Witnesses claim a pride of 15 lions attacked homes in Liboi and Kulan in the Garissa district on Sunday night, while villagers were asleep. Police reported that at least three people died and a further two were seriously injured.
Senior politicians in the Garissa region said the attacks began after a Somali militia near the border with Kenya stole three cubs.
Let me be the first to welcome our new lion overlords. Now give them back their babies, dammit.
At class today, we did a bunch of stunt karate, including board breaking. Now, everyone knows that board breaking is completely useless in terms of self defense, but it sure is fun.
Provided that you break the board on the first try. “It only hurts if you fail.” My hand is, well, umm, a mass of bruises right now.
Oh yeah, and I hacked mysql, php, perl, dbi, and many other scary acronyms today, trying to get our web site working again. I think that breaking my knuckles on resistive wood was more fun than all that.
I got my teeth fixed today. The cap / repair / bonding agent / whatever that I had installed on a front tooth when I was 13 decided to fall off while I was in Haiti. The dentist fixed me right up, including:
* Local anesthetic (yay for anesthesia!)
* Grinding with carbide and diamond bits
* “Etching” the surface (“don’t touch this with your tongue, it tastes really bad”)
* Plus my favorite: the magic “bonding” light which turns the epoxy into tooth-alike
* More grinding
* biting on carbon paper to mark where it didn’t fit yet
* MORE grinding
* Spitting. Lots of spitting.
He even threw an additional filling on one of the back teeth for good measure. God, I love having good dental insurance. I can think of nothing better than spending a morning with a vacuum, a carbide drill, a retaining ring (“keeps the tooth from shattering when we drill”), a “wedge,” two cotton balls, and up to three hands in my mouth.
For extra bonus points, I attempted the “calm abiding” mode of meditation that I’ve been practicing. Turns out that it’s okay for most of the steps, but when someone is drilling in my mouth, it disrupts my settled awareness of my own consciousness. I clearly have more practicing to do.
After the little adventure on Thursday, where the deadbolt on one of our doors seized up, requiring me to go after it with a vice-grips, I replaced both deadbolts and both doorknobs. This involved purchasing a chisel, since anything I open or disassemble in this house invariably reveals some sort of hack-job that I can’t stand to leave alone. So, chiseled out proper seatings for the “strike plates,” and so on.
Went to a birthday party for a two year old, which was pretty cool. Peter and Rosa are doing well, and their daughter is adorable. She refers to herself in the third person. “Happy Lena!” she kept saying. At one point she sat down, about halfway through her presents and said “enough!” Then she commenced to play with the presents she had already opened. Cute kid.
The self defense training center had their annual charity “demo” on Saturday, which was a blast. The junior team are super energetic and cute, and the high school and above folks are just remarkable. In between, they did challenges to raise money (50 hurricane kicks in a row, board breaking, etc). All told, they raised around $3,500. here’s a totally backlit, low quality, huge movie of one of Tara’s staff forms.
Right now, my political platform is down to three things:
* Domestic policy: Citizenship ought not to be automatically conferred based on where your mother was when you gained separate life. It ought not to be based on heritage, and it ought not to be based on property. Citizenship should be continually earned. You accept adult privileges when and if you are willing to accept adult responsibilities. Give it a five year shelf life, after which you need to re-test, re-commit, or whatever. Loosely put: Immigrant who holds a job for five years, stays out of trouble with the law, and wants to swear fealty: In. Dumbass sitting on his butt in middle-ass America, waiting to collect another welfare check: Out. Let’s start acting like a meritocratic democracy again.
* Foreign policy: Blatant extortion, based on our military power. All nations should either send us protection money (10% of their GNP ought to do it), or fend for themselves WRT their own defense. Anyone not sending protection money should be subject to invasion, occupation, and eradication at our whim. Our whims include “keep it down with the gunfire over there, or we’ll drop throw cuba at you.”
* Technology / Space policy: Our singular purpose as a society, for as long as it takes, should be to carve the moon into the shape of a huge, six sided die and to color it pink. We need to pimp the planet, and a “fuzzy dice, hanging like testicles in the sky” moon is the first step. This will unite humanity in a single coherent effort, establish our dominance of the skies, and force the development of both sustainable space construction and terra-forming technologies.
Who’s with me?
New essay: Civil Liberties. Discuss.
We picked up our first food from the Scratch Farm today. It was everything I had dared to hope and dream. A little stack of half-bushel boxes on a table, tended by two young, idealistic women. The boxes were filled with spring lettuce, pea shoots, baby broccoli, beet thinnings, and so on.
They even gave us a strawflower plant as a “welcome” gift. How cool is that?
I am filled with bliss that this is going to happen once a week for the rest of the summer, progressing through the foods as they come out of the ground.
Thanks for this, rjb5.
West MN Technical college offers a course: Sausage Theory
MTMC.1115 - Sausage Theory (1)
This course covers the use of raw materials, non-meat ingredients that are important to manufacturing of sausage. Formulation of meat blocks and recipes will be covered.
Of course, it’s a pre-req for:
MTMC.1155 - Adv Sausage Theory(1)
This course covers meat selection, product cost, material cost, and profits, and all leading to understanding of their importance in the manufacturing of sausage.
We shall not speak of the also listed: “Advanced Sausage Production” or “Meat Proficiency”.