The Sword and Laser discussion

Can you believe it? This is the third one this month. Something has got to be done about these kids!

HILL VALLEY, CA (AP) The historic Hill Valley Court House Mall was severely damaged today in what witnesses describe as a "mad rampage" by a gang of teenagers on hoverboards. Police say defective cybernetic implants were a contributing factor.

"Based upon the surgical scars, we believe all the teens had illicit cyber implants," said police spokesman Erik Strickland.

Those arrested were Griff Tannen, Chester Nomura, Leslie O'Malley and Rafe Unger. According to eyewitnesses, the altercation began in the local Cafe '80s when the gang confronted an unknown teenage boy. When the boy attempted to flee, Tannen and his compatriots chased after him with a Pitbull hoverboard, but a malfunctioning thruster caused them to fly off course into the front facade of the the Courthouse Mall. O'Malley received a concussion when she impacted a pillar and her trial has been postponed until she recovers. The three other gang members were immediately put on trial and convicted.

This is the third such hoverboard rampage so far in October, and the twenty-seventh this year. All of them have been linked to malfunctioning cybernetic implants.

"This is a serious problem," Dr. D.K. Khurana of UC Hill Valley said in a fax. "Blackmarket implants are increasingly popular among Millennials. Without proper medical safeguards, there's no guarantee of neuro-integrity, but kids today don't care. They want to interface with everything in their environment. The cool thing right now is for them to control their clothes, adjusting the size to fit the social occasion."

The Hill Valley Courthouse Mall was built in 1885 and served as Hill County's main judicial center until the abolition of lawyers in 2003, after which it was converted to a shopping center. It survived a lightning strike in 1955 during the historic Hill Valley Lightning Storm, which some residents attribute to local "mad scientist" "Doctor" Emmett L. Brown, though the courthouse clock was never repaired afterwards.

"Not this time," Mayor Goldie Wilson III promised. "This time we're going to make proper repairs right away. I don't want people thirty years from now claiming the damaged facade needs to be preserved." The city council will take up the issue at their next meeting on October 27th.

I like it a lot, but I got caught up in one detail. Are current teenagers still Millennials? I thought that most Millennials are just hitting their 30's now. What's the generation below us called?

Joanna wrote: "I like it a lot, but I got caught up in one detail. Are current teenagers still Millennials? I thought that most Millennials are just hitting their 30's now. What's the generation below us called?"

A generation is typically defined as 18 or 20 years, so yeah, people born in the late '90s still qualify as Millennials. Of course it's an entirely arbitrary distinction -- I'm old enough to still qualify as Generation X, but friends of mine who are just a year younger are considered Millennials.

Sean wrote: "Joanna wrote: "I like it a lot, but I got caught up in one detail. Are current teenagers still Millennials? I thought that most Millennials are just hitting their 30's now. What's the generation be..."

I honestly think that there's at least a mild cultural divide at least for US residents between those old enough to remember 9/11 well and those younger.

And then there's those of us who remember the threat of nuclear annihilation during the cold war. I have a hard time getting across what that felt like to younger people.

John (Taloni) wrote: "And then there's those of us who remember the threat of nuclear annihilation during the cold war. I have a hard time getting across what that felt like to younger people."

I don't think I really, really grokked that fear until I read Callahan's Chronicles by Spider Robinson, and a number of other tidbits of info from history classes, comments, and other fiction all fell into place. That and playing Nuclear War the card game. If I had encountered A Canticle for Liebowitz at that age, I suspect that it would also have done the trick.

My very first historically-grounded memory is of being irritated that Sesame Street had been interrupted to show looping footage of the Berlin Wall coming down. I think I was three or four.

My understanding is there is a little bit of a grey area between both the Gen X/ Millennials, and when the Millennial gen ends. Most put the end of Generation X at somewhere between 1977 and 1980. And Millennials ending at somewhere between 1995 and 2000. I was born in '77 and very much consider myself in with the Gen X. My sister born in '79 has many more of the Millennial traits.

This is not to say that we aren't all our own persons, and some fit less or more into the "standard" with our peers. But, there does seem to be sociological trends that seem to extend to whole generations.