Today I ran on the treadmill a bit, and worked on Carrie's laptop. It has been416 days since I last had to fix it.

The use of scarecrows in farming is being revived... The scarecrow is not in the form of a person filled with hay on a stick however; it's a life-size fiberglass killer whale. Aquaculture pens in the ocean for breeding fish can be decimated by seals which can break their way in and then eat their fill, and they've found that it can be much easier to harvest the captive fish than to hunt for them. Enter the seals' least favorite creature the killer whale- Farmers have started to make killer whale scarecrows to scare off the seals, and apparently it was a very effective idea as no seals have challenged them.

There are protests going on in the American Southwest over immigrant rights. There is a bill before Congress to build a more substantial barrier between the US and Mexico, to make it a felony to illegally enter the country, and to charge a tax to wire money to Mexico. The goal of the protest is to express outrage over the bill and for the legalization of the 12 million illegal immigrants that live in the country. I don't think making it a felony is perhaps the right thing, it's not like we're putting people who try to cross the border in prison, they get deported either way. I think we do need to secure the entire border however, crack down and deport illegal immigrants who are here, but also work on a fair guest worker program for those who are in Mexico, who want to come here and work legally. I do not feel that we should reward people who have broken the law to get here to work here. Mexico is pushing for a "more friendly" relationship with the US, though a bit hypocritical- they are against the building of a barrier and want a completely open border with us, yet they have walled off their southern border to keep out poorer Central Americans. Next to oil revenue, Mexico's second principal source of income is the money sent home by workers to their families.