And then we told them...
"The wealth would trickle down!"

Capitalism, socialism, globalization and what is (and isn't)  a marriage  were debated (and debased) ad nauseum.    And between Joe Biden's  dismissal of Paul Ryan's malarkey and Mitt Romney's coining of a new meme with his binders full of women, there was a distinct dearth of professionalism on display in our dilapidated democracy but no fewer shameless shows of Shadenfreude on Wall St. And despite the dumbed down declamations by one Fox-News fed bigot after another, Obama won another four years.  Touche.   

Words in Red above were the top ten most looked up words of 2012--according to the dutiful definers at  Merriam Webster.  Capitalism and Socialism were tied for top honors, making the top ten  total 11. Clearly influenced by a presidential election year--and reflective of how mainstream  media  pounded away with "Obama is a socialist" stories (despite the fact that he spent most of his first term riding to the rescue of Capitalism--thus leading perhaps to the general curiosity and confusion concerning the meaning of those two words).  And with special credit going to Joe Biden, who sparred with Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, for the lighthearted “With all due respect, that’s a bunch of malarkey,” which  sent lookups of the Irish-American word soaring.

 By contrast, in 2010 without as much election news, the list was comprised of: 

austerity,  pragmatic, moratorium, socialism, bigot , 

doppelgänger, shellacking, ebullient, dissident, furtive.

Something about these lists (with bigot and socialism appearing twice) and others from previous years seems to offer clues to something instructive...and soon as I figure out what that is I'll let you know. 

"You can observe a lot just by watching" 
Yogi Berra

While Observing the Obvious...

...came to conclusion that Rafa Nadal's multitude of physical tics and OCD like habits on the court are a critical and deliberately cultivated part of his tennis playing arsenal.  Finely tuned quick twitch reflexes are what it takes to play the modern booming serve and baseline to baseline top-spin heavy swing with all your might on every shot game.

 Even all that jumping, dashing and darting around before the match seems to be  part of a routine that keeps him ready and alert for everything and anything that might (and will) happen in a fraction of a millisecond.  If Federer is deer-like in his grace and economy of movement, then Nadal is cat-like in his perpetual preparedness to pounce. 

 ...All the J.D. Salinger hype surrounding the new documentary and book(s) seems tone-deaf on the part of all those claiming to be his champions.  The guy became famous for his stories and then legendary for his life-long allergic reaction to that fame.  And so, his admirers and fans persist in fanning the flames of the fires that burned him out.  The current hyperbolic hoopla is just the kind of thing that drove the guy out of civil society and possibly out of his mind.  Kudos to Adam Gopnik for making this point better than I can, and making a whole slew of others even more pertinent in this piece in New Yorker..

.http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/09/who-was-jd-salinger.html