From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
Subject: Re: More on guys who aren't dating Ed Wright
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 03:24:57 GMT
Distribution: soc
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

[Note: The articles in this thread are, in my opinion, getting just
too damn long.  For this reason, I am cutting out large sections of
the text to which I am replying.  Charlie, if it pleases you to rant
about how I've edited out some sentence that you believe to be your
crucial, decisive, and irrefutable point, feel free to rant way.]

In <MARTINC.92Sep28105441@grover.cs.unc.edu> martinc@grover.cs.unc.edu (Charles R. Martin) writes:

>... while complaining that the World Series doesn't get the viewership
>it used to, that even the Cosby show beats it, etc.  

"Even" the Cosby Show?  Yes, "even" the highest rated show in series
television managed to beat it *once*.

>What's "better"?  Martial artists certainly claim that they're better
>able to defend themselves -- and/or choose not to fight -- than others.

Martial artists will say they are better able to defend themselves, 
but they do not make the same claims of overall general superiority
that athletes do.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Every martial arts
school that I know of stresses humility and the duty to defend those
weaker than themselves.

One martial artist I know (a multiple black belt and a former member
of a US counterterrorism team) recently spoke on a terrorism panel.
During his talk, he made a point of debunking the Rambo superhero
image of special forces: "Sure, I'm good at my job, but so is that
radio operator over there.  He's just as important as me."  He did
not claim that martial arts training made him a superior radio operator.
And if you talk to this guy, he will tell you that the people he admires
most in the world are artists, and that he envies their talent and
creativity, and he would laugh if you told him that spending time
in a gym was better than spending time in a studio.

Contrast this attitude to the smug arrogance of Arnold Schwarzennger,
the official head of the US fitness program.  Or the self-righteous,
nose-in-the-air superiority of Nancy Colucci's post.  Or your quotations
from the DUMB Book of Diet and Fitness about how exercise improves a
person's outlook on life, increases creativity and intelligence, improves
your sex life, etc., etc.


>Nonsense.  First of all, your argument assumes that someone can improve
>their mind with optimal efficiency at every waking moment.  This isn't
>medically defensible.  Assuming that one is *not* optimally efficient at
>mind-improvement at every waking moment, then something that makes one
>more efficient may well give more total "mind improvement points" than
>constant effort at mind improvement.

God, I think you actually believe that rot.  "Mind improvement points."
You sound like a 12-year-old kid who has just discovered Dungeons and
Dragons.  However, let me quote what one Charlie Martin said in another
post when I accused him of saying that exercisers were superior not only
physically, but intellectually, morally, and spiritually as well.

>Funny, I don't remember saying that.  Does anyone else remember me
>saying that?  It can't be misquotation, can it?  I mean, could it
>possibly? 

Do you actually enjoy setting yourself up to look like a fool?  I
mean, can it possibly be?

>Also, since people who are *moderately* fit tend to live longer, trading
>no exercise now for more time may not pay off in the total.

At last you have said something that makes sense.  However, *moderate*
fitness does not require any special exercise program -- just walking
the dog is enough -- so that's plainly not what we're discussing here.


>   However, you still miss the point.  It's a *value judgement*, Charlie.
>   A real nerd wouldn't choose to play softball because he could doing
>   something else, like reading or computer programming, that he enjoys
>   more instead.  It is someone with those interests and values that I
>   am looking for.  Why should I look for someone who likes to spend her
>   free time playing/watching/talking sports when I am *not* looking for
>   someone to play/watch/talk sports with? 

>Because you may just find -- you may well *be* finding -- that by
>completely excluding someone who spends *some* of her free time doing
>sports, you narrow your sample too much.  

I don't really expect that sort of perfection in another person.  I
think I was being a bit unclear there.  I was talking more about my
standards for myself, and what I consider to be my ideal.  I realize
that I'm not likely to find anyone who exactly matches that ideal (at
least, not again, but that's another story).  I am willing to consider
someone who has a slight interest in sports.  But if it was a major 
interest -- something that she really wanted to share with the man
she loved, that's different.  What I really meant by that last sentence 
was, why should I look for someone who likes to spend her free time 
playing/watching/talking sports and wouldn't be completely
satisfied with a man who didn't?  

>I don't think it's my categoruies that are the issue.  At least, your
>category of "unfit" as it communicates itself through what you write
>seems to oscillate rapidly through "not a Muscle&Fitness model" to "not
>a health club fanatic" to "only those completely uninterested in any
>exercise."

Yes, I use the word to mean different things in different contexts.  That's
because other people use the word to mean different things.  Deal with it.

Usually I mean reasonably fit.  I'm afraid this term does "oscillate,"
Charlie, because different people have different ideas of what they
consider reasonable.  I'm sure, however, that more people would say
you fall into that category than would say that I do.

>   far as lawyers go, unless they have an undergraduate science degree,
>   their background and range of interest is likely to be quite limited.

>You mean "different" rather than "limited, don't you?

No, I mean "limited."  C.P. Snow's initial thesis was that there are
two cultures, the humanities and the sciences, and people are generally
educated (and interested) in one or the other.  In "The Two Cultures 
Revisited" to say that there were, in fact, many people in the sciences
who had interests in and kowledge of the humanities, but few people whose
interests ran the other way:  You'll find many physicists who are interested
in poetry, but few poets who are interested in physics.

>Hmmm.  Okay, up to now you've usually given the impression that you
>weren't really dating; now at this point, you seem to be saying that you
>can't convince yourself that you could be serious about the women you
>are dating.

If you read my reply to your first posting, you might have gotten
some clue that was not the case.  Unfortunately, you seem to base
yur impressions more often on things I didn't write than on things
I did.

>You've already shown that
>by your measure there are likely only 80 women in Dallas who meet your
>total collection of acceptability criteria.  I'm showing that you're
>much more likely to meet those 80 women than the 80/1,000,000 odds you
>suggest. 

It's not necessary, I already believe that.  I believe I can improve the
odds by a factor of 10 quite easily and a factor of 100 with some effort.
Beyond that, I'm not quite so sure.

>I don't know -- why?  Why do you insist on something in a mate that
>would make her different from the people you consider friends?

Charlie, I'm starting to suspect you enjoy "playing dumb," but this
takes the cake.  Okay, if you really want me to baby-talk you through
this...

First of all, there's the matter of sex.  If I were to have sex on a
regular basis with all my friends, I'm afraid it would wear me out
rather quickly.  For my own health and safety, I think it's best that
I stick with one woman for this.

Then there's children.  It would be a major imposition on my friends to
ask them all to bear and raise my children.  Especially my male friends.
I'm also not sure I could afford the child support.  

Then there are all the things I wish I had someone to talk to about
but don't.  The things I haven't been able to find any friends with
an interst in.  The reason why I am willing to compromise less in a selecting
a wife than a friend is simple.  I can have as many friends as I want,
so I don't have to get everything I'm looking for from only one friend.
However, in the United States, at least, it's only possible to have one
wife.

>One part of it
>seems to have been "Ed Wright doesn't want to go out with women who
>don't completely fulfill his value system."  I think you're shooting
>yourself in the foot thereby.

Perhaps.  But if I settle for a woman who doesn't offer what I'm 
looking for and end up lonely anyway, what have I gained?  At least
while I'm single I can keep looking.

>See?  You've turned this explicit statement of personal concern into a
>personal attack that you then defended yourself from with the good
>old-fashioned, childish and sophomoric "you ought to get your head
>examined."  Why do you find it so hard to accept compassionate concern?

Well, you were the one who *insisted* that I play this sophomoric
game of yours.  I believe the rules now require that the next sophomoric
statement be, "Oh, yeah?  You told me to get my head examined first."  But
I'm really tired of your silly little game, so all I'll say is, grow up. 

>You "refined" your argument and presented it as a refutation of my claim
>that very few people ATTENDED sporting events.  You misquoted me to set
>up a straw man you COULD defend.

I presented it as a refutation of your argument that most people are
not interested in sports.  There was more than one argument on the
stack at the time.  Unfortunately, your brain seems capable of holding
only one argument on its stack.  At least, you like to give that impression,
so that you can concoct phony misquotations to cover your genuine 
misquotations.  (Which you now refuse to apologize for, despite your
promise to do so.)


>   When I said I wanted to date women who didn't care what I looked
>   like, you twisted this into "will not date women who like or dislike
>   his apearance."

>Are you sure that's me?  There were a lot of people in on this before
>you concluded I was the antichrist.  

I believe it was Little Jimmy Dutton who first identified you as the
antichrist.  Please give credit where credit is due.  

>In any case, the logic of what you're saying escapes me: 

Well, fancy that...

>Either they like your appearance, dislike your appearance, or don't care.

Horse feathers.  You're conflating two separate parameters.
On a marketing survey, these questions would look like this:

1) What do you think of the product's appearance?
  a) Like strongly
  b) Like somewhat
  c) Neither like nor dislike
  d) Dislike somewhat
  e) Dislike strongly
  f) Don't know
2) How strongly would the product's appearance affect
your decision to purchase or not purchase it?
  a) Strongly influence
  b) Moderately influence
  c) Slightly influence
  d) Not influence at all
  e) Don't know

As I have said over and over, what I care about is a woman's
answer to question #2.  I do not care about her answer to question
#1, despite your mistatements to the contrary.

>As *I* recall, you originally were pissed off because women only 
>wanted to date atheletes,
>or "fit people" or guys who work out a lot, or something.  

I was originally pissed off because the wolf pack in soc.singles
was telling people they *shouldn't* date someone who they
didn't find physically attractive.  (Some people even justified
this by saying that turning down someone they didn't find physically
attractive was for the good of the person being turned down.)

>I got involved when you claimed that there are no reasons to
>exercise except vanity and a desire to fit the current style, and that a
>true intellectual *wouldn't* do that stuff because it steals time from
>improving the mind.

I was speaking about my *own* lifestyle, which you chose to attack.
I'm not into running other people's lives.  I've got a fulltime job
running my own.  I don't care what the hell you do with your life as
long as you don't try telling me how to live mine.  You crossed that
line as soon as you pulled out the DUMB Book of Diet and Fitness.


>Ed, either you believe you are unworthy of other's love -- the *very*
>strong impression or inference I draw from your writing -- or you
>believe what you seem to be saying in this posting, which is that no
>woman (at least that you meet) is worthy of your love.  

Or it could be choice C -- not what my post "seemed to say" but
what it actually *did* say.  That I do know meet many women who
share the same *interests*.  However, you love to set up these
little dichotomies that are constructed so that they prove your
argument either way.  Sorry, I'm not going to bite.

>Why are you sensitive about your mother, Ed?

I'm not.  For what it's worth, you were right the second time.  My
mother did think I was skinny.  However, you're changing the subject.
The old Charlie Martin 1-2 punch: first you accuse me of changing the
subject to avoid your questions, then you change the subject to avoid
mine.  So, how about an answer, Charlie?  Since you were making up facts
you could not possibly know, why didn't you at least make up a consistent
set of facts?

>   Of course, you left out possiblity D.  Last year, I placed a personal
>   ad in a local paper.  I talked to one of the women to one of the women
>   who responded, on the phone, several times, and we agreed to meet at a
>   restaurant.  We gave each other vague, general discriptions of our physical
>   appearances in order to recognize one another.  I arrived at the restaurant
>   first and was waiting just outside the door when she pulled up, saw me,
>   turned around, and drove back out of the parking lot.  Afterward, she
>   would not accept any of my phone calls. 

>Maybe it was.  Life's like that.  Maybe she was married, and lost her
>nerve.  Maybe she just got a call on her car phone that her father had
>had a heart attack.  Maybe she's shy, and chickened out.  Maybe she
>liked the way you looked so much that she lost control of her bladder
>and was too embarrassed to tell you.

Most of those explanations don't explain why she later refused my phone
calls.  And the others are so silly I can't believe even you believe
them.  Or are you going to pull out the DUMB Book of Physical Fitness
and quote me statistics on the number of women who have bladder attacks
when they see gorgeous men?

>   No, I've been around too long to think that life is always fair and
>   people always get what they deserve.  And I believe that I *am* admirable
>   in all things.  (Yet another one you owe me, Charlie.)

>Except your physical appearance, apparently.  Or your fitness.  Or your
>abilities with the Opposite Sex.

I do not consider physical attractive or physical fitness to be an
admirable characteristic.  If you read the things I wrote, you might
have noticed that I mentioned that, oh, 50 or 60 times.  How many more
times do I have to repeat it before I reach comprehension level?

As far as the opposite sex is concerned, well, if someone turns
me down, I don't assume that proves I'm worthless or inferior.
I am not responsible for other people's taste.  This is called
self-esteem, Charlie.  It is the exact opposite of your twisted
version which involves constantly blaming oneself for failing to
live up to other people's judgement.

Besides, I never wanted to be a "ladies man."  As long as I find
one lady before I die, I will have succeeded completely.


>Figure it out for yourself, Ed.  Do you want to be happy or not?  Are
>you willing to take steps to become happier or not?

This is based on the assumption that I would be happier with a
serving girl/topless dancer who does not provide the things I
am looking for than I am now.  I am not convinced that is the
case.



Newsgroups: soc.singles