Flutterby™! :

Robot Wisdom has a link to a Rocky Mountain News article about the Trenchcoat Mafia. What grabs me about this story is that except for the Hitler thing (we were too well informed about that, but pick any other random source of evil), I had a bunch of friends in high school who were just like that; "extremely bright, but not good students", the weapons interest, the black trenchcoats. Some of 'em went military, one of 'em tried to commit suicide and last I heard (it's been years) was laying low to avoid some coke dealers he'd crossed, some of us went into 'puters. And it seems to me that this whole deal (which isn't really significant in isolation, so ignore some of my kneejerk response) could be easily reformed by making high school a useful institution rather than just a holding pen for that period between having the physical attributes of adulthood and being brainwashed enough that they can join the lockstep of the rest of the spawn-n-die culture.