I need more detail--if it is inattention, then you ought to see patterns in her memory. There is something she is paying attention to, something she is interested in, and she will be remembering that.
If there is nothing she is paying attention to ever, I suppose that rises to the level of a neurological condition right there.
Sounds ideal! My wife remembers EVERYTHING.
1: Would that affect whether or not he should propose?
Propose away. She won't remember anyway so he can always change his mind.
But seriously, if it rises to the level of having to see neurologists it's a serious problem whatever their findings and if he has to ask if it's going to drive him crazy, it probably already is.
Wasn't this issue analyzed extensively in the Adam Sandler vehicle Fifty First Dates? Actually I can't really remember what that movie was about so something meta-joke what something.
Either it's a neurological issue, in which case it will require serious effort on his part to get used to - the kind of thing I used to see in my grandparents, when my grandfather's memory started to go.
Or she just isn't interested in what he's saying.
Either way, bit of a barrier, I would say.
Also, 4.1!
4:1 is the obvious solution.
Is it a coastal vs central Texas cultural difference that makes me think that 1 year is not at all an obvious "propose or move on" time frame?
I guess it depends on the ages of the people involved.
To what extent are people accurately able to predict what will drive them crazy once they're married? It seems like a subject ripe for revisionist history.
8: They're on the coast, actually. I think it's more a function of them being in their mid-thirties, and cognizant of the biological constraints of child-bearing years.
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I need to retire these pants, because all morning I've just been sitting here, out of breath and with my heart beating fast, and it's gotten really uncomfortable/old.
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I am frequently told I have an amazing memory and frequently told I have an astonishingly poor memory, because I pay a lot of attention to things like who sang what song and almost no attention to things like what direction I drove to get to a certain location or what my phone number is.
If woman is like me, the question for the boyfriend is whether he can sympathize with or tolerate her priorities. Of particular importance is whether she keeps forgetting things about him, their relationship, and their plans together.
If the issue is neurological, the question is how treatable it is, what goes into the treatment, or alternately, how good the boyfriend is at classifying things as "shit you can't do anythign about so don't stress over it."
I wouldn't really sweat this problem, since people's memory just tends to get better and better as they age.
if he has to ask if it's going to drive him crazy, it probably already is
This was my first thought.
Also, since it's enough of an acknowledged thing that she's had it checked out by doctors, is this something the two of them have discussed? Does it actively bother her? Does she have particular coping strategies to deal with it? Or is she just going blithely along forgetting things, and then the people around her have to deal with it?
11: Is that your pants, or are you going into labor?
I've just been sitting here, out of breath and with my heart beating fast
Don't worry, heebie. I often have that effect on the young ladies. I'll try to turn down the sex appeal.
Another source of memory problems: forgetting uncomfortable facts. Some people are really good at this. Is that what she is doing? Is she uncomfortable with the same things he is?
In other news, I'm having trouble getting back into the swing of the working week.
Hella pedantically, anterograde amnesia (the thing from Memento) isn't actually a problem with short term memory; it's a problem with integrating experiences (which are more or less stored in short-term memory) into episodic memory. A problem with remembering exclusively conversations sounds like something else weird; does she have trouble remembering other things, like events? Does she have trouble remembering conversations with other people? She might just not be paying that much attention to him, or maybe she doesn't hear very well, or maybe she's blackout drunk the whole time she's around him and just super good at hiding it.
Or maybe she does a ton of benzodiazepines.
11: Is that your pants, or are you going into labor?
Worst pick-up line ever.
If she really does have a problem integrating memories than she might be extra-susceptible to false memories, which could be useful for him. Maybe instead of proposing he should remind her that he already proposed and prompt her until she starts filling in details herself.
My ability to remember casual conversations, including with loved ones, is bad enough that my wife could write a description comparable to the OP with only mild hyperbole. On the other hand, I have comparatively good recall for passages from books I read years ago or obscure trivia. I don't experience this as differences in how "interested" I am, it's just how my memory works (and always has). For self-interested reasons, I'd resist describing it as a character flaw. I guess it could be something neurological.
Of course if the particular way that this woman fails to remember conversations is going to drive this man crazy then that's a compatibility issue, but I'm not sure it's an issue that can be addressed on the basis of objective criteria.
If it's like Memento, he would get to spit into her drinks with impunity, so there's that. But yeah, it's going to drive him crazy.
It is unclear exactly what her problem is but most of the alternatives seem bad just in different ways.
I guess it could be something neurological.
This is also totally pedantic, but of course it's neurological. It has to do with the operation of the brain, right? It's just a question of whether it's pathological or not.
Anyhow I as well am not very good at remembering conversations. And I'm terrible at remembering people's names.
Of course if the particular way that this woman fails to remember conversations is going to drive this man crazy then that's a compatibility issue, but I'm not sure it's an issue that can be addressed on the basis of objective criteria.
None of the comment threads here ever have policy implications, for the record. We're all just making shit up about what'd we'd do in a situation.
I may have gotten things backwards in 22; she may be extra insusceptible to false memories. I forget. Anyhow, he should experiment on her.
I remember reading about a study about people susceptible to false memories, and the group they sampled were people claiming to have been abducted by aliens, which struck me as hilariously insulting.
To what extent are people accurately able to predict what will drive them crazy once they're married? It seems like a subject ripe for revisionist history.
"When I proposed to you, you were all about the slavery. Now it's states' rights this, states' rights that."
26: Fair enough. Now we just need a working definition of "pathological." Not my field, of course, but that one seems like it should be pretty easy to hash out, right?
27: Also fair enough.
Actually, I want to stick with neurological, rather than pathetical, with the caveat that what I mean by "neurological" is "caused by something whose physical correlate we can characterize well with existing brain science." I'm not a Cartesian dualist, and I don't think this represents a metaphysical divide. I do think it is something we can characterize well enough relative to the current state of knowledge, though.
"Pathological" on the other hand, involves all sorts of value judgments that would just wind up begging the question here. In general use of the work "pathological" is often a value judgment masquerading as an empirical judgment.
Either it's already driving him crazy, or he doesn't want to propose and he's seizing on something that sounds more reasonable than "I like her well enough but I don't want to propose." Either way, not rushing forward just because of a perceived timetable seems to be smart.
11: Sure it's the pants, and not a blood sugar crash, she says, having nearly passed out in her office after having a sugar cookie last week?
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29: Why this is a very loose tangent rather than a complete non sequitur will only be apparent to others who have read the book, but I just finished Miéville's Embassytown, and oh man was I fascinated by that book.
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"caused by something whose physical correlate we can characterize well with existing brain science."
What would that physical correlate be, in this case? Like, it's neurological if she has a brain lesion?
Why is somebody posting as my unborn child? I don't think my unborn child is reading newish sci-fi yet.
Oh hey I must have imagined that.
38" "Pathetical" or "neurological"?
" is the new:, neurologically speaking.
Anyhow, 36 continued: is the folk meaning of "neurological" "caused by known neuropathology"? I guess I could believe that's the case, but it really seems likely to confuse things. Could we say "neurological disorder" rather than just using "neurological"?
I believe in giving challenging reading material to pretty young kids, but Mieville is totally not age-appropriate for a fetus.
42: once as a little kid I was lost at the mall and Zardoz was there and then I hit it with my lightsaber and actually Zardoz was (half) me!
Of course it will drive him insane, and may be a sign of a much bigger problem, an ease with arguing in bad faith, which will certainly make him hate life for awhile.
Sure it's the pants, and not a blood sugar crash, she says, having nearly passed out in her office after having a sugar cookie last week?
There is actually a bowl of delicious old Valentine's candy by the coffee stand. I hadn't made that connection.
What would that physical correlate be, in this case? Like, it's neurological if she has a brain lesion?
I was more thinking that it is neurological if the most promising route of treatment is mostly physical or chemical. Whereas it is psychological if the treatment is basically going to be some sort of CBT or maybe just family counseling.
These folk categories are generally pragmatic. They are about how to deal with things.
But the pants do have a very tight elastic band at the top of the extend-o-panel.
48: er but I think the likely most promising treatment if somebody had a stroke and lost most of their temporal lobe is going to be something similar to CBT. So that's a psychological problem?
Whether the problem arises in arguments and is a source of debate as to who said what -- that is, whether she admits to the problem -- is probably a relevant consideration.
Whether the problem arises in arguments and is a source of debate as to who said what -- that is, whether she admits to the problem -- is probably a relevant consideration.
a thousand pardons for double penetration.
maybe she's blackout drunk the whole time
Speaking of drunk, NMM to Mindy McCready's dog.
Would drive me insane.
I am frequently told I have an amazing memory and frequently told I have an astonishingly poor memory, because I pay a lot of attention to things like who sang what song and almost no attention to things like what direction I drove to get to a certain location or what my phone number is.
That's basically me. I think it's basically a lot of people. Remembering stuff we find intrinsically interesting, or stuff we consciously attend to wel, and forgetting other stuff.
If I consciously attend to stuff, my memory is good. I tested it a while back as I was worrying I'd lost my edge after graduate school as I didn't seem to have a grasp on certain things the way I was used to. It was fine; way up in the thin part of the bell curve if the book I was reading was to be believed. The real explanation was probably trying to do to many things at once, many of which deep down I don't give a shit about, but other people pay me to give the appearance of giving a shit about.
51: Hmm, I might have reached a dead end in my reasoning here.
41: I think the fashion now in philosophy of mind is to use 'neurology' for the branch of medicine and 'neuroscience' for the branch of biology. This doesn't seem like ideal usage to me, partly because 'neuroscience' is a half-Latin half-Greek word. How's the terminology in your field?
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After kinda sorta ratifying and losing the paperwork in 1995, Mississippi has finally officially ratified the 13th.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/mississippi-ratifies-slavery-ban-after-lincoln
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57 could be me as well. The McCready story is incredibly depressing.
Just took some scissors and snipped the fucking waistband in a few spots. Whew.
59 last. I'd answer that but I'm too busy watching television.
The McCready story is incredibly depressing.
Yeah.
59: yeah, that's about the usage with which I'm familiar. The distinction between psychopathology and neuropathology is less clear to me (and brief googling suggests it might not be that clear to anybody else) but might break down along lines somewhat similar to those rob suggests (where neuropathologies have specific, known etiologies and are treated by neurologists). But as far as I can tell cognitive neuroscience is in the process of eating experimental psychology so who knows how things will be in ten years.
Somehow, I'd never heard of McCready before this week. Or rather, I'd heard the name and vaguely knew she was some sort of celebrity, but not for what. Now that I've read an obituary, I can't quite figure out how somebody in the news that often flew under my radar altogether.
60: Yay Mississippi! One step at a time! We knew you could do it!
Actually, I think the way the folk category "neurological" works is just that if you can tie a problem in some way to the physical--either by a physical cause or a physical or chemical course of treatment--that licenses medicalizing it. I want to hang on to this category for rough and ready purposes because there are plenty of things that resist medicalization precisely because we don't have a tie to the physical at either end. And for these problems we have to resort to the old language of praise-and-blame virtue thinking, harsh as it is.
Something like 80% of marriages between deaf and hearing people end in divorce. Not that this guys situation is the same, but I am pretty sure that efforts made to communicate naturaly drop during marriage and his problem will only get worse.
68: I really am not sure I understand where you're coming from. I mean, there are chemical courses of treatment that are wildly effective against sleepiness, but that doesn't mean that sleepiness is neurological and (say) inability to immediately grasp jokes about Wittgenstein is not.
Somehow, I'd never heard of McCready before this week just now.
@68, 71
So are we approaching a consensus for frontal lobotomy?
72. I woke up this morning and there she was, whoever she was, all over the British media. I'm still no clearer as to why.
Put me down as another person who had never heard of McCready* before this thread. Who is he/she?
*Unless, of course, you're referring to Kurt Russel's character in The Thing.
Why do people act as if they don't have access to search engineS?
Apparently she's a country music singer. That probably explains why I never heard of her.
71: Actually I'm happy with both those examples. Sleep issues are basically a brain thing in a way that understanding Wittgenstein jokes is not, given the current state of our understanding.
Although having articulated the distinction, I'm not sure how it helps us with this poor boy and his forgetful girlfriend.
@76
My level of interest in this person is not high enough to bother with searching for information, but just barely high enough to read what an unfogged commenter has to say about him/her.
77 is probably a better answer.
Apparently she's a country music singer.
Who dated a baseball player and was on a reality TV show. If you don't follow at least one of those three, you just aren't American.
Sleep issues are basically a brain thing in a way that understanding Wittgenstein jokes is not, given the current state of our understanding.
Dude, what does this mean?
Also, is a "brain thing" like a "bean thing", and if so, how many does urple have in his refrigerator? Also also, where is urple lately?
Who dated a baseball player
...and Superman. Also was in and out of hospitals and jails several times, so was apparently a tabloid staple.
83: OK, you win, they are both physics things.
I don't see a dealbreaker to the marriage here. The particular issue is not the issue. The generalized issue is, can I marry someone who I know has a flaw? Yes, of course you can. It's quite possible to marry someone whose flaws are not apparent until after the marriage, but not possible to marry someone who has no flaws.
I don't understand how 87 is informative at all. Of course the person you marry will have flaws. If you don't realize that, you are a fucking idiot. That doesn't mean that all flaws are equal, in terms of things that will make the marriage work or not work.
I went to the neurologist because I wasn't understanding Wittgenstein jokes, and he told that humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world.
Put me on team "I have no idea what you're getting at with a psychological/neurological distinction."
I do think "has a known treatment" is a reasonable class to separate out in a lot of situations, but in this one probably not really because the complaint isn't "she keeps going off her memory meds" or whatever.
88: We aren't given sufficient informaiton to conclude that this particular flaw is sufficiently problematic to destroy a marriage, so we're only considering this flaw makes the marriage better or worse than one where the parties are not aware of any flaws in each other. My view is that the absence of perceived flaws is a bigger red flag than any particular known flaw.
I'm inclined to say that, as a general rule, if someone is unsure about whether to propose and has a specific major reservation, that person should not propose. Using this particular case, he can't get married with the idea that once they are married they can figure out how to deal with the fact that she's a blackout drunk with heavy benzo use got short-term memory issues. Figure out how you are going to deal with that before making a major commitment.
A more important factor than the fact that she has a lousy memory would be how she deals with having a lousy memory. Does she write important things down, knowing that she won't remember them otherwise, or have other comparable strategies for dealing with her memory issues? Or are her memory issues a constant source of frustration for her? Or does she take the attitude that "This is how I am. People should just learn to deal with it."?
Everybody has flaws. But not everybody is good at dealing with their own particular flaws, or those of their partners.
I'm interested in the question from #9, as a more general discussion point.
On rereading the thread, I see that 93 was totally pwned by 15.
93 (15): If he finds a photo of himself with "Don't believe his lies" written on it, probably don't get engaged.
9/94: To what extent are people accurately able to predict what will drive them crazy once they're married? It seems like a subject ripe for revisionist history.
The challenge is that you'd have to ask yourself not only, "Will Behavior X drive me crazy over the next n years?" but also, "Which endearing quirks or behavioral traits which don't even register today will drive me crazy n years from now?"
Two old friends of mine (about my age) who are a couple are currently coping with a situation where one of them has developed short-term memory loss/anterograde amnesia over the last several years (I'm not actually sure of all the symptoms or its classification (not early onset Alzheimer's)--the manifestation I most notice* is the need for continual reminders of current task or objective). It is testable, repeatable and very noticeable to any observer paying attention. It is definitely a sad thing, and a huge thing. The non-impaired partner exhibits the patience of a saint, but sort of has to for things to even function at all.
*They live several states away, so only see them sporadically.
But also: do people pick the entirely wrong traits to fret about? The things I was worried about with Jammies were false positives and have not panned out. (Different things annoy me, of course. Just not the ones I would have guessed.)
OTOH, I think Jammies anticipated entirely correctly which habits of mine would drive him nuts. I'm slowly improving.
"Which endearing quirks or behavioral traits which don't even register today will drive me crazy n years from now?"
There exists an N such that for n>N the answer is "all of them".
I'm curious how you go about developing an apparently serious relationship if one partner can't remember the couple's conversations. Is this something that developed after they'd been together for awhile?
99.last: I'm slowly improving.
Next time you marry you'll totally nail which habits will annoy you.
98: I think I've mentioned here that my friend has a 50% chance of getting early onset Alzheimer's. I'm friendly with her parents, one of whom has it, and the situation is pretty significantly different than what the bulk of their marriage was like. (That kind of caretaker situation is obviously very different than entering into a marriage with the problem existing ahead of time.)
100 could be called "Emerson's Theorem." It would even satisfy Sti\g\l\er's Law of E\p\o\n\y\m\y.
103.parenthetical: Yes, of course, did not mean to imply otherwise. And in this case there was no genetic or existing behavior at the time of marriage that would have even hinted at such a subsequent development.
Next time you marry you'll totally nail which habits will annoy you.
I avoided the ones from my first marriage when I launched the second, but you (or I, anyhow) just find all new things to drive you crazy. Other people: they're goddamned insufferable.
No, yeah. The parenthetical wasn't supposed to be correcting you.
106: Don't you hate it when people think they can come up and talk to you just because ... you've entered into a long-term relationship with them?
</Judy Tenuta>
101: I do think the description in the OP is likely hyperbole at least in part. I'd guess a better description would be "she forgets enough conversations to annoy him," and then of course all of the play is in whether the problem is severe enough that (taking into account whatever coping mechanisms she does or doesn't have) he finds it annoying enough that it is a fatal relationship flaw. I think the tone (as conveyed by HG) would be different if the subject under discussion were Alzheimer's or some comparable issue.
But I'm just guessing, of course.
If the memory problems are serious enough that she's consulted neurologists about them, I doubt there's much hyperbole in the OP.
If the memory problems are minor enough that the neurologists did not recommend any ongoing treatment, I bet there's plenty of hyperbole.
I think there's absolutely no way to tell from the information in the post anything about what her condition is -- could be anything from ordinary ditziness of the sort I suffer from to the full Memento. But they shouldn't get married, because once you're asking the question "Is this person likely to be intolerable in the long run?" about someone, that's enough to make marrying them a bad idea.
101, 11: Hyperbole fight! ... no, make that Hyperbole WAR!!!
112 and all similar are right, of course.
I'm curious how you go about developing an apparently serious relationship if one partner can't remember the couple's conversations
Sorry, hon, did you say something?
I'm not sure what distinguishes neuropathology from just certain habits of mind--depends on the definition of normal, obvs--but I have had a not entirely dissimilar situation with my soon-to-be-ex. I'll refrain from describing it except to say that it manifests as a kind of Gracie Allen appearance of cluelessness despite her otherwise obvious intelligence. It's far from the only or most important factor in the demise of the marriage, but it did go from endearing to almost unendurable, and I regret to say that I haven't always reacted with the patience and understanding she deserves.
They should definitely get married; they should definitely not get married; I have no relevant information on which to pontificate. Sometimes people forget conversations and it's annoying; sometimes people forget conversations and it's charming.
Is one of them an asshole? Are they both assholes?
with which to pontificate? to provide a basis for my pontification. on which.
If the memory problems are minor enough that the neurologists did not recommend any ongoing treatment, I bet there's plenty of hyperbole.
Because neurologists have plenty of safe, low-cost, and proven-effective ways of treating serious memory problems?
because once you're asking If you haven't asked the question "Is this person likely to be intolerable in the long run?" about someone, that's enough to make marrying them a bad idea.
FTFY. Seriously, 112 is completely backwards.
Jesus, I'm really sorry to hear about your soon-to-be-ex-dom. Hope everything resolves as painlessly as possible.
Would you like the phrasing "Once the question 'Is this person likely to be intolerable in the long run?' is one that you're having genuine trouble answering..." better?
Obviously, you can't know on the front end what's going to drive you nuts in the long run. But if you've already identified a problem that gives rise to a substantial risk that you'll hate being around your prospective spouse, and you don't have a good reason to think that the problem's soluble, that's enough to not get into anything permanent.
118: Or, because doctors love to prescribe shit and keep making you come back. Mostly I was just trying to make the point that you could just as easily infer that it was not serious as that it was.
Honestly, if it really is serious, I am kind of bothered that the guy's reaction to it is "Is this going to annoy me too much to marry her?" rather than "Man, she has these memory problems that just aren't normal and I'm really worried about her. I wish we could figure out what's going on."
So, in conclusion, they shouldn't get married. /emerson
Maybe I'm missing something but I suspect that the theory in 121, if applied seriously, would produce like 3 marriages/year total worldwide.
123: Maybe that's how many should truly occur!
123: That sounds about right. For a happily married person, my general rules of thumb on relationships are pretty Emersonian. Heck, even in my own marriage, I'm fairly clear on how I manage to tolerate him longterm. How he tolerates me remains mysterious.
122.1: I do not think there is anything they could prescribe. Not much to be done about serious memory problems, at the current state of mental health care. Arguably the OP relates that they have asked her to keep coming back, if she has seen neurologists plural. In any case I do think it is plausible to assert that memory problems serious enough to inspire one to seriously entertain visiting a neurologist are non-trivial memory problems.
Perhaps there are commenters who have consulted with a neurologist who can weigh in?
A year?! wow. That isnt long enough to find out about all the other stuff that is going to annoy the hell out of him.
I vote no on proposing.
What throws me about the original post (or, to put it another way, what makes me sure that I can't say anything at all about the situation) is that for neurologist-level memory problems, I'd think that the sort of relationship annoyance the post seems to be about wouldn't be high on the list of issues. Can she hold down a job? Does she get lost whenever she's anyplace unfamiliar? I know heebie doesn't have answers, but I can't imagine how to think about the situation without them.
127.2: Will selflessly votes against his own self-interest. Must have a backlog of work.
120: Thanks, it's being going on for ages, so at the this point the resolution will be nothing but sunshine.
126:2. Glad you asked! The urologist was an asshat moron. Technically, the referral to see him was based on a structural anomaly that showed up on an MRI done in the ER in response to the worst headache in my life, but because I mentioned memory problems he decided I must be having microseizures which warranted Topamax which made the memory problems sooo much worse and eviscerated my ability to function. turns out, my fogginess was entirely explained by chronic insomnia/sleep deprivation that my primary refused to treat as anything other than depression until I finally snapped and insisted she try something other than increasingly insane doses of sleep medicine and she humored me and ran some blood tests that revealed serious hyperthyroidism which I then got fixed and lived happily ever after.
um, neurologist, not urologist. The latter would have more excuse for not understanding the human brain...
but basically I am saying that seeing a neurologist doesn't necessarily mean you actually have a neurologist level of problem.
135: no, of course not. But, you know, you presented with "the worst headache of [your] life", which will scare the crap out of ER doctors (even if they know you're drug seeking), and will probably lead to escalation regardless, so in that sense your experience (even though there was nothing serious going on) is an indication of the degree to which a trip to the neurologist is a response to the possibility of something serious going on.
That reminds me of when the urgent care doctor told me "Usually the worry here is that you have a brain tumor, but I don't think you do because..."
I occasionally wonder how many healthcare resources could be saved if we just provided drug seekers opiate administration clinics.
Seriously, 112 is completely backwards.
I continue to not understand where you're coming from, unimaginative. Sure, you shouldn't go into marriage thinking that you have foreseen everything about the other person that might end up driving you crazy. But I continue to think that there being an issue you are already actively worried about is a bigger red flag than the of-course-always-present possibility that there will be such issues in the future.
My grandmother had serious short-term memory problems for the last 10-15 years of her life and she got tested every now and then but there wasn't any treatment. It's possible she had Alzheimer's, but her condition was different enough from most Alzheimer's cases that it was never clear and even testing her brain after she died doesn't seem to have been conclusive.
I have no experience with this other than with my grandmother so I don't know if they'd have recommended a different course of action for someone much younger. She was in her 70s when it became clear her memory was declining.
I do happen to know that the woman is a successful lawyer, so make of that what you will.
Oh boy it's worse than we thought.
141: Hmm, will there be more reveals to this?
Lee has bad enough short-term memory that she was denied long-term care insurance on those grounds, though I don't think any official neuologist ever took her on. The better part of a decade later, I refuse to accept any bet I know I'll win and I try to keep my mouth shut when I know we've had a conversation before. If there were actuallly a heaven, I'd be raking in pluses for it. Instead, I am doing better at only reminding her of what she'll remembe having said whenever I can manage that. She keeps copious notes and is also charming and encourages people she meets casuallly to remember how to tell her that they met and whatnot. Though tonight reiterated that she still remembers how she and I met and so I'm not responsible for the whole story there.
He should not propose, right now. The question I'd have (and have had) would be, "is this thing that's worrying me a core part of the person, or might it improve?" After 18 years of being married, with one very large unchanging issue between us, a friend asked, "how long are you prepared to stay married without this changing?" and I discovered the answer was "one year". We had an honest enough relationship that I could tell him I loved him, wanted to stay married, but I had about a year left in me. It was very hard for him of course, he took it as an ultimatum, was angry, of course, but after about 9 months was willing to look at it. At that point a whole bunch of information came out that brought about the end of the marriage, and I only wish someone had asked me that question sooner, how long are you willing to stay, with no change? I wouldn't advise Heebie's friend about anything IRL, but here I'd advise him to be direct and honest, he sees them having a future together, but for this one thing, (if that's the truth) and...oh you know, actually this is a terrible idea.
141: Okay, if this is actually about me, he *definitely* should not propose.
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Damn Donald Knuth for inventing Computer Modern and thus setting off a chain of events that leads one of my collaborators to tell me we can't use Palatino as the typeface in our paper because it looks unprofessional. (No, not that collaborator. Another one.)
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I assume all your subsequent papers will be single-author.
That's very tempting. I had a discussion Friday where I was told I had to change a sentence because it used "the passive tense". It was in active voice. Today's font discussion involved being told that I was using Times New Roman ("actually, that's Palatino") and it's a bad font because of "those little things on the letters". I said "serifs? the default TeX font, Computer Modern, has those too" and was told that "no, Serif is a different font that doesn't have them", in a "don't you know anything?" kind of tone. Arrrrgh.
I'm probably a pain to work with too, especially since I've gotten to be really picky about the way plots look in my papers, to the point of remaking all the plots my collaborators made in one recent paper to enforce a uniform color scheme and style throughout. (Which led to another of these arguments where the collaborator from 150 told me that the best contrasting colors for color-blind people to see are red and green so we should switch to that. Come to think of it, I should just leave a copy of the Dunning-Kruger paper on his desk sometime.)
150: geez that's terrible.
152: I managed to accidentally please a collaborator by asking what font he was using for plots, so I could match it. Are standards so low?!
especially since I've gotten to be really picky about the way plots look in my papers
essear should write a paper with An/d/r/e/w G/e/l/m/a/n.
I associate Palatino with TeX-set papers that have an extra dash of class. It's not Arial, for God's sake.
Which led to another of these arguments where the collaborator from 150 told me that the best contrasting colors for color-blind people to see are red and green so we should switch to that. Come to think of it, I should just leave a copy of the Dunning-Kruger paper on his desk sometime.
Why are you collaborating with this guy in the first place?
I thought I was annoyed by how I have to do all this professional typesetting and formatting that 30 years ago either a real editor would have done, or nobody would have cared about. But at least I don't have to choose the TYPEFACE.
156: I make all decisions based on whether they give me something to whine about here.
158: And we certainly appreciate it.
I switched to Cambria over the summer. It's been so long now since I've written something in a document format, though, that I can't even remember what it looks like. "At least it isn't Arial or Times New Roman" was my main goal.
152 would have made me spit nails.
150 would have led to violence (verbal, anyway). And maybe some passive-aggressive emailing of evidence to back me up.
My world remains a Courier world. This is what change looks like.
I went totally off Computer Modern after producing lots of LaTeX docs. I eventually went with Utopia for my thesis, which is still a serif face, but a bit more modern looking and less 'computery' than CM.
I'm still cycling rapidly between amazement that you can use other fonts in TeX (isn't that always dictated by the journal?) and relief that I don't have to figure out how to set the damn font in TeX in addition to the million other fiddly things I can never remember how to set correctly.
re: 166
It's pretty much a single line, maybe two, in the preamble to the document.
ALL MUST BOW BEFORE THE MIGHT OF GARAMOND.
I'm going to see my neurologist tomorrow, I'll let y'all know how it goes.
Alas for the couple in question, the story that immediately sprang to mind when I read the question was http://blogs.nonado.net/diamond/2010/08/11/shall-we-lets/
Ooh, I like that Computer Modern.
If it's what almost everything you read is written it, it kind of gets old. And compared to alternatives it somehow makes things look kind of thin and insubstantial.
I eventually went with Utopia for my thesis
My default choices lately have been either Utopia or Bitstream Charter with the mathdesign fonts, which look great since the math symbols were designed to match the text. But these were rejected by a different collaborator who said they make "v" in math mode look too much like "nu" and that this would confuse our readers. So Palatino was my fallback.
My TeX installation doesn't have Garamond, which I thought was due to some kind of licensing issue, but Google suggests otherwise. I should look into that.
And compared to alternatives it somehow makes things look kind of thin and insubstantial.
I concur. Also, I find its default kerning rather odd.
ALL MUST BOW BEFORE THE MIGHT OF GARAMOND.
If you set a paper in Garamond as a Germanist you look like a wannabe, given that it's the Suhrkamp house font.
I love that a place exists where an extended discussion of typography flows naturally from a discussion of whether a guy should propose.
Was it really a "natural" transition? But, now that you mention it, if she writes things in Arial there must be an underlying neurological issue to worry about.
It was a well-kerned transition.
People believe what's written in Baskerville. (NYT link).
David Dunning shows up in the link in 180, too.
I'm a Times New Roman man. If docoments come to me in another font, I change them to Tmes New Roman before reading them. Fonts don't get old for me. Consistency is important.
I have no idea what font I use or what font I'm reading, and I'm always baffled when this topic comes up.
When I don't have page limit constraints, New Century Schoolbook, expanded by one point.
Yeah, I have strong feelings about fonts only in the sense that if I'm going to be reading more than a couple of sentences, I want an ordinary-looking book font with serifs. As between Times New Roman, Garamond, Palatino, Baskerville, whatever, I don't care at all reading, and only care writing if I'm fussing with page limits. (In college I was fond of Palatino -- it looked less dense on the page. But I never cared much.)
Personally, I vary the fonts I use without much rhyme or reason, but I did have a boss who dictated that any document we thought would be read disproportionately by older people should use a sans-serif font.
I use Chicago for everything, but I set it to bold to make it more important-seeming.
183 -- In a business where the product is written material, it makes sense to have a standard font. Obviously, any document has to have a single font, and using the same font from document to document makes sense because you can cut and paste without thinking about it. Especially where more than one person is involved in the production, it makes sense to have a single standard.
At my former job, it was TNR 12. My current outfit uses Garamond 14 for virtually everything.
I still feel vaguely pleased with myself about having whined enough to wean a prior employer off Arial (maybe Helvetica? Something that documents shouldn't be in, anyway.), and back into the realm of sensible, serifed fonts.
I don't know if computers still come with ALGERIAN, but it is so much better than Impact for making poster headings and such.
That's my one font opinion. That and a hatred of "Mistral" combined with ambilance to Comic Sans.
191 - ABC News typically uses Impact for on-screen text in news segments, and every goddamn time it pops up I expect a lolcat to appear.
Please people, don't attempt to use Impact for serious/non-ironic purposes. You just can't anymore. Sorry.
I'll refrain from describing it except to say that it manifests as a kind of Gracie Allen appearance of cluelessness despite her otherwise obvious intelligence. It's far from the only or most important factor in the demise of the marriage, but it did go from endearing to almost unendurable
I am a person of reasonable intelligence who is sometimes Gracie Allenish (I think it's something of a defense) and I suspect it is the quality of mine that is most likely to drive my partner batty over time.
Actually, come to think, I have other qualities that might be in the running for 'most likely to drive a partner crazy', but the ditziness is up there.