Alzheimer's Disease Causing Baby Boomers To Misremember 1960s Even More

[madinmaryland]

PALO ALTO, CA—Alzheimer's researchers at Stanford University published a study this week showing that the degenerative brain disease is beginning to affect the baby boomer generation, causing many to remember the 1960s even less accurately than they normally would.

"We're seeing men and women who have spent so much of their lives misremembering the past grow even more detached from reality," said neuroanatomist Dr. Arthur Rothensen, who conducted the study. "This terrible disease has made thousands of boomers' memories of the 1960s almost completely unreliable and fragmented. And we're talking about people who, even before they contracted Alzheimer's, believed they single-handedly ended the war in Vietnam."

Added Rothensen, "It's just sad, really."

The study, which surveyed more than 1,500 baby boomers, found that Alzheimer's disease had a noticeable effect on those already suffering from "selective memory loss," and only added to the unrealistic and often romanticized nature of personal accounts from the time period.

Among the survey's participants, those who for decades had misremembered the '60s as a rose-colored utopia in which everything and anything was possible were 38 percent less likely to accurately recall the past.

"Dad always used to exaggerate his experience of the 1960s, but now he's totally gone," said Dylan Finster, who recently moved his father Harold into managed care. "It was bad enough when he would go on and on about being at Woodstock, and how it completely changed the world for the better. But these days, not only did Woodstock change the world, he was also airlifted out of Hanoi with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jefferson Airplane in 1969."

..snip

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/alzheimers_disease_causing_baby

[old mark]

1. I believe at least part of that is from smoking all that great pot

and doing all that early acid....the really good stuff that you young people missed out on, like you did the sexual revolution and mini dresses with no bras.

Oh, yeah - your music sucks, too. Now get back to work...
:evilgrin: :hippie:

mark

[david13]

2. This is stated as a joke, but it's absolutely true. The percentage

of population that 'went' to Woodstock was far far less than 1%. Yet all one hears today is "WE" went to Woodstock. We who?
And the music. "We" were grooving to ... whatever band, etc. That also was an extremely small percentage of the population.
"We" were all experimenting with drugs; "we" were all experimenting with free love. Absurd. It was a very small percentage of the population and most, by far more than half were not and were simply living a straight life, going to church, and school, working, etc.
"We" were protesting. No, again it was an extremely small percent and by far most of the population went along with whatever the government said, as they do today, much like lemmings.
It is a common phenomenon. The band wagon. Along comes the "I remember the 60's" band wagon and everybody (no, just too many) want to jump on and ride along.
Similar is the nostalgia about Route 66. Oh, it was so wonderful! No it was not. It was a basic nightmare, and that is why billions were gladly spent to replace it with the interstate limited access multiple lane system.
dc

[WildEyedLiberal]

3. And it's never more glaring than in threads where they complain about today's youth

While "they" were out ending the Vietnam war with peace signs, "we" just sit brainlessly before a television and play Xbox. I would wager that there is as much activism on college campuses today as there was "then," but what do I know? I just shuffle through my life in a zombie-like trance with my iPod.

[AngryAmish]

5. The neurosyphilis that so many Boomers suffer from does not help, either

[WildEyedLiberal]

4. I seriously triple dog dare you to post this in GD

I wonder how long it would take before people realized it was from the Onion?

I'll bring my asbestos flame-proof suit. :popcorn: