"At the slightest interruption -- an irritating ring tone, an insistent email alert or the hushed conversation in the adjacent office cubicle -- our thoughts can plunge into the mental underbrush like hounds snuffling after the wrong scent. As scientists document the normal brain changes at fault, they are highlighting a growing conflict between the push-me-pull-you demands of modern multitasking and our waning powers of concentration. By one estimate, the average office worker is interrupted every three minutes. Indeed, our inability to ignore irrelevant intrusions as we grow older may arise from a basic breakdown of internal brain communications involving memory, attention span and mental focus starting in middle age, researchers have discovered."

And then we get to the driver:

"America's 78 million baby boomers are turning 60 at the rate of about 8,000 a day. By 2050, the world's population of those over 60 years old is expected to exceed the number of young people for the first time in history, according to the United Nations population division, with more than 2 billion people potentially prone to absent-minded moments of memory lapse and befuddlement."

Befuddlement?  Cmon.  Get ready for a new "ism."  I can see the ads already.  Do you forget things?  Not sure what you are doing?  Sensing distractability?  You could suffer from befuddlementism.  It afflicts millions of Americans.  Ask your doctor about Provigil.

Read the rest here.

And this little quiz is neat.  Guess who got a 100% (while listening to Russia choral masterworks, sipping on gunpowder tea and answering a brief question from a lingering 17-year old)?  Ahem.