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"This renewed series will attempt, through a rigorous quantitative method detailed below, to determine the following:
Which couple best exemplifies both the unique spirit and impossible standards of everything the New York Times "Weddings/Celebration" section stands for?
Back in the day I used a scoring-system metric originally devised by Alexis Swerdloff but I felt it needed a more modern update. This new and improved NUPTIALS (Names, Universities, Parents, Tropes, Identifiers, Avocations, Locales, and Special Situations) algorithm can be found below. (Further suggestions are always welcome.) By establishing in advance a robust quantifiable rubric I hope to remove the more easily triggered human elements -- jealousy, rage, lack of productivity as I try to figure out if I went to field hockey camp with that girl -- from this important analysis."
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"The romantics smooth away Cobb's edges by invoking the product-of-his-time defense. He was racist because everybody was racist back then. [...] Meanwhile, Cobb's kindnesses are overshadowed by his surly reputation. Mention that Cobb hit a black groundskeeper because he didn't like the state of the facilities -- and then choked the groundskeeper's wife when she tried to break up the fight -- and romantics will counter with stories of Cobb's goodwill. Cobb used his fortune to establish a college scholarship program for Georgian students, and quietly supported several retirees in need, often anonymously. [...]
The foil to the romantics are the nostalgics: People who revel in Cobb as an archetypal mean-old-cuss, weirdly morphing the man into a brutal darling. Nostalgics get downright lurid about how Cobb's own teammates hated him, and how his relationships were strained. [...] A tough and tortured man from the cutthroat old days: He is horribly awe-inspiring."
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