Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Well, if there’s any mathematical progression to that study, I’m at least 100% happier than shown. Mah waf r a jeanyus!
Is that why Einstein was never happily married?
Or why Forrest Gump was? (channelling our inner subconscious)
That works for me….although my wife is probably up there hitting 30-35%.
How then does this explain wives wanting to fix their husbands, if ya can’t fix stupid?
Yeah, gotta topgrade the organization don’t ya know. Smarter, harder working, better organized, better physical gene pool? Yep, checked all those boxes.
All that and managed to marry my trophy wife first. Good idea in a community property state.
26 years next week on the 17th. At least 15 of them happily. ;^)
Congrats! Got married on St. Paddy’s Day I see…was the celebration the normal American version or is there Irish mixed in, making it a far more interesting affair???
Mostly Scot-Irish-Welsh on both sides (with a mongrel shot of Czech, German on her side). Mum immigrated from Scotland. Date chosen was at the whim of the Detailer whose scheduled allowed for it whilst I PCS’d from P’cola to NAS Norfolk.
All of which means it must have been one helluva party! Good times.
27 years this July – I’m not so sure I agree with this actually. I think The Oracle is much smarter than me about many things and there are things I know I’m smarter than he is.
Balance.
That and knowing when to just. walk. away.
Amen to that, Kris! Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam; so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out. Prov 17:14, which I learned the hard way.
I could not be married to someone I didn’t think was smarter than I am. I picked the smartest man I could find (and I was an engineering major with a ratio of about 300 men to one woman so I had a lot of great selection). I knew I wanted to have smart children someday. And I did!
It’s been 20 years and we’re very happy so I beg to differ with this silly study.
Liz-
Eng classes haven’t changed much, my freshman year the ratio was about 250 to 5 spread across Mech, Manu, Aero and Auto.
Oh, and that was in 2002.
Reminds me of the girl character in the Heinlein novel who couldn’t respect a man who couldn’t solve partial differential equations in his head, as much as she liked him otherwise.
The moment I knew he was the one…the instructor in our strengths of materials class assigned a group project where we had to design a sheet of aluminum in a way to withstand a high load of pressure.
In 15 minutes he came up with a design that withstood nearly 6000 pounds. School record. The next highest group project withstood less than 800 pounds. He was SO in there after that…:-)
6000psi using aluminum? Are we talking about compression, tensile, or torsional pressure here?
Aw, heck — do you still have his design? I do so love to see an elegant, functional design.
Like those of my favorite author, Geoffrey Chaucer, and his seminal treatise on structural engineering.
You know… “Cantilever Tales.”
– Max
Kris and the rest of you kind folks … Just walking away is pretty good in the beginning and middle years of a long term marriage. I still do it, and so does my long-suffering spouse. But there are times when one can go toe-to-toe and actually improve matters. And when you get really old and cranky, it helps to clear the air. Because, deep down, you *know* you’re not going to quit on him, and he won’t quit on you. And because there’s that ‘love you forever’ thing, and it really means something.
Marianne
I agree Marianne, wholeheartedly. I believe the reason I’m about to reach 27 year of marriage – after having gotten married 6 weeks after I turned 20 – is the toe-to-toe activities as much as the til death do us part stuff.
It’s knowing when not to that’s the real key…
My bride saw that on TV yesterday, turned to me and said “Well, you got something right…”
The only possible reply was “Yes Dear”.
Ahh, but how did you say it? With all the manly devotion you could muster?
Heckfire, this is a great deal. I got a great looking, athletic, artistic, intelligent green eyed 5 ft 2 inch blond and she got me. 27%? Make that 270% and I’m happy, even after 30.2 years. I still chalk it all up to those Navy wings on the SDBs.
27% smarter than what? Intelligence has a lot of different pieces. I’ve got a smart wife. I think I’m a smart guy–about some things. [I doubt that Lex's wife could bring an F-18 on board a carrier on the proverbial dark and stormy night.] We’ve been married almost 45 years and we respect each other’s abilities, and each of us will pass the lead to the other when appropriate.
Now I will admit that there was a young lady I’d dated in high school and my early college years who I could never see as a potential wife. I knew goldanged well that she wasn’t 27% smarter than me about anything! But she was smart enough to finally get tired of waiting and to dump me.
Will be 37 yrs this May 26th (I never forget my anniv. as it is on day Castro took over Cuba–will never forget that day–watched it live on tv) and my “bride” is indeed 5yrs younger than I, (part of the formula) but obviously MUCH dumber–else why would she have stuck around past the first five minutes?
(of course pity has great explanatory power also–she IS a Nurse, after-all.)
No, a Nurse could never leave YOU to fend for yourself. You’d never remember where you put the Barbancourt.
How can I say, “Well, that explains why I am the only Badger in this burrow”, without sounding exceedingly self satified and smugly arrogant?
You can’t.
No that there’s anything wrong with that…
Forty-one years soon, she is the keel to my sail. She balances me when I yaw too far, gives me the sureness to speed when I can. As I’ve already revealed, a Scotch-Irish lassie of strong midwestern, Iowa-Missouri family. A fabulous foursome, three girls and a son, to our credit.
Smarter? I like the way Mike Meyers said it… “intelligence has a lot of different pieces”… and facets, I would add.
Never knew what happiness was until I got married……….
then it was to damn late.
(Actually…shhhh….I love my wife and she’s smarter’in me.)
I got the most remarkable little girl out of it.
Women think men are dumb, because men are dumber when women are present. Really, gals, when y’all aren’t around, we can do mathematics, and physics, and engineering, and all.
I thought evverbody knew that when a man is in the presence of a good-lookin wummun, most of the blood drains from his brain to engorge a different organ.
So, you’re saying that you like them a lot. Please remember to log off and tell them that.
When I asked my son what he liked best about his then-girlfriend-now-wife he replied, “Mom, she’s smarter than me.”
Without skipping a beat I replied, “Ah, then, you’re taking after your father!”
As much as we’d like to think the old joke — God made women beautiful, so men would be attracted to them. He made them stupid so they’d be attracted to men — is true, deep down inside we know it isn’t.
I’ve tried both sides of that coin — the “smarter than me” side is SO much better.
Almost 27 years and I still think she is smarter. As for a number quantifying it? I wouldn’t have a clue. Not a Clue. But I would probably be living in a single wide mobile near the tracks in my hometown without her.
One would give pause considering the deployments, detachments and work up cycles that intrude on regular life. But it has been a most rewarding walk through life, indeed.
For us it’ll be 37 years next June. We each figure the other is smarter, and still occasionally surprise each other. (Once we get it all disambiguated, we might be able to figure a score. Maybe.)
Irish, with a bit of Scots and English on my side, Chinese on hers. Less overlap on family recipes, which is a good thing, too.
I’m pretty sure mine is smarter than I am, in general. I can best her in a few specific applications, mainly physics and mechanics, but that’s why I’m here — to change the oil, fix what’s broken, stomp on spiders and kill the varmints. She outdoes me in so many other areas… OK, pretty much every other area, that it’s not even funny. I’m pretty sure she looks upon me as a fairly simple beast, and that’s probably not far from the truth.
Like that time a couple of years ago I got home from work, there she was in the door with a hot home-made pizza, a cold beer, and wearing nothing but lipstick. I mean, how did she know I wanted cold pizza for supper? *I* didn’t even know that until I got home!
I tell ya, sometimes it’s scary — it’s like she can read my mind or something.
– Max
I thinks it’s more to do with respect than smarts. My wife can be a dumb blonde one minute and an amazing school teacher the next — kids magically go from not reading to reading and writing in months! How’s she do it?
For me, I am almost always lazy and use my limited intelligence in foraging and napping. Working only when I’m on the scheds.
Who’s smarter now?