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

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Apparently, our ancestors and chimps just couldn’t keep their hands off each other:

The researchers, from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, propose that humans and chimpanzees first split up about 10 million years ago. Then, after evolving in different directions for about 4 million years, they got back together for a brief fling that produced a third, hybrid population with characteristics of both lines.

That genetic collaboration then gave rise to two separate branches, one leading to humans and the other to chimps.

This will no doubt drive the creationists ape.

[Via The Speculist]

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!