Roommates and Roaches

Watch out, you might get what you're after,
Cool baby, strange but not a stranger.
I'm an ordinary guy,
Burning down the house.

Hold tight, wait 'til the party's over,
Hold tight, we're in for nasty weather.
There has got to be a way,
Burning down the house.

~The Talking Heads 

So, this week I will be talking about some of the different types of roommates that one might come across. Maybe some of you have an eternal roommate that fits into one of these categories. Choose your love, love your choice. Although sometimes we do not choose our roommates--they just propose to us. Or something like that. Since starting college, I have had 49 roommates. All have been male. This is actually much higher than I thought (The number, not the gender). Let's hope I can push it up to 50 in the next five years, maybe in a 49-1 gender distribution.

Let me clarify that unless specifically noted, the roommates listed here are not necessarily roommates I personally have had.  If you actually were my roommate at one point, perhaps you will know some of these people. Please, please, do not think that I am trying to call you out. We do not need another Carly Simon moment. I also have realised that some roommates I have had could fit into several of the categories (Right now I think I have a guy in mind that could fit four distinct categories. Wow.)

A few of these will admittedly require a rather pronounced understanding of the code names. This will especially be true on the one about the roommate who had no concept of personal property. Because Kappa is with Lambda, but his name is Clifford, but Clifford is not his real name and is not to be confused with the Kappa Prime, because that's a woman (I think) who liked Alpha Andy. And all of that makes perfect sense.


The Chef. One phrase: London Broil. For some of us, that says it all. Picture multiple crock pots full of beef, smothered in fresh garlic and spices. But  I will say this, the dude only made one bad meal in his life. Cinnamon and broccoli just do not make a good match. I could tell hundreds of stories about "The Chef," but that would be a post in and of itself. So I will summarize it with just a few phrases: "Rice and chicken," "The Hog's on the couch," "Forgive us for our hubris," "The microwave is melting." I probably should also mention hiding in the back rooms to avoid the wrath of The Chef in his task master role.

The Kid. This is a roommate that was still learning the halls of the local junior high when you were in college. This is a roommate who does not know who Monica Lewinsky is because he was born after "that" happened. And O.J Simpson? That's Homer's older brother, right?

The Lover. This is a common type of roommate. A man with an oft-knocking woman. Some people do the whole girlfriend thing well. Others don't. These latter group sometimes break your couch. I will spare you the details. All I can say is Sink Girl sank our couch. I have also had roommates who handle the lover life well.* They managed to realise that I sometimes wanted to use the kitchen or the living room. And I did not have to feel like I was a chaperone for a chimp in heat on Animal Planet.

The Chatter. This roommate is a subcategory of The Lover. Specific to the Chatter is the fact that his lover lives in another time zone and he somehow thinks it will be a good idea to stay up until 2 a.m. getting chatty with her on "MSN Messenger." (You can know that this was not The Kid by the fact that he used an IM to talk to his girlfriend). And he did not even end up marrying the girl. This is usually how it is actually.

The Bad Boy. Avoids going to most ward activities, including "FHE" (which I'm pretty sure stands for Freakishly Huge Entertainment, but I haven't found that in the handbook yet). One time this roommate did not reach quota for dating and did not feel remorse about it. (Awful, I know!) For good measure spilled an entire Crock-Pot of barbeque pork in the corner and stained the carpet red. Nothing could get the stain out. They even tried Bon Ami. Good thing we have couches that can be moved to cover the stain. 

Mr. Chicken and his ghost.

The Trapper. This is the type of roommate that goes to bed and locks the bedroom so you cannot get in. Half of the time you wonder if he even is in school. Then he gets a subpoena from the California Department of Justice, but you realise he has fled the country. At least he found his ham sandwich and a wife.  

The Beavers. These are not roommates, but rather friends of a roommate. The beavers come unannounced and must spend the night dammed up in a pile in your front room, blocking even the simplest of tasks. These large toothed friends usually hail from a university up north and smell of burnt wood. (Possibly from a burned dam?) The reason why these second hand roommates are called beavers is lost to history. 

The Bulldog. "I like power lifting. A lot." That sums it up. Picture a dude that can dead lift 600 lbs and sits in the front room in short pants. Drinks a lot of protein shakes and "whey." Moonlights as a security guard. He did smile one time. The San Antonio Spurs had just won the NBA title. The smile was short lived. Maybe it was his inner Tim Duncan.

The Keeper. This one is sort of like The Bulldog. The main difference is location. The Bulldog spent his time in the front room on the couch, whereas The Keeper spent most of his time in his room. I was home one time for an entire day (foot injury) and The Keeper literally went from 6:30 am (or earlier) until 8 pm without using the bathroom or coming out of his room. And we lived on the third floor and faced the main road, so he was not going out of the window (in either sense). We called this guy The Keeper as a shortened form of "The Keeper of the Chamber of Secrets." There was another time that we had not seen the guy for...a while, so we opened his door to see if he was dead. This literally was what we thought. We though we had become "those roommates" that let a guy die because we did not check on him enough. But he was just fixed on a video game--and had been in there for 24 straight hours as far as we could determine.

The Farmer. There once was a boy named Shmuck. He had a farm--a server farm. It caused a massive power bill. To the tune of $200 for the month of June. Shmuck and his server farm.

The Parasite and his trawler. Is it a common practice to wrap your lover up in the blankets from your roommate's bed? I didn't think so. But there he was, The Parasite, in the blankets from someone else's bed. With his girlfriend. Trawling along the Bayou. Eating seafood he was not ready to pay for. The Parasite once let Santa Claus sleep in his roommate's bed when he was away. The Parasite also used my towel a few times, so I exchanged it with a towel I used to clean the toilet. All I can say is that old habits are hard to break and somehow that towel ended up wet after he took a shower.

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*Although, the week before they got married also proved rather difficult in the furniture department: Evenings usually consisted of them telling jokes from the back of LaffyTaffy wrappers, followed by collapsing onto the floor in a fit of hysterics. I only had to administer oxygen once or twice. #EngagedPeople

Dating is Dead: Part III

I walked along the avenue
I never thought I'd meet a girl like you
Meet a girl like you.

With auburn hair and tawny eyes
The kind of eyes that hypnotize me through
Hypnotize me through.

And I ran, I ran so far away
I just ran, I ran all night and day
I couldn't get away.

~A Flock of Seagulls

This is the final installment in the rant. You will need to read the previous two posts to get caught up to speed if you are just joining us now.

Let me begin today by reiterating that I am aware of the fact that there are ladies who feel they have been marginalized by men only wanting to hang out. This is where a choice can be made. Contrary to how some view it, maybe the proper response to what you perceive to be too much hanging out is not to barricade your house until a Prince Charming comes knocking. Have you tried asking a boy on a date? Not everyone is culturally comfortable with this, but I am personally of the opinion that you either need to be the change or go to the bench. Bounce or be bounced. When you allow yourself to become victim to a restrictive social practice, how in the world can that be my fault? Stop blaming me when you fall into the pit of your own social Dawinism.

"Call me old fashioned, but....." Yeah, about that.

The movement within the society to which many of us are indigenous is not to give women less of a voice or to maintain a certain sort of paradigmatic status quo. This philosophy is not just growing in prevalence in the world, but within the Church (with a capital C) as well.

Asking boys on dates is not for every girl. Even some men are opposed to it. I guess I can live with this. But I am strongly of the opinion that when you ride the status quo train, you go where the track takes you and you do not complain to the driver when it does not go where you want. This is true not just in your puerile romanticism, but in life in general. 

These opinions on girls becoming involved in the asking process are usually rebutted with one of two thoughts: "That's a man's job" and "Back when I was young...." Perhaps these two views are really the same view expressed in different ways. In some senses, it is hard to argue with the first phrase. As long as "A woman's place is in the kitchen," I guess that I will concur that it is a man's job, not a woman's, to initiate all dative interactions. But wait, no well thinking person would actually say that first phrase. Why? Because it is from a bygone era.* I would argue that you cannot have progressive ecclesiastic and educational goals for women while retaining retrogressive social and systemic views to accompany them.  As for you "back when I was young" believers, all I have to say is that smoking kills. And it took a couple centuries to figure it out. Aren't we glad someone finally wised up?**

I remember reading a recap once of an NBA basketball game on January 26, 2011 between the OKC Thunder and the Minnesota Tiberwolves. A player named Kevin Durant (pictured above) was asked about how he had scored 32 points in the second half and pulled down 18 total rebounds for the game. Summarizing, he said something akin to "My shots where not falling in the first 24 minutes, so I decided I needed to just focus on grabbing rebounds. I think my rebounding sparked me a little bit. I started scoring when I became active on both ends." That's my philosophy. Be active on both ends. Any old fool can cherry pick beneath the basket and then complain when no one passes them the ball. You might have some other social perspective. That's okay. The NBA has  players who are pure scorers (e.g. James Harden). I just partake of a more progressive philosophy.*** And don't blame me when your barn burns down. I told you waiting around and smoking in the hay loft was a bad idea.

Not too long ago I was involved in an online discussion on the topic of hanging out. An "older" (her designation, not mine) woman told me her daughter had not been asked on dates because the single men in her area are all addicted to "Settlers of Catan." **** This woman's daughter just loves opera and no boy has asked her on a date to the opera house. That was why her daughter had yet to find a spouse: all of the boys in her town refused to take her to the opera. Darn those opera hating boys. The mom then cited the "back in my day" excuse as to why the daughter refused to run the floor or grab any rebounds. She wanted someone to pass her the ball, and she did not want to set a pick to get it! 

This mother concluded by speaking on behalf of the Church, and then claimed insight into psychological aspects of being a single man: "The church is becoming very concerned about the lack of interest in marriage.. Guys have it easier if motivated." So there you have it. A married woman in her sixties who also happens to be an expert on what it is like to be a single man. Several other people made comments of a similar (vain) vein. I am not going to feign intelligence on what most concerns the leaders of the Church, so no comment on that part of her claim.*****

I am not saying these people are evil or wicked. They probably are actually decent people. My intent is not to belittle this woman or her daughter. But I think that we should be careful about claiming insight where we really do not have any. Few things on the topic of hanging out are more annoying to me than when someone 40 years removed from the modern single culture claims to "remember what it's like to be single." It just doesn't ring true to me. I will fully accept that such persons may have insights that I do not have. If you have lived into your sixties and know less about life than someone in their twenties, you did it wrong. But such commentary comes with the caveat that it is from an outsider, a person who actually does not "remember what it is like," because they never were single in this era in the first place.

To continue with the comments on the opera lady and the online discussion I had, there were a surprisingly high number of people among the 241 comments on this forum with axes to grind on "hanging out." Filthy, wild, bombastic posts were made. Ad hominem was resorted to. Grammar errors were prevalent. The word "Council" was used in place of "Counsel" a disgustingly large number of times. It almost was frightening how many people there are out there with radicalized views on the topic of hanging out. Some of these had seemingly devoted their lives to satisfying personal vendettas. Perhaps I am one of them.

Conclusion.
I think that we still have yet to ask some of the most important questions pertaining to hanging out. Yes, hanging out happens, but WHY? Are single adults of this era made of lower quality material? Are these the same young people who are serving missions at increasingly higher rates, even with a raising of the bar?  Really? Why the nose dive all of the sudden? Sometimes I feel like we are going to the doctor for chest pain and all the doctor can say is "well, I think you have chest pain." No duh. I could have diagnosed that my self. Tell us how to fix it. I know hanging out is a "problem" for some people. Have we ever thought to ask why these single adults are hanging out? I personally feel that that is the real question we need to answer. Some single people hang out. We know that. Now we need to answer the question as to why they do. And might I suggest it is not just because single adults "lack commitment" or some other hooey trash like that.

I think we also need to fully admit that hanging out has been going on for a lot longer than we care to acknowledge. What else would you call a church dance, with its strange mix of sexually veiled lyrics and lots of standing by the sidelines? Yet church dances are sanctioned hanging out that we pat ourselves on the backs for. (Naturally there will be different experiences with dances. I for one do not like them.) My overall point is not that church dances are wicked. Rather, I am indicating that the YSA culture has institutionalized hanging out. I am going to refrain from making a list, so as to avoid starting a fire I do not want to put out.

For me personally, writing all of this has been rather cathartic. I'm not gonna lie: it feels good to throw eggs at the little red school house. Although perhaps it is merely a Pyrrhic victory.

There is a lot more I could say on this, but I am now out of time.  I summarize with three thesis points:

1. Actually do your research. Sure, I study statistics for a living so I care a lot about actual data backing up my claims. But still, do your research. Do not just buy into every agenda driven piece of baseless "social research."
2. Stop wishing that the Bucks still had Lew Alcindor. He and the era's short shorts have retired. Run the floor. Play both ends. Or be benched.
3. Ask the questions that actually need to be asked. Ask why. Ask how. 

I cannot address every concern. I have seen "hanging out" lumped in with topics wholly unrelated in severity. Some people have very valid difficulties relating to marriage. This is not a post about spousal abuse. This is not a post about pornography. Hanging out is categorically different from these evils. Please "get" that. Please. There are of course all sorts of societal ills in relation to marriage. Marriage is perhaps the most fought over topic in the political and public sphere. But hanging out is hardly on the same level as these debates. Hence nothing I said here should in any way be extrapolated to  these topics. Because they are not even close to being the same. 

Let me also add that writing this has allowed me to examine my approaches to how I play the game. There were some times where I really was just sort of going through the motions. Composing this long post has helped me see where I can improve my play on both ends of the court. As always, what I say here is my own opinion. I am not trying to necessarily change your opinion on these issues. But I think that it is important to present my story. There are of course people who think I am way off base on this. That is fine. I've been butting heads with people since 2nd grade with Mrs. Stwetchipants. I am sure I am a hiss and a byword to many a young lady. However, now my view is written. And that's really all I wanted to do in the first place.

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*Understand that I am not trying to belittle women that stay home with their children. Some women choose to work. Some women need to work. My mother was a stay at home mom. It worked well for us. But her place was never "the kitchen."

**This whole "back when we were young" idea is a strange one. It is like a man that used to ride bus 34 on the Blue line still going to the bus stop everyday even though the bus company cancelled that bus back in 1967. Buddy, the bus don't come to these parts no more. And sitting here on the busted bench waiting for it is not going to make it come back. "What you've gotta do is get some hot cakes and..." Those good old Luddites.

***I will here add that the (Nobel Prize winning) Gale-Shapely algorithm in social economics shows that a linear asking methodology with men as the initiating variable leads to women being married to less desirable spouses (i.e. male optimal) than if women had also participated in some iterations as leading variables. In layman's terms, when women will not ask, and men abide by such, women marry a less desirable spouse than if they had participated in asking. Look it up. It is called "Male optimality of the Gale-Shapely Algorithm." This is an example of how we allow traditional social perceptions to lead us to poorer social choices. Here are some papers you can read. Or you can remain ignorant but happy in your social paradigm. Male Optimal Pairs, Major Source on GSAlg. Check out Theorem 1.2.3 of the second link. Male optimal pairing patterns lead to the woman being in the minimal [worst] stable marriage in the discrete space of possible stable pairings. Some of this sounds silly, but it is actually a huge area of study in game theory and social economics. Food for thought.

**** I know that some of you really like Settlers of Catan. I have absolutely nothing against the game at all, nor I am at all trying to shame you for playing it. This was just what the lady blamed for her daughter not being married.  

***** This post is already way too long, but I need to say this one thing: There is strong evidence that the leaders of the Church are concerned about the decline of families in the United States. Hence they talk about the importance of family. Part of that is marriage. Again, I cannot speak from the perspective of the leading councils of the Church, but for me personally, the day where the social practice of dating becomes the emblem of the doctrines of the family and marriage is the day where we have gone far afield from the cause which we should be committing ourselves to sustain.

Dating is Dead: Part II

And if she asks you why you can tell her that I told you,

That I'm tired of Castles in the Air.

I've got a dream I want the world to share in castle walls,

Just leave me to despair.

~Don McLean

The following is the second installment of a post started last week. You will need to read the first post to understand this one.

The true tale I will now share is a rather extreme example; however I think the story establishes a certain principle.

I remember a time that I met a professor in his office to get him to sign a sort of permission slip (I am trying to be vague here to protect the innocent). He did not know me from a hole in the head, as I came from a rather large general ed class with multiple sections. The first inquiry was my name. He then signed the paper I needed signed. He then asked me if I was going on lots of dates. As I had literally been home for a mission about two months, I had not reached the quota of dating rates he was looking for. He then laid into me about "hanging out" and how it was such a pernicious evil and I needed to "repent and stop hanging out." He literally used the word "repent." And he was serious. He cared more about if I was "going on lots of dates" or not than he did about my work in his class, my major, or who I was as a person. Why is our society like that? This is not how to lead. This is not how to mentor.

To this man it was black and white. You either are dating someone, or you need to pray for forgiveness in sack cloth and ashes. There is no in between. You either kill whales, or you work for Greenpeace. You either watch Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood or you are a guest on Jerry Springer.

For just a moment, let's assume that hanging out is prodigiously endemic among singles. One  reason that some have suggested for the rise in "hanging out" is that young people do not know how to date. A romantic discourse of Jane Austen-like proportions  usually follows. These persons on the date-and-mate soap box fawn and foam over "how it used to be:" The froo-froo and hand-kissing, the carriage rides and courtship. Marriage in view, oh the joy! (All we can hope is that these people don't also want the accompanying corsets and layered petticoats). Yet where is the sense and sensibility in these frivolous tales and rules of courtship? It is much more appealing to meet someone of the opposite gender in a setting where you do not need to continuously be referring to a booklet of rules on how to act. The endless confusions on when (and if) to open all doors, where to stand, how to stand, when to bow, how to bow, how to dress, what to text, when to text, how to text, how to approach the door, how to leave the door.....yadda yadda yadda, becomes rather hard to keep track of. Honestly, some of this has become a damned if you do, damned if you don't type of thing.  And that is why people hang out.* It is an opportunity to meet on equal terms and strip away the facade of frivolities.

The last date hang out "meeting" (But not a 미팅) that I had with a girl was rather nice in this regard. We were just two people doing something together. There was no need to put a sociological title on it. Neither of us cared about what it was to be called. We did not need to go and write down in our little quota book what good people we were. Because we came from different cultures, we were forced to just "be." Neither of us felt the need to carry on some sort of ritualistic song and dance from yesteryear. I know that some of you may enjoy these dating rituals and rules. I do not. I find it petty and annoying. Perhaps my lack of reticence in this regard will be indeed damnable and all the girls in my area will black list me. In fact, some already have begun the paper work.

I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1811

There are many well intentioned people in this dating versus hanging out debate who exacerbate the problem of the dating facade with qualifying criterion, checklists, and catch phrases. While such practices may at times lead to better quantification of dates, they unintentionally also often lead to poorer qualitative results. Or, at the very least, they add yet another layer to the game of social charlatanism. 

Now take a big huge breath. Much blasphemy was spoken above. The progeny and the issue have been disgraced. Yet shall we not say that "nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility[?] It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."

Actual footage of a true story.

I will hasten to point out that there are indeed men that hang out in inappropriate proportions and ways. Absolutely. But as I have said before, I very very rarely hang out. Maybe I am an outlier. I also hasten to point out that the type of hanging out that Elder Oaks is addressing in the 2005 talk requires the participation of women. Sometimes they are even the instigators. There have been a couple of instances where girls have actually rejected going on a date with me so they could hang out.** (Facebook is a marvelous reconnaissance tool. Yes, I can see your photos of you on your "spontaneous" movie night). Overall I feel that the role of women in hanging out has been incorrectly portrayed in the past. At times, hanging out is made to sound like it is a bunch of villainous hungry men with bazookas chasing the women and the poor widdle picked-on girls need to lock their doors and bunker down (Perhaps to watch a wonderful documentary like Twilight?). Not so. This is a bit of an iconoclastic view of course, but here are a few of my thoughts.

I am a member of group on Facebook that different people can post about activities they are doing and invite others to join them. I sifted through the last 50 posts advertising an opportunity to hang out. I ignored posts that were advertisements for an official activity relative to the group (aka "Sanctioned hanging out") and or posts pertaining to someone's job. There were 30 solicitations from men. There were 20 solicitations from women. So hang out solicitations were 60% to 40% in favor of men. In all but three of the posts where food was part of the hanging out, men were either equal providers or sole providers of such. One other interesting thing I noticed was that three men in the group contributed to 83.333% of the hang out solicitations from men. The women on the other hand were much more distributed in their hang out invitations, with no girl posting to hang out more than three times. 

So what does all of this mean? Who knows. I think it did demonstrate that girls also instigate hanging out to a statistically (and practically) significant degree. I also believe it shows that, in general, men in this group are not just free loading off of the women for food. It was interesting as well to note that a set of only three men comprised a far majority of the invitations to hang out. I will refrain from attempting to further interpret these findings. Who knows what it actually means. But I think it shows that the accusations of men forcing the ladies into hanging out and providing the food are not as well founded as some want to have us believe. Insinuation that I freeload off of the single women in my area is insulting and ridiculous.

A few of you know El Toque. Remember El Toque (This is like the Alamo, but with El Toque). No girl ever gave him one crumb from beneath the cushions of her precious little sofa. El Toque fed people again and again without reciprocation and it disappoints me when he is labeled as a freeloading "single man."

This rant will be continued next week.

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*There is scarcely room to speak on such topics here, but there are maybe about 30,078,103 levels of hanging out. Some types of hanging out can be way more productive than others. But I think that too often we get this image of hanging out as some overweight man in a wife beater, yelling at his woman to bring him another beverage in a can, and to make it snappy because the Celtics only called a 20-second timeout instead of a full. Oh, and after the game he is going to play Halo for a couple hours, so bring him a bag of Cheetos. Although, I really do not hang out anyway, so maybe that actually is what it is like. 

**A girl of course has every right to say no to a date. But then it would obviously be inappropriate to tell the bishop that the boys in your ward refuse to ask you on dates. Because that would be lying.

Dating is Dead.

Like the oyster cracker on the stew,
The honey in the tea
The sugar cubes, one lump or two?
No thank you none for me.
We're the golden crust on an apple pie,
That shines in the sun at noon,
Like the wheel of cheese high in the sky
Well ... we're gonna be sinkin' soon. 

~Norah Jones.

She looks like someone.

First off, I am pretty hesitant to even get into this topic because it is one big pit of tar. This blog has three distinct audiences. I am not going to detail them as to avoid categorizing anyone publicly. But this post might appeal to only a certain audience.

As a preface, please do not think I a trying to attack married people (Basic theorem: Dating does not equal marriage). I am not trying to attack marriage. Some of this needs to be said I think and my brother is tired of having to listen to me talk about it, so I am presenting it to a new audience. Thank you to the consultants for your contributions.

This post is a bit longer. It is sort of dense perhaps, but I wanted to say it all in writing. Please give feedback if you desire. Tell me if you think I am wrong. Maybe I am completely out of touch on this topic. Tell me where you want to see improvement.

Because it is impossible to entirely avoid talking about religion when talking about dating, I have been forced to occasionally mention religion here. I wish this is not how it was, but it is. And might I suggest that dating is not a doctrine of the gospel, nor is it connected to the four fold mission of the Church? (At least the last I checked). Sure, principles of the gospel can therein be applied. But cultural traditions are never doctrines. You cannot have a testimony about cultural traditions. Yes, yes, yes, "Dating leads to marriage." I'll let you keep believing that. And marriage is indeed a doctrine of the gospel (This is actually true!) But see the theorem I stated above. Am I saying dating is wicked? No. Am I saying that I do not seek consistent chances to charge like a champion into the coliseum of this cultural tradition? No. This is actually why I am addressing this topic: I am actually in the pit. I do not enjoy a soft seat next to the copious pageantry of the procurator.

Be warned: Esto no es un post feliz. However, for the millionth time, please do not think I am trying to attack married people. I'm not trying to belittle your testimony.* I'm not trying to advocate for any current political causes. And I'm certainly not trying to get you to purchase insurance against roosters eating your turnips.

Again, comment below if you desire. Or you can email me or write me a Facebook message. Do not try to come to my house, as the Witness Protection Program does not allow me to have visitors. This has hampered my ability to find a wife, but has admittedly increased my ability to eat cold cereal for lunch.

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"Dating is dead." Sometimes I hear that phrase uttered. I have no idea whether this is true or not, as I have not checked the morgue lately.  In what preliminary research I could do, there seems to be no formal (meaning they actually use academic methodologies) study on the matter, especially as it relates to the demographic (i.e. non-pagan white male) that I am part of. There are a few blog posts (all by women) on the matter and they usually take one of two sides: "Dating is dead and I blame men," or "Dating is dead and I am darn glad it is." Maybe some of you are on one of those two sides.

One thing that commonly comes up in my locale when speaking on this subject is the term "Hanging out." There was a "study" done around 2002 at my university by a man named Bruce A. Chadwick. I use the term "study" rather loosely, as he cites no sources and never actually seems to give much hard data on what he found. He references a prior study "of young women attending colleges and universities across the United States" that purported dating had disappeared, but he never actually manages to say who did the study or how they reached their conclusions. Chadwick's "study" is informally introduced in a devotional talk entitled  "Hanging Out, Hooking Up, and Celestial Marriage." 

Chadwick does make the rather baseless (IMHO) comment "It appears almost all of you have the appropriate goal [to get married]; it seems that it is the implementation that falls a little short," a claim which he fails to ever back up with any sort of data. Even a 100-level statistics student should be able to tell you that such a claim could only be made if there was a study done showing that marriage (not dating) trends have declined because of hanging out. Yes, yes, yes, I know "the average marriage is rising." And has been since the Neolithic era. Let's be thankful that people have stopped marrying their 15-year old cousins.** But he fails to establish that fewer LDS people are getting married because of hanging out. But he stacks his straw rather well I guess.

The rest of Chadwick's speech is actually decently good, so I will commend him on that. But overall, the premise of his speech, and the comment "the implementation falls a little short," somehow seemed unsubstantiated. But maybe I just care too much about actual statistical evidence when such claims are used to affront my current situation.

Chadwick's aforementioned speech and "research" were cited as a source in the now famous "Dating versus Hanging Out" talk by Dallin H. Oaks, given May 1, 2005. Maybe such citation means that in fact Chadwick was preaching pure doctrine. Although, keep in mind that Elder Oaks also equally quotes from Time magazine, whose current issue (at the time I am writing this) has the headline "Strangers crashed my car, ate my food, and wore my pants." You be the judge.

I have mentioned before that this talk has become the dating doctrine for a lot of people. Elder Oaks explains social trends pretty well in his talk and he is absolutely on target with much of what he has to say. For my generation, this talk is sort of where "the dating (quasi)-doctrine" began its momentous ascent into the discourse of the social church. "Hanging out" became the vogue impropriety to blame and attack. Interpret this picture:

Those of you from the UK might name these anthropomorphic stacks of grass Aunt Sally, a phrase which here means "throwing wood chips at a pile of straw." I am going to be careful in wondering this, but sometimes I have to ask if hanging out is really the barn we need to burn. 

To be continued next week.

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* As I postulated above, one cannot actually have a testimony of dating. It's like claiming to have a testimony about carrots. Carrots are not bad--they just cannot be assigned a truth value. And it would sound rather nuts to get up and claim that a group of concerned ladies wants you to feed them more carrots. Especially if they want those carrots from only a few gardens.

**Let's not even get into what the average marriage age rising means. More men and women are going to college. More men and women are going on missions. Averages are some of the weakest and least informative types of social statistics. Draw your own conclusions. Also keep in mind that there are multiple presidents of the Church who got married for the first time in their thirties. And several others got married in their later twenties. Furthermore, we still have yet to have a president of the Church who has followed the "approved/suggested" order of mission, marriage, college. If you play the "times have changed" card here, please don't pull it off the table in later installments of this post. If times have changed, then get your "back in my day" arguments out of the dating debate. You cannot have both eras. More on that later.

Graduate School Post 2

This is Ground Control
to Major Tom.
You've really made the grade.
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear.
Now it's time to leave the capsule
if you dare.

~David Bowie

I had originally intended to post something else this week, but was unable to obtain the pictures necessary. The photographer was watching Granite Flats instead. As a side note, I fear that Granite Flats will end much like ALF. There will be a cliff hanger ending to the third season, with good intentions to make another season. But then there will be contractual problems and the show will never culminate. We shall see.

After realizing that I would not have the necessary photos for the originally intended post this week, I decided to post a different post. But the timing for that set of posts did not feel right, so I have now decided to also defer that post for a week or two and present the current post you are reading. Most of the posts that you see on the blog have actually been back stage for some time (Sometimes even several months), including the pictureless one and the posts that I will be putting out next week or so. The post for today is different in that I wrote it this week. This is meant to be an update on where I plan to go for a PhD in Statistics.

Here are the basic facts:

• I will be going to a school in my current state.
• It is not my current school, but it is a school with similar colors.  There is a huge debate over this I believe. I am not sure why we do not go back to the original colors, a move which I have long advocated.
• This school is actually the only school in my state with a PhD program in statistics.
• This school was pretty much a backup to a backup when I was applying to schools. I will explain below why I chose this school over the others. 
• When I went to visit this school, the graduate chair had me meet all the single ladies in the department. I met a secretary, a (young) professor, and several of the unmarried female students. I do not know if this was on purpose. But I did meet one of these single ladies for a total of 1 hour and 12 minutes. She hails from Abraham Lincoln's birthplace. This meeting was planned, paid for, and paired. You be the judge. But if I need to show my religious conviction within the next week, I am totally going to use this as a quota reacher.
• I am going to refer in this post to the aforementioned school as Vester Valley University (VVU). This is not to be confused with VVP (Vester Valley Penitentiary). Although, VVP does have a very good prison ball team (Currently 2nd in the Western Division behind San Quentin Cellblock C).     

In the previous post on graduate schools, VVU only got a cursory consideration. And honestly, I probably would have gone to another school if it had not been for the fact that VVU gave me a pretty good financial offer. One aspect that was especially good about VVU is that I can go there on a fellowship, which means that I will only need to be a student. Usually math/stats PhD students are supported through teaching assistantships or tutoring jobs of some sort. That is what I do right now. It can be a little hard to balance taking the graduate classes, passing level exams,* and also tending to the every need of students stuck on a ridiculously ineffective online homework system. (Why do we insist on using online homework?)

Being able to go back to doing full time work as just a student is what I would say is the leading reason why I chose VVU. Overall, national ranking did not play a large role. I actually declined what is the "best" program in terms of ranking some time ago. If you read the last post on this topic, there was another school (The Paw) I was leaning towards at that time. There were a couple of red flags that started to spring up after I made that post. The Paw took forever to make any sort of decision on funding (Nothing was finalized until April, which is hard when April 15 is the deadline to commit to a program). There were also a lot of technical aspects of the program structure at The Paw that I did not especially like in the end (Such as having no central department offices and a rigid level exam syllabus). They also seemed to be massively disorganized, which was admittedly a bit off putting.

Overall, I am not really sure I found a place that I 100% liked. This would have likely been the case no matter where I ended up. I do not even 100% like the place I am currently at. Sitting on the bus bench between the All-Stars and the freshmen is a strange spot to be. I am of the age where my office mates dates one of my teachers. Weird.

Ultimately I had to make a decision based on what would be the best school situation, taking into account outside factors. There were a few places that I like better in terms of outside factors. But VVU was the best overall combination, so that is what I went with. Comment below if you desire.

Next week will be the start of a three week series.

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*In order to go on with the PhD program, most schools require passing qualifying or level exams. Level exams is a term I prefer, since "qualifying exam" makes it sound like you are trying to qualify for admission into the program or something. If you do not pass the exams after 2 years, you usually  have to leave the program (Oft times with a master's degree as a consolation prize). VVU has a level exam structure that is better than others I felt, so this was one reason I liked it. 

How to Set Someone Up

I just met you,

And this is craaaazy,

But here's [her] number,

So call [her] maybe.

-Carly Rae Jepsen (Derived)

This is another top ten list. It is about how to set people up for marriage. Or at least how to attempt to. Please do not take too much of this seriously. I am not trying to pick anyone out or respond to any specific situation. It is extremely rare that someone actually tries to set me up on dates. They realized I was a lost cause several years ago. But here is the list nonetheless.

1. If you are going to try to set someone up, make sure that you know both people well. It sounds fundamental, but you would be surprised at how many people overlook this fact.  How often do you talk to the parties you are attempting to set up? Unless you have meaningful contact with both people at least once or twice a month, chances are you do not know them well enough to be suggesting people they should date. Note that knowing someone's parent is not the same as knowing the person themselves. Do not try to set me up with some girl because you are Facebook friends with her mother.

2. Ask if you are trying to set up people that are your peers. If you are trying to set up two people that are not your peers, chances are you will fail. This is actually a really prevalent theme I find. If you are not peers to both parties, you will usually struggle to be in touch with the undercurrents of any relationship you are trying to cultivate. There naturally are exceptions to this, but in general being 40 years older than the couple you are trying to set up is not going to lead to positive results.

3. You should know the relationship status of both people. This does not mean guessing their status. You need to know straight up if they are in any sort of relationship or not. I have had people suggest women for me to pursue and all it took was a 30 second glance at Facebook to figure out that they already had milk for their Honey Bunches of Oats (Or is that a Honey Bunch Cluster for their milk?).  Six albums of pictures with them holding the same bronzed and blonde lover usually indicate a relationship.  Don't make me figure out that the "really nice" girl in your ward is actually almost engaged.

4. "Just try it for one date." Setting up and planning a date takes time, especially when it is with a person I do not know. I need to figure out where the person lives, where to park when I get to her house (I actually have had to figure this out with a few girls due to the awful parking situations by where they live), how to get to the place we are going, what to do when we get there, etc. There is no such thing as a casual blind date. It is extremely rare that I would call going on a first date with someone "fun." Just my thought.

5. Ask the question "Am I already married?" No offense, but married people can badly botch the set up game. There is just something about being married that makes one unable to be objective about setting people up. Whether we want to admit it or not, married people sometimes don't "get it." I know that many of you are married, so this is a sensitive subject. But understand that you can lose perspective very quickly once you are married. Yes, you were once single. But you are not now. I went to preschool. But I don't think any of you are going to call me for advice about your preschooler. I've even forgotten what it is like to be in high school.

One of my colleagues got married a bit ago. I distinctly remember him saying before he was married that he never wanted to be set up on a date. Obviously he had forgotten about this statement, because it was not 6 months after he was married that he was trying to become my matchmaker. He failed. Although I also was crotchety about it, so that may have had some effect.

6. It takes a heck of a lot more than her being a "nice girl" for things to work out. Just because we are the same race and religion does not mean that we have anything in common or that we desire to speak with one another. Besides, I am not a nice boy, so most "nice girls" find me repulsive. Well, I guess that there are mean girls who also find me repulsive, so maybe my bridge is falling from both ends.

7. Dates with visibly pregnant women can be awkward. I am just going to leave it at that.

8. I have spoken on this topic before, but I do not want to go on a date with someone born in 1997. I also do not want to go on a date with someone born in 1977. I might relax some of these standards if the girl is super rich, super cute, or super good at Settlers of Catan. I actually have no clue how to play Settlers of Catan, so that last one is probably off of the table as well. Maybe we should replace it with "A woman cultured in opera." Or not. 

9. This more falls under the advice giving category, but the following phrases are off limits: "There are plenty of fish in the sea," "I know the perfect girl for you," "When Gretta and I got married...." (That was 40 years and 40 pounds ago). And please don't tell me I need to stop looking for someone that is perfect. If I had a penny for every person that has told me that, I literally could fund a trip to Europe. Why in the world do people think that most single people are just stuck in a rut of looking for someone that is perfect? [Scoff]. Personally, I would be embarrassed to admit in public that I am that out of touch with the majority paradigm. Also avoid the words "special someone"  and "Ostertag for three." (That also was 40 years and 40 pounds ago).

10. Do not try and honey pot me. Few things are as awkward as being invited to someone's house for a meal only to show up and find out that they wanted me to meet some girl that just "happens to be there." This is especially egregious when the girl seems to think I want to flamenco dance with her. I would not recognize a flamenco dance if she came up and slapped me in the face (Which may or may not have actually happened....)

When I got Married...

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain,
I like watching the puddles gather rain.
And all I can do is just pour some tea for two,
and speak my point of view.
But it's not sane, It's not sane.

~Blind Melon

First off, I am not married, so obviously this is not about when I got married. Today I am going to look a little bit at the statistics behind the claim that the average marriage age is rising. In doing this, I am going to fill in the blank "When I got married _______." In order to get this to a point where I felt it was factual and summarized my claims accurately I had to make this post a bit longer. This is not an attempt at a justification for my current status, but rather an examination of the perceptions of a situation.

I sometimes joke that the average marriage age is rising....and has been since the neolithic era.

Thurg at his wedding.

But that actually is not true. Let me explain.

Here is a link to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. This gives median marriage age data. Those of you who understand basic probability distributions will understand why the median age is perhaps more useful than the mean (The median helps us understand the distribution in terms of percentiles instead of averages, hence we know the value in the distribution below which half the population lies). I will reference the following graph several times (This is a smaller version of the graph found under the link. This way if you are on a phone you can possibly view the graph a bit more easily):

Are marriage rates declining? Yes. But how severely? Note that there was a major dip in the census data post WWII (1950, 1960, 1970s). People getting married in that era currently control a significant proportion of the public pulpit on marriage. Keep that in mind. 

According to the work of the well know (in the field) economics professor Nicholas F.R Crafts of the University of Warwick (link here), all but two of the 43 English counties had higher median marriage ages for women in 1861 than the median marriage age for women in the U.S. in 1910. Starting in 1890 (Which is as far back as my data goes), median marriage age for women in the U.S. trended overall downward for the next 60 years. It took until 1970 (That is in the 20th century) for the median marriage age of women in the U.S. to surpass the lowest recorded median age (by county) in England in 1861. What does this mean? It means that women in 1950, 1960 and 1970s were seemingly getting married at ages unprecedented for over a century. 

Remember that the 1860s were a time were it was not at all unusual to see a girl get married at ages that are not even legal without parental consent these days. Yet the median marriage age of women was higher in every county of England in 1861 than it was in the United States 100 years later. 

I am going to be sloppy and go out on a limb: We would also see a similar phenomenon with men. I am going to ignore the fact that married couples in the 19th century usually had a larger age difference than we are used to these days. If we factor that in, the results for men would be even more pronounced. Conclusion, the post WWII generation got married at ages so low we had not seen them for nearly 100 years prior. 

By the way, average life expectancy rose by 30 years over that same century time span. Rather curious, is it not? (Yes, married men live longer. But the effect is minimal at best. This rise in life expectancy cannot be attributed to getting married at a younger age. As noble as that is of course.) 

Let me raise my hand here and admit that in 1860, marriage ages for women in the U.S. were lower than in England. Professor J. David Hacker of the University of Minnesota estimates in this paper that it was roughly 2 to 3 years lower in the U.S. However, as the U.S. modernized to the level of England, marriage ages also quickly rose to those of England.* This is reflected in the U.S. Census data. As with many questions in social science, we have to pick between two less than ideal alternatives. We can either use statistics from a more modernized country and extrapolate to the U.S., or we can use 19th century statistics from a country based on rustic agrarianism. We can pair data sets from countries modern among their contemporaries, or we can pair data sets from the same country, albeit a country which saw a rather rapid modernization movement at the end of the 19th century. In all, this shows that attempts to use social statistics from bygone eras to create policy platforms for the modern era will always require leaving some hole unfilled.   

So, to fill in the blank, "traditional America" (Meaning those born in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s) can say "When I got married, I was more likely than not married at a younger age than someone 100 years older than me." Probabilistically, that is what the median marriage age tells us. Not until 1980 (120 years later) did the median marriage age in the U.S. surpass that of the 1860s in England. So in other words, my grandparents' generation got married younger than any other generation that has ever been alive at the same time they were.

Sit up and read this carefully, because even well respected sources such as twentysomethingmarriage.org** sometimes overlook this. Marriage did not start in 1950. In this article twentysomethingmarriage.org makes a sloppy (or sly) mistake by cutting off their graph at 1947. This allows them to "show" that marriage ages are on the rise, but lead the uninformed reader to assume that marriage ages have always been on the rise. But go back and look at the U.S. Census data. Surprise! Marriage was a thing before 1947. And the 1950 census had the lowest median marriage age on record, a record which started 60 years prior with a median marriage age that was 3 years higher. Again, just because you read it in the ultra conservative "Family" section of your ward newsletter/local paper does not make it true.

Now let me end by fully acknowledging that currently the average (and presumably the median) marriage age is as high as probably it has been for a very long time (Ignore some of those people in the Bible that got married at age 439 or whatever). The percentage of men in the U.S. never married at age 35 is about 1.8% higher than it was 100 years ago. Yes, fewer men are getting married. But the rates are not nearly as severe as some would have you believe.  

Furthermore, I just have not seen good evidence that it actually matters what age someone gets married at (within reason). Some people refute this by talking about their early struggles in marriage at age T minus 20 years old and how it really brought them closer together as a couple. Great! I agree that working through difficulty can be positive for your marriage. But how in the world does that mean I will have an unsuccessful marriage if I get married at a later age?*** Note that having to work at your marriage is a fact of life. That is true whether you are 20, 30, or 100.  I am not trying to belittle those of you who did get married young. But my story has never been your story.  And that is true even when I was a small child.

Sadly, just because it is true does not mean people will believe it. And the microphone does not shut off when someone misinformed gets up to speak. 

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*To quote from the paper: "Indirect evidence suggests that the age of first marriage in the United States began to rise sometime in the eighteenth century and continued to increase slowly in the nineteenth century, peaking around the turn of the twentieth century." Hence people who got married from the 1940s to 1960s in the U.S. were actually a low point in the rise and fall of marriage age. This paints a slightly different picture than many would have you believe. If you are feeling really gumptious, read the whole paper. It is very eye opening and is amazingly accurate in establishing that rising marriage age is systemic to a rapidly devolving society. (That is to say, the claim that a rising median marriage age is caused by unmarried people refusing to take extant marital opportunities is not well founded).

**Let me say though that this site is a must read if you want to speak in an educated way about marriage and singleism. If you seek to preach about singles of my demographic, this site is pretty much the canon. It does an excellent job of bringing in legitimate and respected sources from both sides of the debate. This "bipartisanship" results in one of the very few moderate commentaries on marriage. The writers actually get social science and do not resort to "back in my day" finger pointing, nor do they fancy themselves qualified to speak for "The Brethren." A well regarded member of the Church actually writes for these people by the way.


**There is some evidence that getting married in one's thirties can be correlated with lower marital quality. However, this same research makes explicit note of the fact that such claims differ "significantly" when blocking by those who "were religious and those who weren't." And as with many studies in social science, there always are two sides to the story. The article from twentysomethingmarriage.org that I cited ends by saying "In general, couples who wait till their midtwenties or later enjoy more maturity and financial security, both factors that make it easier to sustain a lifelong marriage." If you fall outside of this category of course you can still have a quality marriage. But the point is that even moderately conservative social scientists (i.e. people who do actual research instead of just polling their freshman marriage prep class) indicate that as long as you get married at a reasonable age, you can have a successful marriage.