What if I told you that you could save less than a second about half the time you use the microwave?

If you are like me, you frequently use less than 2 minutes cook time on your microwave. Are you aware that many microwaves will accept time entries of up to 99 seconds? Let’s say you want to irradiate some food for 1:30 like I often do. Try entering 90 seconds. You may find that you can save yourself an entire button push.

Imagine how this could add up over a lifetime.

Piracy is a legitimate form of income in modern day Somalia. You can buy a coffin at Costco. A percentage of scientists believe that everything you know and love is the by-product of a computer simulation which does not have you as its purpose. Try to rectify yourself to that cosmological irrelevance if you can.

Somewhere out of the corner of my eye, I recently read that, “The only real tragedy in life is not to have been a saint.” That got to me.

I’m a married man in America.

I do truly believe that a practical solution to many of our largest problems has been with us for over a century. It is called the bicycle. I felt for a long time that it was reasonable to suggest this to people.

Maintaining our current level of comfort and helping reduce global warming is probably having our cake and eating it too. Increasing efficiency is rarely fun.

It has been my experience that moderation in all things truly is a secret to a good life.

I’ve often wondered: in any given system, how can an all-powerful and all-knowing entity not at least share responsibility in all outcomes?

C.S. Lewis makes a point that gluttony as a sin is far more destructive in developing delicacy than in mere excess consumption.

When I watch a wild animal these days, it is easy for me to think that I am watching one of God’s thoughts.

I’ve been called out. It’s going to be very very hard for me to lay out my favorite animals in very many categories.

Favorite Primate: Mountain Gorilla, Lemur (tie). I also have strong partiality to bush babies. I do not care for the old world or “simple” monkeys. I think the chimpanzee and orangutan are fascinating, but neither have enough honor to rank in my favorites. Both are scandalous drunkards, rabble-rousers, and sexually incontinent. If you can possibly avoid it, do not live with a monkey.

The Mountain Gorilla is immensely powerful, yet peaceful. They have the most powerful bite of all mammals. A male gorilla can turn a car tire inside out with its hands, for fun. They are entirely vegetarian and avoid not only confrontation, but contact of any kind with other large animals. They are serene, immense, silent, hermetic, and steadfast. I love the deep black of their coats and skin. I love the overabundant muscularity coupled with grace. They are very highly intelligent without being combative.

Lemurs I will not say much about at this time. They do things in schedules. They…accept imitation well.

Favorite Monotreme: Duckbill Platypus. It’s hard enough being a marsupial in this world, what with having your entire ecology overturned by imported toads or rabbits. But being a monotreme is another level entirely. Try being a mammal that lays eggs. There are only two such animals on earth. You are probably aware that the platypus is weird. But I would wager even money you don’t know the half of it. For instance, it’s bill is actually an acute electromagnetic field sensor that can find creatures buried in mud. The male has a barb in his heel that is venomous. Venomous mammals are rare people, but there is only one vertebrate on this earth delivers venom using a claw.

Favorite Fatigue Hunter: African Wild Dog. A little known but fascinating mammal, it received brief notoriety in the “Planet Earth” television series. The species uses well-coordinated attacks with strategy yielding very high success rates. They are wildly colored. They symbolize to me the true spirit of dogness. I hang my head when I think of the domesticated fops paraded at dog shows.

Favorite Multi-Optimized Animal: Frigate Bird. When you really get to know the animal kingdom on this Earth, you realize that most creatures are optimized to do one thing really well. Well, the frigate bird is special in that it is supremely optimized in two ways. The bird takes long migrations for nesting and feeding seasons. It is a highly efficient long-range flier. The frigate bird feeds by snatching sea-fish from the water, so it also requires very high agility. If you have ever been impressed by seeing a hunting bird dive into the sea and return with a live fish in it’s beak, consider this: the frigate bird makes a habit of stealing those fish, out of the other birds’ mouths…while flying. Like most things, living or otherwise, that are highly specialized the frigate bird has a sparse yet fine beauty.

Favorite Ruminant: American Bison. Cape Buffalo comes in a close second here. Giraffe is also a strong consideration. What is more hoary, tougher, longer suffering than a bison? Possibly camels. But the camel is a whiner. It is one thing to face into a blizzard. Bison march into them. Behold a bison, and know what it is to never yield the essential.

Favorite Animal which is Probably an Alien Race Observing Us: Cuttlefish.

Favorite Extremely Rare Animal: Pangolin. Both times I visited Maasai Mara National Park, I asked our guides to let us know if anyone on the radio net mentioned a pangolin siting. The first guide merely laughed saying that he had only seen one once in his life. The other didn’t even know what it was. And these men LIVE in the animal’s habitat. Also, pangolins are bipedal. Stop and think about that for a moment if you can.

Favorite Safari Animal: Warthog. Can there be an animal with more sass? They peel out when they run. They can chase lions away.

I could go on here. I could go on and on. And maybe on another day I will. I could talk about moray eels and pygmy marmosets. There are grey parrots and dung beetles I haven’t mentioned. And don’t even get me started on who is really the villian among the lions and hyenas.

The animal kingdom is richer, and weirder than we imagine. A lifetime of consuming every fact of the natural world I could has shown me that even with all the media we have dedicated to it, the wonder and unknown is still considerable.

Also, it seems like I am blogging again.

3D reborn HDR

Originally uploaded by ukweli

Her name is Maureen. She has waited very patiently for me to return from Sudan for over a year. One might think that was enough. It was more than enough, really. But did she stop there? She did not.

I’ve been riding this bike frame for 9 years now. It was a hard day for me when I sat on the top tube and it suddenly was entirely separated from the seat tube. It honestly felt like a pretty bad omen considering the timing–days before I left for Africa. I look forward with relish to reassembling the thing from the ground up. Maybe I will finally build those disc brake wheels I’ve thought of for years.

I was simply flabbergasted when Maureen slid this thing out of a large box she had in her closet. I would not have guessed in 100 years that she had accomplished this for me and kept it secret. There is quite simply no material gift in this world I would have been more delighted with.

Maureen, you are a gem. I don’t even know what else to say.

There is a time to face facts. With the Kororak Primary School that time is now. The first school building simply will not finish during my time in Sudan. I admit to real disappointment.

My replacement–an engineer from Kenya named Moses Wandabwa–is with us now. I have given Moses all the information on the school, and I am confident that he will have little difficulty seeing it to completion. But there is a pang. If you have ever handed someone else a crying baby with a suspect diaper, you may recognize the feeling.

In the end, it was the mobilization of basic materials that slowed us. Sand, gravel, large stones, and water were and are needed in an abundance I could hardly believe. The community was very willing to help, but the work was simply monumental. There was just no speeding it up. Gravity is not someone you can get into a hurry. I know this.

I predict two more full weeks to completion of the first building. I would expect the next building to follow in less than a month and a half. As it stands now, the first building has three trusses erected on steel beams and about half of its first meter of stone wall complete.
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Toby days remaining: 4