The Inferno

This gave me a good laugh, sadly due to the ever-increasing depths of human stupidity. This time it’s the boot of Europe, Italy.

The country that gave us pasta, spaghetti, pizza and all those other delectable comestibles has gone off its rocker and decided to ban non-Italian food. This is in some misguided attempt at nationalistic culinary purity. The cause: Berlusconi’s centre-right government. Who else but some fool fascist would invent rules about food. There is an old joke about this sort of cleansing in Nazi Germany?

Q: What did the Germans eat by the time the Nazis had finished banning all non-white food?
A. Rice

It’s always the accessories, the peripherals of a culture that are first to go, before the people themselves. First, they ban non-Italian food. Then non-Italian books. Then non-Italian people. Followed shortly by non-Italian ideas. And finally they’ll have their dream, a pure, snow-white Italian nation. *snicker*

The source tells us that by “non-Italian” they just mean “non-white”, since French foods are ok. It’s only all those filthy Saracen dishes that have to go. And so once again, beneath the thin veneer of nationalism, we find the familiar devil of racism lurking, not very well disguised this time either.

The real kicker:

The antiimmigrant Northern League party brought in the restrictions “to protect local specialities from the growing popularity of ethnic cuisines”.

You know why they’re so popular, why there’s a “growing popularity”, Berlusconi? Because it’s good food and people like it! Occam’s razor, simplest possible explanation and all that. But of course, these guys are immune to all forms of logic, as evinced by this stellar quote:

Asked if he had ever eaten a kebab, Mr Zaia said: “No – and I defy anyone to prove the contrary. I prefer the dishes of my native Veneto. I even refuse to eat pineapple.”

Hahaha. Can this be real? It sounds like something out of a WW2-era Disney cartoon of a fascist. Well, Mr Zaia, we’re glad you don’t eat pineapples. We’re happy that the noble Brazilian fruit is unsullied by your touch.

Perhaps Mr. Zaia needs a gentle reminder that even all those traditional Italian foods like pizza and spaghetti are not Italian, but were gifts from Greece and China. Maybe he should stop eating all that wretched foreign food and subsist entirely on pure Italian air and Italian water, as he takes in the reek of the largest open-air garbage dumps in the Western world, caused by yet another age-old Italian tradition: the Mafia. Portare avanti combattimento!

This made me laugh. World War II for the /b/ generation.

This about sums it up. Click to enlarge.

I ran into some troubles with Gentoo and glibc over the weekend. Here’s what fixed it, in case it helps anyone out in the future.

Why it broke:

Someone upgraded glibc from 2.6 to 2.9_p20081201. It’s masked, and what’s worse, installing it moves the old glibc libraries from /usr/lib to /usr/local/lib, which is a most un-Gentoo location.

Additionally, the famous e2fsprogs circular bug occurred, which can be fixed by following these steps:

quickpkg com_err ss e2fsprogs &&
emerge -uDNf world &&
emerge -C com_err ss e2fsprogs &&
emerge e2fsprogs &&
emerge -uDN world &&
revdep-rebuild #(if necessary)

However, having a new glibc breaks the e2fsprogs emerge with the following message:

1. /usr/local/lib/libdl.so.2: undefined reference to `_dl_tls_get_addr_soft@GLIBC_PRIVATE‘
2. The ebuild environment file is located at ‘/var/tmp/portage/sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.41.3/temp/environment‘.
3. A complete build log is located at ‘/var/tmp/portage/sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.41.3/temp/build.log‘.
4. collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
5. make[2]: *** [debugfs] Error 1
6. make[2]: Leaving directory `/var/tmp/portage/sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.41.3/work/e2fsprogs-1.41.3/debugfs’
7. make[1]: *** [all-progs-recursive] Error 1
8. make[1]: Leaving directory `/var/tmp/portage/sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.41.3/work/e2fsprogs-1.41.3‘
9. make: *** [all] Error 2
11. ERROR: sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.41.3 failed.
12. Call stack:
13. ebuild.sh, line   49:  Called src_compile
14. environment, line 2449:  Called die
15. The specific snippet of code:
16. emake COMPILE_ET=compile_et MK_CMDS=mk_cmds || die;
17. The die message:
18. (no error message)
20. If you need support, post the topmost build error, and the call stack if relevant.

So, I asked on #gentoo but got no answer. Not because they didn’t help, but because it stumped them as well. So here’s my fix.

Symbolically link /usr/local/lib/libdl.so.2 to /lib64/libdl.so.2. Then emerge e2fsprogs. This will fix the problem.

ln -snf /lib64/libdl.so.2 /usr/local/lib/libdl.so.2

emerge e2fsprogs

Note that, after this, /usr/local/lib/libdl.so.2 will point to /usr/local/lib/libdl.so as before. Portage fixes this every time it runs, so emerge everything except for e2fsprogs before this fix, then emerge e2fsprogs and you can boot again. So to summarize:

If you upgrade glibc and this breaks the e2fsprogs compilation, temporarily make libdl.so.2 point to the new libdl.so.2 and e2fsprogs will compile. This will restore the core utilites such as  fsck and mount, thereby letting you boot again.

This is a coincidence. I’m researching multicore computers and it turns out that the very world we live on might be multicore. Well, just dualcore for now. Two cores spinning in opposite directions that might be responsible for all the friction that gives rise to plate tectonics and so on.

What’s not surprising is how most scientists are treating this theory very skeptically. Indeed, what would happen to the millions of existing geography/geology textbooks were this proven to be true? Relegated to the dustbin of history, like maps of Europe with Yugoslavia on them.

It sure would be nice to know. We explore space (which is important, of course), but we scarcely know anything about what goes on on our planet, beyond a few miles below the surface. Maybe one day X-ray vision cameras will really help us see what the Earth guards so jealously.

I’ve been watching the classic TV adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Poirot of late and it’s pretty good. The one with David Suchet as the inimitable egg-shaped Belgian and his sidekick, the predictable and dull Hastings. With the redoubtable Japp and the efficient Miss Lemon figuring in every episode as well, the series is simply a marvel.

Anyhow, in the episode “How Does Your Garden Grow?”, a Russian aristocrat is seen passing this note to a Russian in the employ of the Soviet Embassy.

After doubling up with laughter, we tried to guess what the letters stood for.

World Trade Fair?
Western Tournament of Flowers? (It’s for a flower show, after all)
Wednesday Through Friday? (This seems the most promising, albeit the most prosaic)

Your guess is as good as mine.