Good morning – I found this to be an interesting write that could certainly spark some banter.

From the Huff Po:

What It Means To Be Human Is Changing Thanks To Gene Editing

“We might be splitting in class between those who can afford to manage our children eugenically and those who cannot.”

Near the end of a wide-ranging conversation about the complexity of the human genome and the history and future of genetics, Arizona State University President Michael Crow noted the almost inconceivably large number — “10 to the 14th” power — of microorganisms in our bodies. And then he turned to cancer researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee and posed what Crow called “a complicated question.”

“What the hell are we?”

Crow and Mukherjee, author of the new book “The Gene: An Intimate History” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer,” already had spent much of the evening — a Zócalo Public Square event in front of a full house at the Skirball Cultural Center — trying to answer that question.

‘Choice seems like an illusion defined by genes.’

One answer, said Mukherjee, is “a majestic formula” akin to e=mc102: “Genes plus environment plus genetic interactions plus chance” equals the human form.

But what it means to be human is also changing, he said, both biologically and culturally. Our increasing knowledge and ability to manipulate our genes — the fundamental units of heredity and the basic units of biological information — are altering our notion of who we are. And as a result, humans are faced with figuring out new language, new regulations and new answers to all sorts of new, very fundamental questions.

Chief among them: What does choice mean in an era when humans can manage their own genomes? “Choice seems like an illusion defined by genes,” suggested Mukherjee. Other questions we’re grappling with include: What is randomness? What is normal? “And who gets to define the borderlands and boundaries of what we define as normal? I’m not sure we’ll ever have the answer to that question,” said Mukherjee.

“The real question,” he added, “is how do we want to categorize? What are the axes upon which we want to divide ourselves? That’s not a laboratory question” but one we must tackle as a society, although ironically, “it’s possible that that question, too, is devised by our genes.”

Mukherjee and Crow engaged in a rapid back-and-forth that crossed centuries and academic disciplines and covered Mukherjee’s family history of mental illness, the eugenics movement, the Nazis, the genetic engineering of wheat, science education, the maker movement as applied to genetics, the human fantasy of perfection and the personal histories of Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin.

“Darwin ran away from medicine, thank God,” quipped Mukherjee. “Every time you push your children to medicine, remember it’s Darwin you’re blocking.”

Crow pressed Mukherjee repeatedly on how humans can avoid “going down dark roads” and misusing genetics. The doctor-writer advised that “the antidote to the future is history.” We need to consider how wrong we’ve been in the past. “If I read you the list of people who attended the first conference on eugenics,” which included Alexander Graham Bell and Winston Churchill, “it would shock you,” he said.

‘We might be splitting in class between those who can afford to manage our children eugenically and those who cannot.’

Why, asked Crow, do humans want to understand genes and improve themselves?

“One of the purposes is emancipation” from disease, replied Mukherjee, before rattling off the “transformative” impact of the language of genes on our health, from vaccine development to the treatment of breast cancer.

During a lively question-and-answer session with the audience, Mukherjee was asked whether eugenics would be revived in this country. Mukherjee said he didn’t think the U.S. ever would have state-sanctioned eugenics. But he also warned, “we are entering a future in which we’re going to manage ourselves in eugenic ways. We might be splitting in class between those who can afford to manage our children eugenically and those who cannot…”

Another audience member asked Mukherjee whether, given his family history of mental illness, he had taken advantage of technologies that allow him to have his own genome sequenced, or that of his children.

‘The antidote to the future is history.’

After thinking long and hard about it, he decided not to. “We don’t know what the determinants are for schizophrenia,” which has plagued his family, he said, so it would not be that useful. But he also was stopped by the “moral conundrum” of having two children. If, say, only one of them had the schizophrenia gene sequence, “would it change how I thought about my two children?”

“These are choices we will face … this is part of our future, it’s coming our way,” he said. “We better have — number one — the vocabulary to deal with it. And number two, the humanistic constructs to answer the questions being asked by our genomes.”

*****

Readers: It’s Friday. You know what to do.

Blog me.

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

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Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2016

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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Good morning!

I realize that Trump is getting more air time than any other presidential candidate but sometimes one just can’t help posting a write about him. This time the “one” is me and it is one of those times.

From Reuters:

Trump, aiming to offset money disadvantage, escalates Clinton attacks

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK – Donald Trump this week took his use of sordid accusations against Democrat Hillary Clinton to levels unprecedented in modern U.S. presidential campaigns, in the latest example of the Republican’s unorthodox playbook.

The presumptive Republican nominee is working to gain stronger footing and offset a big advantage Clinton is likely to have ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election – a huge campaign war chest that she and her allies intend to use to launch a barrage of attacks against him.

Trump is using the same strategy he used repeatedly during the Republican nomination fight against rivals like Ted Cruz – making incendiary statements that U.S. television networks can’t resist covering, giving him hours of free media and putting his opponents on the defensive.

The strategy may already be working.

Trump has raised more than a few eyebrows with his latest round of attacks against Clinton. He has turned history into headlines that play like a virtual reel in the 24-hour news world of cable TV and the internet.

Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowsi, said the strategy makes sense.

“Clearly, she’s going to have massive amounts of money,” Lewandowski told Reuters. “The difference is Mr. Trump has funded his campaign. What we’ve been able to do in this campaign cycle is to generate earned media based on Mr. Trump’s ability to be a straight talker, and genuine and authentic, and I think that’s what drives the news cycle.”

Trump’s latest salvos include a rape accusation against former President Bill Clinton dating to the 1970s and the suicide of an aide to the former president in 1993 – events that the campaign links to Hillary Clinton.

An online video released by Trump has various women accusing the former president of rape or unwanted sexual advances. Trump accused Hillary Clinton of helping to silence the women. The Clintons and their supporters have dismissed the charges as baseless and politically motivated.

Then, in an interview with The Washington Post, Trump suggested that the Clintons may have been involved in the 1993 death of Vince Foster, a former aide to Bill Clinton and a friend of Hillary Clinton, even though more than five investigations, including one conducted by Republican special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, concluded Foster committed suicide in a Virginia park.

Trump was alluding to theories over the years that have been circulated in tabloid publications, in the depths of the internet and in books by the Clintons’ foes.

The attacks have put Clinton on her back foot.

Trump “just continues to gobble news cycle after news cycle,” said Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, who ran the Super PACs that backed Senator Ted Cruz in the primary and aggressively attacked Trump. “Clinton is spending less time campaigning about the future and more time explaining the past than she would probably like.”

The barrage puts Clinton in a bind. So far, she has opted to ignore Trump’s personal attacks and her campaign has offered general pushback. But Clinton risks the negative onslaught dragging down her standing in the public and irreversibly damaging her general election hopes.

“I played a lot of hardball in my life, but I don’t envy what the Clinton campaign is up against here. Trump himself has totally changed the political dynamic,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist who supports Clinton. “What they can’t afford to do is get in the gutter with the guy. He has absolutely no morals or scruples. Getting into the gutter with him is an absolute waste of time.”

Clinton’s campaign and the Super PACs supporting her will not be without funds to try to combat the attacks and launch her own. At the end of April, she had $30 million in her campaign account, compared with Trump’s $2 million.

And the PAC supporting her, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, had $46 million at the end of April – a total that is likely to grow over the summer. The PAC backing Trump is just getting off the ground.

Clinton will also depend on an army of surrogates to try to combat Trump without having to respond to him herself.

Trump has already proven he can dispatch opponents without spending much money by defining them to voters through aggressive appearances on news programs.

Republican rival Jeb Bush had a more than $100 million advantage going into the primary. But Trump painted him as “low energy” and defined him as inept, a characterization Bush’s money was never able to overcome.

The PACs backing Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz spent millions assailing Trump. Trump was able to leverage extensive coverage of his campaign by the media to combat their attacks while spending little money on advertising.

Trump has been proven an expert at raising attack lines that have already been settled, but insisting that questions remain. He spent years demanding that President Barack Obama produce his birth certificate, despite myriad evidence that Obama was born in Hawaii, including government records of the president’s birth in Honolulu.

For Trump, some of the attacks are targeted at young voters – those in their early 20s and 30s were too young to have been immersed in news about the scandals of the Clinton years.

“You have a whole series of the population who either (a) don’t know anything about it, or (b) weren’t paying attention at the time,” Lewandowski said.

A Clinton ally said Trump is simply trying to distract attention from his own liabilities – such as refusing to release his tax returns and his own history of problems with women.

“The more he raises these outrageous and outlandish charges,” said U.S. Representative Xavier Becerra, of California, a Democratic leader in the House, “the more he keeps you pedaling in a different direction.”

*****

Readers: You can click over if you want to watch a short video. I didn’t feel like posting it here. Although I did view it, I was mostly watching the women in the video cheering Trump on. Why oh why would any woman vote for a man who is a misogynist is beyond my reasoning. A girlfriend of mine the other day said of Trump becoming the president, “At least we’ll have fun.” She was dead serious. Yeah…I know. The logic escapes me.

OH…by the way…don’t ya think Trump needs to be added to the “LSOS” Club?

On a more pleasant note…I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that so many of you are with me again. I had no idea if starting up again would pan out but it looks like we’re going to have plenty of back and forth badinage during this unbelievable election year.

So…let’s get it going. Tell me what’s on your mind. Blog me. 

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2016

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"

Happy Memorial Day!

This day is to honor and remember those fallen soldiers who have given their time and lives to serve and protect us in times of war and in peace. And a time for us to thank them for doing all that they have done in service and in sacrifice to ensure our safety and protection. I give a tremendous amount of gratitude.

For me personally it is also a time to remember and thank some very special ones in my life. Madaline and the Girlz who died in combat. Knowing Maddie and the Girlz they would have gone out saying, “It’s a good day to die.” And although Memorial Day is to remember those that are no longer with us, I cannot leave out Anonz who continues to serve, sacrifice, and be a hero to the world.

I found this write and decided it was a good day to post it since so many women of the world are fighting their own personal wars (Many they aren’t even aware of) when it comes to protecting themselves from the men of this world. I love to give kudos when I see other women stepping up and protecting their fellow sisters.

Here’s the write:

How 3 Badass Women Stopped An Alleged Rape Attempt

“Don’t roofie someone on our watch!”

People of the internet are celebrating a tale of three women who allegedly headed off an apparent rape attempt, according to a viral Facebook post by one of the women.

Sonia Ulrich wrote that she and two other women — Monica Kenyon and Marla Saltzer — were at the Santa Monica, California restaurant FIG Thursday night when Kenyon witnessed a man placing a suspicious-looking substance in his date’s drink while she was in the bathroom.

Posted On Facebook:

GUESS WHO STOPPED A RAPE LAST NIGHT?! THESE GALS!

Ok, so we’re still recovering from the events, but we wanted to tell the story. And if it seems like the photo is making light of a heavy situation, it’s because we know FB prioritizes pics AND we needed to get your attention. This is no joking matter.

Monica, Marla, and I were at Fig at the Fairmont for their delicious happy hour (“Fig at 5.” Treat yourself). I was going on about something and saw Monica staring behind and making a funny face. I stopped. “What’s going on?” After a few second she said “That guy just put something in her drink.”

Now, Fig is a nice restaurant. We were enjoying our charcuterie platter and some fancy cheeses. That type of place. They had a bottle of wine they were splitting. It seemed like a first or second or third date. After a few “Oh god. What do we do”s, I got up to find her in the bathroom to tell her. Warn her. Tell her to get up and leave this creep. Make him drink it. Something.

So, after feeling awkward hanging out by the sinks in the bathroom til she was done, I approached. “Hey! Um, this is kind of weird, but, uh, we saw the guy you were with put something in your drink.”

“Oh My God.” She said. Shocked, kind of numb, so I babbled “Yeah, my girlfriend said she saw him put something in your drink and we had to say something. Woman to woman…you know. We had to say something. How well do you know that guy?” I was expecting to hear “We just met,” but I got:

“He’s one of my best friends.”

Shit. Yeah. One of her best friends. They had known each other for a year and a half. They worked together.

I continued to talk for a bit and said she could ask “the one with the short blond hair” any questions since she was the one who saw it and then left her to return to the table.

When I got back, Marla was talking to the server about what happened. Seeing if he or the manager could do anything. Monica filled us in on more of what she saw.

“He pulled her glass toward him, kind of awkwardly, then he took out a little black vial. He opened it up and dropped something in. Then he tried to play it cool, like checking his phone and hiding the vial in his hand and then trying to bring it back down slyly.” He apparently saw Monica looking. Marla said she was just going to lean over to Monica and say “that guy is acting really creepy” when she saw Monica already looking. Witnessing.

It only took a minute for the manager to walk to their table, see if everything was ok, allowed the girl to order a sparkling water. All super cool. He stopped by our table and said he couldn’t do much because he didn’t see it. But he did let security know.

The poor woman had to sit through 40 more minutes, sitting across from “one of her best friends” knowing that he was trying to drug her. Marla noticed him several times chinking his glass to hers to get her to drink. She played it cool. Mostly, I believed, just stunned. The staff wanted to jump in and dump the glass, dump him, do something! I was going through fantasies of walking up and demanding he drink the tainted glass of wine. Eventually, they finished up dinner. There was a delay getting their bill “The computer is down” is what the waiter kept saying to him. Then, in walks Santa Monica PD. They say “Come with us” and he doesn’t protest. Doesn’t ask why. Doesn’t seem surprised.

The head of security came by and said that because we notified them immediately, they were able to go back and review the footage from the security camera.

They got him on tape. They had proof of him drugging this girl. They took the glass away as evidence. They kept us for statements. We asked the girl if she had a ride home. “My car is at his place. In his building. We came together.” Part of a plan. We were blown away. She was still in shock.

But it wasn’t over.

From every table In our section, from through out the restaurant, people came by to thank us for taking action.

“It happened to my sister…I’m glad I was there to take her home.”

“It happened to my roommate at a producer’s party. He’s still messed up from it.”

“It happened to me. At a backyard barbecue.”

“It happened to me. At a bar I worked at.”

“Some Heroes don’t wear capes. Thank you. It happened to me. Thank you.”

“Fuck yeah you guys! You fuckin rock!”

At least 10 stories of being personally affected buy someone like this. Something like this. Those were only the ones who knew what went down. I am sure there were tons more stories through out the restaurant and the hotel.

We kept thanking the manager for taking action. We are well aware how many people would not have taken what we said seriously. Not taken action. Said their hands were tied.

So thank you, everyone at Fig and Fairmont in Santa Monica for keeping this guy from harming someone.

And thank you in advance to everyone who sees this and shares this and reminds each other that yes, you SHOULD say something. Even if it’s awkward or weird or just uncertain if anything can be done.

Know that YOU did something. And that it helped.

Santa Monica Police Lieutenant Saul Rodriguez confirmed to The Huffington Post that they arrested 24-year-old Michael Hsu on charges of intent to commit rape and drugging with the intent to commit rape. He is being held on $1 million bail, and his arraignment is on Tuesday, Rodriguez said.

He said that three witnesses reported seeing the man put an unidentified substance in a woman’s drink.

“We appreciate those witnesses came forward,” Rodriguez said. “It could have prevented a serious crime from taking place.”

A woman who answered the phone at Fig said she was not allowed to comment on the Facebook post. But earlier on Saturday, a woman at Fig told Jezebel that everything in the post was true.

People can be weirdly hesitant about intervening in a potential assault — partially because they misunderstand rape.

“Sexual assaults and rapes are often not considered ‘real rapes’ by victims, friends, family, or the criminal justice system unless they involved force, violence, and were committed by a stranger with a weapon,” criminal justice professor Sarah Nicks told HuffPost last year. “So when a bystander is aware of a sexual assault, they may not see it as a problem or an emergency, due to the social norms of their group and setting. They may look around for cues to see if others define it as an emergency, and seeing none, do nothing.”

That’s part of the reason why many colleges are increasingly focused on bystander intervention as a means of preventing rape. But in the meantime, know that stepping in if you see something suspicious can really make a huge difference.

*****

It’s thrilling to post a news story that has a great ending to something that would’ve been horrific if these three Badass Sheros hadn’t noticed this sick fuck’s behavior and stepped in.

Love it when girls support girls. Wonderful women of the world they certainly are. Pass it on.

xox

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2016

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"

Happy Sunday!

Readers: How’s this for a Sunday write?

Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

It’s one of the things we are most afraid might happen to us. We go to great lengths to avoid it. And yet we do it all the same: We marry the wrong person.

Partly, it’s because we have a bewildering array of problems that emerge when we try to get close to others. We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well. In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on any early dinner date would be: “And how are you crazy?”

Perhaps we have a latent tendency to get furious when someone disagrees with us or can relax only when we are working; perhaps we’re tricky about intimacy after sex or clam up in response to humiliation. Nobody’s perfect. The problem is that before marriage, we rarely delve into our complexities. Whenever casual relationships threaten to reveal our flaws, we blame our partners and call it a day. As for our friends, they don’t care enough to do the hard work of enlightening us. One of the privileges of being on our own is therefore the sincere impression that we are really quite easy to live with.

Our partners are no more self-aware. Naturally, we make a stab at trying to understand them. We visit their families. We look at their photos, we meet their college friends. All this contributes to a sense that we’ve done our homework. We haven’t. Marriage ends up as a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully avoided investigating.

For most of recorded history, people married for logical sorts of reasons: because her parcel of land adjoined yours, his family had a flourishing business, her father was the magistrate in town, there was a castle to keep up, or both sets of parents subscribed to the same interpretation of a holy text. And from such reasonable marriages, there flowed loneliness, infidelity, abuse, hardness of heart and screams heard through the nursery doors. The marriage of reason was not, in hindsight, reasonable at all; it was often expedient, narrow-minded, snobbish and exploitative. That is why what has replaced it — the marriage of feeling — has largely been spared the need to account for itself.

What matters in the marriage of feeling is that two people are drawn to each other by an overwhelming instinct and know in their hearts that it is right. Indeed, the more imprudent a marriage appears (perhaps it’s been only six months since they met; one of them has no job or both are barely out of their teens), the safer it can feel. Recklessness is taken as a counterweight to all the errors of reason, that catalyst of misery, that accountant’s demand. The prestige of instinct is the traumatized reaction against too many centuries of unreasonable reason.

But though we believe ourselves to be seeking happiness in marriage, it isn’t that simple. What we really seek is familiarity — which may well complicate any plans we might have had for happiness. We are looking to recreate, within our adult relationships, the feelings we knew so well in childhood. The love most of us will have tasted early on was often confused with other, more destructive dynamics: feelings of wanting to help an adult who was out of control, of being deprived of a parent’s warmth or scared of his anger, of not feeling secure enough to communicate our wishes. How logical, then, that we should as grown-ups find ourselves rejecting certain candidates for marriage not because they are wrong but because they are too right — too balanced, mature, understanding and reliable — given that in our hearts, such rightness feels foreign. We marry the wrong people because we don’t associate being loved with feeling happy.

We make mistakes, too, because we are so lonely. No one can be in an optimal frame of mind to choose a partner when remaining single feels unbearable. We have to be wholly at peace with the prospect of many years of solitude in order to be appropriately picky; otherwise, we risk loving no longer being single rather more than we love the partner who spared us that fate.

Finally, we marry to make a nice feeling permanent. We imagine that marriage will help us to bottle the joy we felt when the thought of proposing first came to us: Perhaps we were in Venice, on the lagoon, in a motorboat, with the evening sun throwing glitter across the sea, chatting about aspects of our souls no one ever seemed to have grasped before, with the prospect of dinner in a risotto place a little later. We married to make such sensations permanent but failed to see that there was no solid connection between these feelings and the institution of marriage.

Indeed, marriage tends decisively to move us onto another, very different and more administrative plane, which perhaps unfolds in a suburban house, with a long commute and maddening children who kill the passion from which they emerged. The only ingredient in common is the partner. And that might have been the wrong ingredient to bottle.

The good news is that it doesn’t matter if we find we have married the wrong person.

We mustn’t abandon him or her, only the founding Romantic idea upon which the Western understanding of marriage has been based the last 250 years: that a perfect being exists who can meet all our needs and satisfy our every yearning.

WE need to swap the Romantic view for a tragic (and at points comedic) awareness that every human will frustrate, anger, annoy, madden and disappoint us — and we will (without any malice) do the same to them. There can be no end to our sense of emptiness and incompleteness. But none of this is unusual or grounds for divorce. Choosing whom to commit ourselves to is merely a case of identifying which particular variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for.

This philosophy of pessimism offers a solution to a lot of distress and agitation around marriage. It might sound odd, but pessimism relieves the excessive imaginative pressure that our romantic culture places upon marriage. The failure of one particular partner to save us from our grief and melancholy is not an argument against that person and no sign that a union deserves to fail or be upgraded.

The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn’t exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently — the person who is good at disagreement. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate differences with generosity that is the true marker of the “not overly wrong” person. Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition.

Romanticism has been unhelpful to us; it is a harsh philosophy. It has made a lot of what we go through in marriage seem exceptional and appalling. We end up lonely and convinced that our union, with its imperfections, is not “normal.” We should learn to accommodate ourselves to “wrongness,” striving always to adopt a more forgiving, humorous and kindly perspective on its multiple examples in ourselves and in our partners.

Alain de Botton (@alaindebotton) is the author of the novel “The Course of Love.”

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*****

Readers: I think this is a good write. What do you think? I have to admit I’m a romanticist at heart but I am realistic too – I do not expect what was stated: “…that a perfect being exists who can meet all our needs and satisfy our every yearning.” Geez, do people really think that someone perfect exists and can satisfy all? If I thought that I would never have been in any of my past relationships. Nor do I expect to be able to satisfy every need and yearning of my man – Whoa, that’s a lot of pressure.

Over the years of relationships I have come up with some reasonable needs that are nonnegotiable. Happily I’m all for a dose of pessimism – albeit its usually mixed in with a touch (or more!) of humor (Gotta have that in my relationship!) Can you tell with my writes here? :)

Care to share your two? Blog me. 

Oh…before I sign off, please remember my California peeps, the Presidential Primary Election is coming this June 7th. Don’t forget to send in your vote by mail ballot this Tuesday (If you haven’t already) or visit your local polling place to make sure your vote counts. This goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway…Hillary Clinton for President.

xox

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

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All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2016

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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Good morning,

Since we’re on the subject of health…

From the Huff Po:

Mutant Superbug Has Been Discovered In The U.S.

The infection resists the treatment of last resort, meaning “the medicine cabinet is empty for some patients,” the CDC director said.

Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) bacteria is pictured in this medical illustration provided by the Centre of Disease Control and Prevention.

The woman hadn’t traveled outside the U.S. in the previous five months, according to the report. Doctors treated the infection using another antibiotic, but said they were alarmed by the discovery of the mcr-1 gene inside the U.S.

“The fear is that this could spread to other bacteria and create the bacterium that would be resistant to everything,” Dr. Beth Bell, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, told ABC News.

“The more we look at drug resistance, the more concerned we are,” Dr. Tom Frieden, CDC director, said Thursday. “The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients. It is the end of the road for antibiotics unless we act urgently.”

At least 2 million people become infected in the U.S. each year with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according to the CDC. Those infections result in at least 23,000 deaths annually.

The Pennsylvania woman’s case, while not deadly, is the first U.S. discovery in a human of bacteria resistant to colistin, a drug held in reserve to treat serious infections that resist another major class of antibiotics called carbapenems. Bacteria that could resist colistin and carbapenems would be unstoppable,according to The New York Times.

In a study last year, the CDC warned that drug-resistant infections would continue to rise. And while the medical community has been anticipating the strain’s arrival, the troubling part is that “this case seems completely home-grown,” according to Dr. Nasia Safdar, an associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Multi-drug-resistant bacteria are found elsewhere in the world, frequently in agriculture. This particular colistin-resistant strain, for instance, was first discovered in people and livestock in China in November 2015. Since then, it has turned up in Europe and Canada. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday it had detected the bacteria in a single sample of a domestic pig’s intestine.

When it comes to spreading resistant bacteria, “food-producing animals are of particular concern,” the CDC says. “Antibiotics must be used judiciously in humans and animals because both uses contribute to the emergence, persistence, and spread of resistant bacteria.”

The CDC, Defense Department and Pennsylvania Department of Health are working to identify close contacts of the Pennsylvania woman to determine if others have also been exposed to the bacteria. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf(D) said his administration was taking the discovery “very seriously” and promised to “take necessary actions to prevent mcr-1 from becoming a widespread problem with potentially serious consequences.”

*****

Thoughts?

Blog me.

✌🏽 & ❤

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2016

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"