#and by its uses I mean it taught Chris how to work the microwave

[tleecacc]

Virginia Lee

My mom came into this world on November 11, 1922. She loved that she was born 11/11/22. And she loved that it was something genuinely unique. That it held all the axioms of synchronicity. 

She often proudly told the story of when she was born, how she was so tiny the doctor’s did not expect her to live. As a last resort, a last ditch effort to save her life, the doctor gave my mother horse serum. Apparently that was a thing. And when she made it through the night, the doctor came in the next morning to tell her mother and father that miraculously she was gaining strength. He said to her parents, my grandmother Eulalia, and grandfather Daniel, ‘this little girl is a fighter’ …That she was.

She was born into an era that included the great depression. She lived through a world war, and so many incredible changes that the 20th century presented its almost unfathomable. Some of which she out right rejected, others she eventually either accepted or adopted. Her first microwave oven was used as a bread box for years before she agreed to learn to use it properly. She was the original, ultimate minimalist. She saved wax paper, rubber bans, bread bags and aluminum foil. She abhorred the idea of just throwing things away after one use, which culminated in receiving food gifts wrapped in layers wax paper, encased in at least two bread bags, held tightly together with six rubber bans. She was also a vitamin freak and insisted on a well balanced diet. We were not allowed to leave the house without drinking orange juice that was kept in as air tight a container as possible, so as not to lose its rich life giving force. She detested impracticality. We’d by her gifts to make her life easier but she would eventually admit to one or another of us, ‘Its so unnecessary, I don’t need it’ ‘I’ll never use it. My old (fill in the blank) works just fine’ etc. 

I thought she was the most gentle person ever to touch her feet to this earth. And I believed she couldn’t possibly love anyone as much as she did my brother’s and sisters and I, until she met her grandchildren. My mother held an extraordinary amount of love in her heart for each of them.

She found her spiritual path in the love and devotion she exhibited towards her family everyday of her life, and to every person she encountered, with few exceptions. She prayed for all of us everyday. Harder if she thought we were in special need, a heart was aching, someone's health was in question, a soul was at risk… or you spent time in bars which is the same thing…  so yeah, she prayed a lot. 

My mother was one of 11 children born to Daniel and Eulalia May. When you come from large families such as ours, you can spew out the names of your offspring or siblings in successive order as if it were one name. For my Mother’s family it was

BobDorthyVirginiaMaryRitaBillLoraineDaveDanBarbaraTom. And by the time my mother was 14 years old, she was a mother to her 8 younger siblings, as her mother was rarely well. She never complained about that role. She loved her brothers and sisters and was devoted to their care. She loved each of them and their individual take on life. She was very proud of the life they each garnered for themselves and their children. She was happy to see them living in a world less harsh than the childhood they endured. She held an extraordinary capacity of love in her heart for each of them. And she took their needs on without the least bit of resentment or regret. 

My mother’s family moved 17 times in her years at home. In a family with six gorgeous women you can imagine the stir it caused within each neighborhood they were adopted into. They were the May girls. With their flowing red, auburn and black heads of hair, their Miss America smiles and that undeniable May sense of fun loving humor. To say they were gregarious almost doesn’t do their personalities justice. 

My momma was beautiful, physically and spiritually. She loved her life. She was radiant in the outdoors and pushed us daily to be out in the fresh air. She was athletic. Mom made the varsity field hockey team as a freshman. She never drove a car and so walked everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Which may explain the athletic prowess of her children. As toddlers, when the newest sibling took over your spot in the stroller, we had to run along side her to keep up. Although she only stood four foot eleven, she had legs that moved incredibly fast. This tiny, feisty, determined woman walked everywhere and loved every minute of it, so it was hard on all of us to see the loss of that freedom in the recent months when her health finally took that joyful ability away. 

According to my mother, the advent of television was humanities downfall, and she was determined to get us children out of doors in the fresh air. She loved picnics in the park and spending time in our large back yard (‘you can’t find a back yard like that just anywhere’). She took us places on busses when my dad did not. We rode to the Art museum, Steinberg, downtown, the Muny free seats, all of forest park really and of course Cardinal Glennon Hospital. A place I believe they new her by name. She made sure we learned to swim, rode bikes, and spent as much time as possible at Jamieson park. She ensured we ran, play ball of any and every kind. All of which we each embraced and learned to love. And to this day we, each of us appreciates her love of nature, because she instill that same love in each of us.

We woke every morning to a good, most often hot breakfast. We were not allowed to escape without first downing a glass of orange juice. Our nutrition was high on her list. Good food on our plates was something she did not often have as a child and often went hungry. I think she is the only person I know who actually did walk uphill to and from school…in worn-out clothes and ill fitting shoes. So to my mother, giving your children what you didn’t have meant that we had everything that was important. Sometimes more, but never less. 

She made Christmas Eve our best family celebration every single year. And the tradition goes on today, and will never fade if most of us have our way. It was one occasion that brought us together without fail with all of our clashing personalities, boisterous voices, our loud laughter, and our undying competitive spirits. And an occasional cartwheel from Uncle Laurie. It wasn’t always easy. It was always crowded. And nothing gave her greater joy than to see us all hugging and joking and telling stories, especially if they were about her. She never once let us for a minute question her deep abiding love for us, and she laced all of it with her Irish, indelible May family sense of humor. 

My mother was hilarious and she’d be the first one to let that be known. Her sense of humor was one of her great attributes and oh so contagious. My mom instilled in us a basic truth, that one can get through any hardship with prayer and an ability to laugh at ones own foibles. Besides, they made for better stories. And she was the ultimate storyteller, often laughing harder than everyone in the room. She’d sometimes be laughing so hard you couldn’t make out the punch line. And she loved a good practical joke. She once turned off the kitchen lights and laid herself out on the floor, playing dead, to scare my brother Scott, after he and my brother Chris had just spent an hour telling my sisters and me scary stories in the dark. Stories and antics that made us scream with fear and laughter, except maybe Laurie. She screamed alright but then burst into tears….of course…Because Laurie cries at everything so, grain of salt. But man she got him good. And laid there on the floor laughing so hard her belly shook.

She had the most contagious smile. Broad and genuinely warm and engaging. Her laugh was the most incredible music I’ve ever known. If she was telling you a story that she found particularly hilarious, it was all she could do to get the words out as she could hardly breathe. In those moments it didn’t matter that you might not be able to understand her, her joy was a gift.

She made our life so amazing. Nine kids in a 2 bedroom house with a 1/2 story attic big enough for 5 girls to share, like a dorm room. A finished basement where we could roller skate when it rained, or play ping pong or pool and a room that held a zillion board games, blocks, bats, balls, snow suits and boots, a record player, dart board, and the electric trains we set up every Christmas. She taught us to play cards, and never complained when we turned up the stereo or radio when we girls were doing dishes, or dad was out of the house. 

She pitched whiffle balls, set up our croquet game or let us use her clothes line for badminton or volleyball. She let us dig in the dirt, play with the hose when it was hot, had my dad build us a sand box and a swing set. She taught us how to cross stitch and made paste with flour and water to stick our construction paper cutouts together. She was unstoppable. She was the ultimate mother. I am who I am today because on 11/11/22, the day God took his wand and cast stardust across the universe and breathed life into my sweet sweet mother, the tiny infant that was not expected to live. She fought for her own life and that of her children and grandchildren with love and prayer and sheer determination. She fought with a deep love for life and heart felt prayer from her soul, for each of us.

The last day she was awake, she gave me a message to pass on to her children. It was a moment I will never forget for the remainder of my own days, and worth repeating often.

‘Tell the children I said goodbye. 

Tell them that I love them so much.

Tell them to be good to their mother’s and dads, they love them so much

I love them so much’

I said, I promise momma, I love you so much

She said, ‘I love you more.’…I love you more. How could I ever argue that.

Addendum:

Since the funeral, I have wanted to finish my acknowledgments of the remainder of my siblings that I did not mention at church. Sorry, I lost if after Peggy…

To:

My brother Christopher Dennis, for all the quiet stoic patience that my mother instilled in you. I remember how you always got on your bike and ran errand for mom as a kid. How you took on babysitting duties and made those times fun for us. How you rarely, if ever, complained about life in the middle of 9 kids. How much joy you gave her with the attention and love you gave to our brother Mark. It made her so happy. Mom loved you so much and I could always see her appreciation of you and your gentle way of being. When I look at you, I see that part of her in you.

Mark Joseph, wish you could read and understand me so I could tell you how incredibly much she loved you. Words could never convey.

James, I’m happy she is finally able to bestow all of herself on you now.

Carol Lee. Mom loved you so so deeply. She worried about you constantly, and was so grateful to be able to be there for you in the hard times you suffered from a disease doctors knew very little about in your younger years. She was always so happy to hear your sweet voice on the phone, and to know you were okay. I know she hated leaving you. Thank you for always staying so closely connected to her.

Laurie Lee. She thought she was finished having her passel of children, but as she was apt to reminded you, she decided she had room for just one more, and that was you. I love how much you loved her. How you kept in contact with her and worried about her. You were her last and she enjoyed spoiling you with her time and attention in the years when you were the last be at home with her before grade school. She always noted your generous heart, and you are more like her in that way than many, you just cry more…then again maybe not. She was so proud of you and how hard you worked for the sisters. You are so devoted to your own family, and working for the nuns is almost as good as having a priest for a son…, but not quite so don’t get a big May head about it. Lucy I am so grateful to have been there, to bare whitness, as you, her youngest child, knowing this would probably be her last meal bravely spoon feed her, through tears of course, that last bit of ice cream. I will never forget it.

Finally I come to Scott David. This one, will get to me the most. I spent many hours over my lifetime watching my mom with her own struggles, for her strength to take care of her brood with little sleep, for her ability to keep going after a particularly difficult day with the Bear, which were many, to fight her own depression from being overwhelmed with the enormity of the load she bore everyday from the sheer logistics of her life. But you Scottie were my hero in that. You could make mom laugh with just a one liner as you came barreling through the door. You were a true angel in mom’s life and therefore all of our lives. You brought her more joy with your own May sense of humor than all of us put together. You made her day, everyday that you were near her, and for that I could never repay you. I relished every single moment of watching you, with your quick and whitty sense of irony, make her laugh, make her smile, make her silently giggle. Thank you for all the Johnnie Carson nights you spent with her. I enjoyed watching the two of you at that hour more than any other hour of the day, because you could always bring her relief with your own joy of life. Thank you for all the practical jokes you put up with from her. They were the best and I was always on board with being in on them. You as much as mom taught me that with a humor, everything, no matter how difficult, can be made better, could be eased. I can never find the words to express how much hope you brought back to us when you lifted her spirits. Thank you for giving her so much joy. I don’t know what she would have done without you in her life.

Love you Momma,

Theresa Lee 

[leepace71]

The Political Avenger: Chris Evans Takes on Trump, Tom Brady, Anxiety and Those Retirement Rumors

Ahead of 'Avengers: Endgame,' the progressive Captain America actor and Twitter firebrand says he's ready to retire his Marvel hero for directing gigs, a new Apple show and the fight against the "dumb s—" president: “I’d be disappointed in myself if I didn’t speak up.”

It's a Friday afternoon in February, and the view from Chris Evans' house in the Hollywood Hills consists mostly of fog. He bought this place for $3.2 million in 2013, back when he was two hit movies into his seven-film stint as Marvel Studios' Captain America; there's a Zen-ish garden inside the front gate, and a stone Buddha sits by the door. Evans banishes his dog, Dodger, to the guest room, shuts off the TV in the family room (CNN on mute), cracks a can of Modelo, and takes a seat on the couch. His arms are insane, as thick as thighs.

Evans has a movie coming out in a few months — an intimate little passion project called Avengers: Endgame (April 26). It's the sequel to last year's Avengers: Infinity War, which raked in $2 billion worldwide and ended with Thanos (Josh Brolin) disintegrating half of Earth's population, including the still-bankable likes of Black Panther and Spider-Man. The moody trailers for Endgame are designed to reveal even less than usual, but it's safe to assume that Captain America rallies Earth's mightiest surviving heroes for a rematch with the mad god who finger-snapped their friends and loved ones into oblivion, which means this will be the first of the four Avengers movies to depict actual avenging.

Evans — who made $15 million for the past two Avengers films, up from $300,000 for his first stint as Captain America — has said he's done playing the character after this. It's been reported that he intends to retire from acting entirely. And yet the announcements of new work keep coming. He's in Rian Johnson's crowded-house murder mystery Knives Out, due in November. He's playing the father of a teenager accused of murder in Apple's forthcoming limited series Defending Jacob. He's in talks to star in Antoine Fuqua's Infinite as a presumably Chris Evans-ish guy who can recall his past lives. It's a crowded dance card for a newly retired 37-year-old actor, and when I bring this up, Evans gets as annoyed as he'll get all afternoon.

"I never said the word 'retire,'" he says. "It's a really obnoxious notion for an actor to say they're going to retire — it's not something you retire from."

All he said — back in 2014, as the end of his obligation to Marvel loomed on the horizon — was that he was hoping to get behind the camera more, and that he'd told one of his CAA agents, "We are turning a corner." Cut to 5,080,000 Google hits for "Chris Evans retiring."

So, for the record: He's not retiring. He'd love to direct more, but the way he talks about it makes it sound more like a five-year plan. He's been looking for a good script, except the problem with good scripts is that they tend to go to great directors, which is not a weight class Evans would put himself in, not yet. He's directed one film, the slight-but-not-embarrassing indie romance Before We Go, which grossed $37,151 in theaters in 2014, or roughly 0.01 percent of what Infinity War made on its opening weekend. When that project is faintly praised in his presence — he also starred in it, opposite Alice Eve — he waves this off, saying it mainly taught him how much he didn't know. "I'm OK with making mistakes," he says, "and I learned a lot from that one."

Once he's done helping Marvel hype Endgame, he's going to take advantage of the security provided by nearly 10 years of huge superhero movies by letting the next phase of his career unfold at a more leisurely pace. "Momentum is a real fallacy, in my opinion," he says. "But it has a really strong hold on a lot of actors' mentalities. You really believe that while the ball's rolling, you gotta keep it rolling. I could be wrong, but to me — I just don't believe in that. I don't think that's real."

I guess we'll find out.

Evans laughs. "My last cover interview."

Here are some things we learned about Chris Evans, from what may or may not be his last cover interview:

He uses the word "pretentious" a lot, usually because he's worried something he's just said sounds pretentious, which it rarely does.

He will talk at length and in detail about himself, and his neuroses, and the conversations he has with himself about his neuroses.

He keeps it closer to the vest about other people. He mentions in passing that Justin Timberlake lives around here — "I think" — without mentioning that Timberlake lives around here with his wife, Jessica Biel, who was once Evans' girlfriend. Nor does he mention his former girlfriend Jenny Slate by name, although he occasionally says things about what it's like to hang out with a bunch of comedians, something he clearly knows because he dated Slate, on and off, for a while. They are off again, per the gossip pages; on Valentine's Day, a few weeks after we meet, Evans will tweet a picture of himself nuzzling Dodger and wish the best to his 10.6 million followers "from this pair of dysfunctional codependents."

When asked how he functions in relationships, he says: "I'm the one who fears being enveloped. I was always a really autonomous guy my whole life. Camping by myself is one of my favorite things. I really like to be with someone who also has their own thing to do as well, you know? If I'm with someone who just kind of adopts my life, that can feel a bit suffocating."

Evans and actress-comedian Jenny Slate, in 2016. At her urging, he read a collection of feminist essays, The Mother of All Questions. "You have to understand that you don’t understand," he says.

When he's not working or camping by himself, you can find Evans camped out on Twitter. He is extremely online in a way that actors who headline ultra-mainstream movie franchises tend not to be; on any given day, you can find @ChrisEvans quoting Idiocracy to mock President Trump's McDonald's buffet for the Clemson Tigers, signal-boosting tweets about gay purges in Chechnya, or addressing Sen. Lindsey Graham as "Smithers."

He worries about doing too much of this sort of thing, about it seeming performative or becoming white noise — Chris Evans, back on his bullshit. He does not worry about saying something online that might inspire MAGA-minded fans to microwave their Captain America action figures. And for what it's worth, he says, "Marvel has never said anything. On the contrary — when I bump into Kevin Feige the first thing out of his mouth is 'Man, I love what you're doing [on Twitter].'"

"I don't see it as trash-talking," says Feige, Marvel's president. "I see it as very astute, very honorable, very noble, very Cap-like. Commentary and questioning. I've said to him, 'You're merging! You and the character are merging!'"

"I’d be disappointed in myself if I didn’t speak up. Especially for fear of some monetary repercussion or career damage — that just feels really gross to me."

Evans campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016; and while he has not decided on his 2020 candidate, his crusading use of his platform has made him a real-life superhero to a certain segment of the online #Resistance. Days after we talk, he pops up on Capitol Hill to do some bipartisan grip-and-grins with Senate Democrats Brian Schatz, Chris Coons and Jeff Merkley and Republican Lisa Murkowski. In March, he does the same at the House of Representatives. It turns out he's conducting interviews for A Starting Point, a politics website whose mission is "to create informed, responsible and empathetic citizens." He's a co-founder, along with the actor Mark Kassen and entrepreneur Joe Kiani; the launch date has yet to be announced.

While he's only visiting Congress for now, everyone jokes about him getting a job there someday. There's familial precedent; his uncle is former Massachusetts Representative Mike Capuano (who lost a hard-fought race to Ayanna Pressley, a progressive city councilwoman, in September). For now, Evans feels obligated to do what he can, even if it turns his social media mentions into a garbage fire.

"You don't want to alienate half your audience," says Evans. "But I'd be disappointed in myself if I didn't speak up. Especially for fear of some monetary repercussion or career damage — that just feels really gross to me."

His willingness to call bullshit on anyone abetting the disintegration of our republic extends to his home state's favorite sons. When we talk, Tom Brady is two days away from leading the New England Patriots to a sixth Super Bowl win; when I ask if the chance to play Brady in a biopic would bring him out of non-retirement retirement, he looks grim.

"I don't know," he says. "I really hope he's not a Trump supporter. I'm just hoping he's one of those guys that maybe supported him and now regrets it. Maybe he thought it was going to be different — and even that bothers me — but maybe there's a chance now he just thinks Trump's an absolute dumb shit, which he is. If he doesn't, if he's still on that Trump train, I might have to cut ties. It's really tough."

"I think maybe a couple of years ago," he continues, "I might have tried to pull some, like, mental gymnastics to compartmentalize, but I don't know if I can anymore. So I'm just hoping he's woken up."

Evans has a platform and he's using it. But like a lot of straight white men seeking to consciously and conscientiously navigate a tumultuous moment in the history of straight white male-dom, he's learned that shutting up is important, too. At Slate's urging, he read Rebecca Solnit's The Mother of All Questions, a collection of essays about the insidious side effects of patriarchy, and took away a great deal. "You have to understand that you don't understand," he says. It's not the most action-heroish way to look at things — but that may be the secret of his appeal as a movie star.

"At the root of it, he has true humility," says Robert Downey Jr., who's played Tony Stark against Evans five times. "I think it's the reason he was able to kind of come to the front and be our team leader in the Avengers. I think a lot of his theater experience helped, too. Because it was like, 'OK, I'm going to dress up, I'm going to go out, and I'm going to tell the truth.' It's very kind of old-school Spencer Tracy. Although I guarantee you Spencer Tracy never would've put on that getup."

Unsurprisingly, Evans blows off discussion of his own goodness. "The characters I play do a lot of that heavy lifting. If people knew me — I'm just an asshole."

He seems a little uncomfortable. I change the subject by asking him to tell me what happens at the end of Avengers: Endgame. Evans laughs. "Yeah," he says. "I wish I could. Uh, it's — I mean — it's a good one. It's a real good one. I saw, like, the first hour of it."

So you watched it up to the point where Cap dies?

"Right, exactly," Evans says. "After I die by Tony's hand, I just said, You know what? I can't watch this."

I should make it clear that this is a joke, even if it feels like the kind of joke that could turn out to be true. "I can't believe they even cut together a trailer," he says, "because so much of it is a visual spoiler. You'll see. A lot of the characters have"—

He stops, covering his mouth.

"Probably shouldn't have even said that," he says.

READ REST HERE...

[roslinadama-sinequanon]

Christmas in Connecticut-Chapter 14

Now available here:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13293105/chapters/31036059

and here

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12789981/14/Christmas-in-Connecticut

and here

In this chapter Christine notices some changes in her sister.

It’s Christmas Eve and time for Andy and Sharon to share their good news with their families.

Silent night! holy night! All is calm all is bright Round yon virgin mother and child Holy infant so tender and mild Sleep in heavenly peace! Sleep in heavenly peace

Silent night! holy night! Son of God love's pure light Radiant beams from thy holy face With the dawn of redeeming grace, Jesus, Lord at thy birth Jesus, Lord at thy birth

Silent night! holy night! Shepherds quake at the sight Glories stream from heaven afar Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia Christ the Saviour is born Christ the Savior is born!

+++

Christine gave a low whistle of appreciation as she watched Sharon deftly chop carrots and butternut squash with the efficiency of a Reality TV chef. “Where did you learn to chop like that?” She asked.

“Andy.”

“Andy cooks?”

“Mmm…When he was growing up he had to help out in his grandparent’s Italian restaurant. Since then he’s loved to cook and he’s been helping me with my less than impressive culinary skills.”

“Italian? I thought he was Irish like us. It is Flynn, right?”

“Yes. Andrew Patrick Flynn. Irish on his father’s side, Italian on his mother’s.”

“Ahhh…is that why we’re having lasagna along with the ham as part of Christmas Eve dinner? Is it an Italian thing?”

“Actually, it’s an Andy thing. The Italians have a tradition called “The Feast of Seven Fishes”. They serve seven different seafood dishes on Christmas Eve. “

“And just where did you learn that?” Christine leaned in and snagged a carrot, grinning when Sharon swatted her hand away.

“Where do you think? It was part of Andy’s Christmas celebration when he was a child, but without a big extended family around him in California it was just too much food, so he started making his mother‘s lasagna instead and it became his and Nicole’s tradition. I decided to give it whirl and surprise them, hopefully make them feel more at home. I called his mother for her recipe. Usually it calls for tiny meatballs and sausage but Andy gave up red meat so this is a vegetable alternative. Sylvia swears no one will know the difference. I guess we’ll see.”

“Just don’t tell Ed what’s inside. It’s like pulling teeth for me to get him to eat vegetables—and his cholesterol is through the roof.” Christine continued to watch her sister stir spinach leaves into a big bowl of ricotta cheese singing, “I’ll be Home for Christmas” along with Andy Williams.  Shaking her head, she grabbed a bottle of chardonnay from the refrigerator and poured them each a glass, asking, “Who are you, and what have you done with my sister?”

“What do you mean?” Sharon accepted the glass of wine and took a sip.

“Come on Share. You’ve never exactly been Martha Stewart. You always said you hated cooking; now you’ve morphed into Giada De Laurentiis.”

Sharon smirked. It was true. Back when Emily and Ricky were growing up, cooking meals had been just another responsibility she had to deal with on her own, right up there with laundry, grocery shopping and paying the bills. After working a full day at the PSB, sometimes longer, driving out to St. Joe’s to pick the kids up at their after school programs, settling them in at home and refereeing their squabbling, she was ready to kick off her high heels and curl up to relax with a glass of wine. Instead, she had to prepare a decent healthy meal for them. She did her best to create balanced menus, but the crock-pot and the microwave had become her best friends.  After supper, while the kids sat at the kitchen table doing their homework, she would help them in between washing the dishes, cleaning up and packing their lunches for the next day. Once she had them bathed and tucked in with a story or two, she would do laundry or catch up on some work before crashing in her own bed with a book. Most nights she was lucky if she made it through a whole chapter before falling asleep. By the time her alarm went off in the morning and it was time to start the process all over again, it often felt like she had just closed her eyes.

“I used to look at cooking as just another chore on an endless list of chores. But with Andy, it’s fun. His love of cooking is infectious. I’ve started to enjoy it—at least when we’re cooking together. He’s taught me a lot and it’s just kind of nice to have that time together to unwind at the end of the day. We have some of our best conversations while we’re chopping and sautéing together.”

Christine sighed. “You’re lucky. The only thing Ed can cook is scrambled eggs, and he’d never think to lend me a hand.”

Sharon smiled at her sister. Christine liked to gripe about her husband, but there was no doubt how much she loved the man.

“I am pretty lucky. Between Andy and Rusty’s boyfriend Gus, who works as a cook, we’ve been eating very well lately, even without all the fat and red meat.”

++++

“Everything okay?’ Andy asked later, when they were dressing for the dinner party and midnight mass.

“Yes, why do you ask?”  Sharon slipped the back of her earring on then turned to face him.

“I noticed a moment between you and your sister earlier today when she was hugging Ricky.”

“Mm…The perils of being engaged to a detective. Nothing gets by you.”

Andy’s eyes lit and he took her hand, a swell of love and pride filling his chest at his ring back on her finger, hopefully for good this time. “I like hearing you say that…engaged. But, you’re right, it didn’t get past me. I know it’s been a long time but your mom and I were just talking about that this morning. You never get over losing a child and with Ricky being the same age as her son would be?” He shook his head sadly. “I can’t even imagine.”

Quick tears burned in Sharon’s eyes at just the thought of losing her son. “I don’t even want to imagine.”

Back when they were in the “getting to know you” phase of their relationship, Sharon had opened up to him about the death of her nephew.  Like Sharon, Christine had married right out of college, but unlike Sharon, her marriage to Brian O’Connor had seemed perfect. Their first daughter Jillian was a honeymoon baby, born a year before Sharon had Emily. Then a year after Emily, Bridget had come along. Despite living on different coasts, the three girl cousins bonded easily during Sharon’s vacations home.

Christine got pregnant a third time and after two girls, she and Brian longed to round their family out with a boy.  Sharon had just given birth to Ricky when Christine found out that the baby she was carrying was also a boy. The sisters were thrilled and hoped their two sons would be just as close as Emily, Jillian and Bridget were. But, Joshua Michael O’Connor was born only 25 weeks into Christine’s pregnancy. He weighed barely over a pound---and died almost three weeks later. It had been devastating for the whole family. Family leave did not exist at the time and Brian had to keep working. Chris was recovering from her c-section and wanted to spend every second at the hospital but Colleen had recently broken her leg hiking in the White Mountains leaving her unable to take care of Jill and Bridget. Brian‘s parents were divorced and he did not have a good relationship with his mother, so, still on maternity leave, Sharon had flown back east with three year old Emily and baby Ricky to help. Figuring it would be hard for Christine to see healthy, thriving Ricky while her own tiny baby was fighting for its life, she had taken all four kids out to her grandparent’s house on Nantucket, while Colleen and William were there to support Brian and Christine.

Sharon remembered that time as more like a blur rather than a vivid memory. It had only been six weeks since she had given birth. She was nursing Ricky who was proving to be a much more demanding baby than Emily had been and was still not sleeping through the night. On top of that, she had to chase, entertain and take care of three little girls between two and four. It was exhausting. Her postpartum hormones were already wreaking havoc with her emotions and the added grief of seeing her little nephew covered in wires and tubes, along with trying to comfort her sister, was almost more than she could bear. But she did. Bear it. Because even though her heart was breaking. Even though she’d flown back to the east coast knowing that her marriage, barely five years in, was already in serious, serious trouble, she simply didn’t have the luxury of falling apart. Her family needed her and that was that. Somehow, she was able to dig in and find a way to summon reserves she didn’t even know she had.

Ironically, Christine’s marriage died first. Not slowly and painfully the way Sharon‘s had, but sharp and quick. Chris and Brian simply never recovered from their child‘s death. Brian wanted to try again right away for another son, while Christine was afraid to take a chance and go through that grief again. She was happy with just having her little girls. For Brian, it was a deal breaker. Before the ink was even dry on the divorce papers, he had remarried and quickly had two more children with his new wife. Both were girls.

A few years later Chris hired a landscaping company to do some work on her yard and met the owner, Edward Simmons. It was a perfect fit. Ed was 10 years older than Chris, divorced with two teens about to head off to college and was perfectly happy to help raise Christine’s daughters without wanting any more children of his own. Chris went back to school, got her masters in music history and was now the head of the music department at a private school in the Massachusetts Berkshires.

“She adores Ricky,” Sharon said. “But it’s not surprising that there are times it’s still hard for her. I suppose if we lived closer and she saw him all the time it would be different. Each time she sees Ricky she wonders what Josh would look like since they would be the same age. Would he be as tall as Ricky is? Would his voice also be changing? You know those kinds of things. “

“It’s good that you two can talk about it.”

“Mmm.. I worried about that in the beginning. I was afraid it might come between us. But Chrissie isn’t like that. She can love Ricky without resenting him or me for being lucky enough to have him. Can you help me with my necklace please?” She lifted her hair and presented her back to him so he could fix the clasp on the delicate white-gold chain with its tiny pearls and Celtic cross. When he’d finished she turned around leaving her hair up.

“What do you think?”

Her dress was strapless in a deep shade of emerald that matched her eyes. A sheer illusion scalloped lace overlay with elbow length sleeves covered her from her shoulders to her nipped in waist. The sheath style hugged her gentle curves in all the right places and she‘d finished off the look with a pair of knee high black suede boots he’d always found incredibly sexy. That combination of classy with sexy was something Andy had never found in another woman. “You look stunning…as always.”

Sharon smiled, warmed by the way he always made her feel so beautiful. “Thank you, honey, but I meant my hair. Do you think I should wear it up or down?”

“You’ll look gorgeous either way, but…” He threw his tie around his neck and took a step toward her pulling at the hand that held her hair up to allow it to fall in auburn waves to her shoulders. Reverently he thread his fingers through the silky mass.  “You know how much I like you to wear it down. I love your hair.”

“The feeling’s mutual.” No middle aged balding or comb-overs for her man. Andy’s full head of thick dark silver tipped hair contrasted beautifully with his tanned skin. Her silver fox was sexy as hell. She felt herself flushing at the memory of the previous night, his head between her thighs, her fingers digging into his hair, clutching and tugging at the short strands insistently while he pleasured her in that way they both enjoyed.

As if he knew what she was thinking Andy’s eyes met hers, mutual appreciation and desire starting to flame. His lips brushed over hers in a kiss that started out tender, but quickly blazed, tongues tangling before he broke away to trail his mouth along her jaw. His words were muffled against her skin. “Is it wrong that I want to fuck you right before we go to church?”

“Andy---“Sharon’s breath caught in her chest, a wave a lust running through her veins. From the very beginning, Andy had proven to have an uncanny ability to throw her off balance in a way that was completely new to her.

He grinned, that lazy sexy half grin that did nothing to dampen her libido.

“It’s not wrong,” she said reaching out to grab the two ends of his tie. “But we can’t. We’re already dressed and we have to be down to dinner in a few minutes.”

Her hands were trembling as she began knotting his tie. Andy still wondered over the fact that he could have this kind of effect on her. Sharon presented such a self-contained reserve to the outside world, but on the inside, she was a warm, passionate, responsive woman, at least with him.

“There,” she said when she finished. She took a step back and admired her work. Suspenders in a cranberry and emerald paisley pattern held up Andy’s dark dress slacks and his green tie matched her dress.  She’d watched him choose the green one over the cranberry one after seeing which dress she was wearing. Taking a step toward him, she couldn’t resist running the back of her fingertips over his cheek. “So handsome. You look like you stepped out of the pages of GQ.”

“Spoken like a true woman in love.” His smile widened until it brought out his dimples. Oh damn, the man was killing her.

“Spoken like a woman who tells the truth.”

Andy lifted her hand, toying with her engagement ring. He wondered if he would ever get used to seeing it there, or if it would ever stop giving him a thrill. Somehow, he doubted it.  Other than his sobriety, he’d never worked as hard for anything in his life as he had to win Sharon Raydor’s heart. And he‘d never wanted anything more than to spend the rest of his life with her. That ring was the proof that somehow he‘d been able to do both.

+++

Colleen paused for a moment and stood back to take in the elegance of her fully set dining room table, extended by three leafs to accommodate the large family gathering. Everything was perfect, from the Irish linen and crystal to her best English lace fine china and silver. Red and white poinsettias surrounded by wreaths of holly created festive centerpieces and long flickering candle tapers added a touch of warmth .It had been a long time since she’d had her entire family home for Christmas and she was enjoying every minute of it.

“Okay everyone,” she called out. “Dinner’s ready.”

As the family made their way into the dining room, everyone was too focused on the food to notice that Andy and Sharon were slightly anxious and a bit fidgety. A large ham caramelized by brown sugar and dotted with cloves sat in the center surrounded by bowls of fluffy white mashed potatoes, steaming fresh green beans and almonds, gooey sweet potatoes, corn swimming in butter and a large casserole dish filled with the cheesy lasagna, it‘s top browned nicely.

“Okay,” William said, once everyone had found seating. “Who would like to say grace before I start carving this ham?”

Andy cleared his throat nervously. Sharon gave him an encouraging look and they both stood. “Before we say grace,” Andy began. “There’s uh, something Sharon and I would like to share with you.” He waited until everyone stopped chattering and turned to look at them expectantly before continuing.  “Earlier this week, I asked this beautiful lady right here to marry me.”

Sharon wrapped her arm around Andy’s waist, almost melting into him.

“What did she say?” Ricky called out amongst the excited squeals.

With a smile that lit up her whole face, Sharon lifted her hand, finally showing off her beautiful diamond engagement ring.

Andy was beaming with pride. “Thank God, she said yes.”

With that affirmation, everyone jumped to their feet and surrounded them with laughter, hugs and kisses and plenty of admiration of Sharon’s ring.

“I can’t believe you kept this a secret all this time.” Emily admonished her mother as she examined the glittering diamonds.

“It’s only been a few days,” Sharon said. “And we thought it would be more special to do it tonight with everyone here.”

Christine pushed forward, arms crossed under her breasts. “Okay sis, now we want all the romantic details.”

“Sorry, I’m afraid that’s confidential.”

“Oh come on, Auntie Sharon,” Bridget wheedled.

"Yeah, come on Auntie Sharon,” Chris grinned. “At least tell us where he proposed.”

“Well…I suppose I can tell you that much.” In a touching gesture, Sharon rested her head lightly on Andy’s shoulder. “We had a lovely dinner sitting by the fireplace at the Inn and then he took me on a moonlit horse drawn sleigh ride up through the woods to this gorgeous gazebo. It was all lit up with white twinkling Christmas lights. That’s where he asked me.”  

“Did you get down on one knee, Dad?” Nicole wanted to know.

“Of course I did. Gotta do things by the book with this lady.”

Sharon smiled tenderly at Andy. “It was all very romantic. The most romantic night of my life.” That drew a chorus of “Awwwsss….”

“Congratulations, son.” William put a hand out to take Andy’s in a firm handshake. “You be good to my girl.”

“Yes sir. Always.”

Colleen’s gaze moved from Andy back to Sharon. It was no wonder her daughter seemed to radiate love and happiness when she’d spoken of Andy and of their relationship, and that she‘d finally seemed at peace.  Stepping forward she cupped Sharon’s lovely face in her palms. “Honey, I couldn’t be more pleased for you.” She kissed her child’s cheek and then turned to Andy opening her arms to him. “Welcome to the family, Andy” she said. And with that, she enveloped him in a warm embrace of acceptance.

+++

“Sharon this is delicious.” Andy took another helping of lasagna. “I can’t believe you made my mother’s lasagna.”

“Are you sure it’s good?”

“Just as good as Nonna Sylvia’s, even without the meatballs and sausage,” Nicole assured her.

“It’s delicious,” Ed said, shoveling in a mouthful, oblivious to the soft giggles as Christine’s eyes met Sharon’s across the table.

“So.” Ricky stabbed his fork into another slice of ham. “When’s the wedding?”

“Well.” Sharon grew uncharacteristically flustered as all eyes turned back to her and Andy. “We haven’t gotten that far yet. We've just become engaged. There are a few…things we need to work through.”

The table went silent, the joy of just a few moments ago dampened.

“What do you have to work through?” Ricky pushed. “I thought you said yes.”

“I did say yes. But, we need to decide where we can have the wedding.”

“What do you mean?” Emily was thoroughly confused. “Won’t you do it at St. Josephs?”

Colleen’s eyes met Sharon’s, devout Catholic to Catholic.

“Well, there’s a problem with that. Andy and I are both divorced Catholics. We can’t get married in the Catholic Church and if we get married outside the church we could be denied the sacraments.”

“Oh my God, when is the Church going to join the 21st century?”

“Ricky.” Sharon’s tone was one of warning, but it was Andy setting his hand over the frustrated young man’s and giving him a slight negative shake of the head that caused Ricky to step back from his argument.

“You know there’s a way around that,” Colleen said. “You could get an annulment.”

“We’ve discussed that,” Andy said. “But there are problems with that too.”

“I don’t think mom will have an issue with it,” Nicole said. “She’s been remarried a long time.”

“I don’t think she will either, but…”

“But Jack probably will.” Sharon finished for him. Before everyone could jump in with their opinions, especially her two biological children who were looking pretty outraged, Sharon cut them off. “Look, we’re happy, we’re engaged, and we’ll figure this out. Let’s just enjoy this moment.”

“Sharon’s right,” William said. “This is a happy day.” He lifted his glass in a toast. “To Andy and Sharon, the future Mr. and Mrs. Flynn.”

“Well…” Sharon hemmed, lifting her glass with everyone. “That’s still up for debate.”

With everyone clinking glasses and questioning Sharon on whether or not she would keep her last name no one noticed the pointed looks shared between Ricky, Emily and Nicole.

TBC

[ewingmadison]

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[preserving-ferretbrain]

by Dan H

Saturday, 22 May 2010

Dan learns that SCIENTISTS HAVE CREATED ARTIFICIAL LIFE!~

So the big news in Science at the moment is that Scientists have created artificial life!.

First of all. Dear newspapers, news websites, news programs and other news media. Please for the love of all that is holy stop attributing things to “scientists”. “Scientist” isn’t a job description, it is at best a way of describing a broad category of people with vaguely similar qualifications. Opening a story about the recent implantation of synthetic DNA into a bacterium with the headline “Scientists Create Artificial Life” is about as helpful as me opening this article with the headline “Arts Graduates Talk Shit About Microbiology”.

So anyway, it appears that a geneticist by the name of Craig Venter (who was one of the big names behind the human genome project, although I confess that I’d never heard of the guy before) along with the rest of his team (a team which, digging a bit deeper, he may not actually have been the head of – some sources seem to credit the initial announcement to one Daniel Gibson, although that may just be because Gibson’s name is alphabetically first) have successfully implanted a synthetic genome into a bacterium, causing it to behave like a different bacterium.

Now to give the press their due here, part of the reason that so many newspapers are running with the “artificial life” byline is that Venter (who is, by all accounts, a bit of a showman) is keen to claim that this is exactly what they’ve created. Venter and his team make a wide variety of incredible claims for this technology – that it will allow us to reverse climate change, produce limitless cheap fuel, and cure whatever diseases are big at the moment. And of course on the other side of the fence there are folks saying that this will lead to the end of the world and genetically engineered super-bacteria invading Kensington. And if I had a penny for every time I’d seen the words “playing God” I’d be able to get an extra cup of coffee out the vending machine.

What’s staggering about this story, from my point of view at least, is how utterly ignorant most people seem to be about how all of this stuff actually works.

Here are some choice quotes from the BBC “have your say” section:

You can't control evolution. It only takes one of these bacteria to mate with another and you have serious and posibly extinction problems. Not a good idea.

Ah yes. Bacteria. Well known for mating with each other.

For those who have an imaginary friend and think we are playing god, yes we probably are, and we are getting very good at it. It's no longer just nature that can create new life. People can do it too, although we are just part of nature ourselves really, aren't we!

Ka-ching! That’ll be a penny, thanks. So… do you actually have anything to say other than “this sounds awesome but I have no idea what any of it actually means”?

Also. The “god = imaginary friend” line? Are you fucking twelve?

Before this study continues we need to be sure that the "bacteria" doesn't mutate like all other organisms in this world do. We all know computers have flaws. This scientist is just in way over his head and he needs to slow down. This could do more harm than good. This could be a step toward ending global warming or it could be a step towards mind control. Watch out it is 1984 all over again.

Umm … okay. So you know that all organisms in the world mutate. But you seem to think that if this organism was to mutate, for some reason that would be unconscionably terrible? And where exactly is the mind control thing coming from.

Of course it’s not just the ignorant plebs that post to the BBC main page that spout this mindless dogshit. Michael Hanlon, Science Editor for the Daily Mail writes:

It is possible to imagine a synthetic microbe going on the rampage, perhaps wiping out all the world’s crop plants or even humanity itself.

Well yes. It is indeed possible to imagine that. It is possible to imagine anything you damned well want. I could imagine an army of killer penguins going on the rampage and wiping out all the world’s crop plants or perhaps even humanity itself. It doesn’t mean it’s remotely plausible.

Aside from a few echoing voices of sanity, the discussion of this story is just a desperate, mortifying condemnation of how little basic understanding of biology people have.

DNA For Dummies

DNA or “deoxyribose nucleic acid” as it is known to its friends and drinking buddies, is a sequence of “base pairs” which in layman's terms form a set of instructions which tell our cells how to develop and how to behave.

Just as Venter observes, DNA “code” is effectively made from four chemicals, Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine and Thymine. This is what he was talking about when he said that his “artificial life” had been made from “four bottles of chemicals”. Although DNA is extremely complex overall, the chemicals it is made from are very basic, and reasonably well understood. “Scientists” have, in fact, been producing artificial DNA for years, and have been swapping the DNA of bacteria around for so long that it's taught at A-Level.

Chris Ventner's analogy is that DNA is like the “software” to the cell's computer, and this analogy is more or less correct. But it's exactly this analogy that makes the whole “Artificial Life” thing sound so stupid. If you took a computer, scrubbed the hard drive, and then installed a new operating system which you had copied from another computer, you wouldn't claim to have created that computer yourself. You certainly wouldn't expect to get your face on the cover of Wired with headlines saying “SCIENTISTS CREATE ARTIFICIAL COMPUTER IN LABORATORY”.

As one of the (depressingly rare) sane commentators on the BBC article pointed out, it's not actually artificial DNA that's the challenge here, but artificial everything else. DNA is complex, but it's ultimately one chemical. Building a whole artificial cell would be vastly more difficult. Others pointed out that since the DNA implanted was effectively an artificial copy of the DNA of an existing bacterium, they didn't really “create” anything that didn't exist already, and again when it comes to DNA the hard part is working out what a particular bit of code actually does, not reproducing it.

Indeed it's all a bit Ship of Theseus. This “artificial life” consists of DNA copied from one living organism, implanted into the cells of another living organism, which carried on living. Were it not for the quasi-mystical significance which popular consciousness attaches to that strange stuff called “DNA” nobody would claim for a second that these guys had successfully “created life” any more than we say that people with pacemakers are cyborgs.

That's Life?

A big part of the problem with the “artificial life” claim is that when you get right down to it, “life” just isn't a well defined technical term. Yes there's the definition we all learn at GCSE (something is alive if it Moves, Respires, is Sensitive to its surroundings, Grows, Reproduces , Excretes and consumes Nutrition – the “Mrs Gren” definition) but that's a bad definition all around – if nothing else it applies to a great many things which you wouldn't describe as living, like fire.

Life, when you get right down to it, is a self-sustaining chemical reaction with an arbitrary level of complexity. You can say that a cow is alive and bag of nails isn't, but once you get into the freaky world of micro-organisms it gets far harder to draw the line (a lot of biologists draw it at viruses).

I said earlier that both sides of this whole stupid affair were as bad as each other. While the anti-science crowd are crying about “Playing God”, the pro-science crowd (who thanks to Dan Brown I will now forever think of as “Galileo's Illuminati”) are crowing about the fact that “Science” has created “life” and that this proves that religion is obsolete (seriously, a depressing number of people really do talk like they're in Angels and Demons).

The problem with the “Science Creates Life” soundbyte is that for it to have any meaning, you have to buy into the superstitious, quasi-mystical notion of “life-essence”. That there is somehow a tangible, observable, creatable force called “life” which has been hitherto beyond the reach of scientists.

“Life”, like “energy”, is lodged in the popular consciousness as being a kind of invisible liquid which flows to and from objects, rather like the Force. Heck, there's even a tendency to treat them as the same thing. Rather like the Force. In reality these sorts of ideas went out with the Victorians, but because they're easy to imagine, they've stuck around to this day. Anybody who hails this new “discovery” as a triumph of science over superstition has actually failed to understand what the scientific consensus on “life” has been for the past hundred years.

Nature and Artifice

The biggest source of stupidity in this whole non-story seems to be the persistent notion that it matters whether or not something is “natural”. This is pure superstition. It's like the old myths about microwaved water being bad for you because its “chemical structure” is somehow changed by the “radiation”.

The idea that “artificial” DNA can function just as well as “real” DNA should be utterly unsurprising to anybody with a basic understanding of the way science works. The fact that artificial DNA can be created is interesting, but only from an engineering perspective, it doesn't raise deep philosophical questions about the nature of life, because those questions have, in the mind of pretty much anybody who keeps up with the science, already been answered.

And in a sense, the same goes for the potential applications of this technology. There's been a whole lot of talk about how these “custom bacteria” will either save the world or destroy it (which, again, is exactly what Dan Brown says about antimatter at the start of Angels and Demons). This is nonsense.

We can already engineer “custom bacteria” using DNA from existing sources – as I learned during my sodding GCSEs, we already use it to produce insulin, and have been for over a decade. Whether the DNA we make these custom bacteria with is cut wholesale from other cells, or whether we make it ourselves from “bottles of chemicals” is irrelevant. We don't understand anywhere near enough about how DNA actually works to invent wholly new organisms, all we can do is copy bits and pieces of things that already exist and do more or less what we want. And we're not going to break any existing scientific laws. There's some talk of these bacteria being able to make fuel out of Carbon Dioxide, and to be fair they could (so can, y'know, plants) but they'd need an energy source to do it, so all it would really be is a complicated solar power plant.

Similarly, worrying about these “custom bacteria” mutating and destroying the world is rank idiocy. Bacteria exist. They mutate. There is no special quality in “natural” bacteria which prevents them from evolving into a world-destroying superplague. Michael Hanlon, in the Mail observes that there's “no guarantee” that these engineered bacteria will “follow the rules”. Where he thinks these “rules” come from, or why he thinks natural bacteria obey them, he does not explain. Perhaps he believes that there's some kind of long standing union agreement.

The same magical thinking arises time and again when a new technology allows us to do artificially something which has been happening naturally for centuries. Somehow we imagine that heating water with microwaves can turn it into a deadly poison, when heating it with infra red radiation doesn't, or that particle collisions in the LHC will create a black hole that destroys the solar system, when the billions of similar particle collisions that happen all the time all around us have no such effect.

“Scientists” have not “created life”. They've created some synthetic DNA, and implanted it into a bacterium, both of which are things we knew they could do already. It's technologically moderately interesting but it doesn't challenge our perception of what life is, it hasn't let the any genies out of any bottles, and it isn't going to make us all live forever.

None of those make good headlines though.

Arthur B

at 22:54 on 2010-05-22

Michael Hanlon, in the Mail observes that there's “no guarantee” that these engineered bacteria will “follow the rules”. Where he thinks these “rules” come from, or why he thinks natural bacteria obey them, he does not explain.

Yeah, at most you can say that all the natural bacteria and micro-organisms out there follow the "rules" of natural selection.

Which means that a synthetic bacterium brewed in a lab for some completely artificial purpose like producing human insulin is going to be far less likely to thrive in the wild than a "natural" bacterium which has been subject to all the dangers that threaten a wee microbe out in the big wide world. It's like expecting a family of chihuahuas to take down a wolf pack on the pack's home turf.

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Andy G

at 23:57 on 2010-05-22Interesting stuff!

“Life”, like “energy”, is lodged in the popular consciousness as being a kind of invisible liquid which flows to and from objects, rather like the Force. Heck, there's even a tendency to treat them as the same thing. Rather like the Force. In reality these sorts of ideas went out with the Victorians, but because they're easy to imagine, they've stuck around to this day.

Actually I have been writing an essay about a recent book that talks about life and energy in just those terms! But he is talking more about the way the world is experienced in consciousness (to try and describe the way in which the world appears "dead" to many people with schizophrenia). I think the problem with lots of Victorian thought was that it treated lots of concepts as if they were a matter of empirical reality (like the Creationists taking the Bible literally). And that's clearly lingered on Have Your Say.

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Rami

at 00:42 on 2010-05-23I'm probably wrong, but as I'd understood it, the more interesting work was in developing synthetic RNA to engineer already-understood bacteria into a wider range of useful applications?

Anyway, to regurgitate a tired old meme: I, for one, welcome our bacterial overlords...

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Viorica

at 02:05 on 2010-05-23. . . I'm sorry, you lost me at "DNA"

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Dan H

at 12:45 on 2010-05-23

I think the problem with lots of Victorian thought was that it treated lots of concepts as if they were a matter of empirical reality

To be fair, the "invisible fluid" models for things like life and energy were actually perfectly good physical theories for quite a long time, so for that matter was ether theory.

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Dan H

at 12:47 on 2010-05-23

I'm probably wrong, but as I'd understood it, the more interesting work was in developing synthetic RNA to engineer already-understood bacteria into a wider range of useful applications?

Yeah, something like that (although I believe that's far older technology). But funnily enough SCIENTISTS DEVELOP SYNTHETIC RNA is much less punchy than SCIENTISTS CREATE LIFE!

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Frank

at 15:46 on 2010-05-23

None of those make good headlines though.

Or excite investors.

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Jamie Johnston

at 16:17 on 2010-05-23I've got to the sub-heading 'DNA for dummies' and at this point I'm going to stop reading for a moment to summarize what I've understood of this story from my sole source of scientific news, namely BBC Radio 4. Then I'll read the rest of the article and see how accurately Radio 4 has informed me. It's like an experiment!

So my impression is that Venter's team (or whoever) has analyzed the DNA of some bacterium or other, put together molecules in the same combinations as that original DNA so as to make some new DNA that's functionally identical to the original DNA, and then put that DNA into a different 'empty' bacterium. The bacterium then happily wandered around being a bacterium, in every important way the same as if it had been 'born' naturally by, er, whatever the normal way for a bacterium to come into existence is (cell-division or something?). It also reproduced in the usual way (see earlier vagueness) to create new bacteria just as a 'natural' bacterium would do. In short, they've taken stuff that was previously not a living creature and made it into a living creature. It isn't a 'new organism' in the sense of being a new species. (Do bacteria have species? You know what I mean, though.) It's just a new individual. The whole business is exciting in as much as if you can make new DNA then you can (1) theoretically do cloning and stuff without having to take DNA from existing organisms, and (2) very very theoretically make DNA in new combinations and thus ultimately new types of organism.

Things I'm not clear about: I don't know on quite what level the new DNA was created, e.g., whether they took protein molecules they already had lying around and stuck them together, or whether they made the new molecules out of atoms and stuff, or what. I suspect it doesn't matter much. Also I have a mental image of the new DNA being somehow physically squirted into a microscopic empty cell-membrane bag, but I've no idea whether that's literally how it works. Nor do I know how they got the empty bacterium in the first place.

Now I'll read the rest of the article and see how wrong all that is.

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Dan H

at 16:27 on 2010-05-23I think the bit you're missing is that the "empty" bacterium was in fact a perfectly ordinary bacterium from which the DNA had been removed, so the other bacterium had, in fact, been "born" in the normal way, it's just that they had taken its DNA out and replaced it. So they took something that was actually totally a living creature, and made it into a slightly different living creature.

It's sort of like giving somebody a heart transplant and claiming that you'd created a living human on an operating table. It's technically true that neither the person receiving the transplant, nor the transplanted organ can survive independently of each other, but claiming that you have therefore "created" a whole new person would be farcical.

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Frank

at 16:32 on 2010-05-23re: 'Scientists'

On the latest edition of NPR's Science Friday, one of the segments discussed the origin of the word 'scientist'. The person who coined the word dismissed other possibilities to describe/define a 'cultivator of science'. The coiner (Well?) chose 'scientist' because it may remind readers/listeners of the word 'artist' who were apparently held in higher regard, but he was also concerned that 'scientist' might suggest less esteemed people of the time with '-ist' endings specifically 'economist' and 'atheist'.

It is funny that some people in the writing/dancing/sculpting/painting/drawing/etcing communities would love to be thought of as the generic term 'artist' while those working in the fields of genetics/biology/chemistry/geology/thermodynamics/etcics cringe at the label 'scientist'.

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Jamie Johnston

at 16:56 on 2010-05-23Although there's also a fun sort of tongue-in-cheek 'reclaiming' (and simultaneously 'pointing out how unhelpfully broad a term it is') thing going on, at least among internetty science-fans if not among professional science-doers, saying things like 'Let's do Science on this!'

Which in turn tempts me to start saying things like 'Stand back: I'm going to do Arts!'

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http://roisindubh211.livejournal.com/

at 03:46 on 2010-05-24This line makes me crack up:

Watch out it is 1984 all over again.

Has this person actually read 1984? I wonder where he/she gets the fascism-biology connection? Is Big Brother supposed to be created in a lab?

Seriously- you're spoilt for choice for science gone OUT OF CONTROL in literature, from Frankenstein to Jurassic Park, for goodness sakes, and they pick 1984?

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http://mmoa.livejournal.com/

at 12:57 on 2010-05-24I actually find it a little ironic that one of the more reasonable responses to this has come from the Vatican itself who have officially declared this advance as 'interesting':

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/22/vatican.synthetic.cell/index.html?hpt=T3

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Arthur B

at 13:03 on 2010-05-24I think after the whole geocentrism/heliocentrism thing the Vatican

really

doesn't want to get caught out again when it comes to making statements about science.

Except where it comes to

condoms

, in which case they'll endorse any pseudoscientific bollocks which supports their position.

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Andrew Currall

at 18:26 on 2010-05-24I don't think I share your dislike for "scientist". Yes, it has rather a broad scope, and yes, it is often used to create an air of authority that it shouldn't actually create (anyone can claim to be one, many with some legitimacy), but I don't see that it's any worse than "geneticist"- it's just a bit less specific. It does mean something, and is generally so far as I can see used more or less correctly. It's certainly no worse than "artist".

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Jamie Johnston

at 18:49 on 2010-05-24Deleted my second comment because I seem to have written it without reading Dan's response to my first one, hence it made no sense. But anyway, @ Dan: yes, I hadn't gathered that. So in fact they haven't really created a new individual, they've just, er. Um. Made an individual different?

Also, @ Róisín (if you don't mind me using that as if it were your name, even though it probably isn't, simply because it's a name): Yes, and another ludicrous thing about that is that the phrase 'it is 1984 all over again' (rather than the more obvious 'it's like 1984') actually draws attention to the fact that

1984

never even happened the first time. In fact the problem with people ever invoking

1984

in a 'we're heading into totalitarian hell' way is that the main thing about

1984

is that the year 1984 came and went and there was no totalitarian hell.

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Arthur B

at 19:11 on 2010-05-24

In fact the problem with people ever invoking 1984 in a 'we're heading into totalitarian hell' way is that the main thing about 1984 is that the year 1984 came and went and there was no totalitarian hell.

Can't agree here. The main thing about the title of 1984 is that it's completely arbitrary - Orwell had wanted to go with 1948 but his publishers considered that a bit too bleak even considering the subject matter.

The main thing about the

content

of 1984 is that it is actually timeless* and dismissing it because it didn't come about on some arbitrary schedule is rote repetition of

the

most annoying misconception about science fiction ever devised by man - namely, that it's a predictive genre and individual works become invalid if their predictions don't actually come to pass.

Jamie, I am disappoint.

* It is, in fact, literally timeless - there's no reason to assume that the year the novel takes place in is in fact 1984. The Party could have added in or blotted out centuries of history if it so chose, or indeed keep recycling the year 1984 over and over again for shits and giggles.)

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Andy G

at 19:14 on 2010-05-24

Can't agree here. The main thing about the title of 1984 is that it's completely arbitrary - Orwell had wanted to go with 1948 but his publishers considered that a bit too bleak even considering the subject matter.

Isn't that an urban myth? I thought the title was actually based on a rather bleak poem his wife wrote for a 1934 school competition imagining life in 50 years' time.

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Arthur B

at 19:31 on 2010-05-24Anthony Burgess was fond of the 1948 idea. The usual explanation I've seen is that he just switched the last two digits of the publication year. According to the intro to the Modern Classics version he did consider several several years for the title. Not heard the poem explanation before.

Either way, the point is that Orwell wasn't predicting an inevitable slippery slope to utter totalitarianism by 1984, he was suggesting a constant threat of totalitarianism that

any

generation could succumb to. There's no vaccine against dictatorship and no society immune to degeneration, we can't pat ourselves on the back and say we've saved ourselves from it just because we got past one particularly overhyped year.

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Andy G

at 19:42 on 2010-05-24@ Arthur B:

His former wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy wrote a poem called "End of the Century, 1984" (which only came to light after Burgess had come up with his theory). I can't actually find it online but it's meant to be fairly bleak and dystopian. It seems to me a more plausible influence, as it seems a bit arbitrary to just swap numbers.

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Arthur B

at 20:48 on 2010-05-24Thanks!

(The working title, apparently, was

The Last Man In Europe

...)

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Jamie Johnston

at 21:58 on 2010-05-24@ Arthur: Fair point, I am mostly wrong. In related news, I am not entirely wrong because I also partly meant something else, namely that people who say 'it's just like

1984

' are often using it precisely as a predictive exercise, their implied reasoning being, for example, 'people in positions of authority are using euphemisms, this is a bit like newspeak, therefore totalitarian hell is imminent'. In other words they treat

1984

like a less cryptic and more secular version of Revelations.

Also I haven't heard people having that misconception about science fiction before, so I deny that I have had a derivative fail and insist that I be given full credit for an original work of fail. :)

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Arthur B

at 22:22 on 2010-05-24

In other words they treat 1984 like a less cryptic and more secular version of Revelations.

This is very true, though to be fair I wonder whether Orwell didn't at least partially intend it to be like that, or at very least a spotter's guide to general symptoms of totalitarianism - between Winston Smith's diary, Goldstein's book, and O'Brien's speeches in room 101, you've pretty much got an easily-grasped analysis of the sort of traits you can expect a totalitarian society (or one heading in said direction) to exhibit.

I think it is sometimes correct to say that a situation is "just like 1984", but only if it shows the actual signs Orwell wants us to watch out for. So, widespread censorship, pervasive surveillance, a culture of informants, brazen propaganda, that sort of thing, especially when several signs are seen in combination with the others. It gets ludicrous when one of the more minor elements (like Newspeak), occurring in isolation, is used to argue that the entire package is unfolding in real life.

It's kind of like Godwin's Law - it's not actually bad to say someone is acting like a Nazi if they are in fact an antisemite and a fascist. Likewise, it's not actually bad to say "It's just like 1984" when, for example, you're protesting against people being spirited away in the middle of the night to secret prisons in far-flung parts of the world to be tortured for information on enemies of the state.

Applying it to biochemical advances is pathetic, though. Haven't they ever heard of

Brave New World

? ;)

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Andy G

at 23:16 on 2010-05-24I think I'd quibble a bit with the idea that Newspeak is a minor element!

On the other hand, I do remember a Telegraph article that mentioned how Big Brother imposed metric units (one of the guys in the pub grumbles about it at some point) ... that's what I call distorting a minor element!

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Arthur B

at 23:35 on 2010-05-24I think Newspeak is significant in the novel, but I don't think it's actually so useful in analysing IRL social trends to see whether things are drifting towards authoritarianism - in particular, I think Newspeak as depicted in the novel is the sort of thing which you could only really successfully accomplish if you'd already established utter totalitarian control over a society (which is why in the novel it was only in its emergent stages, and normal English was only just beginning to be phased out).

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Dan H

at 13:49 on 2010-05-25

It does mean something, and is generally so far as I can see used more or less correctly. It's certainly no worse than "artist".

The point being, though, that you don't say "ARTISTS DO X" every time somebody with an arts degree does something.

"Artist's thriller trilogy becomes posthumous bestseller"

"Economic downturn may continue, say artists"

"Viking settlement lasted into 17th century, artists discover"

It's just completely stupid.

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Dan H

at 13:50 on 2010-05-25

@ Dan: yes, I hadn't gathered that. So in fact they haven't really created a new individual, they've just, er. Um. Made an individual different?

Yes, pretty much.

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Andy G

at 01:33 on 2010-05-26

@ Dan: yes, I hadn't gathered that. So in fact they haven't really created a new individual, they've just, er. Um. Made an individual different?

It's nano-augmentation! Deus Ex here we come!

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Rami

at 03:54 on 2010-05-26

The point being, though, that you don't say "ARTISTS DO X" every time somebody with an arts degree does something.

Of course, bearing in mind that the separation between "science" degrees and "arts" degrees is not AFAIK seen in the same light (or referred to in the same terms) in North America, the word "scientist" is used much more for someone whose profession is in scientific research. Which makes it rather less ridiculous. Just like the headline "Artists launch new show at museum" wouldn't be completely ridiculous even if it did conflate painters, sculptors, filmmakers and performing poets.

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Andrew Currall

at 12:50 on 2010-05-26"Artist" doesn't mean "someone with an art degree" any more than "scientist" means "someone with a science degree". It refers to one's profession (or possibly hobby), not training. Historians/archaeologists are not artists (not are they usually scientists); neither are economists. Authors are, and I admit use of "artist" in place of "author" is unlikely. But it isn't wrong, nor do I see any problem with it.

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Dan H

at 13:07 on 2010-05-26

"Artist" doesn't mean "someone with an art degree" any more than "scientist" means "someone with a science degree".

That's sort of my point, that's *exactly* what "scientist" means - it's the only possible meaning. It *isn't* a legitimate job description.

Rami's right that it's used *colloquially* (both in the UK and in the US) to mean "people who work in scientific research" but this is simply incorrect - just as it would be incorrect to refer to people who do research in Arts subjects as "artists".

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Rami

at 17:47 on 2010-05-26

It refers to one's profession (or possibly hobby), not training.

I can't get to

OED Online

but according to

Merriam-Webster's definition

training is exactly what it refers to.

Possibly some of the confusion here is that "artist" and "scientist" are not used (or defined) similarly: an artist is “

someone who professes and practises a creative art

”, not just someone trained in it. Neither colloquial nor formal usage, AFAIK, refers to arts graduates (or, in USian, liberal arts majors) as "artists".

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Dan H

at 18:44 on 2010-05-26

Possibly some of the confusion here is that "artist" and "scientist" are not used (or defined) similarly

I think you're right - artist was a bad example.

Basically the term "scientist" describes a broad, heterogenous group of people, but the media like to invoke "Scientists" (a subtly distinct, and wholly fictional class of person) to lend legitimacy to otherwise implausible claims, which is why it bugs me.

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Andy G

at 03:30 on 2010-05-27OED says a scientist is someone who is studying or has expert knowledge of a scientific field. It would still sound a little odd to me though to call someone a scientist purely on the basis that they happen to know science. It may not be a job description, but it surely implies something about what that person *does*.

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Guy

at 06:25 on 2010-05-27Surely the now agreed-upon definition of "scientist" is "someone who lies about how magnets work."?

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Arthur B

at 15:37 on 2010-05-27@Guy: Sounds like these geneticists have been listening to the Insane

Clone

Posse!!!!!!!

Geddit?

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Guy

at 08:54 on 2010-05-28@Arthur - if someone wanted to create a cover band for them (which itself would probably require some kind of Miracle, or possibly a life-form artificially created to have inhuman levels of bad taste) that would be a great name for it. :)

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Jamie Johnston

at 23:08 on 2010-05-28Aha! Allow me to shoe-horn in the totally irrelevant fact that the best tribute-band name ever is:

aRe wE theM?

And, to return to the subject, although we bid a sad farewell to the exciting idea of synthetic life-forms taking over the world, there are glimmers of a slightly more plausible but still entertaining thriller plot in which it's actually not the media but Venter himself who is exaggerating the implications of his work in order to justify

an application

to patent every conceivable technology that could arise from making DNA and squirting it into cells. I hear Dan Brown uncapping his pen.

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Robinson L

at 20:30 on 2010-12-18

And if I had a penny for every time I’d seen the words “playing God” I’d be able to get an extra cup of coffee out the vending machine.

The Omnians have a saying, “Don't play God, He [sic] always wins.”