Thinking on women in the 19th Century French Society.

I adapt, with various modifications to reflect modernity, a discussion in 1828, at about one o'clock one morning, between a famous doctor, Horace Bianchon and one of the most elegant men in Paris at the time Baron de Rastignac. It does not reflect my Opinion about women at all. I propose you take it for its pure entertainment value, if any.

Love never goes to study the registers of birth and marriage; no one loves a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or clever; we love because we love.

But some love for quite other reasons; because a woman is fashion, for example, she has soul, her foot is very pretty, she has perhaps alot of money, perhaps he may marry her!
"I have all the discomforts of marriage and of single life, without the advantages of either; a false position to which every man must come who remains tied too long to the same apron-string."Baron de Rastignac said.

The fragile, fair woman, with her chestnut hair, who pities herself that she may be
pitied, enjoys an iron constitution, an appetite like a wolf's, and the strength and cowardice of a tiger.
There is something of the ways of the fine ladies whose bodies we attend to, saving that which is dearest to them, their child-if they love it-or their pretty faces, which they always adore. A man spends his thoughts obs4eesed with them, wearing himelf to death to spare them the slightest loss of beauty in any part; he succeeds, he keeps their secret like the dead; they send to ask for his bill, and think
it horribly exorbitant.

Those women of whom is said, 'They are angels!'have seen stripped of the little grimaces under which they hide their soul, as well as of the frippery under which they disguise their defects--without manners and without stays; they are not beautiful.
If only you knew how much value the cold, severe style of such a woman gives to the smallest evidence of their affection! What a delight it is to see a periwinkle piercing through the snow! A smile from below a fan contradicts the reserve of an
assumed attitude, and is worth all the unbridled tenderness of your middle-class women with their mortgaged devotion; for, in love, devotion is nearly akin to speculation.

In short, some men have a particular horror of that kind of woman-a woman of fashion. Do you want to know why? A woman who has a lofty soul, fine taste, gentle wit, a generously warm heart, and who lives a simple life, has not a chance of being the fashion. She, the woman of fashion, is the diamond with which a man cuts every window when he has not the golden key which unlocks every door. Leave humdrum virtues to the humdrum, ambitious vices to the ambitious.

A woman of fashion and a man in power are analogous; but there is this difference: the qualities by which a man raises himself above others ennoble him and are a glory to him; whereas the qualities by which a woman gains power for a day are hideous vices; she belies her nature to hide her character, and to live the militant life of the world she must have iron strength under a frail appearance.

She feels nothing; her rage for pleasure has its source in a longing to heat up her cold nature, a craving for excitement and enjoyment, like an old man who stands night after night by the footlights at the opera. As she has more brain than heart, she sacrifices genuine passion and true friends to her triumph, as a general sends his most devoted subalterns to the front in order to win a battle. The woman of fashion ceases to be a woman; she is neither mother, nor wife, nor lover. She is, medically speaking, sex in the brain, she is as polished as the steel of a machine, she touches everything except the heart." Marry an angel! you would have to go and bury your happiness in the depths of the country!

What about the wife of a politician. She is a governing machine, a contrivance that
makes compliments and courtesies. She is the most important and most faithful tool which an ambitious man can use; a friend, in short, who may compromise herself without mischief, and whom he may belie without harmful results.

Do you accept this diatribe against the modern independent woman, what they used to call then-a woman of fashion?

Perhaps his greatest enemy was TIME itself

"When it's all over, it's not who you were. It's whether you made a difference"

A man with incredibly low self esteem, painfully shy, supremely talented; he was, as is the nature of most gifted people, most fragile. He needed love and approval. I do too, infact alot of it. But he lived for it, and the only place he ever got it was on stage. That's where he was preparing to return-THE STAGE-to the one place he could find the love and adulation that never seemed to register anywhere else.
It is tempting to ponder, perhaps MJ'S greatest enemy was TIME. It was a life in modern day tragedy. A star at 11, a teen idol as an adolescent and the King of Pop before he hit 30, he spent what should have been the best years of his life HOUNDED, HAUNTED AND CONFUSED.
One thing for sure: He is frozen forever in time, electric on stage, sliding his inimitable way through Thriller, a defining image in our collective memory.
IT is a life left in ruins. We will learn by his example, the treacherous nature of celebrity in modern age. HE died at 50,reportedly awash in about $400 million in debt. But that and the other fact of certain-to-follow court battles over his children and his wealth(whatever there remains)is not for today.

He taught many how to live. There were always those waiting outside the courtroom or hotelroom who screamed his name like a prayer, a mantra. He feared he would die like Elvis(according to Lisa Marie Presley). Both, by the way, suffered abuse from their handlers. Drugs played a part in both of their deaths. And both had defective Systems of Support (hungers-on and yes-men) that led to their early demise.

ThE World mourns the arc of a life that should have been filled with the blessings of success as defined in our world: money, talent, fame and celebrity. But instead it descended into a hellish purgatory on earth and died a very lonely person-all to himself with his doctor and maybe one other person. He died damned by public opinion (not all public opinion though)and tortured by demons only he understood. Some defeat those demons, and some don't. Michael Jackson ran out of TIME.

He lived like a King but died with a Whimper

'One night he called me in a panic. He had just gotten married to Lisa Marie Presley and needed advice - sex advice. He was incredibly nervous and said that he wanted to make sure that Lisa was impressed with his "moves." He asked me if I had any advice. I answered with one word: "foreplay." -Gotham Chopra, a close friend of Michael Jackson.

"Really?" He answered. "Girls really like that?"


"You and I must make a pact, we must bring salvation back, where there is love, I'll be there..."
"I'll Be There" was one of the first songs that introduced us to that legendary performing/recording act of five brothers, The Jackson 5, featuring the angelic voice of a small, skinny kid named Michael. Their music became the soundtrack of the early seventies, it being impossible to have not owned at least one of those infectious singles (information not of my own knowledge}. A mere year or so later, the pre-teen Michael Jackson (marketed as being two years younger) became a solo artist, with his own run of child's view singles that included his first monster hit and release, "Got To Be There,".

Some time between the brothers' hits "Enjoy Youself" and "Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground)" and right around the time Michael starred in The Wiz alongside the 5's Motown sponsor surfaced, tales of intense rehearsals, parental abuse and emotional neglect; it was shocking since these boys appeared on every home's entertainment device for years, thus becoming somewhat extended family to many.
That was the first controversial tabloid exposé the still rising star had to survive, but sympathies especially went out to Michael, his having been the most popular and familiar face of the act as well as one of his family's youngest children. Under the supervision of Quincy Jones, the producer/architect behind an emerging late seventies/early eighties champagne r&b sound, the album Off The Wall and its associated hits established Jackson as a young African American icon.

The album's follow-up, the international sales phenomenon that was Thriller. At the top of his game as well as the world, Michael won eight Grammys for the hit-packed album, and he showcased his famous moonwalk dance moves on Motown's 25th Anniversary special. Virtually, the next day, every kid on the planet was trying to emulate his or her pop hero, and from this point on for many years, he really was the King of Pop, all due respect to The King.

It's after this point when things started reeling out, his Bad album having included many hits, though none that touched the heart as what came before. The whole idea of Michael Jackson now being "bad" in any sense of that word was ludicrous, as was the album cover that featured a thuggish, mysteriously lighter-skinned Jackson. His growing immodesty and contrived crotch-grabbing contradicted everything we knew about him, and that emerging, fabricated image probably was the first red flag that something was very wrong. Perhaps those around him did not re-orient him from fear of losing their jobs or offending, and probably, this was the last, best moment in time that some kind of intervention might have been effective.

From then on, though pretty good albums and decent singles were released such as the beautiful "You Are Not Alone" and "Heal The World" (after which he named and created a charitable foundation), Michael Jackson's career and personal life decisions did almost nothing more than provide fodder to the tabloids. The list they were able to choose from was long and disturbing: marrying then immediately divorcing Lisa Marie Presley; converting his home into Neverland; having numerous plastic surgeries that resulted in stranger physical appearances; acquiring a hyperbaric chamber and, apparently, the bones of the "elephant man," John Merrick; adopting Bubbles the chimp; securing an arranged marriage and pregnancies with Debbie Rowe; naming his son "Prince Michael"; arranging for interviews during which he asserted his heterosexual desires a little too insistently -- something we never really gave much though about until allegations of sexual abuse with children occurred, which brings us to those stories of Macaulay Culkin, Jesus Juice and sleepovers with children that takes us to the endless lawsuits and eventual loss of his millions and collapse of his career.

Today's death of Michael Jackson accompanies the death of a little more of americas' country's innocence. And it's symbolic that his heart finally just gave out. Ultimately, the adult Michael was responsible for his own actions and will be remembered for them accordingly. But due to his abusive upbringing and unimaginable, disorienting success as an artist, he probably just couldn't handle his life in any practical way. All we know now is that he suffered from something, and his passing is tragic because it happened at the bottom of a downward spiral, his never really being able to redeem himself in the eyes of the public -- something we seem to require before a forgiveness and acceptance back into the flock. Beyond the reams of his documented eccentricities, Michael Jackson was a huge talent who'll be missed, and he was one of our better, kinder kids whose life and story spun out of control, those seeds probably planted in his misplaced childhood. Just a thought -- shouldn't we have been our disturbed brother's keeper when it was obvious he really, really needed one?

Is Iran collapsing!

Some stories shock us for their audacity, some shock us for their uncommonness, but others shock us because normally they are about things that just cannot happen but then they happen!! Tell me, is iran collapsing!

For those who still doubt the movements of a society

For those who still doubt the movements of a society
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg4n86sq_2c7w2q2c8&invite=g77zjth

Today

Frequency of insignifican speech

Today, the 13th of June 2009, I get inspiration from Thomas Hobbes;let's listen to him: 

"In a good poem, whether it be epic or dramatic, as also in sonnets, epigrams, and other pieces, both judgement and fancy are required: but the fancy must be more eminent; because they please for the extravagancy, but ought not to displease by indiscretion.

In a good history, the judgement must be eminent; because the goodness consisteth in the choice of the method, in the truth, and in the choice of the actions that are most profitable to be known. Fancy has no place, but only in adorning the style.

In orations of praise, and in invectives, the fancy is predominant; because the design is not truth, but to honour or dishonour; which is done by noble or by vile comparisons. The judgement does but suggest what circumstances make an action laudable or culpable."

Plight of the Poor

Despite the stereotypes, the poor are not necessarily lazy, (though some indisputably and regretably are), and unwilling to work, downright stupid or content to subsist on handouts and goodwill of others.

POVERTY is a state we treat mistakenly, as an abstract social issue. The Kenyan government frequently has looked the other way as majority of its population languish in depriving conditions. The old policies and many of the new pro poor pro growth policies that are being paraded by the Finance Minister in his annual budget are unrealistic, if you ask me, and fail to grasp the magnitude of the poverty situation in this country. The visible result of years of non-action has been the growth of a new type of subculture in Kenya--the working poor and the educated unemployed.

The glaring reality is that, by not doing enough to address the poverty issue, we have created a permanent bifurcated society, one whose tensions and difficulties is narrowing the scope of national aspirations and even limiting some of the economic, social, and political freedoms. Nevertheless, there are viable economic and social alternative policies that could help improve the situation.

Poverty stands as our most conspicuous failure. It has become the most pervasive socioeconomic problem in our society, transcending tribal differences and geographical locations. The rich are amazingly rich and the poor are astoundingly poor.

Any realistic assessment of politics and poverty would conclude that the poor are not well-represented in the corridors of power. Their voices are all too absent from debates on policy reform directed at improving their conditions. Some cynics are quick to claim that the poor are all denizens of a self-perpetuating culture marked by, among others, chronic unemployment, crime and long-term dependency on others. These stereotypical characterizations misrepresent the magnitude of the poverty issue and the people enmeshed in this economic condition. The poor are not necessarily lazy and don't want to work. They are not all criminals. Poverty is a vicious cycle of economic strangulation. Children brought up in poverty are more likely to remain poor as adults.

We need a Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA. This involves the assessment of poverty; analyses of relevant public expenditures and institutions and safety nets; and the preparation of strategies to reduce poverty. The idea is to bridge the gap between policymakers and the poor by systematically bringing the human social dimension into this analysis. PPA addresses a wide range of critical questions:

* How do the poor perceive the relative importance of the various manifestations of poverty, such as low income, lack of food, security, and propensity to ill health"

* What do they see as the root causes of poverty?

* What factors block their opportunities for example, insufficient access to assets such as land and credit; geophysical factors causing isolation; and sex, ethnic class, or religious discrimination?

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain

All serious daring starts from within. With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.

Charles Darwin:A revolutuion in Thought

While aboard the HMS Beagle, Darwin collected evidence for his "Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the struggle for Life". Today, scientists are exploring evolution at a level of detail far beyond what Darwin could, and they are discovering that evolution sometimes works in ways Darwin could never have imagined. They feast on a far bigger banquet of data. In his time he had no clue what the human genome was and that DNA is what makes variation and heredity possible In proof of Darwin's theories, scientists have observed thousands of cases of natural selection in action. They've observed that bacteria develop resistance to drugs that were once believed to be invincible Also they have proved Darwin's claim that different species share a common ancestry. Paleontologists have found fossils of whales with legs, linking modern whales to their territorial ancestors. The fossils point to hippos and other hoofed mammals as being the closest living relatives to whales. Our own DNA contains clues to the bonds we share with the rest of life. For instance, we are a closer kin to mushrooms than to sunflowers!

Stopping settlements first

President Obama seems to have found Israel's soft underbelly-the issue of settlements. President Obama's anti-settlement stance has, unsurprisingly, prompted an outpouring of wailing and teeth-gnashing among Israel's supporters who view him as being the first American president to ever chart a middle eastern foreign policy that is markedly pro-arab. The problem in the Israel-Palestinian conflict is that there are on both sides a critical intractable minority that will accept nothing short of everything it wants. Benjamin Netanyahu must reign in ultra nationalists like Avigdor Lieberman and Abu mazan must reign in Hamas, if he ever will.

Those who deny FREEDOM to others, and rage and fight against the RIGHTS of others must know that in the just rule of GOD, they will not long retain their FREEDOM or their RIGHTS. Indeed those, like many unbalanced leaders in the third world, including in my country Kenya, who make a peaceful REVOLUTION impossible, render a violent REVOLUTION inevitable.

PRESIDENT MUSEVENI'S BRINKMANSHIP

A person capable of deceiving others is not nearly as dangerous as one capable of deceiving also himself. The latter is truly lost since he knows no untruths. He is dangerous since he can lie without speaking untruth, without having to lie. The grand isolation of such a person's thoughts leads him or her to express them in such words as are gratifying to only himself or herself while having a disgusting and unfortunate effect upon others who know that he or she is lost.

Post Mao Post Deng Xiaoping China

The rebirth of China from the dark, the very dark days of chaiman Mao, and the repression under Deng Xiaoping, (which led to the infamous Tianammen massacre), has raised global economic and political issues that can nolonger be ignored. Some fear that a China powerful economically and politically might be harmful to world order.