Are you Lobe-o-phobic?

Of course I subscribe to the local newspaper, dammit. I use it to swat teenagers. Why, just yesterday I was beating the tar out of some young whipper-snapper who offended my sense of propriety. He was, if you can believe this, wearing shoelaces with so-called "happy faces" woven into them! Kids didn't act like that when I was a boy, I'll inform you. Why, back in the 60s when I was a young man we knew how to act in public, what with our bell-bottom corduroy pants and paisley shirts and love beads and peace sign buttons all spiffed up. Hmph. Imagine how people would have reacted had we shown up at demonstrations against the system wearing something as out-landish as "happy faces" in our shoe laces! Kids these days, they make me ill. Things weren't like this when I was a boy. The whole world is going to Hell. It's time for these damned kids to grow up and shrink their lobes like adults. Yup, I saw the whole fiasco in the paper yesterday, and the story follows here.

Shrink Lobes, not War!

Brain atrophy linked to loss of social skills
NEW YORK | Friday, Oct 5 2007 IST

As people age, they experience shrinkage in the part of the brain responsible for inhibiting appropriate behavior -- which may explain why your great-aunt asks embarrassing questions about your weight and older people seem to have fewer qualms about making racist remarks than younger individuals do, an Australian researcher , [Dr William von Hippel of the University of Queensland] suggests.

In the October issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, von Hippel reviews research on how changes in executive function, or the ability to plan and control thoughts and actions, may negatively affect older people's behavior.

Studies have shown that older people tend to be more prejudiced than younger individuals, von Hippel notes, but this may be because they are less able to muffle the ''automatic or unintentional stereotypical thoughts (that) appear to be common in most people.'' In fact, he adds, tests of the ability to ignore distraction found that the worse an older person's ability to focus, the more likely they were to express prejudice.

Older people also are more likely to exhibit ''off-target verbosity,'' von Hippel points out, or talking a great deal about topics unrelated to the current conversation. Research suggests that adults of all ages rely on their ability to inhibit inappropriate comments to interact with others socially, he notes, while older people may begin to lose this ability. This could explain their greater likelihood of asking about private topics in public situations, he said. Similar loss of function could put older people at greater risk of becoming depressed, he adds; for many people, the ability to control ''rumination,'' or brooding about problems without doing anything to solve them, is a key mechanism for avoiding depression, and if this ability is lost with age, the risk of depression may increase.

[....]

Older people show stronger executive function earlier in the day, he notes, so one way of coping with the social effects of frontal lobe atrophy could be to encourage them to schedule important activities for the morning hours. Both aerobic exercise and caffeine consumption could also boost executive function among older adults, he adds. -- (Reuters)
****

I find the whole damned thing depressing, especially the way kids today are so fat. You might recall my aunt Ella. She used to eat like a horse but she was never fat.

I was born with shrunken lobes, though Nature in its majesty endowed me otherwise in compensation. But the point is that I was from an early age a cranky guy who let things 'slip out' as it were, and I have no shame. In fact, I do let slip to this day, especially when the nurse comes to feed me pudding. She bends forward with the spoon and -- oopa! -- there I go.

I'm also cranky when I encounter kids of all ages finding fancy "theoretical constructs" to apologize for female genital mutilation, lapidation, and asymmetrical warfare, which in my cantankerousness I translate as sexually mutilating children, throwing stones at women and killing them, and murdering civilians at random. I find that rather than terming protests against neo-colonialism and cultural imperialism a good thing, I find myself condemnatory in the face of moral cowardice and fashion-mongering. I find myself outraged and intolerant of those who group together like ducks on the walk quacking about "Peace." My tiny lobes. What else could it be?

I write as publicly as the public will allow that Islam is an evil poligion that must be combated publicly. Primitive tribal code behaviour in our time is not something I extol the virtue of. I look at "Big Man" rulership of villages and people as a bad thing. I see in most of the Left's agenda a return to feudalism, a slavery of Humanity. And I'm so cranky I let it all come out in public. Islam is a bad thing. It's not a religion. It is a totalitarianism romanticized by philobarbarists and neo-fascist children who idealize comic book visions of Humanity, of real people they do not have a real sense of. There are those who get upset at the way of things as they are, those who flee to childish phantasies and playground games of Cops and Robbers as if it's a real thing they act out. Ain't so. Grow up, shrink those lobes, and look at the world as it is. And if the lobes get small enough then one might even have the balls to stand up in public to say that bad is bad and evil is worse. What part is there to be ashamed of in saying that evil is a thing to crush? Well, it offends children living in a pretend world, spoils their games and make-believe daydreams. Do I care. More importantly, do you care? Do you really care if geriatric teenagers make a fortune peddling senile phantasies of a perfect world in which they are King of the Mountain? Push off. Shrink your lobes and start talking back to the fools who can't say no to any nasty thing in fashion this day and the next. Tell those fat wankers to bugger off. Islam is a bad thing. It corrupts the lives of millions, and the Left makes alliance in order to gain their further control of the people. Throwing rocks at girls and hanging homosexuals and mutilating children and blowing up people is just plain evil. Get over your lobes and say something about it.

Excuse me, you silly piece of work, it's that lazy paperboy at the door. I'll be back when I'm damned well ready. You just sit there and eat those biscuits.