A fine question. She's quite attractive, actually. Tall, slender, long (formerly) blonde hair, big blue eyes, delicate features. On the other hand, she's probably around my mom's age. I imagine that 20 or even, ahem, 30 years ago, she was fantastically hot.
I don't have such a belt, Adam. We can't all be divinity school lotharios.
Err . . . I sought clarification from the Smasher offline, but I still don't understand what's supposed to justify the x/2 + 7 formula. Apparently, this is common knowledge, but I never heard it.
This has been discussed here many times. In the olden days, back when men were men and women were young girls, it was bandied about as a formula for determining the optimal age of your wife-to-be. Now, it's become the formula for determining the minimal acceptable age for the rogering of a younger by an older person, regardless of the genders involved (certain combinations of gender may render "roger" an inapposite word).
It is common knowledge, spread about popular culture like hippo shit. I attribute your ignorance to your hoity-toity NYC and Harvard education. I wager Phoebe Maltz is similarly unenlightened.
I had heard (from the always dependable "them") that the formula was developed by Jewish matchmakers, in which case I would expect that Yglesias and Maltz would have both been enlightened.
Right, I understand what the formula purports to do. But what's the justification. Why not +6 or +9?
Because, just as every seventh year one must let one's field lie fallow, so too must add six years of maturation from half one's age before plowing one's inamorata. But wait! you say. You said "six years", not seven. Quite! This is because crafty people "sell" their fields for the seventh to a gentile. So really, you need seven years—if you're crafty.
Think of it this way: Beginning grad students should stay away from freshmen. Junior faculty should stay away from undergrads. I think the numbers add up.
What makes you think it happened suddenly? Anyway, one mechanism could be that knowledge of the formula was retained after it no longer became socially acceptable to have such young wives, leading it to be reinterpreted in a more acceptable way—and I'm not sure it would be completely unacceptable for you to date a 19-year-old. Remember, this is a bare-minimum condition here.
It wouldn't be completely unacceptable, but one should expect to get a lot of shit for it. One of my coworkers married a girl at the low end of the 1/2 +7 continuum and every time his wife calls, his cubemate asks if she needed help with her algebra homework.
Standpipe is the real pwner here, but I fear that I have established the "beaten to the post" standard recentlyandbefore--occasionally with tragic consequences.
(Took me a while to get those links, I fear I will be pwned by my own petard....)
I'm yunger'n Adam, and while 52 is pushing it, I certainly couldn't rule out a woman in her 40s under the right conditions. I wouldn't say 52 was impossible, either, but the circumstances which would produce that are improbable.
This is a question worth teasing out. I initially told MY that his friends would mock him mercilessly if he dated someone who was 19, but I wouldn't have to sit him down or anything. But I'm not so sure. As MY rightly pointed out, this would be a college freshman he'd be bringing around. And we already mock him mercilessly, so that's not much of a disincentive.
Ogged makes a good point in 67. Dating someone young but not hott makes people think you just have control issues or can't handle someone your age. Young + foreign makes people question even more (as in my coworker's case).
I had a really creepy experience where the age of the guy interested in me was greater than X/2 plus 7.
It was the spring of my Freshman year in college, and I was taking a 4th semester Greek class on the Iliad. There were a couple of grad students in the class who were taking it for personal enrichment. One was a doctoral student in Chinese. The other was in the Government department and justified the class, because he wanted to use Thucydides in his dissertation. He must have been about 30.
I had shopped a Virgil class at which the professor had handed out Tennyson's poem "To Virgil, Written at the Request of the Manuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of Virgil's Death". In chit-chat before class I mentioned that I had the poem, and the guy asked me if he could look at it. I said, "sure." He then asked if he could borrow it and promised to return it. I said not to worry about returning it. (Even then I could have gotten it off the internet pretty easily.)
So a couple of days later he hands it back to me, and I put it in my folder. Back in my dorm room, I realize that he's attached a piece of paper to the poem. On it he has composed several lines in Homeric Greek. At the end, it says "Would you like to come over to my house for dinner at VI on Saturday evening?" (It was written with Roman numerals.)
It's creepy as hell, period, but I was especially bothered, because I was barely 18, and he was so much older. One of my roommates was taking a Government class, and it turned out that he was a TF for the course. He wasn't her TF, but she did attend one of his review sessions. I never mentioned it to him, and I refused to sit next to him in class for a while. It probably wasn't the most mature reaction on my part, but he did put me in an akward position, and the age difference made it especially uncomfortable.
Weren't these rules developed with reference to a rather different sense of the term "date" than the one the kids are using today? Where to date someone is to spend time, just with them, in a well-lit place, engaged in some activity with the expectation that, if you like each other, you'll do just that thing again and again and take it from there, the idea of someone Matt's age dating a college freshman doesn't seem so bad. Where it means to sleep with someone, then spend all your time with her, it looks rather different.
On either understanding, however, it would be wrong for Matt himself – as opposed to someone simply his age – to date a 19-year-old. Matt is a huge celebrity, probably the most important young pundit out there since Jonathan Chait burst onto the scene in the mid-90s. Chicks dig that kind of thing and it would not be right for him to take advantage of it.
Chicks dig that kind of thing and it would not be right for him to take advantage of it.
I think you have it precisely backwards.
Regarding your speculations on the word "date"—the various attentions paid to the youngest Miss Snopes (whose name I can't recall) are informative here.
84 was also intended as defense. After all, you're not the one who runs an entire website devoted to tales of his getting hit on by older persons of the opposite sex.
It's not a poem. It's a song, called "Carousing". It appears on Alasdair Roberts' Farewell Sorrow, which makes me think it's a Child(e?) ballad or something similar, but it is unknown to google.
Re 97. Yeah I got that 84 was intended as a defense, but then I read 85, and I didn't want to damage your reputation too much. So, I didn't mention it. But thanks to Kotsko and Weiner both!
there is the issue of the refrain, though. Some poems have refrains, but in a different way, it seems. (As for songs that repeat the same line over and over, they are either an abomination, or it is done for poetic effect.)
If you're going to enverb (is that the right word to make up?) the name Wolfson, wouldn't it mean TBALB, or to be hypercorrecting, or possibly to know some interestingly obscure references (I try to avoid saying nice things, but I can't always) not to interrupt flirting?
ogmb--Actually, he may not have said 6 PM. It might have been that he wrote out his telephone numbers in Roman numerals. But basically, the answer is both.
Hmm. When I met my wife we exactly matched the age/2 + 7 rule....
She was 21 and I was 28. Which didn't seem a massive age gap at the time given our respective levels of maturity ... :-)
And re: Yglesias comments above, a 19 year old dating someone in their early/mid 20s doesn't seem that odd. (With the usual "it depends on the person" caveats.)
When I was 17 and 18 my then girlfriends were 23 and 24 respectively...
Contrary to 78, dating an 18-year-old for sex would seem highly plausible, whereas dating an 18-year-old for conversation would not. (With a few long-dead exceptions such as Hannah Arendt and Lou Salome.)
Any news on the XXXX Heidegger-Arendt photos, btw?
I always thought the age/2 +7 rule was to yield a range where the age wasn't weird or creepy, not an optimum.
I think the idea was to yield an optimum in the mid-nineteenth century which by current standards is weird and creepy. One neat feature of the formula is that, under the original assumption that the man is the older partner, the appropriately aged partner for a menopausal woman is approximately dead.
I never thought it would happen to me. When I was in college, it seemed weird and creepy when I heard about people my age dating thirty year olds. But then Mr. Manley, the 70-year-old philosophy professor came into my life. His jowls were a little bit floppy, but I can assure you they were the only thing about him that was...
Seriously folks, this all seems like absurdity to me. You can observe a particular relationship with a big age difference and weird dynamics and say to yourself, "something there doesn't seem quite right" (although even then, at least in circles I've been exposed to, people have a tendency to overestimate their standing to evaluate what's going on in a relationship, which is of course mostly conducted in private, or just to find fault quickly because it makes them feel superior; unless you're close to one or both parties the only thing you can really say with authority is whether you enjoy spending time with the couple and why). But this rulemaking?
And BG, as with Ogged and the student who condescended to the UPS guy (or didn't), obviously you interacted with the guy and I didn't, but I don't see what in that story marks him as creepy. That he asked you out in writing so you didn't have to reject him to his face was kind of considerate; it respected your space and your possible shyness (he may have also been protecting himself, of course). Is he creepy just because he was older? But sometime in the history of the universe some 30-year-old has probably had a successful relationship (dating and/or sex) with an 18-year-old, and maybe he thought you were both pretty and well-spoken in class. Since he couldn't know ahead of time whether you'd be the type to say, "30, ew," was there no way he was allowed to express his interest, ever?
Dear Diary,
As regards my own relationship (I am four years younger than
She's a narc, duh.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 5:38 PM
Gone in 30 seconds is how she'd feel about you in bed.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 6:05 PM
re 2
geez, what a stupid comment. my only excuse is that it's really late here in europe and I'm still avoiding work prep for tomorrow.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 6:16 PM
She must be new to town, and looking for a new meth connection.
Posted by dj moonbat | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 6:17 PM
4, meet 1.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 6:56 PM
That's what the old folks are calling it these days.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 6:58 PM
By you, that's euphemistic?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 7:14 PM
Is she fuckable?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 7:56 PM
If so, you might want to go for it, just for the "belt notch." (I assume you already have a notch for "lesbian.")
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:22 PM
A fine question. She's quite attractive, actually. Tall, slender, long (formerly) blonde hair, big blue eyes, delicate features. On the other hand, she's probably around my mom's age. I imagine that 20 or even, ahem, 30 years ago, she was fantastically hot.
I don't have such a belt, Adam. We can't all be divinity school lotharios.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:24 PM
52/2 + 7 = 33
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:30 PM
I'm guessing we're closer to 58/2 + 7 = 36.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:35 PM
I would have gone for 52, but man, 58? Tough call.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:37 PM
So you have to wait (36 - Ogged's age) * 2 years. You're a patient man, right?
OK, I'm going to pg's place to suggest that her November fun trip should be to Daddyville.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:39 PM
Adam, aren't you, like, 24? What's this going for 52 business?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:44 PM
I can't speak for Adam, but I know I saw The Graduate.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:47 PM
25, actually.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:52 PM
You should go for it, ogged—she might be a wealthy widow.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:07 PM
Err . . . I sought clarification from the Smasher offline, but I still don't understand what's supposed to justify the x/2 + 7 formula. Apparently, this is common knowledge, but I never heard it.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:16 PM
"Because it's the formula!" wasn't answer enough, apparently.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:18 PM
This has been discussed here many times. In the olden days, back when men were men and women were young girls, it was bandied about as a formula for determining the optimal age of your wife-to-be. Now, it's become the formula for determining the minimal acceptable age for the rogering of a younger by an older person, regardless of the genders involved (certain combinations of gender may render "roger" an inapposite word).
It is common knowledge, spread about popular culture like hippo shit. I attribute your ignorance to your hoity-toity NYC and Harvard education. I wager Phoebe Maltz is similarly unenlightened.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:19 PM
cw--where do you live in Europe?
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:20 PM
Right, I understand what the formula purports to do. But what's the justification. Why not +6 or +9?
What's more, the conclusion that it would be appropriate for me to date a nineteen year-old seems mistaken. That's like a college freshgirl, no?
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:22 PM
I had heard (from the always dependable "them") that the formula was developed by Jewish matchmakers, in which case I would expect that Yglesias and Maltz would have both been enlightened.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:22 PM
LizardBreath says it's from Little Women, and ain't none of us going to argue with her.
It's probably unseemly to mention this, Matt Y., but on my own blog I'm arguing that you got pwned by Al.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:23 PM
Question: howcome we're always making fun of Yglesias for his Harvard education, but not Weiner or baa?
(Note to Matt Y: yes, this is an apparent defense that's actually a setup to let people slam you some more.)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:24 PM
Because I put my education to good use? (Sorry, BG.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:26 PM
Right, I understand what the formula purports to do. But what's the justification. Why not +6 or +9?
Because, just as every seventh year one must let one's field lie fallow, so too must add six years of maturation from half one's age before plowing one's inamorata. But wait! you say. You said "six years", not seven. Quite! This is because crafty people "sell" their fields for the seventh to a gentile. So really, you need seven years—if you're crafty.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:26 PM
You internet peons mock me 'cuz your jealous of my awesome fame.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:27 PM
Fuck. You're jealous. My achilles heel.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:28 PM
haw haw
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:29 PM
And I thought you'd done it on purpose.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:29 PM
re 21 how did an optimal age formula suddently morph into a minimum age one? And I still don't think 24/2+7=19 provides an intuitively correct answer.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:30 PM
Think of it this way: Beginning grad students should stay away from freshmen. Junior faculty should stay away from undergrads. I think the numbers add up.
Posted by not signing my name, sorry | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:33 PM
Ogged, she's plainly uttering her love poem to you, one line at a time.
Your stroke is nice
I want your speed
etc.
I give you one more encounter before she asks you "To do the deed."
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:33 PM
What makes you think it happened suddenly? Anyway, one mechanism could be that knowledge of the formula was retained after it no longer became socially acceptable to have such young wives, leading it to be reinterpreted in a more acceptable way—and I'm not sure it would be completely unacceptable for you to date a 19-year-old. Remember, this is a bare-minimum condition here.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:34 PM
how did an optimal age formula suddently morph into a minimum age one?
My guess is that we had this rule laying about, and acceptable age differences have become much smaller, so we used the rule we had.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:35 PM
Also, it provides counterintuitive results for young people—eg, my ten-year-old can date 12-year-olds, but not 11-year-olds.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:35 PM
Pwned, ogged.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:35 PM
I also think the "optimum" idea is kind of self-defeating. Every other year do you have to dump your bride for the next year's model?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:36 PM
It wouldn't be completely unacceptable, but one should expect to get a lot of shit for it. One of my coworkers married a girl at the low end of the 1/2 +7 continuum and every time his wife calls, his cubemate asks if she needed help with her algebra homework.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:36 PM
I take issue with classifying "beaten to the post" as pwnage. I concede that I was beaten to the post.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:37 PM
You should date people close your pwn age.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:38 PM
every time his wife calls, his cubemate asks if she needed help with her algebra homework
Becks works with a nice bunch of folks.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:39 PM
Indeed, the results are paradoxical. The youngest a 10 year-old can date is a 12, but a 12 needs to find someone who's at least 13.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:40 PM
Yes, I love where I work.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:41 PM
Actually, it could just be a way of enforcing a rule: no dating before you're 14.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:41 PM
Standpipe is the real pwner here, but I fear that I have established the "beaten to the post" standard recently and before--occasionally with tragic consequences.
(Took me a while to get those links, I fear I will be pwned by my own petard....)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:42 PM
I almost called it "Weiner's standard" when I took issue with it.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:43 PM
No! No one cares! cf text.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:44 PM
I'm yunger'n Adam, and while 52 is pushing it, I certainly couldn't rule out a woman in her 40s under the right conditions. I wouldn't say 52 was impossible, either, but the circumstances which would produce that are improbable.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:44 PM
50 to 48, though I fear you're busted.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:45 PM
This is a question worth teasing out. I initially told MY that his friends would mock him mercilessly if he dated someone who was 19, but I wouldn't have to sit him down or anything. But I'm not so sure. As MY rightly pointed out, this would be a college freshman he'd be bringing around. And we already mock him mercilessly, so that's not much of a disincentive.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:46 PM
Dudes, 19 is a sophomore. Were you left back?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:46 PM
Or did the Aggies redshirt you?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:47 PM
I was held back, wanna fight about it?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:48 PM
I was a junior at 19. A junior wouldn't be as creepy.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:48 PM
54 to Armsmasher and Yggi, who are claiming that freshmen are 19.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:49 PM
"I was held back" sounds like Shakespeare for "Someone grabbed my butt."
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:49 PM
It could also be a jr or sr, though. Or doctoral candidate. Don't be closed minded.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:51 PM
"It" in 60 refers to "17"
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:51 PM
or 19, even.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:52 PM
I turned 19 spring semester of my freshman year, was never held back, never went to A&M, and don't have to live in Lubbock.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:52 PM
Ouch.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:52 PM
Late start?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:52 PM
58: and 56 refers to 54. punk.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:53 PM
If you do date someone "too young," it has to be someone smokin' hot, so that people will think you're shallow but not necessarily immature.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:55 PM
BTW, mission accomplished. Yglesias gets a fruit basket!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:55 PM
"Too young"? you can get married in my home state at 12! It doesn't matter if she's younger as long as you make an honest woman out of her!
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:56 PM
Note that the "can go to bars" barrier is in fact significant.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:56 PM
Ogged makes a good point in 67. Dating someone young but not hott makes people think you just have control issues or can't handle someone your age. Young + foreign makes people question even more (as in my coworker's case).
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:57 PM
Well, if you want to be sending Yglesias a fruit basket, or have anything you want to say to him, or debts to settle, you best hurry.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:57 PM
I had a really creepy experience where the age of the guy interested in me was greater than X/2 plus 7.
It was the spring of my Freshman year in college, and I was taking a 4th semester Greek class on the Iliad. There were a couple of grad students in the class who were taking it for personal enrichment. One was a doctoral student in Chinese. The other was in the Government department and justified the class, because he wanted to use Thucydides in his dissertation. He must have been about 30.
I had shopped a Virgil class at which the professor had handed out Tennyson's poem "To Virgil, Written at the Request of the Manuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of Virgil's Death". In chit-chat before class I mentioned that I had the poem, and the guy asked me if he could look at it. I said, "sure." He then asked if he could borrow it and promised to return it. I said not to worry about returning it. (Even then I could have gotten it off the internet pretty easily.)
So a couple of days later he hands it back to me, and I put it in my folder. Back in my dorm room, I realize that he's attached a piece of paper to the poem. On it he has composed several lines in Homeric Greek. At the end, it says "Would you like to come over to my house for dinner at VI on Saturday evening?" (It was written with Roman numerals.)
It's creepy as hell, period, but I was especially bothered, because I was barely 18, and he was so much older. One of my roommates was taking a Government class, and it turned out that he was a TF for the course. He wasn't her TF, but she did attend one of his review sessions. I never mentioned it to him, and I refused to sit next to him in class for a while. It probably wasn't the most mature reaction on my part, but he did put me in an akward position, and the age difference made it especially uncomfortable.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:57 PM
Regarding 67: One imagines your swimming friend saying the same thing.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:58 PM
Michael: I'll meet you in DC in a week. I'm the one who looks like this.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:58 PM
I'm sure you're correct, Bridgeplate.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:58 PM
72: Meh, all debts get forgiven Wednesday night anyhow.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:59 PM
Weren't these rules developed with reference to a rather different sense of the term "date" than the one the kids are using today? Where to date someone is to spend time, just with them, in a well-lit place, engaged in some activity with the expectation that, if you like each other, you'll do just that thing again and again and take it from there, the idea of someone Matt's age dating a college freshman doesn't seem so bad. Where it means to sleep with someone, then spend all your time with her, it looks rather different.
On either understanding, however, it would be wrong for Matt himself – as opposed to someone simply his age – to date a 19-year-old. Matt is a huge celebrity, probably the most important young pundit out there since Jonathan Chait burst onto the scene in the mid-90s. Chicks dig that kind of thing and it would not be right for him to take advantage of it.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:00 PM
BG, I'm going to insist that all further comments from you begin with "Dear diary...."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:00 PM
And Tia's must start with "I never thought it could happen to me..."
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:01 PM
Nah, no late start. I don't really feel that I was much older than the mean in my class, either.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:01 PM
I inadvertently asserted your hottness, didn't I. Own-pwned!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:02 PM
Chicks dig that kind of thing and it would not be right for him to take advantage of it.
I think you have it precisely backwards.
Regarding your speculations on the word "date"—the various attentions paid to the youngest Miss Snopes (whose name I can't recall) are informative here.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:03 PM
You don't like anecdotes that are actually relevant to the topic under discussion?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:03 PM
84 to 79, though I probably shouldn't admit it.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:04 PM
75: And (when I'm angry.)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:06 PM
Man, I just can't comment tonight.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:06 PM
Drunk?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:07 PM
Alas, no.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:07 PM
Send your mom over, though, and we'll a-go carousing.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:08 PM
The Hulk's wearing a pretty goofy grin in that picture, meseems.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:08 PM
(I hope 89 doesn't tarnish my reputation!)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:08 PM
Bostonian Girl is the only reason I still come to this site.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:13 PM
11 comments were added in the time it took me to catch up, then craft my own unique contribution.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:14 PM
Thanks Adam. ogged's comment made me feel very unloved.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:15 PM
Send your mom over, though, and we'll a-go carousing.
Carousing all the evening and the drinking of the wine
The dancing and the wenching and the ladies in line
But we'll be lying idle in the morning of the day
Carousing, carousing, carousing away
And I love to see you angry; then I know you are alive
And you're already rowdy when the flash girls arrive
And we'll be lying idle in the morning of the day
Carousing, carousing, carousing away
And open the bottle and let the wine breathe
Open the bottle and let the wine breathe
Open the bottle and let the wine breathe
And I feel the sickness a-run in my veins
Holy pulse quicken oh easer of pains [?]
Knower of knowledge and namer of names
Worker and shirker and player of games
Oh holy pulse quicken oh how can this be
That that which unveileth does also deceive
So open the bottle and let the wine breathe
Open the bottle and let the wine breathe
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:16 PM
84 was also intended as defense. After all, you're not the one who runs an entire website devoted to tales of his getting hit on by older persons of the opposite sex.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:32 PM
Whoops, did I just Wolfson? Off to read about financial statement restatements.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:35 PM
A google search of the first two lines of ben's poem turns up only a forum entry from the dutch site of Rolling Stone magazine.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:38 PM
It was meant as a light-hearted jibe, people, jeez.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:39 PM
It's not a poem. It's a song, called "Carousing". It appears on Alasdair Roberts' Farewell Sorrow, which makes me think it's a Child(e?) ballad or something similar, but it is unknown to google.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:39 PM
It's not a poem. It's a song,
Songs aren't poems?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:40 PM
Re 97. Yeah I got that 84 was intended as a defense, but then I read 85, and I didn't want to damage your reputation too much. So, I didn't mention it. But thanks to Kotsko and Weiner both!
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:41 PM
No, songs aren't poems, though poems might be set to music, resulting in a song.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:41 PM
i tend to think music lyrics to be very poemesque.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:44 PM
Actually, in this case what I said above was incoherent. You win.
Don't let this go to your head, though.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:45 PM
there is the issue of the refrain, though. Some poems have refrains, but in a different way, it seems. (As for songs that repeat the same line over and over, they are either an abomination, or it is done for poetic effect.)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:46 PM
Don't let this go to your head, though.
My ego remains as small as a dust mite.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:47 PM
If you're going to enverb (is that the right word to make up?) the name Wolfson, wouldn't it mean TBALB, or to be hypercorrecting, or possibly to know some interestingly obscure references (I try to avoid saying nice things, but I can't always) not to interrupt flirting?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:57 PM
WMYBSALB, w/d?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:58 PM
Let's not pretend that Wolfson only practices one distinctive manuever.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:59 PM
Indeed, the results are paradoxical. The youngest a 10 year-old can date is a 12, but a 12 needs to find someone who's at least 13.
Well, that's the beauty of it. Stops kids from dating before they're 14, when they're old enough.
Or something.
Posted by Ian | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 11:00 PM
I already proposed that—in comment 47, no less!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 11:02 PM
Another distinctive maneuver: the garyfarb.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 11:12 PM
"Would you like to come over to my house for dinner at VI on Saturday evening?" (It was written with Roman numerals.)
So were you creeped out because he was in his 30s or because he behaved like someone in his 50s?
Posted by ogmb | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 11:20 PM
ogmb--Actually, he may not have said 6 PM. It might have been that he wrote out his telephone numbers in Roman numerals. But basically, the answer is both.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 11:38 PM
I already proposed that—in comment 47, no less!
Dammit! I honestly think I started skimming at 46.
Posted by Ian | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 1:07 AM
Hmm. When I met my wife we exactly matched the age/2 + 7 rule....
She was 21 and I was 28. Which didn't seem a massive age gap at the time given our respective levels of maturity ... :-)
And re: Yglesias comments above, a 19 year old dating someone in their early/mid 20s doesn't seem that odd. (With the usual "it depends on the person" caveats.)
When I was 17 and 18 my then girlfriends were 23 and 24 respectively...
Posted by M4tt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 2:04 AM
Contrary to 78, dating an 18-year-old for sex would seem highly plausible, whereas dating an 18-year-old for conversation would not. (With a few long-dead exceptions such as Hannah Arendt and Lou Salome.)
Any news on the XXXX Heidegger-Arendt photos, btw?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 6:15 AM
cw--where do you live in Europe?
Hmm, I actually got down to work and missed this. I live and work in the US. I'm over here for a short teaching stint for one of my U's programs.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 6:34 AM
I always thought the age/2 +7 rule was to yield a range where the age wasn't weird or creepy, not an optimum.
So for me, 26, the range is from 20 to 38.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 7:26 AM
I think the idea was to yield an optimum in the mid-nineteenth century which by current standards is weird and creepy. One neat feature of the formula is that, under the original assumption that the man is the older partner, the appropriately aged partner for a menopausal woman is approximately dead.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:15 AM
No, LB, the new rule is gender-neutral. One of the beneficial effects of the rule is to protect men my age from sexually predatory 104-year-old women.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:27 AM
I never thought it would happen to me. When I was in college, it seemed weird and creepy when I heard about people my age dating thirty year olds. But then Mr. Manley, the 70-year-old philosophy professor came into my life. His jowls were a little bit floppy, but I can assure you they were the only thing about him that was...
Seriously folks, this all seems like absurdity to me. You can observe a particular relationship with a big age difference and weird dynamics and say to yourself, "something there doesn't seem quite right" (although even then, at least in circles I've been exposed to, people have a tendency to overestimate their standing to evaluate what's going on in a relationship, which is of course mostly conducted in private, or just to find fault quickly because it makes them feel superior; unless you're close to one or both parties the only thing you can really say with authority is whether you enjoy spending time with the couple and why). But this rulemaking?
And BG, as with Ogged and the student who condescended to the UPS guy (or didn't), obviously you interacted with the guy and I didn't, but I don't see what in that story marks him as creepy. That he asked you out in writing so you didn't have to reject him to his face was kind of considerate; it respected your space and your possible shyness (he may have also been protecting himself, of course). Is he creepy just because he was older? But sometime in the history of the universe some 30-year-old has probably had a successful relationship (dating and/or sex) with an 18-year-old, and maybe he thought you were both pretty and well-spoken in class. Since he couldn't know ahead of time whether you'd be the type to say, "30, ew," was there no way he was allowed to express his interest, ever?
Dear Diary,
As regards my own relationship (I am four years younger than