What Is Wrong With These People?

Anyone who would want to do this just seems like an alien being to me. Of course, I never understood mosh pits, either.

But then, maybe the wikipedia entry explains it:

In many Western cultures, there are very few outlets for a youth’s natural inclination toward violence…

That’s why it is alien to me. I have never in my life, not as a kid, not as an adolescent, not now, had a “natural inclination toward violence.” I don’t even like to squish bugs (except the computer kinds). Perhaps I’m “unnatural.”

And in rereading the article, it makes me wonder about the perspicacity of the people involved:

“You get to be a superhero for a night,” Klimanis said. “We have to go to work every day. We’re constantly told to buy things we don’t need, and just for a couple hours we have the freedom to do what we want to do.”

He’s “told every day to buy things he doesn’t need.” Really? If so, so what? Is someone holding a gun to his head? Has he no willpower? Is his house filled with things that he bought via this mindwashing? Is his only recourse to advertising and having to make a living to go out and beat people up?

What a maroon.

Still Slogging Through Fedora Issues

OK, I’ve copied /var, but I can’t kill X so that I can unmount it–I’ve knocked off all the other processes, but gdmgreeter, etc. keep coming back like zombies.

How do I put a stake through its heart (at least long enough to umount /var), without a reboot at a lower sysinit level (because I’m still afraid to reboot given the partial update of yum)?

Only In Zimbabwe

The Mugabe (mis)government has come up with a novel solution to inflation:

Official sources said the recent 150 percent pay rise for soldiers, teachers, policemen and nurses had put a strain on money supply.

Reserve Bank officials told IRIN that plans to print about Zim$60 trillion (about US$592.9 million) were briefly delayed after the government failed to secure foreign currency to buy ink and special paper for printing money.

Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “not worth the paper it’s printed on.”

This whole article almost reads like something from the Onion, it seems so absurd, but it seems to be a real story. Has any nation in recent history declined so far as the current Zimbabwe has from the Rhodesia of the sixties, then one of the richest nations on the African continent?

Data-Free Policies

Glenn notes an article about how the obesity wars have moved into the schools.

…like other misguided public health campaigns (remember “Just Say No”?), putting children on de facto diets at school just doesn’t work. In a 2003 experiment involving 41 schools, more than 1,700 children

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!