2019 - Day 298 - Friday...Impunity...

This images does not look like it is 35 degrees below zero, and perhaps I exaggerate just a little bit (that's an exaggeration), but it cold a hell (how cold is it?) here in central Texas. The cold front came through last night, and we got 0.93" of rain, and the temperature dropped by more than half. Okay, that is an exaggeration, too. Yesterday afternoon on my way home from the office, it was 83 degrees. This morning, on the way to work, it was 43 degrees, and right now it is 47 degrees. The wind is howling from the north at about 150 miles per hour (perhaps another exaggeration), and the wind chill (first time to use that word this season) is about 1,000 degrees below zero. How cold is it, you ask? Just go outside and empty the pool skimmer, and you will figure out how cold it is. So there!

Impunity -- Noun. exemption or freedom from punishment, harm or loss. "We realized we needed to have some sort of penalty or else these landlords would simply engage in this behavior with impunity." David Chiu, quoted in The Washington Post, September 19, 2017

Did You Know? Impunity (like the words pain, penal, and punish) traces to the Latin noun poena, meaning "punishment." The Latin word, in turn, came from the Greek poine, meaning "payment" or "penalty." People acting with impunity have prompted use of the word since the 1500s, as in this 1660 example by Englishman Roger Coke: "This unlimited power of doing anything with impunity, will only beget a confidence in kings of doing what they list [desire]." While royals may act with impunity more easily than others, the word impunity can be applied to the lowliest of beings as well as the loftiest: "Certain beetles have learned to detoxify [willow] leaves in their digestive tract so they can eat them with impunity" (Smithsonian, September 1986).