"The disease occurs when parasitic worms are passed from rat feces to slugs or snails and then to people."
Yeah. If you grow your own vegetables, this is why you have to wash, wash, wash them before you eat them.
As for me, give me vegetables which have been grown with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, please. Pesticides are a lot easier to wash off than slug larvae.
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Big find of British Iron Age coins. Not Roman coins, either, which is extra-cool.
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Hotel says "no" to gay orgy. The corporate management heard the outcry and shut it down.
The article includes this quote from a lesbian blogger: "We have a right to privacy and sexual freedom." Of course you do! But the hotel is a privately-owned building, and the owners of that building have a right to decide whether or not they want to host such events--and they've made up their minds. You have a right to hold such events, but a hotel deciding not to allow you to hold your event there is not infringing on your rights.
I think a lot of people make that mistake, thinking that when a corporate entity decides not to enable them that their rights are somehow being denied them. Nothing could be further from the truth, though. These people frequently seem to forget that their rights end where the rights of others begin--some seem to ignore entirely the fact that other people do have rights.
The quoted blogger complains about "extreme Christian groups", but I have to say that any event which lines up a set of commodes with pillows under them so men can defecate on other men is an event that was planned by a pretty "extreme group". (Not to mention pretty freaking disgusting.)
The public health concerns are, I think, valid, too. At the various anime and SF cons I've been to, the con staff has put down plastic dropcloths to protect the carpet in the Con Suite from spills and such--and almost invariably the plastic gets torn. And that's just soda and cheese doodles! What if the "spill" is bodily waste? It becomes a biohazard for whoever has to clean it up, and recall that homosexuality is the "A number 1" risk factor for HIV infection; if I worked at that hotel and was told to clean it up, I'd say, "give me a bunny suit or piss off, boss. I'm not touching that stuff. You don't pay me enough to deal with potentially infectious material."
* * *
Everyone is coming down from the Obama high. As they realize that he's not actually the second coming, people start to wonder if Obama is really going to be "all that" or what?
I'm even more skeptical now than I was in November, and I didn't think that would be possible--Obama's theme of "change" has been muted by his selection of a large number of Clinton cronies for Cabinet positions: "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" or some such--and his campaign promises would have been difficult to manage even in a flourishing economy with no serious foreign policy issues to deal with. Instead, Obama's entering office with a capsized economy, a Congress that wishes to disable the bilge pumps, and a couple of hostile groups that wish to put more holes in the hull. (To say nothing, of course, of the fact that Obama himself agrees with the need to disable the bilge pumps in the name of "fairness".)
I'm still betting on "Jimmy Carter 2.0", here.
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WoW:
This morning, before bed, I went to Ironforge, got mount training, and got a white ram mount.
...all of which reduced me to poverty: after I was finished, I had 30 copper left. I'd started the trip with over 38 gold; getting a mount is expensive.
I rode back to Stranglethorn Vale and set to work on grinding the Venture Co. camp; and after about an hour I'd amassed about a gold worth of looted coins. Then I sold the loot I got from killing goblins and was pleased to see that I had a total of about four gold.
Grinding in the goblin camp managed to get Gunbunnysmit to 36th level, too. I killed 40 goblins after I started counting; from where I started counting it took 30 kills to get my 36th level. So figure I probably killed on the order of 80 or so goblins. They respawn pretty quickly, though.
The Venture Co. goblins typically have about 1.5 silver on them (1 silver 50 copper) and some other form of loot, usually silk cloth. But a few of them have green items or other valuable things, so once you sell the items you come out quite far ahead. And they're spaced far enough apart that you can kill one, loot the corpse, and move on without having to deal with a mob--though I have had to deal with a couple at a time here and there, since they're all about 35th, 36th level, I and my kitty, Sprocket, can deal with them pretty handily.
It also helps that right now I'm trying to finish "The Green Hills of Stranglethorn" quest, where you have to collect pages of a manuscript for this one dwarf. I have all of them but for page 14, and I've killed several goblins which had pages on them--but all have been pages I already found! Fortunately the pages are worth a silver or so each, so you can sell the extras.
...and I've got quite a few extras in my bank tab.
That was the other thing I realized: banks aren't just for guilds. Your character automatically has a tab at the bank where you can store things, and you can buy slots in which to put full bags. If I had known that I wouldn't have sold that last 10-slot bag I found, but stuck it in the bank instead. Oh well. Still, it gets a lot of stuff I don't routinely use but that I want to keep out of my inventory--gems and engineering materials and such, freeing up space for loot. Which is why I was able to grind goblins so successfully. Heh.