The Market, Energy, And Political Page, T+ 65 -- October 17, 2018

A page from the Feinstein playbook. The October surprise. Let's see -- I assume "operatives" are debating best day to release the report. On a Friday before/after news cycle so it will get maximum play on Sunday morning talk shows? Monday morning before election in November? On a Saturday?

I didn't read the story (and no plans to do so) but has President Trump submitted his answers to Mueller's questions yet? I assume the White House would delay getting the answers to Mueller until well after the election unless ...

California politics: two Democrats are vying for the US Senate in the 2018 midterms. Under the new California "rules," the two highest vote-getters in the primary will square off in the general election, regardless of party. And as expected, two Democrats will square off this year. The GOP is supporting Feinstein -- her opponent is "much worse" in the eyes of some. But worse, it's proven that once elected to the US Senate, it's pretty much a life-time appointment unless you really screw up. Feinstein's opponent: 51 years old. Feinstein: 85 years old. You do the math. Either Republican John Cox or Democrat Gavin Newsom will be appointing a new US Senator sometime in the next six years. Gavin Newsom will win; former mayor of San Francisco. Same city where Diane Feinstein was born and raised.

Market: just before the market opens, Dow (irrelevant) futures down 125 points and WTI trending down (again).

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The Book Page

The God Problem, Howard Bloom, c. 2016.

Again, the writing is a bit laborious. I had to skim through about a hundred pages, but still following the main themes. Then, highly rewarded. The story of Napoleon invading Egypt in 1799; the Rosetta stone, Bouchard the engineer who discovered the stone, and Thomas Young who deciphered the Rosetta stone.

Wow, skim through wiki's entry on Thomas Young. The Rosetta Stone was just a small piece of his life.

The Rosetta Stone, three texts in three different writing systems, three different symbol sets --

• Egyptian hieroglyphs;
• demotic: the shorthand script, the alphabet of demes, the writing system of the common people; yet another unknown Egyptian symbol system; and,
• Greek, a well-known language

Thomas Young: English, near where Shakespeare had lived, south of the River Avon; known as "The Phenomenon"; he learned a dozen languages including European languages; eight Middle Eastern languages (Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac, Samaritan, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Amharic).

From the book:

After fifteen years of work, Young cracked the code of the Egyptian demotic script (the Rosetta Stone), the writing system of Eygpt's commoners.

Thomas Young's fame for translating languages became so great that he was asked to write the article on languages in the ultimate reference book, a book series that was by then verging on fifty years old, the Encylopedia Britannia. Young did write that definitive article. 

And in the process, he compared the grammar and vocabulary of over four hundred languages. 

So Young was very aware of the power of translation. Very aware of the power of isomorphic symbol sets.

But Young's biggest contribution to science had to do with waves. I'll stop here. It just gets better and better.