Huh. Usually I just end up jumping to the front of Natter and finding myself in the middle of one of these conversations (i.e., the kind where people seem to be contributing data points). It's been a while since I've followed long enough to see one evolve. It's kind of cool.

I married a smart man because my DNA and environment made me smart, and I can't imagine being married to a man I couldn't carry on an intellectual conversation with.

Yes, this exactly. Except change the "married" part to "dating" for me. My dad and BF couldn't be more dissimilar. Dad=5'6", bald, smart. BF=6'3", full head o'hair, smart. Okay, they're both male and smart. So much in common.

And I do think I have a slight bias toward bald men, NSM with men my age as once men reach an age where most are either bald or gray. Bald just looks more normal to me than a thick head of gray hair, and I'm sure that's from familial imprinting.

Do both BF and dad have eyes? Two apiece? Two legs apiece? Not lemurs, either of them?

I think we really underestimate the number of similarities that can be found between two people.

In other news, is it crass to point out word mis-usage and grammar flaws in an essay about how sentence construction is the everliving key to composition? Is it crasser if the publisher of said essay is the New York Times?

Aha! That's why I like (or don't dislike) younger men -- my dad is babyfaced.

I should try slipping that one past my mother.

In other news, is it crass to point out word mis-usage and grammar flaws in an essay about how sentence construction is the everliving key to composition? Is it crasser if the publisher of said essay is the New York Times?

interesting. I like smart and tall men. My father is smart and tall (like, way tall -- 6'6".) I am also smart and tall. My mother is smart and short (she's 5'5", on a good day) (small aside for the bitterness of all the times I see a 6' + guy with a short woman). I do not like men shorter than me as a general rule, but if they have a good personality and great butt, I can overlook it. no pun intended. I can never overlook stupidity, I don't care if I can bounce a ROLL of quarters off your butt.

ALthough, if I were to write a letter to the editor about this essay, I've pretty much doomed myself to its being published with all its typoes intact.

(But I mean really, it was the unnecessary use of "whom." These days, you can totally get away with using "who" where "whom" is formally proper, but the reverse is not legit, and smacks of being irritatingly and ignorantly hoity-toity, like all those people who overcorrect "me" into "I" wherever they see it.

Go for it, Nutty.

Aha! That's why I like (or don't dislike) younger men -- my dad is babyfaced.

There are more obscure examples than this. There was the famous t-shirt study a couple of years ago, where women were asked to rate the smell of t-shirts that had been worn for 24 hours be various male subjects. The women preferred the smell of the t-shirts worn by men who had the same HLA (immune system) genes that their fathers had. Mother's HLA genes didn't matter.