“The world's humor, in its best and greatest sense, is perhaps the highest product of our civilization. Its basis lies in the deeper contrasts offered by life itself: the strange incongruity between our aspiration and our achievement, the eager and fretful anxieties of today that fade into nothingness tomorrow, the burning pain and the sharp sorrow that are softened in the gentle retrospect of time, till as we look back upon the course that has been traversed, we pass in view the panorama of our lives, as people in old age may recall, with mingled tears and smiles, the angry quarrels of their childhood. 

And here, in its larger aspect, humor is blended with pathos till the two are one, and represent, as they have in every age, the mingled heritage of tears and laughter that is our lot on earth.” 

Stephen Leacock

Stocks continued to wobble today, swooning lower on the poor economic both at home and abroad. Although the happy talk about The Recovery™ that resonates particularly from the Democratic establishment is a bit disorienting to those with a firmer grip on reality outside the Beltway.

Tomorrow Janet Yellen will face the Congress, and tonight the nation will face some of the grimmer possibilities in the Presidential race with the much awaited first real primary election in New Hampshire. I don't think they will be choosing delegates with ‘coin flips.'

As Jean Racine put it so aptly, “Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.” 

Or perhaps much more succinctly as my fellow engineer Glenn put it so many years ago, ‘Life imitates high school.'

Have a pleasant evening.