This week I gave a mini-presentation to my colleagues at Yale’s Information Society Project. Below are some of the broad questions I put to them.

Stereotypes underlie all prejudice. As I point out in my Introduction, we call out racist and sexist attitudes but seldom question descriptions of older people as confused or feeble. In fact, variability is a hallmark of older populations. Why are ageist attitudes given a pass?

That’s just one take-away quote from a terrific op-ed by Gloria Steinem ago about sexism in the ‘08 presidential race. (A correction notes that it misstates Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s position; presumably it will be amended to note that Kennedy today endorsed Obama — which probably won’t take Steinem by surprise.)

The search function came in handy when reviewing the transcript of my interview with Dr. Natalia Tanner, whom I met in her sunny Detroit office on November 11th. Since it feels as though everything Tanner wasn’t the first black woman pull off, she was either the first woman or the first African-American to accomplish, I’d searched for “first.” The last find was the one that stuck in my head.