Forget world peace, cure the common cold. Please!
While I'm waiting for my content readers to finish with the manuscript I'm rekeying the first book into my laptop. The first publication was done by the college where I was teaching at the time, though I retained the copyright. The college decided they didn't want to be in the book business, so with my permission they gave the remaining stock of books to the Grace Gospel Fellowship, our denomination. After doing a reprint the GGF eventually decided the same thing and, again with my permission, gave the remaining stock to Grace Publications, our denomination's small publishing arm. GP did a third reprint in late 2015, but did so without getting permission from the author (and copyright holder). Oops.
Now that publishing is so easy and reasonably priced because of POD technology I've decided to republish the first book myself. I've asked GP to not reprint when they've exhausted their current supply because by that time I'll have a POD version ready.
Hence, rekeying it into my laptop. I worked for about an hour on that this morning and decided it's pretty tedious work. I'm halfway through the first chapter.
It's not politically correct, but everyone knows it's true: cultures define and recognize physical beauty in people. What constitutes beauty will vary from culture to culture and from time to time within the same culture. Mae West would be considered almost fat by today's standards, but in her day she was voluptuous. I read someplace that facial symmetry is one of the things that in our culture characterizes beauty. OK, maybe so. In women we also value things like prominent cheek bones, long and oval faces (as opposed to round faces), and large(r) breasts. In men, cleft chins, a rugged look (as opposed to fair skin), and broad shoulders contribute to making a male good looking. Dimples help, too.
OK, since I've long demonstrated that I lack the kind of filters that keep normal people out of trouble I'll take this the next step. If a culture defines Person A as physically attractive relative to Person B, what about Person C? That is, doesn't the extremely subjective and transient notion of physical beauty lend itself to gradation, to scaling? Or, as adolescent boys have done for as long as I've been alive, scoring on a...say...one to ten scale?
I'm not saying it's fair, nice, or right, but it is what is. People Magazine annually names their "sexiest man alive" (most recently, Blake Shelton) and sexiest woman alive (Julia Roberts in 2017).
Work with me here. If we could come up with a consensus score for each bride and groom at each wedding in the U.S. for, say, the last five years would we see any patterns? Would brides typically have a higher number than their grooms? (My sons would say they're proof the answer is yes, and their dad wouldn't disagree.) Would the numbers for the bride and groom in each wedding typically fall within a certain range? Is it rare for one to be a nine and the other a four?
I suspect that is the case, that attractive men typically marry attractive women and visa versa. "Nice personality" only takes you so far.
Now that I'm this far down the road...
I'm going to postulate that if there's a gap of 4 or more points it will always be the woman who is more attractive, and the guy will have lots and lots of money. (see: Andy Murray and Kim Sears)
Anybody else thinking about the White House here?
Me? I'm proof that the rules don't always apply.
I don't have any money.
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