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lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

In web and print design, we use a block of text that we affectionality call "lorem ipsum". First used by an unknown printer in the 1500s, it is widely thought to be merely a space filler, a bunch of nonsense words that fill across the page in much the same fashion as real text. It helps typographers arrange their type and helps designers convey a sense of what a page will look like, without distracting people with the content.

Well, today I became curious about lorem ipsum, so I dug around a little and discovered that it isn't nonsense at all. In fact, it was crafted thousands of years ago by a very sensible and intelligent man indeed - none other than Cicero!

Our useful little lorem ipsum that pops up all over the web on unfinished pages, began its journey in 45 BC, when Cicero wrote "The Extremes of Good and Evil", or de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum. (My love of languages notes that 'finibus' is finishes in English, fin in French, fine in Italian, 'bonorum' is bon in French, bene in Italian, and 'malorum' implies malady, illness, male in Italian and bad in English.)

In all my dalliances over the years with Lorem ipsum, I never suspected that my 'nonsense tool' was in fact over two thousand years old. Now, I know that every time someone lorem ipsum-ates a page, I am looking at a most meaningul piece of text:

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

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