Random Nuclear Strikes

Well this puts a different spin on the ol’ Admiral, eh?

Aside from being an Aerospace Engineer and software developer, I’m also a bit of a gun geek, a complete & total science geek (especially anything related to physics, solid state or particle), a tinkerer, and an accomplished gardener (I’ll post pics in the spring as my flowers bloom).  This means I pay attention somewhat to Ag news, and I strongly support local farmers (I grew up on WI dairy farms) and community gardens.  Thus, I stumbled across this article discussing the hazards of massive, single source industrial farming.
Agree or disagree, it’s an interesting perspective. Give it a read and listen to the TED talk linked in the article (TED talks are always interesting).

So, according to Glenn Greenwald, the president has the power to assassinate a US citizen who is ID’d as a terrorist.  That just sounds lovely.  At least Glenn is rightfully disturbed by this.

So who wants to bet that no one who dreamed up Carbon Credits saw this one coming?

More specifically, in our ducting.

I may have mentioned before that when we moved into the house, we noticed LOTs of rat activity both in the attic and crawlspace. I managed to kill ’em off in the attic, but every winter when the rains started, we’d get more rats in the crawlspace and I’d have to poison ’em all over again. Figured out this fall when we had the CAT digging up the back yard that there was a tunnel to the crawlspace under the root ball of a tree we tore out. Closed that up, and thought I was rid of the rat problem.

Well, no. I just discovered that when we got our A/C unit replaced last year, the repair guy didn’t close up the wall hole for the cables/hoses very well. They’ve been coming in through there.

Unfortunately one of our HVAC ducts in the crawlspace has a rat-sized hole, because they run around in the ducting too. This is hardly hygienic.

Anyway, I’ve been meaning to take care of this problem once and for all, followed by a good duct cleaning, but events have now brought that to a head.

Last night the dogs went crazy as we heard several thumps in the floor-level ducting, followed by many high-pitched squeals coming out of the vents, accompanied with…. the scent of skunk spray.

Best I can figure, one of the baby skunks birthed by the wild skunks fed by our dear neighbor (don’t get me started) managed to squeeze into the crawlspace through that A/C unit hole, and is probably too big now to get back out, so it’s resorted to eating the rats.

Or, a bunch of rats cornered it and attacked it.

Either way, we’ve got a skunk problem to go with our annual rat problem.

So in addition to the rat poison I’ll be dropping into the crawlspace this evening, I’ll have some nice Hershey’s Kisses for Mr. Skunk.

A few days ago, I posted about the city of Colorado Springs not falling for the budget cut line.  Phil did a follow-up.

Now I live up in Everett, WA, a city of about 100K+.  I’m pretty active in my community and I sit on the Neighborhood Council, which is an advisory body to the Mayor & the City Council (in short, the Mayor and Council don’t have to do what we tell them, but they do have to report to us on city matters, and they do have to listen to us).  Everett is hurting just as bad as other cities out there revenue-wise, but ya know what, the budget is balanced, and the city is nearly debt-free.  How do they do this?  Simple, when the economy started to slide, they didn’t sit on their hands or ignore the problem, they started negotiating for cheaper benefits with the city employees, and they started to offer 3/4-time schedules, early retirements, and a hiring freeze.  They also put certain projects on hold (there is a Riverfront development happening a short ways away that is just collecting dust right now).

Certain services got cut or reduced, but not a single primary service did.  We still have our libraries, and schools.  We have all our cops and firefighters.  All the street lights are shining, and the parks are still tended, and no one raised any fees or taxes.

It can be done, and towns & cities all over the country manage to do it just fine.