More Miscellaneous Rambling
I've long dabbled in 1960s history, but I'd never even heard of the Celebration of Life rock festival in McCrea, Louisiana, which turned into a festival of death. The gist of it appears to be, promoters were trying to make money at the expense of hippies and didn't do things right: "[H]ealth department officials found that the site had, at least, toilets for a little less than half the expected numbers . . .". Link.
It kind of reminds me of Nassim Taleb's definition of a loser: someone who talks about how stupid the system is, but then fails to exploit it for fun and profit. A lot of Americans were railing against the stupidity of hippies, but didn't do anything to profit from them. This promoter did.
Another interesting piece: "Death at Delta Sig: Heiress Wages a Million-Dollar War on Frats." It's about a rich woman whose son died during a hazing incident. She has spent more than $1 million in private investigators and lawyers, going after the fraternity and university.
I remember a college administrator telling me that hazing would be fine, if the kids would keep it from escalating. He said the problem is, every class escalates the hazing a little bit every year, until the hazing goes from an uncomfortable experience that gives the boys a common bond to a dangerous ordeal. I'm not sure what to think, but I remember seeing it. My hazing experience was more than uncomfortable, but not nearly dangerous. I heard five years later that my fraternity was doing some atrocious things, far worse than anything I experienced.
Random Blurb from the Notebooks: I remember reading about a Hindu convert who made a Hindu pilgrimage to the Cave of Amarnath, a shrine to the Hindu god Siva, deep in the Himalayas. She arrived after a difficult trip over a 14,000 foot pass and a glacier, all the while meditating on Siva. She arrived and gave her offering–green coconut, incense, red and white pieces of cloth, nuts, raisins and sugar–to the priest, who prepared to offer it to Siva–who was manifested in an ice image formed by dropping water. But then the whole place seemed to vibrate with evil, and she stumbled out of the cave before the priest could finish the offering.
