dagblog - Comments for "Luke, you're too damn young for this. Give your job to someone more Mature."

Thanks for coming in, CVille.

Ramona — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 22:40:21 +0000

In reply to As a geezette I just HAVE to

Thanks for coming in, CVille. I guess nothing has happened to Luke, considering he was filling in for Chuck Todd soon afterward--and again, doing it badly.

But at least here, it started a conversation about age vs. ability, which from the looks of things, isn't over yet.

Your "Nancy" response would have been perfect. I'm sure she thought of a few more later, as she was fuming over the insolence of that snot-nosed kid. Ha!

As a geezette I just HAVE to

CVille Dem — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 20:29:01 +0000

In reply to Luke, you're too damn young for this. Give your job to someone more Mature.

As a geezette I just HAVE to chime in! Luke is a little snip who doesn't have enough life experience to write a good short story never mind TRYING to function as a journalist. BTW, in my humble opinion (IMHO), his father wasn't all he was cracked up to be either. He just found an old obscure quote from his interviewee and threw it at him/her with the idea that he was "doing journalism." All he got back was pap and he never asked good follow-ups.

That said, if Nancy Pelosi had a little prep time for the question, I think she might have said,

"Why yes, Luke, I am mentoring several of our brilliant House Members and I have no doubt that they will be ready to take over when my job is done. Luke, you might consider finding a mentor for yourself. It would do you a world of good."

This article was published in

artappraiser — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 05:36:53 +0000

In reply to Jesus DF. Sure, there are

This article was published in print as "Old Neurons, New Tricks"

WHAT THE HELL WAS THE

Richard Day — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 03:40:09 +0000

In reply to Jesus DF. Sure, there are

WHAT THE HELL WAS THE QUESTION AGAIN?

I need to take more notes....

Damn, Q, that was good. For

Ramona — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 03:29:45 +0000

In reply to Jesus DF. Sure, there are

Damn, Q, that was good. For an old guy.

Jesus DF. Sure, there are

Qnonymous — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 02:31:34 +0000

In reply to No, you just can't seem to

Jesus DF. Sure, there are lots of old fools who should be hurled from office, but WTF is this argument? About how "the maximum capacities of the human being occur relatively early in life. Physical capacity, memory, cognition, mathematical aptitude?" Holy shit.

Here. Try this, from an old guy.

Memory. Yessss, people can probably remember a longer list if items when they're younger than when they're older. However, having a capability is more like having an empty vessel. That is, there's fuck all IN young people's memories. "Gee guys, this economic crash reminds me of the big one - back in 2000." My actual working memory is - unless you are an exceptionally unusual individual - deeper and using more working parts than yours. Now, you can argue that that makes me hidebound, and it might. But memory? I win. Another name for it might be experience. But yeah, you might beat me on remembering more random items thrown at you by a researcher.

Cognition? Same deal. A person might be faster at running through a logic chain I guess. I was when I was younger. But. I can also detect way more patterns now. I've seen more. I can also remain open and flexible when the dynamics of change go outside their usual bounds far more easily than when I was younger.

And as for climate change, well... that's where I work. And actually, IMHO, it's not so much age and its accoutrements. i.e. Less skin in the game. I mean, look. If a college kid goes on about how we HAVE to spend trillions, and HAVE to do it their way, and they're not too worried about pensions and such, because they're 21.... do I still have to pretend there's no self-interest involved on their end?

See, I've had to listen to young people's grand ideas about how we HAVE to tackle this crisis, exact ways which THEY know so well, ways which are almost always accompanied by really bad economics - young people that matched up pretty well against the loud-mouthed Right-Wing media freaks we all get to hear so often. I get to hear the holier-than-thou views of young greens who sound and feel - a lot of the time - less like true revolutionaries, and more like.... kids driven by ego who insist their ideas should blow those of the oldies away. "Recycling.... blah blah blah... it's such a sop to the middle classes.... blah blah blah... we need to TOTALLY REDUCE waste in the first place... so why bother with recycling." You'd seriously be hard-pressed to convince me that their ideas were better than the 50 and 60 year olds I also get to deal with in these debates.

Climate change is a world full of bad ideas. I ranted for years against the Kyoto mechanisms, said they'd fail. They did. Same with carbon trading systems, an idea I started working on back in the late 80's. This shit just got way too complicated. And was really really really bad politics. And yes, was way too expensive for the good it was doing.

In sum, the ideas weren't strategic. Weren't... very good.

And as a result, it opened the door to the RW big money boys and media bullies to hammer us. And thing is.... we activists deliberately decided to target our resources on convincing the YOUNG, not the old. Because.... they're gonna someday come to power. But the fact that they poll a bit saner than old people, in some countries, does this mean anything grand on the scale of old versus young? Not that I see. It's the old goats from the 60's that usually knock me over with how smart they are on this shit.

Still.... should you be pissed off at the assholes blocking progress on climate change, financial reform, race/sex, education, etc.? Yeah, sure. Just.... it's a dead-end, turning it into a generational battle. Seriously. There are a lot of kids out there today that'd eat their young, and their parents, to get what they want. And it's that hunger - not the age of the person with the hunger - that's the key thing to beat.

Now... where was I? I seem to have lost my train of thought.... Maybe it's over here, under my slippers.... right next to the strippers.... oops. Bye.

Sorry, DF, you've put way too

Ramona — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:22:44 +0000

In reply to No, you just can't seem to

Sorry, DF, you've put way too many restrictions on how I can answer you. I just don't feel like doing it your way.

But I will say this: My motivation, is, in fact, my kids, my grandkids, and everyone else's. It's the future generations who will benefit if we fight and win. That's why we keep fighting.

Your arguments about climate change are nonsense. Do you really think older people don't have the incentive to fight that battle because they won't be around to benefit? That's just plain nuts. Every generation fights to keep the next generation going. That's what societies are constantly doing. Ours is no exception.

But no, I don't think the young are necessarily better qualified for leadership, any more than I think everyone who's old is automatically qualified. As I've said many times already, age really has nothing to do with it. Some are qualified and some aren't. Some were always qualified; some never will be. That's the way it works.

No, you just can't seem to

DF — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:37:08 +0000

In reply to Wait a minute, DF, wasn't it

No, you just can't seem to hear what I'm saying and reconcile it what you seem to want to hear. I am in no way advocating age discrimination. However, if you don't think Ted Stevens age had anything to do with his ignorance, you're not willing to admit the truth. You already admit with age comes diminished capacity, but for some reason a line has been crossed if we actually ask whether this has occurred?

I raised the issue of technology because I thought it would be obvious, not because I have interest in arguing over anecdotes. The maximum capacities of the human being occur relatively early in life. Physical capacity, memory, cognition, mathematical aptitude all peak before age 30 and then decline. That's the relevant point, not whether you or I can name an older person we know that we'd describe as "vibrant" or not.

Vibrant is a personality trait. We're talking about the question of who is best suited for leadership, which requires far more consideration. You're talking about people being "forced out" like GOPers talk about having their speech censored when they reap the whirlwind from saying something dumb. No one is being forced out. Luke Russert asked a question which was poorly conceived and perhaps poorly presented and timed, but the question itself is highly relevant. Older people shouldn't be forced out any more then their seniority should insure their positions beyond the point when someone else could do a better job. This isn't a "who decides?" issue any more than any other judgment call.

Let me raise another example that's been on my mind recently: climate change. People above 50 pull the levers of power in this country and in many others. None of them seem willing to do anything serious about this problem, one that won't affect their lives nearly as heavily as it will affect mine or the lives of the future generations. To the extent that this is an incentive problem, because older people simply have less incentive to change their lives in order to solve a problem that won't really affect them, this is bad, bad medicine. Younger people just plain have more skin in this game. That doesn't mean that younger people would automatically fix it, but the incentive to come up with plausible, actionable ways to do that is much, much greater.

Now, you can come back and say their motivation is kids and grandkids or something like this, but it's not evident. Please, don't respond with a straw man again. I don't want to see you portray me as saying something like "older people don't care about climate change" and then refute the argument I didn't make by pointing to one who does. That's not what's happening here.

I agree, Dick, I saw Luke

Ramona — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:28:05 +0000

In reply to I saw the kid again this

I agree, Dick, I saw Luke this AM on Todd's show and he's just dreadful. I mean, really. Without that last name he never would have made it inside the door. There must be hundreds of others far more talented than he is who are waiting for their chance and may never get it. Yet there he is. . .

Missed Martin (Maahtin) today and I hate that! He's terrific. Makes me laugh out loud nearly every day.

I saw the kid again this

Richard Day — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 21:46:01 +0000

In reply to I have to agree. I

I saw the kid again this morning--which explains your allusion!

I have said it before, but he attempts to emulate 'grace' and 'gravitas' and ends up expressing gravy. hahahahah

He has probs reading his teleprompter.

The guests feign attention. hahhahah

I am watching Marty Bashir again. You compare talents between these two...hahahaha

Oh well.