Outside of my own emotional "trigger" of being the brilliant/stupid girl who will never be smart enough to be "smart"... ...I wish Thom would redirect some of his focus onto the EMOTIONAL effects of language in regards to declarative, (autobiographical), encoding/retrieval vs, implicit memory and how the use of language affects our understanding and comprehension.

Maybe Thom could find a way to explain the differences of implicit vs. declarative memory and how "words" can and actually do have a separate and interesting , (and sometimes conflicting), affect on both.

Normal people develop in stages, according to a recent high school health book.
* Teenage
* Young Adult-starting a family, beginning a career
* Middle Adulthood-helping small children, continuing a career
* Old Age-integrating past experience, enjoying life

However, the power of the newspapers/media is, that perjoratives, or bad names are applied to each group in order to control them. This is unfortunate, since they have been 'refined' to include attitudes toward the previous or next stage, and how near you are to having achieved it.
Sadly, race and ethnicity also 'plays' into the 'flavor' of this large abuse of us all.
For example, Thom and I are both middle age white guys; I don't know at all Thom's perceptions about this; but I am getting ready to be a 'has been', I am a 'sap' and or don't really know what in the world is going on, and of course I am an old 'weirdo' or 'freak'.

I am extremely happy, and I enjoy friends of several ethnicities. We are all some sort of mix.

For what it's worth here's my whole ugly view of how we're being played as living stereotypes. But keep in mind that I believe the eternal truth, "To thine own self be true." and "No-body is perfect" but...
*Native Americans- robots, like R2D2.
*Asian Americans- low-standards, low-aims like 'Linus'
*Hisapnics- easily slighted object throwers, like 'Charlie Brown' behind closed doors!
* Russian Americans- self-concerned makers of multiple children, like 'Lucy' all grown up.
* African Americans- Ne'er do wells, like 'Snoopy'.