I think the younger generations of Americans ��and I'm talking very broadly about people under 40 for the most part ��have a definite bias against older people and their peers. I'm not crying "ageism" (on some level, I still can't believe that's a real word) in the workplace or climbing high atop a politically correct pedestal. In fact, my gripe is pretty petty when you look at it.

Basically, I think that people today are way too arrogant when it comes to putting together any kind of "best of all-time" lists. In Rolling Stone's poll of readers, the highest-rated Bob Dylan album didn't even crack the top 20, if I recall correctly (and if I don't recall correctly, it sure as hell didn't crack the top 10). Same with Springsteen. I think the Beatles got shafted somewhat as well.

Of Major League Baseball's top 10 most memorable moments (chosen from a list of 30 selected by MLB and various historians and experts, and voted on by the fans), four of them happened more than 30 years ago, and yet it seemed to me that the selections do not show a knowledge and appreciation of baseball history so much as reflect what's been beaten into our brains through television, magazines and the internet. Was Kirk Gibson's World Series Game 1 home run in 1988 so memorable that it should overshadow Bill Mazeroski's 1960 Game 7-winning shot? Or Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World" in 1951? Or Johnny Vander Meer's consecutive no-hitters in 1938? Posing the question as all-time "most memorable" is a problem too because, well, technically, how many people alive literally hold Christy Mathewson's three World Series shutouts in 1905 as a memory? But I guess you can't call it the list of "most significant" moments, because that term seems to come with a more strict interpretation. "Greatest" probably would've been more accurate, and it's not like the list of 30 included any negative moments. (Seriously, if we're talking about moments memorable for their significant place in baseball history, shouldn't the 1994 players' strike that wiped out the World Series be considered? And while we're on semantics, "moments" should be replaced because, really, Ted Williams hitting .406 and Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak aren't single happenings, but drawn-out events.)

I started thinking about all this on Monday while watching SportsCenter, which led with Emmitt Smith breaking Walter Payton's NFL career rushing yards record instead of the Angels' World Series victory. (I also am now firmly anti-Stuart Scott. His catch phrases ��not that he's changed them this millennium ��have become tired and unimaginative and I think his lazy eye droops a little more with each show.) SportsCenter went ahead and rotely annointed Emmitt as the "greatest running back of all time." Well what about Jim Brown? In my mind, there's always a case to be made that the first superstar had it the hardest. You'd think ESPN is Barry Bonds' PR firm, with what seems like the network-wide requirement to attach "greatest hitter in the history of the game" to every mention of the Giants' slugger. Ty Cobb is no longer considered in that discussion, simply because he didn't hit home runs. But NOBODY hit home runs before the 1920s, when Babe Ruth liquored himself up and did it to impress the hookers. When Ruth was singlehandedly changing the face of the game in the early 20s, he hit more home runs in a season than several teams.

I think a consideration for eras has to be made when talking about the all-time greatest things a field like sports. It's a lot easier to do what Bonds does so late in his career, what with all the developments in nutrition (and nutritional enhancers), weigh training, medicine. I think comparatively, music has changed little over the decades. Sure, computers and technology allow for more flexibility, but at the root of it all, it's still people playing instruments, singing, and someone else recording it. I'm not even going to start in on the greatest movies of all time, because how do you take a great story played out well on screen like Citizen Kane and compare it with a great story (albeit with some hokey highlights) played out on a computer like Titanic?

I think some of this arrogance comes from a need to feel like an authority. If I'm having a discussion in a bar and someone insists that Miami could crush Oklahoma on the football field and I want to make the point that I don't think Miami is the best team in the country, I can easily see myself saying something like, "Notre Dame would crush Miami, and so would Oklahoma" rather than simply making a case for the Sooners. Same goes for music. If I wanted to argue about Rolling Stone's Top 100 albums as voted on by the readers (which I think was topped by Nirvana's Nevermind, but I don't remember), I might say, with authority, that The Beatles' White Album was, undeniably, the greatest album ever, even if I don't necessarily believe it. (And I don't. In fact, I couldn't pick a single top album; I'd probably have to list five or 10, in alphabetical order.)

Oftentimes, when the discussion involves sports, fans will too easily fall into either the paper comparison (merely looking at statistics) or try to suggest the modern athlete would crush the one from yesteryear in a head-to-head battle. Well, of course he would, seeing as how he's 100 pounds of muscle heavier. And that's where I think the allowances for era need to come in ��you have to consider the person's performance in relation to his or her surroundings. By many historians' account, both Abraham Lincoln and James K. Polk were great presidents, but because Lincoln was great during the Civil War and Polk was great during a relatively "quiet" time in U.S. history (1845-49), Polk doesn't get nearly the same recognition.

Nonetheless, discussions about "the greatest" are usually interesting and invigorating.

It is believed that while the snipers were driving around the Washington, D.C., area shooting people at random, one was driving and the other was lying in the back of the blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice and shooting. And at least one of them kept an eye on the news, watching the coverage of their rampage.

So I wonder if, in picking the locations for their attacks (which were mostly consumer areas ��shopping centers and gas stations ��and were near access to several major highways), they also started looking for white vans and trucks. That the authorities were looking for such a vehicle came out as early as Oct. 3, the day five people in Maryland's Montgomery County were shot over the course of 16 hours. So when they pulled up near that Manassas, Va., gas station, or that Home Depot, did they look for a white van or truck in the parking lot and decide it was a good place?

This may or may not be true about me.

What

lesser-known Simpsons character are you?

Brought to you by the good folks at sacwriters.com.