Is Musical Talent Genetic...

This is Ben Taylor. Ben is the son of Carly Simon and James Taylor.

And, if your not sure, then take a look at Sally Taylor, Ben's sister, as she performs with dad.



I really like all their music offerings. I have a whole stack of James Taylor records, a few Carly Simon records, but none from either Ben or Sally. This is going to change in the very near future.

Challenges - A Recent Debate

This might not be the usual fare that I type here in my blog but it was a recent conversation I had with two colleagues (perhaps friends even) over a couple of bottles of red wine! It was far from one of those drunken conversations where any old crap goes. On the contrary it was somewhat reasoned but mostly it was opinionated based on what could be best described as personal anecdotal observations of life in action!

The question posed related to once a woman was married was she off limits to all resident Casanovas or was it simply a case of being a bigger challenge? My colleagues tended to think that generally the answer here was one of being off limits. I, on the other hand, tended towards an increased challenge. My view is based on the fact that there is so much more at stake for a married person so the challenges would seem to be inversely proportional to the commitment to the marriage.

This is to say the more committed to the marriage the greater the challenge and conversely the less commitment there is to the marriage then so does the challenge decrease.

The argument was moot in the sense that no cheating on our individual parts was being contemplated. It was one of those debates that arose out of knowing someone where the subject matter of the debate was relevant!

In the end we agreed to disagree!

However, another interesting tangent to this debate was the idea that some men seem to harbor a belief that they are "God's gift to women" and this means that not even lesbians are safe from their God given charms in seducing women! For me this is an interesting argument as well. It could conceivably work in reverse with a woman thinking she could convert a gay man from one side to the other.

I am no scientist (which is probably a good thing for the world as I would probably be a 'mad' one) but this kind of argument intrigues me because I have always considered homosexuality and lesbianism to be genetic and not a learned behavior (and therefore not an illness to be cured). So, in that sense if you're gay then you're gay and similarly if you're a lesbian then you're a lesbian. There is no chop and changing between this and heterosexuality (bisexuality aside).

The point of this post is to solicit (perhaps elicit would be a better choice of word) any one who reads and wishes to comment on the challenges identified here. Comments posted after a enjoying a bottle of red or two are especially welcome :D (the picture is one from the Hrdlicka collection).