Nobel Prizes and Noble Gases

There are the noble gases like helium, neon and argon which are inert which means their molecules are not able to bond and form compounds or, metaphorically, relationships. Then there's nobility which has nothing to do with inertia unless you're talking about sitting ducks like the Romanovs. Finally you have the Nobel Prize which sounds like a reward based on lineage, when in actuality, it's a creature of the meritocracy.This year's Nobel in literature went to the French writer Annie Ernaux who recently looked back on the hot affair she had with a Russian diplomat in her youth. It was a relationship predicated on impossibility thus DOA and intrinsically inert--which may explain both its passion and ultimate doom.

read "Why Big German Words Like Vergangenbangenheit Carry Weight" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Sexmachine" by James Brown