Gettysburg

Walked the Gettysburg battlefield this weekend, camping with some old friends. Yes, it was 14 degrees Friday night, but nonetheless good for my soul (if not my cough). On a quiet Saturday in December it's hard to imagine the scene 147 years ago when thousands fought and died on these fields. The nature of warfare was so different from today, yet young men and women still fight and die so that others may enjoy a better life. If only we civilians living comfortably behind the front lines were willing to make some type of sacrifice in their support. Instead, we fuss about our taxes and the price of gas.

Does the Internet make us stoopid?

Or do we accomplish this all by ourselves?

Eighteen-percent of our fellow Americans believe that President Obama is a Muslim according to a report from the Pew Research Center. Not that there would be anything wrong with a Muslim (or a Jew, or a Buddhist, or an atheist) being president, but Obama has publicly proclaimed his Christian faith repeatedly over the past several years. This 18% represents an increase in that belief over the past two years. We also know from the report that beliefs about Obama's religion track people's political assessment of him: 2/3 who think he's a Muslim disapprove of his presidency.

Lest we think stupidity is related to one's political beliefs or the crazy web sites one reads, the Gallup organization polled Americans and came up with the following:
-24% of Americans do not know the country from which America gained independence in 1776;
-18% believe that the sun revolves around the earth (maybe the same 18%?).

Ahhh, this is why we still need schools, with actual sane, smart adults talking with children about history, science, philosophy, thinking, and the evaluation of all the sources of our knowledge.

And why we need small schools in particular, where we have time to talk about these things without worrying about Annual Yearly Progress.

Good news for those of us 'approaching' middle age...

A new book by science writer Barbara Strauch examines a number of studies that show our brains reaching their peak between our 40's and 60's. In The Secret Life of the Grown Up Brain, Strauch looks at the Seattle Longitudinal Study, among others, which followed 6,000 people since 1956 and tested them every 7 years. It found that the study participants did better on a variety of cognitive tasks in middle age than they did in their 20's, particularly in vocabulary, spatial skills, verbal memory, and solving problems. Alas, we did less well with math and perceptual reflexes.

Strauch is the health and medical science editor and a deputy science editor at The New York Times. She previously wrote about teenage brains in The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids, another good read for parents.

Another Historical Note

Thirty-six year ago today (gulp) Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency. This was the theater that dominated my own high school years, and what we thought was the culmination of years of partisan bickering may have only been the precursor to today's gridlock in Washington. That notwithstanding, Richard Nixon has been a fascinating case in leadership for my generation. Even having achieved his lifelong goal of becoming president was not enough to fill the needs in his psyche, which raises the question, how do our own goals fulfill the needs in our own psyches? Whether material possessions, wealth, grade point averages, college acceptances, advanced degrees, titles, our childrens' success, do we recognize when our own strivings have become fulfilled, or destructive, as Richard Nixon's did? A fascinating character!