More things I learned by reading the newspaper

It turns out that John McCain would be the first person born in the 1930s to become president, which may be more than mere demographic anomaly, according to this New York Times essay. I found the article fascinating because my parents were born in the 1930s -- my father in 1933, my mother in 1936. (The same year as McCain.) They are part of what is known as the silent generation -- almost, in some ways, a lost generation. They have vivid memories of World War II but were too young to have participated. They were too old to enjoy the cultural revolution that rock 'n' roll ushered in, and while they may have been sympathetic to the civil rights and anti-war movements, many didn't participate.

Interestingly, one of my favorite TV shows, "Mad Men", set in 1960, focuses on this generation, and it portrays them -- sometimes to the point of caricature -- as woefully ill-prepared for the social and cultural upheavals that were to come.