Multiple studies involving hundreds of rhesus monkeys have produced data that support the orchid/dandelion hypothesis.

I just finished reading this piece by David Dobbs in The Atlantic.  In it, he outlines the orchid/dandelion hypothesis which posits that certain genetic variants dispose one both to social dysfunction and marked potential for success depending on one’s environment.  In other words, researchers are beginning to find the upside to having “bad” genes.

This new model suggests that its a mistake to understand these “risk” genes only as liabilities.  Yes, this new thinking goes, these bad genes can create dysfunction in unfavorable contexts – but they can also enhance function in favorable contexts.  The genetic sensitivity to negative experience [...]are just the downside of a bigger phenomenon: a heightened genetic sensitivity to all experience.

Cuter than a rhesus monkey, but sharing about 95% of their DNA and a common ancestor some 25 million years ago, Sylvie's cute temper tantrums suggests the 5-HTTLPR gene that she shares with rhesus monkeys is either S/S or S/L thereby endowing her with orchid potential.

So whether Sylvie is an orchid (requiring greenhouse care to flourish) or a dandelion (will flourish pretty much anywhere) may depend on whether or not her serotonin-transporter gene is of the short/short or short/long variants (orchids) or the more efficient long/long variant (dandelion).  I won’t be having her genes assayed and it’s probably too early to guess.  Bur her cute temper tantrums suggests the gene in question is either S/S or S/L thereby endowing her with orchid potential.

Healthy orchids are prettier than healthy dandelions, of course.  So that’s the potential downside for us dandelions.  Yes, I’ve got myself pegged dandelion.  I’ve heard I was relatively easy child to raise; and if I have inner demons like the ones the orchidaceous Lincoln wrestled with, for example, they have let me be so far.  I haven’t achieved the level of success Lincoln did either and don’t have my sites set anywhere near that high (lowering expectations: how dandelionish of me).

So far as Sylvie’s genes are concerned, she’s going to be getting the full greenhouse care treatment.   My hope is that she’ll either blossom into the flourishing orchid her genes intended, or into a very, very impressive and hearty dandelion.

No time for manicure, need to DIY so grabbed some colours from Sasa …

Sylvie

Personal review: Application is easy & fast dry.

I’ll be looking into X’mas/Winter shades from OPI, The Devil’s Heaven.

La Splendeur des Camondo
De Constantinople à Paris (1806-1945)

Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme

Du 6 novembre 2009 au 7 mars 2010

Cette exposition, présentée dans le cadre de la Saison de la Turquie en France, retrace l’extraordinaire parcours de cinq générations de la famille Camondo de Constantinople à Paris, du XIX^e siècle naissant à 1945. Elle illustre une des facettes de l’aventure passionnante, en dépit de sa fin tragique, qu’a été le processus d’intégration des juifs en France. Les magnifiques collections, d’une valeur aujourd’hui inestimable, que la France a reçues des Camondo témoignent du goût et de la modernité de ces banquiers éclairés et cosmopolites.
Réalisée grâce aux prêts accordés par les institutions héritières des legs Camondo, l’exposition montrera des archives familiales du musée Nissim de Camondo, des peintures du musée d’Orsay (Boudin, Degas, Delacroix, Jongkind, Manet, Monet, Renoir et Sisley) ainsi que des œuvres d’art du musée Guimet (sculptures chinoises, estampes japonaises) et du musée du Louvre (mobilier, dessins du XVIII^e siècle).

Commissaire de l’exposition
Anne Hélène Hoog, assistée de Virginie Michel

Conseillers scientifiques
Nora Seni, directrice de l’Institut français d’études anatoliennes (Istanbul)
Sophie Le Tarnec, Conservation du musée Nissim de Camondo (Paris) – auteurs de l’ouvrage Les Camondo ou l’éclipse d’une fortune (Actes Sud, 1997)
Marc Bascou, conservateur général du Patrimoine chargé du département des Objets d’art au musée du Louvre
Hélène Bayou, conservatrice chargée du département Japon au musée Guimet (Paris)
Philippe Landau, historien, archiviste du Consistoire central israélite (Paris)
Sylvie Legrand- Rossi, conservatrice en chef au musée Nissim de Camondo (Paris)
Sylvie Patry, conservatrice au musée d’Orsay
Bertrand Rondot, conservateur aux musées du Château de Versailles et de Trianon

Lucinda, Georgina, Tabitha, Jemima, Seraphine, Polly, Clara, Harriet, Imogen, Melisande, Cordelia, Dorothy,Hazel, Helene, Honora, Juliet, Cecilia, Rosamund, Penelope, Pandora, Romilly, Violet, Winifred, Mathilde, Cecily, Edith, Sylvie, Marigold,Leonora, Philippa & Josephine.

Thoughts? Suggestions? and please help with Brothers

The Round 7 Challenge was different for each contestant. An element of the eliminated stories was assigned to each constestant. I chose to go with Coco’s challenge to incorporate Dostoyevsky – taken from Igor’s story.

Joseph Pullen pulled his ear pods out and put his head in his hands. What should have been a professional triumph wasn’t.  Putting a track on Doug Valhalloran seemed an ambitious but obvious avenue of surveillance two years ago, when he wanted to fast track his way up the bureaucratic ladder. He didn’t understand then.

He and his wife Miranda were awaiting the arrival of their first child.

Miranda was radiant, beautiful. Except for a couple of months of nausea at the start of the pregnancy she had never been healthier or more intune with her body. She was terrified of the surgery because she’d never been seriously ill nor needed hospitalisation before. Their misgivings were mounting and last week Miranda had heard from a distant friend women were dying from uterine infections and babies were drowning from amniotic fluid in their lungs. The friend had whispered the delivery unit was nothing short of a production line abattoir slicing women open and ripping babies out.

It felt wrong to hand over Midwife 002 – Sylvie Valhalloran.

Joseph knew the conversation between brother and sister would disappear with one point and sweep of his finger across the screen of his work station. If only he’d kept his mouth shut when the alarm went off.

He felt a hand clamp down painfully on his shoulder. “Hey Joey, your supervisor gave me the heads up.” It was Brian from the Johaansen Squad three floors above. “Who’ve you got? My team’s on stand by.”

Joseph pointed to the photo on the screen, not trusting his ability to speak unaffected.

“Midwife 002. Fucking hell Joey. Download it now.”

Joseph hesitated.

“C’mon dickwad. Hurry up. They’re like rats, pissing off once you’ve got a fix on them. I want her on death row before dawn.”

“Wait,” Joseph said, swallowing hard as the download finalised. “If you tail her, you’ll get the midwife, mother and infant.” It was her only chance.

Brian pushed past Joseph and snatched the chip from the info writer. The Director loved high profile arrests. But include a newborn. Brian smirked – he would get his promotion finally.

“Good boy Joey. Maybe I’ll get you promoted to JS.”

Joseph shrugged nonchalantly. Assignment there was the last thing he wanted.

“Godspeed Sylvie,” Joseph thought as Brian strode off hastily arranging to have the midwife followed.

- – -

The PDA beeped again. Ignoring it wouldn’t make it go away. It was time to go again. She closed the 1956 edition of Crime and Punishment which had belonged to her mother and put it in her kit. The red cover was battered and held together with yellowing strips of sticky tape. She travelled light – the book, her framed photo and ID were her only personal effects plus a handful of second hand clothes.

Packed, Sylvie opened the most recent message, tapping her finger on the PDA screen while the encryption programme unlocked the message.

Client: Primiparous. Vertex. No complications.

Location: Dead Zone

Special Instructions:

• - Immediate departure
• - Package will arrive with keys and GPS coordinates.
• - Blue SUV parked two blocks south. Dint in the rear fender.
• - Escort only inside Dead Zone.

I can only trust this to you Sylvie. May the Goddess walk with you beautiful daughter ~ Maia.

Ten years ago no midwife would have contemplated venturing into the Dead Zone. It was suicide. But every time she walked out the door Sylvie stared death in the face. It was just another day at the office, only this time she got to drive herself into Hell.

Catch up on my Fourth Fiction Novella

• Round One
• Round Two
• Round Three
• Round Four
• Round Five
• Round Six

J’ai vomi dans mes cornflakes

Mijn zus is lezer. Een meelezer. Ooit hier terechtgekomen en nog steeds af en toe bezoeker van dit. Zo bleek althans toen ze klachten had. Waarom kom ik nooit aan bod? Bij mijn deelnames aan ‘Boer zkt vrouw’ was ik nog een gewillig onderwerp en nu? Alleen maar over jezelf (duh!) of over je wederhelft (waar het hart van vol is, loopt de mond van over). Om mijn zus te plezieren een roddelpost over haar!

Na haar tweede deelname aan Boer zkt vrouw ging een nieuwe wereld voor Sylvie open. Ze begon een relatie met de iets oudere Christoph (zonder e). Tot op heden zijn de twee geliefden nog steeds tesaam. De roddelpers wist ook al te vermelden dat de twee samenhokken. Niet getrouwd en toch onder één dak. De twee leven in zonde! Maar ze hebben gelijk. Tuurlijk hebben ze gelijk en de vrouwelijk helft studeerde af. Verpleegkunde A2 zoals men wel eens zegt. Ondertussen vond ze werk. Zelfs in deze onzekere tijden, door crisis geteisterde periode om het modieus te zeggen. En toch was haar honger niet gestild, want ze vatte nog een brugopleiding voor verpleegkunde A1 aan. Als dat niet straf is allemaal?

The French will claim to have invented all sorts of things if you let them. A Frenchman may or may not have invented the motor car. They lay claim to football and cricket (yes – cricket! is nothing sacred?) During a drunken conversation, a French student once went so far as to tell me that the French had invented bread. Surely that got a mention in the Bible, I ventured? Didn’t that suggest that the staff of life predated modern France? Or had a Frenchman written that too?

One thing that the French definitely were pretty much responsible for was the pop video. In the 1960s, when Hamburg, London and all points west were an unquenchable market for live bands, France fell in love with the Scopitone, a sort of video juke box found in cafes. At the same time as your record played, a film, normally of the artist “performing” or “interpreting” his or her hit, was shown on a small, built-in screen. 

Knowing and admiring your love of French popular culture, I have unearthed, on Youtube.fr, Sylive Vartan performing La Locomotion, the French version of Little Eva’s hit.

As this charming little “clip” makes clear, the French may have been world leaders in film-making and music video technology, but in the art of lip-synching they still had some way to go …

Like this? Try these. 

Je grimace, tu grimaces, elle grimace … 

Je présente, tu présentes, elle présente … 

J’écoute, tu écoutes, elle écoute …

These are two characters in a book by Lewis Carroll 1889.

I prefer Thea but I still like Thora, those damn “ora” endings get me everytime!

Thora Olympine

Thora Ivy

Thora Apolline

Thora Isolde

Thora Mathilde

Thora Lucy Josephine

Thora Anneliese

Thora Bellamy

Thora Caroline

Thora Evangeline

Thora Iseabail

Thora Lillian

Thora Ruby Elizabeth

Thora Sylvie Rose

Thora Winter Abigail

Thora Amabel

Thora Amandine

Thora Lileas

Thora Leatrice

Thora Rosemary

I’m the process of merging two photos that are around 90MB apiece. The text I’m typing is visibly lagging. And that is just a matter of saving the file, not the actual merge. There, done. Holy crap, 840MB psd.

So I finally got around to formatting my desktop. Now, normally, you can never format C: drive, because that’s where Windows is loaded. Acronis Disk Director, the suite I use for managing partitions, actually offered to format C: drive, so I thought I’d check it out.

Right click > Format > "Yes" (to reboot)

It got as far as loading the Windows Files (I have GUI boot disabled) before it froze. One at a time, pixels started falling from the top of the screen, row after row. xD It got to about rows down the screen before it rebooted and failed to boot because it couldn’t find winload.exe. FAIL. That brought a huge smile to my face.
Now I’m reinstalling all my programs on Windows 7.

I ordered a Cat5e Crossover cable last night – I’ve wanted one for ages! It’s basically an Ethernet cable that is used to connect two computers directly to each other without a hub or router. I know I have a router, but when I do network sharing, I want to do it properly. Unfortunately, I’m the youngest so no one gives a damn what I say or does as I ask.
And wow, Argos is such a rip off!!
Argos: Belkin CAT5e Crossover Cable 5m – £9.79
eBuyer.com: Belkin CAT5e Crossover Cable 5m – £3.02
Yeah, that’s more than three times the price.

I had a catch up with Sylvie last night which was really fun. It’s shocking how much time has passed – I still remember her freaking out that she’s getting old just before her 13^th birthday. Now she’s nearly 16. It’s scary how fast time has gone past.
The way things have been with me online is that friends come and go as they please, but occasionally you find those people who stick around. Even if you haven’t spoken to them properly in months, you know you’re still friends and it wont take a moment to pick up where you left off. She’s one of them.

I’ve been getting quite aggressive lately. Though I don’t act on my rage, I have a vivid imagination and my subconscious isn’t afraid to use it. =/
I’ve never particularly liked being touched by people I don’t know, but over the years I’d begun to ignore it with considerable ease. I didn’t object to bumping into people on the high street as I rush past them. Now I’ve taken quite a few steps backwards this summer. I dislike a courteous tap but can get over it. But if someone bumps into me, I absolutely hate it and it makes my imagination kick into overdrive.

…College starts next Thursday.