The media and politicians will try to blame guns and the Right for the college campus shooting that occurred last night, but the key to this comes from the shooter himself:

“I have noticed that so many people like [Flanagan] are alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are. A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems like the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”

All of the non-religious shooting that have taken place in recent years have one thing in common; losers who wanted attention. A mass shooting is a quick and easy way to get that attention.

I suspect a lot of the problem is caused by the recent trend by parents to treat their children like they’re the center of the Universe. Kids are brought up believing it’s all about them and when they enter the real world and find out that nobody really gives a damn about them, bad things start to happen. Add to this the other current trend that tells kids that ‘everyones a winner.’ Kids are praised no matter what they do, get trophies for just showing up and are never exposed to the conflicts that normally take place when you’re growing up. Unfortunately, in the real world, people will judge you on what you accomplish, the trophies go to the achievers and conflicts are an everyday occurrance. Because of overly protective parents and the crazy psycholgist that push this crap, little Johnny and Sally are totally unprepared for reality and don’t have the coping skills to handle it. Somethings got to give and sometimes the frustration is expressed as a mass shooting.

So what do we do?

The first step would be for the media to quit printing and broadcasting the names of the shooters. Much of the glory of the act goes away if no one knows who you are. Since the media can’t be forced to do this because of the First Amendment, it would require them to act responsibly on their own so I suspect this will never happen.

The second step is for parents to get less involved with micro-managing the lives of their children. Let them grow up and have the space to figure out and deal with their own problems. You should be there as a backup to help them with the things they can’t deal with on their own, but should not be running their day to day lives. Give them some space.

The next few days will be annoying as all the usual suspects grandstand to make political hay, but in the end nothing will change and it’s just a matter of time before we go through this all over again.

There’s a story in the New York Post this morning about David Letterman being spotted walking the streets of New York sporting a beard. Within the story is a classic example of the foolishness of the so called experts. Here’s the money quote:

“A lot of those people feel very constrained within the roles that they become successful in,” says Douglas LaBier, director of the Center for Progressive Development. “It does reflect, on a deeper level, a yearning to express dimensions of oneself . . . your creative capacity, parts of your personality you’ve kept under wraps.”

Really?

I have another theory. Lettermans’s retired now and doesn’t feel the need to go through the hassle of shaving every morning.

Maybe LaBier is smarter then I am and knows the real reason men grow beards but my guess is he’s just full of himself and want to impress us with his intelligence. Besides I’d never trust the opinion of someone from an organization called ‘The Center for Progressive Development’ anyway.

Stories that contain quotes from ‘experts’ drive me crazy. Most of the time the comments are inane, convoluted or so obvious as to not be worth printing in the first place. Every once and a while you get someone with real insight into a subject but it’s rare. I guess newspapers and magazines have to fill space and having a quote by an ‘expert’ is one way to do it.

GPG4Win is a neat little suite of programs that can be used to securely sign e-mails and executables. After installation, one of the first things you need to do is create a certificate that you will use when you sign something.

The following tutorial takes you through the process of creating a certificate.

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