running for President, I just used my tag for "The Apprentice" and resisted making a tag even for his name. Now, I've got a bunch of Trump tags, and I'm trying to keep them from getting as ridiculously numerous as my Obama tags. I think I need to do a good culling of my Obama tags — maybe get rid of anything that didn't collect at least 4 posts.

Anyway, speaking of Trump derangement syndrome, Cassidy starts out:

Over the past few weeks, a number of anguished friends and acquaintances, and even some strangers, have got in touch with me to ask what they might do to oppose Donald Trump. Being a fellow sufferer from OATS—Obsessing About Trump Syndrome—my first instinct has been to tell people to get off social media and take a long walk. It won’t do anybody much good, except possibly Trump, if large numbers of people who voted against him send themselves mad by constantly reading about him, cursing him, and recirculating his latest outrages.

Well, that's pretty sensible. OATS is a little silly, but it does allow one to say "I'm feeling my OATS."

To feel ones oats means "to be lively; to feel self-important" — according to the Oxford English Dictionary. P.T. Barnum used it in his 1869 memoir "Struggles & Triumphs":

As I grew older my settled aversion to manual labor, farm or other kind, was manifest in various ways.... In despair of doing better with me, my father concluded to make a merchant of me.....  Of course, I "felt my oats." It was condescension on my part to talk with boys who did out-door work. I stood behind the counter with a pen over my ear, was polite to the ladies, and was wonderfully active in waiting upon customers.  We ketp a cash, credit and barter store, and I drove sharp bargains with women who brought butter, eggs, beeswax and feathers to exchange for dry goods, and with men who wanted to trade oats, corn, buckwheat, axe-helves, hats, and other commodities for tenpenny nails, molasses, or New England rum.

The art of the deal.

Of course, Trump has been compared to P.T. Barnum and he has embraced the comparison. From back in January:

Yesterday, on "Meet the Press," Donald Trump was presented with a list of characters he'd been compared to: "some people are calling you the Music Man of this race. Kim Kardashian. Biff, from Back to the Future. George Costanza. P.T. Barnum. What's - any of those do you consider a compliment?" Trump immediately said "P.T. Barnum."

A letter from The Unabomber ridiculing Lawrence Wright — a writer at The New Yorker — for believing he'd received a letter from The Unabomber.

The letter, below, was sent to Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski, who just happens to have the same last name as The Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski).

"I can't imagine how he would have manipulated the internet today... People ask me, well, what would he be today. He would have been Disney. He would have been Donald Trump..."

That's a statement from November 2007. The "he" is P.T. Barnum, the speaker, Maher, Executive Director of the Barnum Museum. It's near the beginning of this NYT video (which explains Barnum's techniques — showmanship, advertising, and building in Manhattan):



Yesterday, on "Meet the Press," Donald Trump was presented with a list of characters he'd been compared to: "some people are calling you the Music Man of this race. Kim Kardashian. Biff, from Back to the Future. George Costanza. P.T. Barnum. What's - any of those do you consider a compliment?" Trump immediately said "P.T. Barnum."

ADDED: Who has compared Trump to P.T. Barnum? I found this from way back in April 2011:

As GOP insiders and the conservative base warm to what party veterans see as a “joke candidate” ...

 Sometimes the joke is on you.

... likely GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich opted for a more theatrical approach....

"Well look I think that he is a little bit wild. A little bit... some have compared him to P.T. Barnum and the rise of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. He is one of the great showman of our lifetime. He is very clever at getting news media attention. And he’s in his “Apprentice” candidate phase. That’s fine. He brings a level of excitement and life — a lot more folks will talk about the Republican ticket in the next few weeks because of Donald Trump. I’m all for him being an active Republican, then at some point he’s got to settle down…But for the moment it’s a bit like watching American Idol. We have the newest guest star."

But here's something from the current election cycle, as people were getting a clue that they'd have to take Donald Trump something like seriously. This comes from Salon, last September, by Sean Trainor:

Donald J. Trump is not, as Matthew Pressman argues in the Atlantic, Ronald Reagan’s heir. Rather, he’s the heir of the 19th-century showman Phineas Taylor Barnum – disingenue extraordinaire and purveyor of humbug (that quaint, old-timey synonym for bullshit)....

Donald Trump kind of likes being compared to P.T. Barnum.

On "Meet the Press" today:

CHUCK TODD: As you know, people call you a lot of names. Some of it's positive, some of it's negative. I want to throw some by you. Let's see. Some people are calling you the Music Man of this race. Kim Kardashian. Biff, from Back to the Future. George Costanza. P.T. Barnum. What's - any of those do you consider a compliment? Or do you--

DONALD TRUMP: P.T. Barnum.

CHUCK TODD: You'll take the P.T. Barnum?

DONALD TRUMP: P.T. Barnum. Look, people call you names. We need P.T. Barnum, a little bit, because we have to build up the image of our country. We have to be a cheerleader for our country. We don't have a cheerleader. I thought Obama, when he got elected, would be a good cheerleader. That's the one thing I said. I said he'll be a - you know, he'll unify the country, whether it's African American and white and all. You know, he'll unify. He's not unifying. He's been a great divider.....

Phineas Taylor "P. T." Barnum...

(July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman and businessman remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Although Barnum was also an author, publisher, philanthropist, and for some time a politician, he said of himself, "I am a showman by profession... and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me," and his personal aim was "to put money in his own coffers." Barnum is widely, but erroneously, credited with coining the phrase "There's a sucker born every minute"....

One of Barnum's more successful methods of self-promotion was mass publication of his autobiography.... Often referred to as the "Prince of Humbugs," Barnum saw nothing wrong in entertainers or vendors using hype (or "humbug," as he termed it) in promotional material, as long as the public was getting value for money..... Barnum was a producer and promoter of blackface minstrelsy....

While he claimed "politics were always distasteful to me," Barnum was elected to the Connecticut legislature in 1865 as Republican representative for Fairfield and served four terms. In the debate over slavery and African-American suffrage with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Barnum spoke before the legislature and said, "A human soul, ‘that God has created and Christ died for,’ is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot – it is still an immortal spirit." Barnum was notably the legislative sponsor of a law enacted by the Connecticut General Assembly in 1879 that prohibited the use of “any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception" that remained in effect in Connecticut until being overturned in 1965 by the U.S. Supreme Court Griswold v. Connecticut decision.