re-education

Inquiring minds want to know: how do you train an aging brain?"

For one thing, older heads should "challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should 'jiggle their synapses a bit' by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own... 'bump up against people and ideas' that are different... [this includes] reading multiple viewpoints, and then prying open brain networks by reflecting on how what was learned has changed your view of the world."

So that's why I made myself sit down, at Step-Mom's house, with her new Christmas copy of the latest Glenn Beck bestseller.

I'm afraid I didn't find it a very mind-expanding or neuron-stretching experience. How did Arguing with Idiots change my view of the world? Only subtly. It reminded me of the profound wisdom of Mark Twain's insight that you shouldn't argue with idiots because observers might be unable to tell the difference.

So I put Glenn Beck back on his dusty shelf... and didn't pick up Going Rogue.

I do promise, though, in my never-ending quest to retrain this aging brain, to look for intelligent representations of that end of the political spectrum next time I'm in Border's or Barnes & Noble.

But I won't expect to find them on the bestseller table.

Quay-lin

Dispatch from the cave. Thinking more about memory's unanticipated triggers...

On the road to the water park yesterday we passed one of my former abodes, an apartment where I lived for a year (not the luxury digs referenced previously, but a more cave-like efficiency in Hermitage, TN). It tripped memories of move-in night, August '88, when Dan Quayle's acceptance speech at the GOP convention was on in the background.

What I didn't know then was that I would one day come to think of him as the Sarah Palin of his time. Thank goodness she didn't get to become the Dan Quayle of hers. But I suppose she still aspires to be the next Dubya.