From one of my writing buds and a founder of the romance community AccessRomance:

In November 2004, my business partners and I started up the community site AccessRomance. I think we had 17 authors at the time of our launch; we definitely didn’t have more than that. What prompted us to do this were complaints from design clients about the service of other community sites. They talked about it taking days or even weeks, if ever, before they got responses from the people they paid to promote them and manage their online presence. They talked about paying for services they never received. They said they would leave if there was a better alternative.

At the moment, we have 38 names on our sidebar, with two more to come in July. Our growth has been phenomenal. And we’ve done very little to advertise the site to authors (up until now; we are sending promotional stuff to this year’s RWA conference in Atlanta), so most of the growth has happened through word of mouth. Which means our clients are happy, which is just fantastic.

One of our e-book authors told us that shortly after she joined, her editor said she’d had a huge jump in sales and was wondering why. A look at the stats of some authors we hosted before they officially joined AR shows a jump of more than 1,000 unique visitors to their sites the first month they joined. Another author, when recommending to a friend which community to join, said that if she had to choose between the communities she’s a member of, she’d stick with AccessRomance.

And the latest news to make us very proud is one of our authors who it seems is being forced to choose between AR and another community, and she’s staying with us because she looked at her statistics and saw that she had 60 times as much traffic from coming AR than the other community.

How cool is that? It means we’ve accomplished what we set out to do, and if that’s not something to be proud of, I don’t know what is.

Plus, of course, it allowed me to quit my stupid day job as a library drone.

I’ve updated my site–will try to update the blog sidebar this weekend!

Bits WITHOUT spoilers (argh, argh, argh):

“Besides bringing to life the Ottoman Empire as a delightful side benefit, WHISPERS OF THE NIGHT is a superb historical romance that hooks the audience from the moment they arrive at remote Castle Vlararchia in Romania and never slows down as [another spoiler! ARGH!]. The strong story line contains dark gothic elements that turn into a deep abiding passion and love. Fans who value exotic locales away from the genre’s norm will fully want to join the charming lead couple as they learn first hand with their lives at stake the Machiavellian principles that rule Eastern Europe.”

Other than a vague bit that might be trying to conceal a spoiler, there aren’t any mistakes this time around!

News to B&N: The Balkans are NOT the Middle East. Oh, well. Maybe it will sell better if people think it’s a sheikh book…

This show makes no sense to me. First, they set up auditions so that jazz, ballet, modern, hip-hop, etc., dancers do well. And then they make them dance half their dances in ballroom, and they SUCK. Suck appallingly, jaw-droppingly. Because the dancers have no comprehension of ballroom-type techique, no grasp of connection, and no prayer of even how to begin to gain these things.

I don’t understand why they don’t have them do styles at which they have a prayer of succeeding. Why include ballroom at all if no one is capable of making it look like anything but a ridiculous joke? It’s like having a music competition in which everyone enters by playing strings and then they get a piano thrust at them for the first time in their lives for the competition. And the judges (those of the judges who aren’t completely BLIND…) are thrilled when they can plink out something that doesn’t sound entirely awful.

*shakes head*

Purdy….

I haven’t written any rhyming poetry since I was in 6th grade, but I needed a poem that’s written in 15 minutes for a contest. I cheated–it took me nearly half an hour. But it was 4am, and I was exhausted, and I don’t want it to be TOTALLY crappy. Just…not great. And a bit crappy.

Words fly fast from lips that feel too light
With echoed phrases heard too oft before,
Empty phrases that cannot scale the height
Of love’s esctasy requited or the sore
Depths of love’s despair. The more
Words, the less faith, and yet how can the plight
Of one soul be vouchsafed without a roar
That shakes the footings of the earth by right?
Love needs another language in which years
Of babbling speech can in one breath
Be brought swift to meaning in beloved ears
And elude voluminous expression that is death
To noblest intent. Let instead the spirits band
Self’s entirety in one note love must understand.

Equals a rigorous 6-hour university-level survey course sequence of the whole of the British corpus. 1000 years in 36 weeks! Again, precocious student. First half would be for second semester first year–second for second semester third year. This allows for maturity when dealing with more recent works.

This would be a program for a homeschooling student, though of course it wouldn’t be so rigid. The “hours” would be periods of discussion and reading critical articles and the like and would actually rarely last more than 30-45 minutes. (Since there is less overhead without a large class, the student gets much more out of shorter periods of discussion.) “Reading days” are simply time periods for which nothing is expected. A typical actual lesson wouldn’t be nearly so rigid–the teacher and student would probably discuss a novel in one sitting, merely making it “count” for three periods because of the length of time that was spent discussing it. The second half is very heavy on long works, so there are proportionally more reading days and less writing due.

Where there are two numbers on a line, the first is the week and the second is the “hour”.

1 1 Intro to Anglo Saxon Period
2 Bede (Excerpts), Dream of the Rood, Aefric - Colloquy on the Occupations
3 Verse: Battle of Maldon, Battle of Brunanburh, Wife’s Lament, Wanderer, Seafarer, Riddles
4 Paper #1, Reading day
5 Reading day
2 6 Beowulf (Seamus Heaney translation)
7 Beowulf
8 Paper #2, Intro to Anglo-Norman Period
9 Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (excerpts), Geoffrey of Monmouth (excerpts), Popular Ballads & Lyrics
10 Everyman
3 11 Reading day
12 Piers Plowman
13 Marie de France - Lanval
14 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
15 Paper #3, Reading day
4 16 Reading day
17 Chaucer - Canterbury Tales
18 Chaucer - Canterbury Tales
19 Chaucer - Canterbury Tales
20 Paper #4, Margery Kempe (excerpts)
5 21 Second Shepherd’s Play
22 Intro to 16th Century
23 Skelton, Wyatt, Surrey, Spenser’s poetry
24 Lyly, Sidney, Southwell, Nashe, Shakespeare’s sonnets
25 Shakespeare’s sonnets cont. and 16th century short prose - Queen Elizabeth, Tyndale, travel narratives
6 26 Paper #5, reading day
27 Reading day
28 Spenser - The Faerie Queene
29 Spenser - The Faerie Queene
30 Spenser - The Faerie Queene
7 31 Paper #6, Reading day
32 Marlowe - Dr. Faustus
33 Marlowe - Dr. Faustus
34 Reading day
35 Shakespeare - Romeo & Juliet
8 36 Shakespeare - Romeo & Juliet
37 Reading day
38 Shakespeare - Hamlet
39 Shakespeare - Hamlet
40 Reading day
9 41 Shakespeare - Macbeth
42 Shakespeare - Macbeth
43 Reading day
44 Shakespeare - Julius Ceasar
45 Shakespeare - Julius Ceasar
10 46 Reading day
47 Shakespeare - Midsummer Night’s Dream
48 Shakespeare - Midsummer Night’s Dream
49 Writing day
50 Paper #7 _ MAJOR PAPER
11 51 School of Donne and other poets
52 School of Jonson and othet poets
53 Francis Bacon - Essays
54 Hobbes - Leviathan (excerpts)
55 Paper #8, Reading day
12 56 Reading day
57 Milton - Paradise Lost
58 Milton - Paradise Lost
59 Milton - Paradise Lost
60 Paper #9, Intro to Long 18th C.
13 61 Pepys, Swift’s short works
62 Poetry - Dryden, Wilmot, Swift, Pope
63 Essays and nonfic - Pope, Addison & Steele, Johnson, Locke
64 Paper #10, Reading day
65 Dryden - All for Love
14 66 Dryden - All for Love
67 Reading day
68 Aphra Behn - Oroonoko
69 Paper #11, Reading day
70 Reading day
15 71 Swift - Gulliver’s Travels
72 Swift - Gulliver’s Travels
73 Swift - Gulliver’s Travels
74 Paper #12, Reading day
75 Congreve - The Way of the World
16 76 Congreve - The Way of the World
77 Reading day
78 Gay - The Beggar’s Opera
79 Gay - The Beggar’s Opera
80 Paper #13, Reading day
17 81 Sheridan - School for Scandal
82 Olaudah Equiano
83 Boswell’s Life of Johnson (excerpts)
84 Frances Burney (excerpts)
85 Poetry - Goldsmith, Cowper, Gray, popular ballads
18 86 Paper #14, Reading Day
87 Reading day
88 Sterne, Tristram Shandy
89 Sterne, Tristram Shandy
90 Sterne, Tristram Shandy - FINAL PAPER
19 91 Intro to Romanticism
92 Reading day
93 Reading day
94 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
95 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
20 96 Paper #1, Reading day
97 Reading day
98 Austen, Pride and Prejudice
99 Austen, Pride and Prejudice
100 Austen, Pride and Prejudice
21 101 Paper #2, Blake, Wordsworth & Coleridge
102 Wordsworth & Coleridge, Lord Byron
103 Shelley & Keats
104 Prose: Lamb, Hazlitt, De Quincey
105 Reading day
22 106 Paper #3, Reading day
107 Scott - Waverley
108 Scott - Waverley
109 Scott - Waverley
110 Paper #4, Intro to Victorian Period
23 111 Vic. Poetry to 1880: Tennyson, Brownings, Arnold, Rossetti, Meredith
112 Vic. Poetry to 1880 cont
113 Reading day
114 Reading day
115 Bronte, Jane Eyre
24 116 Bronte, Jane Eyre
117 Bronte, Jane Eyre
118 Reading day
119 Reading day
120 Reading day
25 121 Thackeray, Vanity Fair
122 Thackeray, Vanity Fair
123 Thackeray, Vanity Fair
124 Reading day
125 Reading day
26 126 Reading day
127 Dickens, Great Expectations
128 Dickens, Great Expectations
129 Dickens, Great Expectations
130 Late Vic./Edwardian Poetry: Hopkins, Kipling, Housman, Hardy
27 131 Late Vic./Edwardian Poetry: Hopkins, Kipling, Housman, Hardy
132 Reading day
133 Reading day
134 George Eliot, Middlemarch
135 George Eliot, Middlemarch
28 136 George Eliot, Middlemarch
137 Reading day
138 Reading day
139 Hardy, Mayor of Casterbridge
140 Hardy, Mayor of Casterbridge
29 141 Hardy, Mayor of Casterbridge
142 Paper #4 - MAJOR PAPER, Reading day
143 Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
144 Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
145 Reading day
30 146 Shaw, Pygmalion
147 Shaw, Pygmalion
148 Social essays
149 Reading day
150 Conrad - Heart of Darkness
31 151 Conrad - Heart of Darkness
152 Reading day
153 Synge, Riders to the Sea
154 Reading day
155 Reading day
32 156 Forster, Passage to India
157 Forster, Passage to India
158 Forster, Passage to India
159 Reading day
160 Reading day
33 161 Waugh, Handful of Dust
162 Waugh, Handful of Dust
163 Waugh, Handful of Dust
164 Modern Poets: Yeats, Wilfred Owen, Dylan Thomsas Auden, TS Eliot
165 Modern Poets: Yeats, Wilfred Owen, Dylan Thomsas Auden, TS Eliot
34 166 Reading day
167 Reading day
168 James Joyce, Ulysses
169 James Joyce, Ulysses
170 James Joyce, Ulysses
35 171 Reading day
172 Reading day
173 Orwell, 1984
174 Orwell, 1984
175 Orwell, 1984
36 176 Modern Short Fiction - Katherine Mansfield, DH Lawrence, etc.
177 Modern Short Fiction
178 Contemp Poetry
179 Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
180 Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, FINAL PAPER

Just like being back in high school… Lordy, I can HEAR the boredom sublimating off this paper. Note at the time that I assumed McCarthy had some basis for fact in his portrayal of the Salem witch trials–the truth is that virtually all the parallels to the Red Scare were manufactured out of whole cloth. So a large part of this essay is dead wrong, as I assumed he took two real events and paralleled them rather than refashioning one as an echo of the other.

After World War II drew to a conclusion, the long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union began. In the 1950s, tensions ran high between America and its one-time ally, and fear of the Communists was widespread. Joseph McCarthy, a little known senator from Wisconsin, exploited the fears of the masses in an attempt to gain a popularity and a good reputation. He declared that not only did loyal Americans face the Communist threat overseas, but that America itself harbored Soviet sympathizers and closet “Commies” by the hundreds. McCarthy spearheaded an effort to rid the country of Communism in a mass movement called the Red Scare. During the Scare, thousands of innocent citizens were accused of holding Communist sympathies, accusations which had little or no evidence to support them. Arthur Miller, appalled by the wide approval with which McCarthy’s actions were received, set about trying to convince the public of the spuriousness of the charges and attempted to reveal the greed and fear which motivated them. Realizing that any overt criticism would be rationalized by the public, he sought to describe another more removed event that would serve as a parallel to the Red Scare. Due to the striking similarities between the two events, Miller chose the Salem witch trials to represent the Red Scare in his play The Crucible.

The impetus behind both the Red Scare and the Salem trials came from the innate emotionality of the subjects with which they dealt. When the Red Scare occurred, Americans had lost the comfort, however illusional, of the isolationist policy predating the first World War. The United States was suddenly thrust neck-deep into world affairs and immediately entangled in a cold war with the Soviet Union. Americans feared the great power across the ocean, and the thought that spies might be present among them in their own towns and cities struck a common chord. Fear rather than reason fueled the Red Scare, which generated extreme reactions from otherwise civilized and rational people. Similarly, the Puritans of Salem knew that the devil lived in the forest, constantly threatening their souls with temptations just as the Soviets threatened American lives centuries later. The citizens of Salem maintained eternal vigilance against the influences of the devil in themselves and in their neighbors, for they lived in a world in which the unseen world touched the seen with natural and supernatural overlapping as a matter of course. The Puritans took claims of witchcraft seriously, because they considered the devil as immediate as the as the air they breathed. In that oppressive atmosphere of concentrated fear, hysteria inevitably bubbled to the surface of the cauldron of society, bearing the stench of the most reprehensible of human emotions: greed, hatred, lust, and revenge.

In both the Red Scare and the Salem witch trial, men were convicted on the most intangible infractions of all, the crimes committed in the privacy of one’s own mind. However unjustly, the burden of proof lay with the accused during both movements, and by their very nature, the accusations were impossible to prove — or disprove. How could a man prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that he was telling the truth? When the subject under debate was a man’s political or religious orthodoxy, the only proof he could offer personally was his own word, and if his word carried any weight, he would not have been accused in the first place. Character testimony remained the sole defense possible, but in both the Red Scare and the Salem trials, no one was willing to support the accused for fear of being prosecuted themselves.

Another reason few risked supporting the accused was that the outcasts and ‘leeches’ of civilization became the first victims of both movements. No one wanted to protect those who were considered strange even during normal times. In the 1950s, Hollywood became the first target; in the seventeenth century, the beggars, widows, and mentally unbalanced were accused first. Gaining momentum, the movements then shifted focus, sweeping from the fringes of society through the ranks of the middle class and up to the most prominent citizens. Men high in the ranks of the military were accused in the twentieth century, and back in Salem, the governor’s wife herself fell under suspicion. The people tolerated the widespread accusations within limits, but the accusals of the most distinguished people in their societies pressed too far. Eventually, the American public put a stop to the Red Scare, and the Massachusetts governor halted the witch trials, ending the reigns of terror.

Like the general course of events, the central figures in the Red Scare and Salem trails were also remarkably similar. In representing McCarthy as Abigail in The Crucible, Arthur Miller equated the motivations driving each individual. McCarthy was propelled by the need for recognition and popularity, and it was likely that he did not believe his own claims but sought only to use them as a springboard for political success. The other Senators did not risk opposing the force of public opinion while it flowed with McCarthy, and they followed him because they dared not do otherwise. When the wave of McCarthyism eventually dashed itself against the rock of reason, the Senators reverted to their former political positions and decried McCarthy’s actions from the safety and comfort of the majority. McCarthy, his cause lost beyond salvage, quietly disappeared from public view. Selfish motivations also drove Abigail, though her desires were of lust and revenge rather than ambitious greed. She manipulated the fears of the Salem community to serve her own ends, commanding the obedience of her peers in much the same way as McCarthy led the Senate. Like the Red Scare, the momentum behind Salem witch trials disintegrated only a short time after the movement began, and Abigail fled Salem, buying passage on a ship to an unknown destination and an uncertain fate.

To awaken the public to the injustices of the fear-driven Red Scare in the nineteen-fifties, Arthur Miller looked for an event in a more removed time to mirror the McCarthyism movement of his own age. He found his allegory in the Salem witch trials of Massachusetts, which bore striking similarities to the Red Scare centuries later. Although the Red Scare ended decades ago, The Crucible remains not only a political interpretation of events that are now only memories but also a work of art in its own right and a warning against the irrationality born from fear.

I was thinking the other day of which books I’d choose for a 2-semester American Lit course equivelent to a 2-course college sequence. My method is novel-heavy–I’d assign a novel/long work every other week, and on the off weeks, I would have a play assigned half the time and short stories the other half for three days a week, with poetry during the remaining two days. (I think a major reason kids dislike English class is the buffet-style approach taken, where they dabble in the works of a great many writers and run here and there without ever stopping to truly appreciate many long works of prose.)

My choices were made ithe a mixture of methods: fame, quality, and frequency of assignment all contributed to my choices, and sometime practial matters played a part, too, such as assigning the shorter Age of Innocence rather than House of Mirth. I’m not 100% sold on these choices, but it’s something to work with.

The choices are also tailored toward the precocious student, who might have the intellect to enjoy many great works but have a lack of emotional maturity to appreciate works that could be considered more disturbing.

LONG WORKS

Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Scarlet Letter
Twain, Huckleberry Finn
Chopin, The Awakening
Cather, My Antonia
Wharton, Age of Innocence
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Faulkner, Light in August
Wright, Native Son
Ellison, Invisible Man
Henry James, Portrait of a Lady
Buck, House of Earth
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
Bradbury, Farenheit 451
Heller, Catch-22
Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

DRAMA

Wilder, Our Town
O’Neill, Desire Under the Elms
Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
Miller, Death of a Salesman
Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun
Hellman, Children’s Hour
Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Miller, The Crucible
Williams, Glass Menagrie

So, whom did I horribly neglect? And who do you think shouldn’t be here but is? *g*

I didn’t make out a list of short stories or poetry yet, though! These would prepare the student for the CLEP test.

This would be the second year in a sequence of four.

Why is it that whenever a scientist or researcher says anything that is either A) incredibly ridiculous or B) is mildly indicative of something that can be distorted out of all recognition, people in the media and in pop culture hounds have a field day?

Just yesterday, Mark Liberman of The Language Log wrote about a ridiculous book that tries to claim that men are emotional children. I don’t know WHAT it is about American culture that’s currently got a few men prancing around and shouting, “We are cave men, yes we are! We are cave men, and we’ll go far!” *rolls eyes* But an even glancing familiarity with gender constructs throughout WESTERN culture, even, would quickly make people realize how much our conceptions of everything from emotion to language facility ro libido are social constructs. I’m not saying that there aren’t genetic gender differences. (Any woman who’s had a 16-month-old boy eat his crackers into gun shapes and then start shooting things realizes that gender differences are very real…) I’m just saying that the cutsie cutural stereotypes have very, very little to do with genetic gender differences.

On Friday, they tackled a “generation gap” speech at an advertising festival. All I can say is…wow, is that man out of touch. I’m 26, supposedly an “digital immigrant”, but as I’ve had a computer in my house since I was six (and since I’ve been using it since then), I think I’m justified in calling myself a native, anyhow. Anyhow, let’s look as Saatchii’s declaration:

The latest affliction, according to neuroscience … is that the digital native’s brain is physically different as a result of the digital input it received growing up. It has rewired itself. It responds faster. It sifts out. It recalls less. … This, apparently, is what makes it possible for a modern teenager, in the 30 seconds of a normal television commercial, to take a telephone call, send a text, receive a photograph, play a game, download a music track, read a magazine and watch commercials at x6 speed. They call it “CPA”: continuous partial attention.

Now, the neuroscience reference is a bunch of hooey. Maybe it comes from a grossly misinterpreted bit of real research, but most likely it comes from what someone once heard from a friend who thought he read this op-ed piece… Much like the “history” that was cited by two male romance writers to declare that the men are really unemotional, testosterone-overladen brutes. (Yeah, I know that’s what you WANT to think of yourself as, and if that’s your private fantasy, and I know it plays into the fantasy of some women, ugh, I won’t mess with it. But don’t claim history and genetics are on your side when they ain’t.)

But the tenor of this peice is something we’ve all seen many times, a phenomenon going back to at least Socrates’ time. That is: Young people are different from old codgers like us. They can do things we can’t or won’t. There must be something wrong with them.

So, if a person can watch TV, do homework, and IM his friends, then there must be sometihng wrong with him. I know! His attention span has decreased! Nevermind that this is the same kid who plays Worlds of Warcraft for 16 hours with only toilet breaks–I will believe what I want in the face of any evidence! And, yes, neuroscience supports me because I say that it does!

Saatchi is certainly the LAST person who should be telling ANYONE how to advertise in the digital age as his atrocious site is not only flash-only, but it hijacks your ENTIRE SCREEN with a bloody POP UP in an act of incredible cyber-rudeness and then displays an atrocious UPSIDE DOWN, UNREADABLE page that has idiotic SOUND CLIPS from an interview and no text–doesn’t he know that us young ‘uns read all our news on the web because listening to people gab is way too SLOW?–and then has this stupid box so you can spam your friends with the webpages–as if A) anyone cares about what he has to say and has the patience to listen to him drone it out and B) as if anyone ever uses the “tell your friends about” scripts rather than just opening an email and sending his own message directly! If you’re taking advertising advice about “digital natives” from this guy, well, you know, I have advice for you about how to get along in Brunei. Really, I do. Check out his site yourself. I think my retinas are bleeding.

And now…and now…there is a “serious study” that claims that what’s really wrong with young ‘uns if that they remain neurologically immature.

Someone heeds a half-brick in a sock up the side of the head…

You need to read the entire article. I can’t even quote it. The whole thing is a gem–really, it is.

One of my favorites is this:

“When formal education continues into the early twenties,” he continued, “it probably, to an extent, counteracts the attainment of psychological maturity, which would otherwise occur at about this age.”

“By contrast, many modern adults fail to attain this maturity, and such failure is common and indeed characteristic of highly educated and, on the whole, effective and socially valuable people,” he said.

“People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence in the sense of being unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact.”

What do you want to bet that this “overraction” is a personal observation, from the fact that any intelligent person talking to the man for more than five minutes must resist the urge to slap him?

Trying to analyze the man’s arguments is like looking at the hideous, burn out wreckage of the crash of half a dozen cars and trying to work out the mileage on each. But here’s a go.

First, the man has no reasons for what he says. None. This guy is the editor-in-chief of a magazine that publishes things such as a paper on the supposed non-visual functions of the eye leading to experimental trans-iridal light therapy method–in other words, hogwash. It published a purely speculative study of the link between electricity and health problems–that is, “studies” that tribute illnesses to electricity through guesswork rather than actual population studies. It prides itself on publishing ideas WITHOUT observations–in other words, “This sounds kind of good to me! It might be true, eh?” Which appears to be what Charlatan..er…Carlton is doing in his “serious study.” (I would ask if journalists ever READ what they write about, except that I know that they don’t…)

So, what’s the man’s argument? Well, he doesn’t even have one of those. What he does have is A) a collection of random facts and B) a wild declaration. That doesn’t make an argument. He’s been taking lessons in logic from the Central Park Haranguer Academy of Rhetoric.

First, some random facts:

-humans have an inherent attraction to physical youth, since it can be a sign of fertility, health and vitality.
(That’s only true with several reservations–symbols of power can be very attractive to, particularly to women, though that appears to be changing–when I was in NROTC, I couldn’t cross campus without at least one wolf-whistle or a shout of “I LOVE a woman in uniform!”)

-past cultures often marked the advent of adulthood with initiation ceremonies
(Um. Huh? What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? And what does he think that graduation ceremonies are now? And weddings?)

Next, some wild claims:

-A “child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviors and knowledge” is probably adaptive to the increased instability of the modern world

-“But formal education requires a child-like stance of receptivity to new learning, and cognitive flexibility.”

-While the human mind responds to new information over the course of any individual’s lifetime, Charlton argues that past physical environments were more stable and allowed for a state of psychological maturity.

-”People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence in the sense of being unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact.”

-The faults of youth are retained along with the virtues, he believes. These include short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness.

The big problem here is with his idea of “maturity.” He never defines it beyond the implication that it is contrasted to flexibility and adaptability–he seems to believe that maturity consists of stasis. And while it certainly is true that successful people used to be able to develop an unvarying routine and set of tastes and opinions (my grandparents’ generation tended/tends to keep similar hairstyles and even clothing choices from the 1950s down to today), there is no indication that such a tendency is in any way reflective of a greater maturity.

Those who think that children are inherently flexible has never tried to break an average four-year-old from his routine. The idea that flexibility is an inherent–versus inculcated–part of youth is itself fallacious. Certainly, everyone has needed to learn at some point, which implies a certain kind of flexibility, but the growing-into-conformity-with-a-culture is scarcely a demonstration of flexibility!

The only reason childhood and flexibility of thought might be associated is in a culture that attempts to teach flexibility specifically to its young. In that case, the ossification of behavior and opinion at adulthood is not the attainment of maturity but the failure of education to lastingly instill a perceived virtue of the culture in its students. It is a reversion, not a maturation.

His idea that successful people “are often strikingly immature” because they are “unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact” is a claim of breathtaking ludicrousness. It’s one of those “Well, you know, there’s BOOK smart and STREET smart!” bits of nonsense–something that is extremely appealing to the man-on-the-street but has absolutely no basis in fact and is not supported by a shred of research. Those who are A) more intelligent and B) more successful have more stable relationships tend to have a higher moral sense, both of which should be very good signs of social maturity. Exactly what “priorities” of Charlton’s they don’t conform to, I haven’t got any idea, much less the tendency to “overraction”. *rolls eyes*

Yes. We young people have a short attention span. Good grief, would you get off that hobby-horse already? Attention span despends ALWAYS upon CONTEXT, something that morons making wild claims never bother to provide. And, yes, the modern pace of life and the rapidly changing fashions are all because we are immature. *rolls eyes* Yes. That’s it.

He even alludes very distantly to relativism with his “flexibility of attitudes”, but that started with the Transcendalists and flowered with the Boomers, babe. It’s nothing of OUR creation.

As Bugs Bunny would say, “What a maroon!”