A Sobering Look into the Violent Mind of Ron Freeman
This Month's Theme: Why exactly are the crazy heathens raging so much lately?

Once again, news media is overflowing with the information about the newest way that men and women are expressing their belief that there's no such thing as dignity. It's road and air rage and it's the hottest thing since Pokémon. If you don't know what road and air rage is, it is basically when people in vehicles decide that stress is a valid excuse to wig out and be violent. It's an interesting and almost unpreventable phenomenon that will most likely continue until the ragers rage themselves to death in an endless series of imbecilic incidents. Let's learn more.

Got a good topic? Email me at ron@applewizards.net . I want to hear from you!

 


The Terrorism of Temperamental Travelers
                http://www.flyana.com/rage.html

This site has some bizarre incident reports as well as some of the supposed psychological causes for air rage. Air rage is supposedly caused by things such as: bad air and ventilation, cramped seats and aisles, excess carry-on baggage due to customers not trusting baggage handlers, smokers going through nicotine deprivation, and our favorite old standby: alcohol. All of these conditions compounded with stress cause ridiculous violence in our friendly skies.


Drivers.com (Road Rage)
                http://www.drivers.com/issues/roadrage/pepper.html

Inexplicably, the unique causes of air rage are mostly eliminated in road rage (no bad air, seats are fine, no baggage, smoke and drink all you like), but it doesn't lessen the effects at all. This Australian study claims that road rage is caused by stress and the recession. But wait a minute… There is a recession in Australia, but the economy is fine in the U.S. That can only mean that the American economy is as gilded and as in debt as I've always suspected. Well, that or American road ragers have one less excuse.


Boston Globe Online/Editorials/The Syndrome Syndrome
               http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/231/editorials/
               The_syndrome_syndrome+.shtml

Go here and read this. It makes sense. It's right. America is psychoanalyzing itself to death and the problem is really that people don't care enough to keep from losing their temper. Sounds like America to me.


When Fists Flew on the San Juan Special
               http://www.salon.com/travel/diary/hest/1999/08/03/
               san_juan/index.html

This is a sickly humorous story of some really shady characters having a brawl on a midnight airline flight from New York to Puerto Rico. It makes you realize that violence isn't caused by anything besides violent people.


What We've Learned Today: As the short order cook from "The Muppets Take Manhattan" said, "people is people."


             Ron Freeman
             ron@applewizards.net