Animal Updates, LUV and Pi2, VSL AGM

There is a running myth that Australians have kangaroos hopping around their suburban streets. Largely, this isn't actually true. Except when it is. Our asylum home, a mere 6km from the city as the crow flies had this little bounder funneled down the Yarra river valley. It's not the first time in recent months the area has seen said bounding marsupials; one visited a primary school nearby at the end of last year. In other animal news there is the rather sad news that our rescue guinea pig, Zepar, shuttled off the mortal coil Tuesday night and was buried the following morning. I cannot say he was an overly friendly or clever pig, but at the very least he had several years of comfort interrupted by only the occasional terror of having his toenails trimmed.

Tuesday night was also the February main meeting of Linux Users Victoria which consisted on an excellent presentation by Andrew Robinson on the R programming language, and an amusingly clever video of Andrew Tridgell's LCA presentation on running Linux on drones. In what was a very techie Tuesday, the Raspberry Pi 2 was released and several of us made a bulk order. I now have two of said creature and am thinking of setting up a picture rotator or some home automation.

Saturday week is the annual general meeting of the Victorian Secular Lobby. We'll be giving out awards for those who helped out during the state election, and will have guest speaker, Fiona Patten, MLC who will speak on what will surely be a contentious issue for the year, "Religious Exemption to Equal Opportunity Laws". It an interesting perspective that many so-called libertarians have that is to allow institutions to have the to attack the individual's right to fair treatment in the public activities (e.g.. employment, purchasing etc). The fact that religious institutions protest a sacred right to engage in such bigotry may be irrational and distasteful, but also a matter of some power.