In a column yesterday, local ranter Mark Morford takes on a new study that says that college kids these days are 40% less empathetic than their peers of 20 or 30 years ago. Is this a truly scientific study? Hard to say.

Morford goes on to argue that the kids are not all assholes, that they're the same as they ever were, just a little more hyper-connected. And it's always the "outgoing curmudgeons," those hitting 40 and beyond, whose job it is to say, "look at those damn kids these days, what with their telephones and their crazy jeans, their weird drugs and their bizarre mating rituals." He writes that the internet, cell phones, prescription drugs, etc. may have changed us forever, but goddammit, "there's a fluid exchange of identity and personality," and there's still plenty of awesomeness happening out there. [SF Gate]