On the one hand, I rather assume that more of the audience then was actually interested in the content and believed in the tropes it was designed to convey, and that many of the preachers had been trained to and did put effort into both writing and delivery. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” wasn’t ever going to be written or delivered by the altogether limp ministers I knew in the Presbyterian Church I sporadically attended in childhood. Plus, there was often an element of entertainment in a well-delivered sermon full of fire, ironically a form of theatre. As late as the mid 18th century, Samuel Johnson still took the view that preaching should capture one’s attention and its failure to do so was a mark against the preacher.

On the other hand, as a creature of this time I’d find all but the most esoteric one rather boring and meaningless.

So I can’t make up my mind what would be the modern analogy for the experience. 3-hour lecture by an engaging prof on a subject I’m interested in and actually want to hear about, on the positive side. I could probably still manage that. Or 3 hour lecture on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion through Inclusion, Diversity and Equality, with special attention to how we should both condemn and embrace identity politics depending on whose ox is getting gored and how generations of powerless people need to share ‘power’.

To sit and do something for hours is one thing. To sit passively and pay attention for hours is a completely different dynamic. Activity with control and feedback is engrossing. Inactivity and tedium are boring.

Nobody wants to listen to a Puritan preacher talk for three hours, nor should he want to. The self discipline to do a pointless thing is pointless self discipline.

Well, that would explain why my attention span at 60 is much shorter than it was when I was 20. “I’ve wasted too much time at **** before; skip it and move on.”

As long as I can maintain enough focus to finish what needs to be done, I’m not going to worry about it any more.

The faster the feedback cycle, the faster you learn, up to the limit of your brain’s processing speed. I can certainly see how the attention span could atrophy. But consider this: most of the things we’re asked to use a long attention span for are stupid wastes of time. A far more useful skill is knowing when to blow time wasters off. That’s the theory behind the idea of an executive summary: get to the point right now, because life is short.

“Patient people do the world the injustice of allowing it to wallow in its errors.” – John Cowan, Small Decencies

Me, I have a shorter attention span than I did when I was younger. I have learned.

In the 1600s my Puritan ancestors had to sit through a three-hour sermon on Sunday morning, eat a cold lunch, and sit through another three-hour sermon in the afternoon. Children were expected to sit still, pay attention, and answer questions about the sermon later.

Sounds brutal, but which children grew up into adults able to efficiently receive and process large amounts of information delivered all at once?

I was in the second grade when they noticed that I was maxing out their tests.

Naturally, the school system did absolutely nothing, either to cause that or in reaction to it.

No offense, but I doubt that the tutelage of your family had anything to do with your reading, writing, grammar, whatever. You had good genes and you read a lot of books.

If you start from the effects of policy and work backward, you’ll notice that school is really good at inducing conformity and sucking up time, and really bad at everything else. In the past couple of years I’ve come to reorient my entire weltanshauung around what I call “interest-based utilitarianism”, which I’ve defined to mean something approximating, Cui bono?

R.I.P. John Taylor Gatto

Gorelick was the lawyer who severed the connection between counterintelligence and criminal law enforcement for the Department of Justice and FBI; that policy was the reason that the reports that the criminal side was getting about flight school students wanting to learn how to fly, but not land, were never transmitted to the counterintelligence side of the bureau, which knew we likely had al Qaeda teams on the ground here in the US. She later did similar things over at the Pentagon, and was key and essential to helping stop the Bush administration from stopping the boil-over at Fannie Mae, along with Eric Holder. Gorelick has been on-scene at far too many major policy disasters for it to be accidental, and her positioning on the 9/11 Commission by the Democrats was no accident. I still want to know what the hell it was that Sandy Berger was smuggling out, and what else that crooked little bastard got his hands on–There are reportedly missing documents and data in the range of terabytes, from the Clintons, and which were never investigated.

Mark my words: If the facts ever come out, which I doubt they will, the implications of what Gorelick was involved with are going to be epic. One time’s an accident, twice a coincidence, and three…? Three can only be enemy action. The woman has been key and critical to multiple “bad things” that have happened over the last thirty years. That cannot be an accident, unless she’s also the unluckiest federal employee in the history of ever.

We incarcerate children in schools, but the purpose of schools is not to educate the children. Schools function primarily as “free” daycare and leftist indoctrination. Any “education” is strictly incidental, if not accidental.

Older doctors understand the purpose of Epic – to improve patient BILLING and decrease patient LITIGATION and the devil take patient CARE.

Here’s a true/false question for you:

There is no connection at all between these facts: Judy Faulkner was a heavy contributor to the Obama presidential campaigns, Judy Faulkner was chosen as the industry representative to the federal panel that oversaw the selection of electronic medical records software, and Judy Faulkner is the CEO of Epic software, which now holds the medical records of 2/3 of all Americans.

Younger doctors (and medical students) have plenty of documented problems with Epic, and other EMR systems. Especially the ones who were hoping to spend time with patients, as opposed to sitting at a desk and clicking on Epic. Or who were hoping to spend time with their families after work, as opposed to spending the evening clicking on Epic.

BTW, nice one with the old “doctors have poor handwriting” chestnut.