When I started at university, one of the girls in my year was an identical twin. She and her sister had been at the same school, studied the same subjects, applied to the same universities to read the same subjects - but got accepted by different ones. One of them got the offer from my university and one didn't.
She lasted about a term, IIRC, before melting down and going home, where she started at the same university as her sister.

I read a blog post about a similar issue (transracially adopted twins dressing identically when in an environment where they're racial minorities) this morning. Obviously heebie and I are brain twins.

But you can tell us apart by our working/non-working links.

The theory I've heard is that the longer individuation is deferred, the more harrowing and less healthy the process seems to be when it finally occurs. (Resentments have apparently been known to simmer behind the united front for decades and finally erupt as one twin assaulting or murdering the other, for example.) On the other hand, supposing they could keep it up fully into adulthood, find jobs at the same law firm and a nice set of twin girls to marry... maybe that's not such a bad thing. Spectacularly unlikely, perhaps, but not bad in itself.

3: something's up with your website, babe. I tried to create a link a few days ago that turned into exactly the same 404 error created by exactly the same problem in the link. And I even previewed my comment and tested the link before posting (and it worked).

Argh! working link.

I've said before that I went to elementary school with identical twins born on Leap Day. We all had to wear uniforms, but I believe their mom made one wear one color shirt and one the other so that she could sort laundry more easily.

Do you mean to say those twins both turned you down?

I believe David Cronenberg has weighed in on this question.

5: This was my fault. I just copied the address out of my Chrome bar without letting the page actually load and didn't pay attention to not having grabbed the http part.

I dated an identical twin for about a decade, and while they were close, they didn't seem more so than a pair of very close siblings - talked a couple times a week on the phone, strongly supportive of each other, and had rare but somewhat traumatizing intense arguments. They also deliberately chose to attend different universities, and while I gather it was a bit difficult at first, they soon adjusted just fine to only seeing each other once or twice a month (they were an hour a way by bus). They did routinely borrow each others clothes when they were together which led to a rather awkward moment early on in the relationship.

That's a rather touching story, from 6.

There was a Gordon Korman (YA) book with a side note of identical triplets in high school who traded off classes and classwork depending on the subjects they were best at.

OP.2: I was in private supervision for a while, which is to say essentially work-therapy where you try to work out with a more experienced clinician why you're tripping over the things you're tripping over. (It was a hoop to jump through in order to get my LCSW, which never happened, but it was very worth doing.)

Sometimes my supervisor would say to me "why are you working harder than your client? You should never work harder than your client." It's a piece of advice I've had to be careful with because some of my clients don't help themselves because they're really fucked up, and should not be penalized for it. But it's really helpful a lot of the time.

|| I have had to reschedule my verdammte sleep study a second time because I have a head cold. I'm both irritated that I can't get it over with and relieved that I can have a normal night instead of, by report, a distinctly un-fun one. |>

5: I think your link error had the same problem as Thorns's. They had 'unfogged.com' tacked on to the start of the right URL.

I honestly don't even understand comment 9, so I'll assume that I also must have screwed something up, but I really did preview and it worked, and then posted and it didn't.

The best case scenario would be male twins, one of whom grows the "evil Spock" beard.

There are two kids in one of my classes who are not identical twins, or even related to each other at all, but whom I cannot tell apart. It's past midterm! And yet I have to check one of their video assignments before every class to get a grip on which one is named what. And then I still get it wrong a ton of the time. It's ridiculous and embarrassing.

I don't know what is up with me except that they have similar hair, always sit next to each other, and both have names that end in TH.

When you leave out the http, it treats it as an internal link, and slaps http://www.unfogged.com/cgi-bin/ on the front.

I think it was discovered earlier that for some people, copy-pasting from the URL bar in Chrome (which hides http from sight) results in an http at the beginning, and for some people it does not.

But I just tested an http-less link and it was duly broken in the preview, so I have no idea what urple's doing.

People who don't know us or don't know us well keep assuming Mara and Nia are twins, which makes sense since they're inseparable and less than an inch apart in height. I usually do their hair at least subtly differently and often drastically so, but they do like to dress similarly. One of the neighbor kids said he doesn't like to say hi to them anymore because their names are long and hard to remember and he's afraid he won't be able to tell them apart and will feel bad.

I don't think this will actually feel like "being twins" to them, but I wonder what it does feel like to be a sibling (and they've decided they want to be referred to as sisters) in a way that's different from the norm. Also, I'm so grateful that Nia is easy-going and doesn't mind that so many people who see her if she's not with Mara say, "Wow, Mara, you're getting so big!"

5: This was my fault. I just copied the address out of my Chrome bar without letting the page actually load and didn't pay attention to not having grabbed the http part.

Not your fault. Chromes fault. I get bit by that problem all the time, because apparently Google felt that http in a URL was too confusing for users to understand. God forbid users see any of the underlying infrastructural warts behind the magical technology of the internet.... why they might actually learn something!

Sorry, this missing http is a thing I have been bitter about for quite a while.

17: Just remember that Thoth has the ibis head, and Seth has the... whatever it is. HTH!

I think it was discovered earlier that for some people, copy-pasting from the URL bar in Chrome (which hides http from sight) results in an http at the beginning, and for some people it does not.

I think what happens is that you can't copy the http portion of the URL until after the page is loaded. So, if you try to just grab the URL from what pops up as a bookmark when you type it in - without going to the page - you are screwed.

Sorry for all the irksome flippancy, everyone. I will be back to intermittent dullness and gloom very soon.

I knew a set of twin girls from school who ended up marrying a set of twin guys. I asSUME they trade off at will, right?

no worries, I doubt anyone will notice.

FWIW, I'm using IE, not Chrome.

Well, that's just barbaric.

I have one of a set of twins in my class right now. The other one is taking the same course, but in a different section; I ran into him at the campus tutoring center. When he asked when my office hours are, I told him my office hours are for my students only. To which he replied, "Oh! So I can come, as long as [brother] isn't there."

I knew a set of twin girls from school who ended up marrying a set of twin guys. I asSUME they trade off at will, right?

Will just can't stop meddling.

28: This gets to what I would think would be the problem: how would you know they weren't copying of each other?

There are identical twins working in my field(ish) who, IIUC, worked at the same institution until age 30 and frequently collaborated, then spent the next 10 years mostly working at neighboring(ish) institutions and still frequently working together. After they turned 40 they finally went their separate ways.

One of my new colleagues (in a different department) has a twin sister who works in the same subdiscipline at a different university.

Won't end well.

8: is Dead Ringers worth seeing? I was actually just thinking about it today, and what I was thinking was, "is this a good movie, or just a weird and creepy movie?"

Firefox has become more chrome-like (on a PC, at least). No http in the address bar + they ditched the old status bar and hovering over links doesn't show as much as it used to. Chrome actually handles the link hover better now, to my disappointment.

I liked Dead Ringers, but I saw it over 20 years ago so it could be dated.

I once mistook my father for his twin brother when I was a child. My mother took me to the doctor's and my father was there waiting for us. But I knew where Dad was, he was at work. I'd seen him go off in the morning. So it had to be my uncle. Except it wasn't. I was very confused.

10: Ooo, spill!

I have cousins who are twins. They went to the same college, but don't dress alike or have the same hairstyles or anything. So it's annoying that I still can never tell them apart. I wait until I hear one of their names used and match it to something they're wearing or their latest hairstyle, and later when I need to use their name I'm sure they can hear how uncertain I am about it.

37: That sounds like it could be one of the non-math puzzles they're looking for in the other thread.

I'm jealous of twins...it would be cool to have someone so close to you.

My father and brother were identical twins who as far as I can tell could not wait to go their separate ways. It is something I keep meaning to ask my dad about.

As I mentioned here at some point, his brother died late last year (probable heart attack--no one was there). His brother did come out of the Navy in WWII much thinner than my father did out of the Army, and through most of their adult lives there was a moderate (10-20 lbs.) weight difference.

41. That adds to my conviction that you can make too much of twin observations. My dad and his brother, while physically identical, were as different people as you could get: Dad being straight, financially cautious and politically centre left; my uncle being flamboyantly gay, hopeless with money and right wing (I could extend the list of contrasts forever if I could be bothered.) And yet they remained incredibly close all their lives, and wrote to each other weekly until my uncle's last illness.

My conclusion: genetics is overrated.

41 Strange that, just the other day a colleague was telling me his grandfather chose the Navy over the Army because the food was better.

43: There were specific circumstances involved, both were in the Pacific but my father spent the last n months of his time in the Army hanging around Monterrey, CA working in a canning factory waiting to get de-mobilized and gaining about 30 pounds while my uncle experienced an extended period of low rations at some point towards the end of the war.

42: Overall my observation are mixed on that. They just were not that close and the larger circumstances of their adult lives they differed a bit--but on "micro" behavior and minor physical characteristics (the way they held their mouths, verbal tics, vocalization etc. they were uncanny). The first time I visited him with my wife (and it had been years for me) we were almost in giggles due to the similarities; the best was when we were leaving, and he followed us out the driveway and stood there pantomiming directions--precisely as my father would do. I nearly wrecked the car watching him in the rearview mirror.

I recall Dead Ringers being quite sad underneath the Cronenberg "your body is disgusting, puny consumer" stuff.

I think the best fictional turn on the potential of twins was a side story in Tibor Fischer's The Thought Gang where a pair pretends to be one person thereby providing them an airtight alibi as to whereabouts when dastardly deeds are being done by one of them. After they are arrested the one owns up that his plan was to eventually kill the other and then feign resurrection to get into the messiah game. I assume that gambit has been used elsewhere in fiction.

It's fun to think how common late-30s grandparents have been historically,* even if the idea is totally counterintuitive to me as a late 30s Dad. You have your kid at 20; she has a daughter at 18, and there you are a 38 year old grandpa. Seems totally reasonable and way easier on everyone's bodies.

My nanny as a toddler (privilege alert) was a great grandmother then in her 50s. She's now in her 80s and is at least a great-great grandmother.

*yes I know that the traditional northern European age of marriage was later.

Aggh, wrong thread. But worth posting in the other one? Probably not. So we'll just let that comment die on the vine.

47: That theme is worked into The Prestige twice, I guess.

I suppose it is a privilege in some quarters to have a toddler-nanny, but I'd rather you not post about that here, Robert Halford.