Especially if you're the sort of person who likes that kind of thing.

Is this the last teenager still using AOL?

Fortunately, being a pinko-Euro Commie I don't have to live amongst US politics first hand, however I suffer from their effects on the wider world. This Tea Party is amusing in a black comedy sort of way. It's amazing that something relatively main-stream that's even worse than Republicanism has taken off...

David Cameron is just making sure that as much money as possible gets into the hands of our Lords and Masters as is Right, Proper and the Natural Order of Things.

If you've been doing it all your life, it's not senility! :-)

I find that my memory recall has been getting steadily worse as I get older, for example, not being able to think of words in the middle of sentences, forgetting what things are called, mixing things up etc.

However, my ability to solve problems seems to have improved.

I get a lot more done, but I get very tired more often. The more tired I am, the more muddles up I get...

Actually, it was when I was about 14 or 15 years old that I noticed I was muddling things up. I am/was very good at maths, but I started to write numbers down in the wrong order, and there are many words I can't spell no matter how hard I try to learn them. When I'm tired, it's worse.

The other trick I learned is to write down all my crazy, distracting but cool and exciting ideas in a note book or on post-it notes to free up my mind to get back to the job I'm supposed to be concentrating on.

Text files, sed, grep and vi are very helpful too.

My problem has never been allowing the mind to wander, it's always been chasing the damn thing down and getting to to do something constructive. Think outside the box they say, but what if you were born without one?

There's a certain knack to it, but it's taken me well into my late 30s to be able to do it "on demand" and even then it's difficult sometimes.

When I was younger, I used to try to force myself to concentrate but it was always counterproductive. At best I used to get bad butterflies in the stomach, and at worst migraines and aching muscles.

With the experience of age, I've learned not to be so strict with myself, and kind of potter around the periphery of what I intend to do, maybe just reading and analysing very superficially. When I get it right, and if I am not interrupted too much (that's something other people are responsible for but you can hide away from them or make yourself unavailable), I drift as if by magic into "the zone." Very often I find that an hour and a half have gone by without noticing it, and I get much more done that I thought possible.

The trick is to start off with something very easy, something that doesn't even feel like work, or like it requires any effort. If you can start with something very untaxing, the mind kind of wanders in to the main task...

Oh, and the doctor has been giving me all sorts of pills for many years now, too. :-)

There's a good one for anxiety-type disorders called Hydroxyzine. It's actually an antihistamine. I don't have to take it very often.

God uses a Z80 when he can't get a 6809. The 6502 was a pile of rubbish. By 1802, do you mean those Soviet things?

And the 1802 guy standing by, smiling.

Surely you mean the 6809?

Old beetles were that bad and lots of people bought those.

The styling was also by Adolf Hitler, and that didn't stop people (even all those peace-loving flower-power types) for buying them.

Maybe his beliefs are ignorant, but it's a safe bet he knows how to defend them.

When the ignorant and stupid are great in number and they get to "defend" their beliefs with firearms, democracy has a problem.