Eu gosto mais de death metal, não se arranja nada para mim?

Man gets sick benefits for heavy metal addiction

A Swedish heavy metal fan has had his musical preferences officially classified as a disability. The results of a psychological analysis enable the metal lover to supplement his income with state benefits.

Roger Tullgren, 42, from Hässleholm in southern Sweden has just started working part time as a dishwasher at a local restaurant. Because heavy metal dominates so many aspects of his life, the Employment Service has agreed to pay part of Tullgren's salary. His new boss meanwhile has given him a special dispensation to play loud music at work.

"I have been trying for ten years to get this classified as a handicap," Tullgren told The Local. "I spoke to three psychologists and they finally agreed that I needed this to avoid being discriminated against."

(via Hit & Run)

E também de jogos de computador violentos. E de me vestir com roupa preta (oh, my sweet Satan...). E de escrever pequenas narrativas que incluam personagens notáveis pelos seus traços de personalidade sádica. Obsessivamente viciado em todas elas, e, para mais, toda a gente sabe que são indicadoras de graves distúrbios psicológicos e tendências sociopatas. Então, o governo não me arranja um subsidiozinho? Nem um pequenininho para compensar a discriminação laboral e social de que sou alvo? Nada sequer para apoiar a minha reintegração - sou uma vítima desta cultura consumista das sociedades modernas que me tornou num niilista - ou para evitar que algum evento pressione o meu frágil equilíbrio emocional e despolete toda aquela raiva para com o mundo que tenho perigosa e freudianamente reprimida dentro de mim? Olhem que eu ainda faço algum disparate e uso aquele C4 que tenho ali guardado.

Adenda: Crazy for work de Nima Sanandaji

Razões psicológicas para dogmas e crenças

Why Bad Beliefs Don't Die de Gregory W. Lester

Because beliefs are designed to enhance our ability to survive, they are biologically designed to be strongly resistant to change. To change beliefs, skeptics must address the brain's "survival" issues of meanings and implications in addition to discussing their data.

Because a basic tenet of both skeptical thinking and scientific inquiry is that beliefs can be wrong, it is often confusing and irritating to scientists and skeptics that so many people's beliefs do not change in the face of disconfirming evidence. How, we wonder, are people able to hold beliefs that contradict the data?

This puzzlement can produce an unfortunate tendency on the part of skeptical thinkers to demean and belittle people whose beliefs don't change in response to evidence. They can be seen as inferior, stupid, or crazy. This attitude is born of skeptics' failure to understand the biological purpose of beliefs and the neurological necessity for them to be resilient and stubbornly resistant to change. The truth is that for all their rigorous thinking, many skeptics do not have a clear or rational understanding of what beliefs are and why even faulty ones don't die easily. Understanding the biological purpose of beliefs can help skeptics to be far more effective in challenging irrational beliefs and communicating scientific conclusions.

Evolução das distribuções de Linux

(da autoria de Non Plus X, descoberto via Linux and Open Source Blog)

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(Adenda 01/08: Com a publicação da versão 7.6, o domínio do Non Plus X passou para GNU/Linux distro timeline)