PrettyKitty

Here is my problem: the subject of this post is going to read it.  I am going to explain it.  I have decided upon a name to describe someone in my life, PrettyKitty.  When I name someone here they have to be a big part of my life in some way and the name has to work on many levels too.  She is pretty and I think that she would be a lot of fun to be around.  I sense that she is soft and fluffy like a little kitten.  She is little too, that is she is slight and lithe, just like a cat and really just like a cat she is also just as likely to scratch me when I step over any boundary that she has.  It also works because her real name is the same as my best friend’s cat and like that cat, PrettyKitty, is an alpha cat.  In the Just So Stories, it is the Cat Who Walks By Herself, she sets the rules and if she does not like them, she leaves.  I love cats and I am allergic to them.  I want to pick up cats when I see them.  I want to hug and squeeze them and so cats don't really like me, they run from me when they see me coming.  I want to scratch them behind the ears and rub their bellies; I want them to sit on my lap and I want them to sleep with me.  

This woman, PrettyKitty is strong and has strong opinions.  I would like to spend time with her, so it is she who must decide that she wants to spend time with me.  Like a cat she is prickly when provoked and I know that.  She is territorial and I am the interloper, so I have to move with care, and quiet; I need her to accept my presence in her territory and for her to approach me -- it has to be her idea.  I don't have the skills to barge into her life and have her accept me, I don't have what it is, that she wants, for her to jump up on my bed.  So I need to bide my time.

I am demiromantic and I am interested.  I am demisexual and I will never know if things are that far until I try, but I can't and won't unless it is her idea.  She is by all definitions a PrettyKitty.  She will read this, probably soon, for sure by the morning.  I don't have to post this, but I will.  She is reading my blog, the thing that keeps me Sane.  I don’t want to push her away by picking her up and hugging her and calling her George.  She joked that her name should be SpaceKitten.  PrettyKitty

Small Living Spaces

I was chatting with a friend about the perfect low footprint home.  She wants to live in her Dream Home and she is planning it out as we speak.  She wants to live in a nine foot by nine foot home.  Cozy!  I am sure that it is possible, I have seen a house that was smaller when I was a child and it had pretty crappy insolation too.  If I were to design a house like that and I had all the technology to do it, what would it look like?  And what would her house look like?  I have very little experience in house building, but when I was five, my father had the house that we lived in for eight years built and I watched it go up and I remember many conversations that my father had with me about it, mostly when I got older.  As I said not much experience.

My friend, who |I do not yet have a pseudonym for yet, wants to have a single room and a loft for sleeping.  The single room would have a shower, kitchen, a table and two chairs plus a toilet.  What else would you need?  A wood stove-- something small because you would not need much.  I imagine the stairs to the loft would be a ladder and there would be a hole to get through and that is it.  She stated that she would want passive solar water heating on the roof and she would need electricity for lighting and cooking.  she would have a hotplate and a toaster oven to do the majority of the cooking and in the winter, she could use the wood stove as well.  the questions really come down to how much window space she has.  I would bet lots of natural light.  I would want a lot myself, but the more window space the more heat loss.

Some of the things to think about would be the thickness of the walls.  9’x9’ would mean that you might only have 8.5’x8.5’ on the inside, so I might go for 9.5’x9.5’ on the outside and 81 sq ft on the inside.  Both examples have a six inch wall thickness.  I am thinking either two by four frames of wood or the same with steel frames.  The wood would be less expensive to build but heavier and flammable too.  Steel would be more expensive, but a little stronger and I suggested this because moving the house is a design feature.  Insolation could go for a few options: fiberglass, styrofoam or aerogel.  Fiberglass is the most common and cheapest but it is also the least efficient.  Styrofoam is more expensive but is easy to use and does not irritate the skin.  Aerogel is the best, a thin panel the thickness of a sheet of styrofoam has the insolation value of ten or more sheets of styrofoam and you could make the walls thinner.  With a thickness of four inches in the frame, you might as well fill it with insolation since the added insulation will keep the space warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.  Fiberglass would fill it up with one sheet, styrofoam you could use two sheets.  The other two inches of wall thickness would include the outside treatment and the inside covering.  Plywood with siding or stucco and wood or drywall on the inside.  

The roof is the problem here and it is dependant on the quality of the insulation.  If the insulation is really good you can have a fully functional space, but if it is not you will need to have a space between the roof and the top of the living space so that ice does not form on the roof.  If you are using the styrofoam then keep it thick and the entire loft can be living space.  Thicker insulation is more expensive, but the reduction in the heating cost and would be well worth it.  It is a small space, so spending more money to get it done properly would be well worth it in the long run.  If the space is properly insulated, heating with a small wood stove might be too much heat-- for sure you would need a way of venting excess heat otherwise you might accidentally broil yourself in the winter.  Remember, the Inuit used snow to build their igloos and heated them with seal blubber candles and had a constant room temperature of about 20 degrees centigrade.  A candle in a lantern might be enough to heat a properly insulated space.

The reason why this little project interests me is because it coincided with a post that I was thinking of, How I see the Future.  This is a small living space and I envision a different version of this for poor, homeless and people who have small needs.

The way I see things is that there are a number of buildings with a lot of wasted space on them.  Large institutional buildings and box stores tend to have large walls with no windows and this is wasted space.  Often these walls have large lawns or spaces before the wall, sometimes it is merely asphalt.  I propose that these blank walls be filled with micro housing units.  When I say small, I mean close to the size of the House my friend wants to live in; outside dimensions of 10’x10’ or smaller.  

The outside walls could be made with aerogel pressed between plexiglass panes.  This set up would allow a lot of light to pass through them and into the unit but would not be as clear as glass so privacy would be maintained, alternately the lower half of the wall could be covered in solar panels of some type to add to units power supply.  Aerogel is often called frozen smoke for its resemblance to smoke and its weight, but it is known also for its extremely high insulation value.  In addition to its insulation value it is also a very strong building material, but in this case only that it is translucent and a good insulation is needed.

Another feature of this construction is the heating method.  EcoCute heating system would be integrated to several units as both a water heater and the heating system with radiant floors.  The Ecocute system is powered by electricity but is four times as efficient as normal electric heaters.  It accomplishes this by using the same principals as your refrigerator but in reverse.  Using Supercritical carbon dioxide the system allows the fluid to decompress out in the ambient air and draw the energy in that air into the fluid and then the fluid is circulated back into the unit where it is recompressed.  Compression of the gas into fluid releases three times the energy that is put into the compression process, that is the energy that was taken from outside the unit.  Additionally the mechanical energy of compressing the gas produces heat which is added to the energy that the unit then passes into a tank of water.  the water can be heated to ninety degrees centigrade easily.  This is obviously too hot for anyone to shower in, but it can be combined with cooler water to create more comfortable temperatures, and the same for radiant floors.  If the water tank is wrapped in aerogel insulation, it will remain hot for far longer than traditional water tanks, so the hot water can be created when the power is available and can thus be powered by solar energy.  

The units can be of any size realistically, but the base model would be based on a stacked hundred square foot footprint.  One could imagine a tiny living space including a folding table attached to a fold down Murphy Bed, shower, toilet, sink, small bar style fridge with cabinets and clothing space and living quite comfortably, especially if you had very little in the way of possessions.  More spacious units would have floors devoted to room functions as in a more normal house.  Possibly a utility room with washing machine and dryer as well as the entryway and a means to get to the next level.  Next an enclosed, from the stairs/ladder/lift area, bathroom with shower and bathtub, sink and toilet.  Alternate arrangements could remove the bathtub and include the laundry facilities.  Another floor could have a living room and kitchen area, if this is in a multi layer building it may even have a small balcony too.  Sleeping arrangements could include the proposed Murphy Bed or perhaps a different bed solution that is functional during the day.  There might be a private bedroom at the extreme top of the unit with a private balcony too and a permanent bed.

This type of housing would be ideal as mentioned as a first home for young people and as a last home for independent elderly, but also for those people with few needs or little means.  I would like to live in one of these units, perhaps even one of the smallest units.  

No matter what unit style is used it would contain the very best technology and it would be integrated into the structure.  Batteries in the walls, with the philosophy behind the iPad, if there is space, fill it with something or a battery.  The unit would have any surface that was not window space covered with solar collectors and the roof would have collective vertical axis wind power generators with concentrators to maximize the power generated.  LED lighting, while expensive, uses very little energy.  The key to this house is high efficiency, low power usage and collective power generation --maybe even to the point where footsteps generate energy and rain is diverted into tiny power generation applications.  If the building is insulated really well, the occupant might even produce enough heat to warm the building.

There would necessarily be a benefit to the building that these hose rest up against, first they could generate income and the building would require less heating as the exterior walls would be covered with houses and thus well insulated.  This would not be an ideal situation for industrial sites, but high insulation works well for sound as well as heat, so very little sound would pass through the walls as well as heat.  Box stores would also be increasing the population of people in the area that would be customers.  Walmart style stores in particular, grocery stores and discount stores too.

2015: a review

It comes that where I write this it is near the end of the year, not in other places but where I am it is.  And a lot of people choose this time to reflect on the year that has passed.  Why should I be any different?  So I will tell you how this year has ended.  For the first time in many years I have ended my year better than I was when I started, significantly.  This is mostly due to a few things:  a workplace that treated me with respect, getting out and dating, although there was only two official dates and two meetings, I have pushed myself to my limits and I did not break, I have lost a bit of weight and I discovered many personal truths that I did not know about before.  Not everything is positive, there has been a lot of negative, but there has been enough positive that I have not been at all concerned about that negative stuff at all.  

My workplace has mostly been positive and that has rubbed off on me and I am more positive person now.  It is funny when you work with people not trying to make themselves superior or to just trying to tear you down all the time how that will allow you to be positive.  I started there with a wage that I considered modest but in my old workplace my boss would never have paid me and by the end of the year I ended with a wage that was comparable to what people who worked at my old job got in fifteen years.  More when I left, they tried to get me to stay by offering the use of a vehicle to get to and from work each day.  I had to decline, because I did not want to be working 80 hours a week and commuting another 12 hours each week too; I don't even like driving and I know that I am a bad driver.  But it was the thought that counted.  I wish that I could work for them, but I need to get my social life working for me.  

Two dates and two meetings.  The two dates were a mix of good and bad, but they both represented me stepping out of my boundaries.  The first date was not very good.  I talked for a few weeks with her, but the connection seemed to be there but when we met it fell short.  Additionally, there was conflict.  She seemed to be arguing counter everything I talked about.  It might have been that were were both not ready to date anyone or that there was no connection.  She argued every this I said and checked her watch a lot, sure sign that there was no chemistry.  The next date did not occur for another four months, but it was well worth the wait.  I had a ball and I was relaxed.  She took photos of me and told me to replace my old ones on my dating profile.  Her profile said that she was intense, but I found her fun to be around.  She told me that she found me attractive, but that I lived too far away to date.  Still, we are friends and I still chat and send her emails.  She is the only person who I wanted to kiss on the first date-- it felt like love at first site.

The two meetings were mixed as well.  The first was in late August and occurred after eight full months of chatting, but it was only ever that, a meeting.  She wanted to meet me because she thought that she would not get a chance to ever again.  We talked about many things and had a long conversation about teaching.  She was not interested in continuing anything beyond that point so we left it there.  My second meeting occurred about thirty hours ago and since she reads this blog actively, I have to be generous in what i say here, just kidding, I will tell it all as how I feel it, because I would tell her privately this stuff anyways.  She is great, but she is also holding herself back from me, like she feels that she could fall for me, but does not want to because of something had happened to her in her recent past.  I am being circumspect on this, because I know a little bit what it was and it is not for me to share with you.  She can do that if she wishes by leaving a comment.  In any case it is not like this relationship will be anything other than ephemerally physical and deeply personal as friends.  We are both deeply intense people and tend to burn people to a crisp with our presence.  I could fall in love with this woman one day if I am patient and give her total control.  Perhaps in the new year we will have more limited meetings and eventually she might want to have a date.  I think she is worth the wait.  

I did a Teacher Course, partially to appease my friends that I was trying to work towards a good place and a better job, but also because I have not explored that avenue in a few years and it still interests me.  I was working at the time and the teacher claimed that we would need at least twelve hours a week to complete the course.  There are 168 hours in every week and I was working for 70-80 of those hours every week, six days a week.  some of those weeks were in fact closer to 85 hours.  I was bicycling 13km each direction to get to work call it two hours a day with breakfast and supper included.  I was getting to work early, but I allowed the extra time so that I would still be on time even if something bad happened, so another 45min a day.  This totalled to 16.5h plus 70-80h to 86-96 hours from 144 hours 48-58 hours left for sleep and Lunch subtract 3 hours for 45-55 hours for sleep, divide by six days and 7.5 hours of sleep to 9.1, did i forget laundry and showering and getting awake and dressed?  call it 7-8 hours for sleeping each day.  Sunday, wake up at the same time and go to Tims and spend 6 hours a day doing school work and socializing.  I quickly reasoned after a few weeks that I had made a horrible mistake and had told the instructor that I was over my head, but he insisted that they could accommodate me, so I stayed.  Weeks later he reneged and I had to take him to his superior.  When I completed the course I only took three weeks longer to complete it and I thought I had done a good job, despite that I had used half of the suggested time to complete the work-- that gave me more confidence.

I lost weight.  Years ago I was told that my ideal weight was closer to 225 pounds than my 290 pounds that I was.  Working 12-14 hours a day and biking 26km each day did wonders, by september I had lost 60 pounds.  I did not feel better, but then I was also exhausted so I was not a good judge.  A few times I went out for a leisurely bike ride and I did discover that I was a terror on the road, travelling at 50km/h on bicycle paths with many near collisions, just burning off extra energy that I had after the course work had been finished and I actually had a free day.  I read a bit more too.  

The biggest change in my year was the discovery of the word Demisexuality and that it applied to me.  Demiromantic too.  What can I say that i have not already said.  It was like one day I was struggling with definitions that did not work that described me but fell short and then WHAM!! Silence.  Calm.  Explaining why this is so, is difficult.  When someone defines a word that applies to you you can feel that the word limits you or perhaps the word can allow you use its boundaries to end a disconnect that you have with the world.  The latter applies to me.  All the failed sexual encounters and difficulty expressing myself and the successes too were framed and fit in with the definition; it allowed me to understand what my limits might be and why.  It allowed me to see with new eyes.  It gave me a way to explain my boundaries to people that I never had before.  It breathed life into a word that I thought I knew what it meant, but clearly did not.  I can go to the top of the local mountain and shout at the top of my voice, “I am ASEXUAL!”  But, that does not mean that I don't like sex, it does mean that I do not see the gender that I like as all hips to be fucked, but as people that I don't know and therefore not to be pumped at the earliest opportunity.  Not that sexual people think that, but it is like the potential is there.  I always fell in love with friends, now I know why.  I can see someone and think they are beautiful, but not want to have sex with them-- point in fact, I will see sexually attractive people and just not be interested in them sexually.  My abnormalness feels normal.  I am relaxed.

I visited my friend, GardenerGuru and she told me that something had changed in me, something had changed for the better.  I had last seen her in October, so something had changed in me since then.  I am almost, happy?-- it is a tough and elusive emotion for me so I don't know if I can say that it is true, yet.  There is new hope in my life.  It might be that I feel that at least two people new in my life find me attractive and maybe worth keeping in their life.  Maybe there is a third . . ..  And I have not even had sex with any of them, which is a new way of looking at my personal milestones, thank-you PolyGirl for showing me that I could be Demi.

I wonder what will happen in 2016?

17 on 24

Walked out the door without a coat.  It is December 24th, two days aft the longest night and the days are getting longer.  The high for today is expected to hit 17°C.  Growing up we had the occasional Green Christmas.  Green with white patches.  They were very rare.  Almost as rare as a white christmas in Florida.  Including the past two, they have much more common.  But never this warm.  

It is two factors Climate Change and an El Niño.  The El Niño is a common event, it is a Pacific Ocean current and regularly it warms up and warms up and then it lets off  its warmth by piling up the warm water off the coast of the Philippines.  The warm water evaporates, that air warms, it holds more water, so more water can evapourate.  The current travels north and so does the air, the air is faster and it follows the coast past Japan to North America and it continues into the continent.  The warm water filled air warms the air and the land.  The water precipitates out, that heats the air as the water changes state.  If it changes state again into ice it warms the air again and it snows.  

Back in the eighties Canada had a very powerful El Niño effect and it caused massive ice storms in Quebec.  The rain froze on the trees, the rain that was colder than 0°C froze instantly.  Where I was we god freezing rain as well, there was a layer of ice on top of the snow and the roads, clear of snow were ice covered like an ice rink, only one that went up hills.  Walking to school that day was treacherous.  

This year we have Climate Change in full force.  In the past excluding the Ice Storm an El Niño would have brought lots of snow as the temperature would have been much colder.  Today, we get rain.  It rained yesterday a lot.  It rained all week in fact.  The cycle I described above I have described in more detail other posts.  climate change means that the world will increase an average of 2°C.  That is mostly in the tropics as most of the world is between 30° North and South.  The closer to the poles you travel the greater the temperature increase will be and less in the Summer, but more in the Winter.  The Winters in the high latitudes will be up to three times the average temperature rise.  That was the estimate, however if there is one thing about Climate Scientists that you need to know is that they often low ball their predictions.  In fact what can be said about most of their extremely scary predictions of twenty years ago is that they were wrong, the climate change more and faster.  So maybe not three times the temperature rise, maybe five times.

I rode my bike to Tim Hortons on wet streets, there was a stiff breeze, a wind really, without a coat.  It is currently 14°C outside, warmer than the warmest day in November this year.  I am in Little Smoke, and city people do not pay attention to the climate, just the weather, but even they are talking about the weather with an edge of fear, for what is to come.

Against the Slave States– Where is the Magic?

Hearth stones in Nowhere.  There was a first age community there at one time and if all the areas were properly capped then there would be a lot of hearthstones and manses and a few demesnes too.  I will change the rates a bit as listed.  50% level 1, 30% level 2, 15% level 3,  4.5% level 4 and 0.5% level 5.  This changes the ratio from Canon and I think it makes more sense, if a demesne is created when dragon lines cross, two lines for a level 1 three for a level 2 etc., also then it creates the idea of flavour and the kind of hearthstone and the properties that it has and whether the lines are in opposition to each other, do water and fire lines create a demesne or not?

What aspect are they?  In the first age there would have been more Solar Manses, but would they have strayed from the natural tendency?  There is no need as the effects work for anyone, so only purpose would dictate whether they are differently aspected or not.  And while they could all be changed to reflect the designer's needs there would be limits and and ignoring that would affect the entire essence flow in creation.  

So here is my idea.  All lay lines crossing add to each other based on their power and the number crossing.  There are weak, normal and strong lines, 1, 2, and 3 ratings.  The largest contributor determines the natural strain, but can be manipulated to one of the other contributors.  The Elemental lines emanate  from their various poles but the Celestial are more randomly located through Creation.  Elemental lines are curved, air, water, fire, wood and earth in order of curviness through straight curves, lunar lines are curves and spirals, sidereal and solar straight.  Solar are rays from sunbursts, sidereal are long rays.  Celestial lines count twice in natural demesnes but only in determination of the type of demesne.

I will say in the old Realm, 75% of manses were Elemental (15% each), and 15% Solar, 8% Lunar and 2% Sidereal.  In the current times where it is civilized, 85% are Elemental (17% each) and 15% are Celestially aligned (5% each).  This represents a reduction of Solar and Lunar manses and an increase of elemental and Sidereal aspects.

How many in the area of Nowhere?  There is a medium strength Earth dragon line passing through the land away from the Inner Sea.  There is a Medium strength Dragon line off the coast.  There are a few stray rays of Wood and Fire lines passing through the area.  There is a strong Air dragon line in the north and so there are medium loops in the area.  There is also a medium air line in the Inner Sea looping through the area.  There is a Strong Solar Node in the Mountains and in Whitewall.  There is a strong Lunar node in the wilds near Wall port and on the other side of Amber River. There is a medium line of Wood to the east of Amber river.  

Little pic experiment(94)

55 level 1

30 level 2

8 level 3

1 level 4

Nowhere old realm manipulation of some lay lines (88)

42 level 1— 10 solar, 3 lunar, 3 sidereal

30 level 2— 9 solar, 3 lunar, 3 sidereal

14 level 3— 1 solar, 3 lunar

1 level 4 solar

1 level 5 air

2 Earth air water demesne

The air over this bubbling mud flat smells of rot and the mud is treacherous to travel through.  The fine clay is more likely to weigh down and suck any traveller into untold depths of a muddy demise.  Anyone who braves this murky death can harvest a clay that can be fashioned into objects that when dried and fired are transformed into Adamant

2 lunar Manse devolved to 1 Lunar water. Earth missing

A small lake sits in this valley, created by a dam at its edge, the looking mechanism is damaged and now the lake exits over it as a small waterfall.  There's a partially submerged manse in the center of the lake its granite walls and former hard packed earthen floors once helped move an earth dragon line into this location, as it is the lake now moves it further away.  A natural spring was in the center of the manse and now feeds the lake.  Prayers of intersesission to Luna cover the walls in Old Realm script from those that were saved from drowning, written in silver.  The hearthstone originally provided a bonus to swimming long distances of two free successes in swimming Stamina related rolls, but now only provides two dice.

2 Solar Lunar fire demesne

The climate in the north is harsh but here it is quite pleasant even in the harshest of winters.  The ground is warmed by a hot wat spring that never surfaces, but keeps the roots warm and snows melted in the winter.  Creatures of darkness stay away and find it uncomfortable to enter the area.  The trees and the understory are thick and nearly impenitratable.  There is a tall building with tall wide windows filled with delicate pains of glass and mirrors that reflect the light around the manse.  This is a medical center and all forms of simple medical aid can be found within and a servator how will apply first aid to all.  The hearthstone grants the bearer to treat wounds that will never be infected with common infections.

2 Lunar earth fire

Curved obsidian glass set one hundred meters from the the building at the center of the clearing. The courtyard outside the manse is tiled in curved basalt in a spiral design.  The walls of the manse are composed of irregular basalt and obsidian and the mortar is silver.  The black hearthstone is filled with flecks of red and silver.  Whom ever bears this stone can lead a force of magnitude equal to their essence ignoring half the terrain penalties.

2 lunar water

The forest gives way to broad northern marsh.  Trees dot the landscape upon crescent shaped berms raised from the foot sucking mud.  The islands do not appear to be set in place and move around so that the islands are never in the same place two visits in a row.  The region around it is filled with sucking quicksand pits of muck.  The central most mound is the only one that does not move, but the path to it is always different.  Silvered surfaces have been placed on each of the  islands that are treated to only reflect moonlight that seems to be the only light that penetrates the fogs.  The central island has a pool whose surface is mirror calm and a small gem stone rests floating in place.  The stone grants the bearer allows the to figure out puzzles in a natural setting.  A quick glance grants the bearer the benefit of a detailed search, two free successes to a investigation roll, with a detailed search this increases to four successes.

2 Lunar earth

A little ways from the end of the mountain this solid imperishable up thrust of granite penetrates the tree canopy around.  Its smooth surface remains unmarried by the passage of time and the storms and wars that wrecked the area.  Not a single crack or chip anywhere on it.  The smooth surface of the top remains completely natural, only cairns have been placed upon it to commemorate long fights of endurance and victories of endurance. The central Cairn is a monument to Luna who rewards mortals who survive despite the odds, despite great odds against.  The hearthstone that forms adds two dice to resist shaping effects and lengthens the need for rolls by twice.

1 Solar water

This grotto is hidden at the base of the mountain.  A waterfall drops from a cliff of one hundred feet into its midst.  The morning light is caught especially keenly only at dawn and is reflected deep into the grotto the mists from the fall  see light only when the sun hits it's zenith and can penetrate its recesses.  Natural crystal sit in the walls of the sinkhole and reflect light at different times of the day.  The small structure built on its south wall receives this light through pains of Adamantine and mirrors reflect that light into and around the Manse.  Even in the cold of winter the manse is warm and comfortable.  The hearthstone grants the bearer a better chance to remain undetected when stealing from someone(-2 to notice)

 

These are the manses and demesnes that I have detailed near Nowhere.  Seven down, eighty-one to go.

Autistic brain theory

One of the oddities of my brand of autism strikes when I in our modern society insist on doing things the old way, in person.  Reservation of rentals, applying for jobs and government applications.  Yesterday I did a few of those.  I applied for Employment Insurance benefits and I looked into securing some moving aid and I did it all in person and then I had to go home and do it online.  

I was on the Demisexual forums yesterday and I explained it there; it is all about brain theory.  Every time a person does a task a new pathway is formed in their head.  Repeatedly doing something reinforces that behaviour or idea.  Like spelling a word consistently incorrect and correcting it everyday, you still do it and you still correct it.  For some reason although I will search for information everyday on the Internet, I don't go to Amazon to buy books and I don't purchase anything on line— even though when I do I only have good experiences.  My local bookstore does not complain either.  

But what bothers me is that I go into some locations to do business and they are not equipped to help me because everyone does it online, so I have to go home and do it there.  There are other problems too, because I do a lot of certain activities on my computer when ever I boot it up I do those things first.  After a couple hours of computer games the question is asked why did I turn this on?  

I have made a habit of blogging at Tim Hortons.  It has become difficult to do it anywhere else, must because of the warm and inviting environment!  

Clearly I need help

Demiupdate

It has been three weeks.  Things are going well.  The diagnosis has relaxed me.  But it has spread a little.  I am not just Demisexual.  I am Demiromantic as well. I may be demisocial too.  What is it not?

What is it:

Demisocial.  If I don't have some physical connection, and emotional attachment to you I find it difficult to talk to you.  Who are you and what are you interested in–I don't know and I am not going to find out, just tell me what you want and let me do what I came to do.  This is what I was before; I am trying to break that down.  If I have to I will pretend to be gregarious and put myself out there.  For work, for the cashier, for younger people.  For people in distress.  New cashiers at Tim Hortons.  Tough job, high stress, pushy impatient customers—if I can get them to laugh then I know that their day is just a little better.  Job interviews are really tough, there is the Autistic foot watching behaviour I try to quash.  So, it is difficult for me to make new friends, except at work and on dating websites. Which leads to the next one in a bit.  Demisocial means that I find it difficult to start new social things.

Demiromantic and demisocial are closely linked but this is about end goals.  Social you want a friend, romantic you want to date.  I don't really see a difference as I will date anyone because it is the connection that matters for me and not anything else it is getting that connection that is the hardest thing in the world for me.  Dating is something that I leave up to the other person to communicate with me, because just because I am open to it does not mean they are and I really can't tell (Autism).  Dating websites help with that, because well that means they are looking to date, doesn't it?  But as with demisocial, it is about breaking the ice.  They want to date me, they did contact me and presumably read my profile, but I am completely uninterested, because I don't have a connection with them.  I can't just date friends and coworkers, because there are social rules about those things and I can't see them/know them.  

I know that if I know them and I like them I will want to date them, but I can't fake it because it is obvious that I don't care.  It means that the woman has to carry the conversation longer than she my be used to and share a bit more than she is normally willing to.  Plenty of Fish is horrible for me.  I see a hundred profile pictures and some of them are good looking and some of them are not, some of them have no picture.  The profiles are weak and flimsy, they are paper thin, litterally.  So the good looking, the ugly and the no pictured profiles have the same value for me, no value.  I can't contact anyone there.  OkCupid is much better, it has depth and it has an algorithm that tells me that this profile is a closer match to me or not.  I can look at their questions and see their political, religious, social beliefs and I can actually know them a bit.  I can contact them, but they still need to carry the conversation for a while.  I am standoffish at first and arguemenative, but once the ice is broken, I want to see them and I want to kiss them.  If they are willing and let me know.

Demisexual.  Hey it is about sex, so if you are uncomfortable don't read.  But if you are okay with it so am I.  There is nothing wrong with my equipment; I can have sex with strangers no problem, I don't want to becuase I have no connection, but everything functions.  Mostly.  It is like there are three levels of sex for me, stranger fucking, friend sex and making love.  For me there is a difference.  Friend sex is when I like you are a person and I want you to have a good time and I want to see you and have sex a lot.  I will do what ever I can do to make you happy, because we are friends.  There is nothing you can do to reciprocate though and I accept that, because I don't love you, I just like you an awful lot.  If I understand you and trust you and feel that you understand me and trust me, then it may be different and I will be making love and that is different than sex because it just is and I become fully functional.  It is so rare that it happened only once.

What is it?  It is a form of Asexuality.  I am asexual to everyone unless I know them and like them and love them.  And people that I tell this to tell me everyone works this way and they do and they don't.  Relationships work best if you do it that way and the resulting relationship will be stronger if you do it that way, but most people can also just do it.  Most people can contact someone on Plenty of Fish and go out on a date with them that night and wake up with them the next day if they chose to.  I can't.  I could if you just want to fuck, but are we talking about money changing hands here?  I really don't see the point.

What it is not.  I am not blind.  I can see that Hollywood bombshell is hot and desirable, I just am not interested.  That relatively perfect ten sitting beside her friend is obviously beautiful, but even if I stare, I would not be interested in them.  If I am with a long time friend, I might not even see the hotty, because the person who I have a personal connection with is taking all of my attention.

Autosexuality?  Yes, just like everyone else.  Porn helps, but that is because I can pretend I am there too and that I have been with them for ever.  Random hookups have no appeal, neither does watching other people have sex, unless I can get in to that space.  Strip clubs are boring, just a bunch of naked people dancing around who I know nothing about.

I have always been this way, but the word let me know that I am still normal if a rare type of normal.  Ofcourse along with Autism, I wish that I was not.  I think the Deminess is a symptom of Autisim.  There is a high correlation with autism and Asexuality, anecdotally.  But that makes sense, because autistic people have difficulty expressing and understanding social expression.  And this leads to strong ties with one person and only one person at a time.  My dad has only been with one person ever.  Growing up he liked to push me to see lots of women, but he like me is not like that.  

Expanding Expansive Expanse

I know that I wrote about the book series, "The Expanse"; it is up to five books now and they are still on schedule for a new book every year until the last book, number nine.  But the new news is the release of the television series, not that I watch it on TV.  They released the first two episodes on two successive days and they will continue to release through the holiday times, so where other shows take a break, they will be there to pick up the slack.

What I love about the show is that it did not dumb anything down.  The language of choice in the one setting, Ceres Station is the same mix of English, Chinese, Portuguese and other languages that it was in the book you know that you are not in Kansas anymore.  In the book they explain certain features through interactions with the narrative, but here in the show you see it and you have to try to understand it.  Why birds fly with simple strokes and then fold their wings in close while the very light gravity slowly pulls the bird back down.  How the shoes in the ships have a magnetic option so they can walk in zero g, clink, clink, clink as they walk.  Hair is wrapped close else it is everywhere rippling in breezes and head movements.  Gravity is created through thrust and the people who grew up in zero g, look differently, elongated limbs and heads.

All there remains is the plot and it is different, subtly, but only so.  Secondary characters are introduced earlier into the series than they were in the books, all fine.  It is like watching the book that I read.  Even the ravenous need to skip to the next episode that plagued me while reading the book.  Most of the actors are unknowns but that makes it authentic and I am sure most of them and the extras are local talent.  Filming was done in Big Smoke.  New York in the 23rd Century look very pretty, –it is the seat of government for the world's parliament.  Countries are mostly dissolved, you only get a hint of that, because it is not a big deal to people who grew up with it.  And it is not important, it is just setting for what will come.  

People still have smart phones except they are pieces of glass and the apps are way cooler and they still break, the second main character has a fracture in his that you can see when ever he uses it.  

Go watch it.  I could tell you all the secrets but you can see them yourself if you just go and watch it.  It is better if you read the books though.

Give ME nothing please

I am not sure if I stated how much I hate it when people make a big deal about when I do a good deed.  I remember a sidebar in a MAD comic when I was a kid: A man stands up and states his name, his address and says that he is donating $1000 to a charity… next panel he says Anonymously!  Obviously he is not and that is the point, when you donate to a charity, you either want everyone to know that you did it or you don't want anyone to know.  There is middle ground.  You can gift a donation, and that is what I do.  Especially at Christmas time.  People want gifts, but they don't need the gifts.  My sister has a really good job and her husband has a really good job too, they can afford more than I could ever give them and truthfully my sister gets what she wants all year long for herself.  My parents don't need anything.  They are older, they buy the stuff they need and they think buying the other stuff is a waste of money.  I don't care for most anything.  If I need it I will buy it if I don't need it I wont get it.  The only things that I need that I don't buy are things that you can't buy anyways.  I would be very happy if I got what I got them.  I gave my sister a part share in a emergency supply drop.  That donation along with 39 other donations will give enough supplies to ten thousand people for three months in some disaster region around the world.  I gave my mom and dad a birthing kit that will help a village grow somewhere and a bicycle that will let someone or some family to transport itself and get better work, better food, travel to a better water source.

You know those food drives? Everyone gives a five or ten dollar bag of groceries or perhaps a can of corn.  If that is all you can give give that.  The truth is though, that is an expensive chunk of charity.  People have to volunteer to put that those foodstuffs away and store them properly.  Some have expiry dates and those need to be sorted.  Money on the other hand has no special storage requirements and can be used when ever it is needed.  Most food banks have arrangements that allow them to purchase food at wholesale and discount prices.  Money can purchase food stuffs that can go bad like fruit, vegetables and dairy.  It can purchase ethnic foods that people find more comforting.  It can purchase fuel for trucks to distribute the food, it can pay bills that keep the doors open.  The value of a cash donation is about ten times the value that a food donation provides.  Sending your kid to school with a two dollar can of creamed corn? Send twenty dollars worth of value with a mere two dollars cash instead.  

One of my podcasts that I listen to: http://www.trcpodcast.com/trc-379-charitable-giving-premium-vs-regular-gas-elf-on-the-shelf/  They challenged people to donate a mere 1% of their yearly earnings and he backed up his challenge that he personally donated 20% of his income.  It is difficult in today's economy for everyone to tithe, 10% of you income, but some people still do it.  Don't tithe to your church, tithe to people who need it.

There are services that people use everyday like Wikipedia, they are free but they cost money and they don't have advertisements.  We use it, we should help pay for it.  Wikipedia, much more accurate than any paper encyclopedia, goes into much more detail, is self correcting, documented and cited, available in many languages and is the first go to source for many argument and university paper.  This site is the legacy of humanity, it is the repository of 99.9% of all human knowledge.  We need to keep it going.

I am not going to tell you how much I donated this year, because I am not e man in the comic.  I donate anonymously.  I donate as gifts.  I sometimes give my spare change to that homeless guy.  If I don't have change I might have bought them a coffee.  I don't want an applause, I want you to do the same. I don't want Christmas gifts, the gift cards I got last year are still in my wallet.  Give me a gift of knowing you care for people you will never meet.  Oh and don't forget to tip the people that you visited everyday.  I have to tip one or two more people that I saw everyday almost.  I don't have to, but I will.

I Don't Care About Polar Bears, sort of

When I say I am concerned about the environment, I mean the overall environment.  Which is to say that I am not concerned about the fate of the polar bear as a species.  I am not concerned about the introduction of foreign species into an environment.  I am concerned about the elimination of the complexity of a food web and the removal of a layer in a food web.  I am not really concerned about the removal of a top level predator as much as I worry about the removal of a lower level animal.  

Why is that I might hear someone say, I would also hear that I am stupid or naive too.  Why.  Because the average run for a species is a million years, then they get replaced or they evolve.  If a few unimportant spots on a food web go vacant, they will get filled by another creature, or they will be filled by already existing animals that learn to fill that need.  If there is an exploitable resource, something will exploit it.  Eventually.  That is the key word.  This is what evolution is, resource exploitation.  

What scares me is elimination of trophies levels, particularly the lower ones.  Like say the Asian Carp.  The Asian Carp is a vegetarian and when it gets big, nothing eats it, and it gets very big.  A lake has a very simple food web composed of fish primarily.  It starts with the Sun.  The sun feeds the plants, algae  and phytoplankton.  The zooplankton eats the phytoplankton and algae and vegetarian fish eat the plants.  Minnows eat the zooplankton, small fish is eaten by bigger fishe until there is only a top predator fish. The Asian Carp would threaten this food chain by feeding on the plants, algae and phytoplankton in all its sizes meaning less food for the zooplankton and the minnows and everything else.  I don't eat fish, but I know that less or no pike, pickerel, bass, trout or other large predator fish  would be bad, because the fewer species at a specific level means that the food web is more vulnerable to a disease or disaster.

If all the top predators in the world disappeared, the food web might fluctuate wildly between years of over population, starvation and too much food availible, all the tropic levels would be affected this way until the food web stabilizes at a new equilibrium level.  As the new top wanes and waxes, the mid levels wane and wax accordingly, over population above means near total elimination of the lower levels, lower upper levels mean a rebound of the lower levels.  

The same is true if one lower level trophic levels is eliminated.  Except if it is the only or the biggest species on a trophic level. Then it all falls apart.  Losing one or a few species on a healthy food web will not cause the structure to collapse, but it will weaken the health of the food web.  Elimination of a few species on a weakened food web can cause it to collapse, but only as far down as the disruption goes.  

Eliminate the Sun, everything dies.  Eliminate all the plants, everything dies.  Eliminate the plant eaters, the plants live and everything else dies.  Eliminate the top predators and everything lower survives.  When you understand this, the elimination of the polar bear, or the wolf, or the lion, tiger or anything like that, is not a serious problem.  It is a shame, but not a problem.  If we humans continue to affect the world with no self checking, we can wreck every ecosystem and food web on the planet, but we can't destroy them.  Even the worst case scenario, acidification of the oceans killing the pH sensitive oxygen producers and oxygen production is reduced to 50%, life on this planet will not end.  Life evolved on this Earth that survived similar evolutionary bottlenecks and some of their ancestors exist today.

Survivors of that extinction include a branch of reptiles that include, Crocodiles and dinosaurs.  It does not include Mammals.  It does include birds.  If we eliminate that trophic species, we may die.  Humans can live with 7% oxygen but we don't move so well below 14% oxygen.  Surprisingly plants don't work well in low oxygen either.  Birds and  the few other species would be virtually unaffected.  The scavenger birds would initially do well the vegetarian birds would do well, the birds of prey would need to re-balance.  Scavengers would need to diversify and either hunt or die off.  

Interestingly fires to not burn well in 10% oxygen.  The result would be is that dead plants would rot but not burn meaning the land and marshes would become carbon sinks.  This would reverse the carbon problem we have now.  The oceans would give up their carbon as the air loses its, the oceans would de-acidify and and if any form of the phytoplankton remained they would be able to flourish.  If not the Earth might recover with Algae.  The Birds would like the Darwin Finches, move into different roles.  Birds would in very short order start to take up the roles that were vacated by the Mammals.  There would not be a polar bear, but there might be a giant non flying owl that hunts penguins that live in the arctic.  There might be large sea going Crocodile that never goes on land.  It might eat plankton.  A whale shark may have become larger or smaller.  The point is that the world will do fine, even if we fuck everything up.  The other point is that it will do well without us too.  It is OUR choice wether we are present on this planet and it is our choice if we can live in the open.  

This post was inspired by listening to a podcast of Science for the People, "Where does the Camel Belong?"  http://www.scienceforthepeople.ca/episodes/where-do-camels-belong

It is about a book about the science of invasive species and asks the question: Are species invasions really bad?  The answer is no, not really.  Some are bad but most are neutral.  And trying to do something about an invasive species after it has escaped, is pointless.  The book chronicles a few of the many thousand species invasions and some of the efforts to contain and eradicate the offending species, and they have all failed.  Even the fool proof plans have been foiled by nature.

For me, I hear something and it triggers something in my head and it rarely has little to do with the trigger, if you were wondering how the first part works with the inspiration.  

It is important to realize that when an invasive species enters a food web that everything around it does not recognize it and ignores it, until they know it is not poisonous to them and they begin to exploit it.  The Asian Carp, for example, likes warmer waters, so the cold Great Lakes may stunt its growth and the carp minnows may be food for longer and keep the population in check.  As climate change works it's magic on the environment and warms the Great Lakes, it may warm faster than the cold adapted fish living their can adapt to the new ecosystem and the Carp may then flourish where the other animals cannot.  A parasite that the cold water fish have, that they can live with and survive may infect the Carp and they might have no protection to it and that could limit their growth.  The point is that there are possibly hundreds of reasons why the invasive fish might be kept in check without our intervention.  Zebra Mussels another example.  They invaded the Great Lakes years ago and they were going to be the bane of the lakes, until some animal, group of animals started eating them.  

The book author makes the point that Humans want the world to stay the same as it was when they were born—not the way it was before humans got involved.  Camels evolved in North America, they lived in North America for 40 million years, then a land bridge to South America developed and many Camels invaded there, four survive there today.  The Bering land bridge opened up and two species of camel crossed and landed in Asia and Africa.  Then another invasive animal crossed the same land bridge and killed all the camels in North America.  Where do Camels belong?  

The House Cat belongs in Africa where it evolved?  The Cow belongs in Europe?  Wheat belongs only in Iraq?  Sugar, cotton and cannabis only belong in India?  Horses in the mid east?  Humans in Africa?  Potatoes in the Andes?  Apples and carrots in Afghanistan?  Do you see it?  The Polynesians carried Rats in cages with them on long journeys to release them on the islands they went to so they could have food to eat when they came back.  We bring cats with us where ever we go, because we like them.  They kill rats, well they kill everything smaller than them.  We will put a stop to an air turbine project because it will kill a thousand birds a year, but the neighbour's twenty barn cats will kill a hundreds of birds apiece every year, but we don't stop them.  And we get angry about an animal that hunts and kills the cats.  

Four No Trump

Trump said you just don't know who the Refugees could be.  You are correct Donald, you don't know, they might be even as mean as you, but probably not.  I am not going to condemn him for speaking his mind; he is an idiot with an audience.  He is just speaking what his audience is thinking aloud and that is the lesson that we should take from Donald Trump.  People have made chilling parallels between his popular speeches and the equally popular speeches made by a man ninety years earlier in Germany.  Trump suggested that Muslims should wear badges that let people know that they are Islamic.  Next he will suggest that gay people are insidiously invisible in society and they should have to wear badges too, then atheists.  And his audience will applaud.  Just as they did ninety years ago.  His speeches will get people fired up and they will throw rocks at Mosques and fire bombs, just like they did eighty-five years ago to synagogues in Germany.  Then he will get in power and he will start attacking Islamic countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and then Iran.  After that he will preemptivily nuke Pakistan, because they have the bomb.  

Am I going too far?  Interment camps in the United States to hold Muslims?  Expensive job right, well maybe they will start starving them to lower costs, and working them to pay for their internment then executing them. 

Why is this not likely?  Why do you think I am wrong?  No one thought Hitler would do that.  Not many people in Germany knew what was going on in their own backyard.  People did not want to know. People just wanted to live their lives and not get singled out.  Why should it be any different in America.  

This is why Donald Trump is so popular; he is saying things that people are thinking and he is legitimizing their own thoughts. And whose fault is it?  It is our fault.  Because we are letting it happen.

I can see the chain of causal links leading from Trump speeches right to World War II.  Simply put: Europe was divided by the two winning powers, the Allies and the Soviets, two ideologies, capitalism and totalitarian disguised as communism.  The two powers did not trust each other because capitalism and communism are opposites, not that the Soviets were communists, because communism is small scale.  

But I digress.

The Cold War set in one side against the other and each side defined itself by not being they other, so since the Communist state was officially an Atheist state, the Capitolistic state had to become a theocratic state and more power was given to religious groups.  In God We Trust was put on the money and people swore to God in the pledge of Alegence.  Truthfully, though the Atheist communist state was not atheistic. But the western power still sold their future to Theism.  

Over reaction?  By the fall of the Soviet State, the religious were mostly all Republicans, the Religious Right and they were altering education policies around the country.  Communism is a Leftwing government type, the soviets were not Leftwing though, but the American philosophy became increasingly more Rightwing.

Rightwing ideology thinks that you should only get what you can pay for.  You should only get the healthcare you can pay for and the education that you can pay for and America became a place of two tiers, those with money recieve the best education and e best healthcare and they live longer and make more money.  The poor, have poorer health and less education and make less money. The poor and the rich embrace religion, which is a Rightwing institution itself and increasingly the people learn only religios dogma.  The wealthy learn things that allow them to cement their power and wealth and the poor learn as little as as the church and the wealthy will let them, because if they learn more they might recognize the bullshit that are being taught for the bullsit that it is.  

The result is an underclass segment of society that fears the unknown, and looks to their leaders to tell them what to do.  The underclass is large and it is powerful, their leaders are either crafty intelligent people feeding into their followers fears or they are a product of that ideaology and don't know any different.  

As an aside, I realize that I am not backing these suppositions up with any facts and so I am doing precisely what they are doing.  I could spend a day backing up all my statements though, if I wanted to.  It would not be hard, but it would take time.  So I am doing the lazy thing and blogging without backing up what I say with proof, but don't listen to me if you don't want to.  I am a godless heathen and I know forbidden knowledge like reason and science, history and critical thinking.  If you have the latter exercise it.

What Trump is saying is not the disturbing fact, the disturbing fact is that he is saying it and he is popular for doing so.  Just like Adolf Hitler was.

Daesh is bad, but your backstabbing Ally is worse

Apparently they will cut out my tongue if I call them Daesh, but since they would also cut my head off with a knife too it hardly seems to matter. Daesh is simply the Arabic acronym of the name that is ISIS, but because it is similar to other Arabic words that are derogatory, they don't want it used.  Like when the Conservatives Reform Alliance Party in Canada looked at what their acronym said.  Since Daesh will cut my head off with a very small knife, I don't think I care if their acronym resembles the word for 'sowers of discontent', matter of fact it seems quite perfect.

Why will Daesh cut my head off?  1) I am a westerner, 2) I am currently speaking out about them, 3) I am not their particular brand of Islam, 4) I am not Islamic, 5) I am an Atheist, 6) my country was dropping bombs on them.  So come and cut my tongue out Daesh!!

But at least Daesh is honest.  It has told everyone that it will do this, because I am their enemy.  But what about those countries that hold out their hands and pat you on the back, then cut out your tongue and behead you with a blunt sword or whip you to death.  Literally tie you to a post and whip you until you die.  With friends like that, who needs Daesh?  Why would they do this to me? Because 1) I am about to name them, and if you say bad things about that country, that is the punishment, 2) I am blogging these ideas, 3) I am an Atheist.

Who are they?  Saudi Arabia.  

Hey they are not that bad, they are letting women cast a ballot and run for municipal office, for the first time ever, but the women can't drive to the ballot box themselves, and if they were elected, their husband would have to drive them to work.  Hey if we were going to talk about women's issues in Saudi Arabia, let's talk about what happens when women are raped.  They are executed.  Either because they had premarital sex if they were unmarried and if they were married they are executed for adultery.  They can't take off their Hijab either because it is the law.  There was a Canadian man who went through customs there and he had an empty poppy seed pod in his possession.  He was arrested and sentenced to merely prison for bringing in drugs to the country, if it actually were drugs, if he were a Saudi citizen, he would likely have been executed.  

For a list of Capital Crimes in Saudi Arabia go here:  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Saudi_Arabia#List_of_crimes

Blasphemy, you know drawing the prophet Mohammed or writing about him and saying that he probably should not have had sex with his eight year old wife, yes I know, he waited 2 years, but still.  

Fornication, you know having sex before you are married.

Idolatry, you know like owning a statue of the dancing Shiva or any statue of any god of statue of something that could be a god, maybe, depending on the judge's discretion.

Sorcery and witchcraft.  What does this mean?  A catch all for behaviours that people don't like, like taking off you hijab and using your feline wiles to subvert a god fearing man into lusting for you, might be that.

Treason that includes stealing state secrets and telling someone that you think the King is stupid.  Or that the government's policies are stupid.

Waging war on God, take that God.  I know you are all powerful, so me picking a fight with you is punishable by execution.

Being gay.

Being a Jew.  Pretty sure that was covered off with Blasphemy and waging war on God.

Fourth offense of theft.  I assume they have already cut both your hands off at this point, so why not.

I am lucky, though, I am a westerner and by default an ally, so they would not kill me, they would just lock me up forever in solitary confinement and torture me.  Under torture I would commit many more crimes, like treason by telling them that the King told me to do it, because torture is an extremely reliable way of getting the truth.  And the prophet Mo likes to have Rape little girls, because I am sure his eight year old wife wanted to get fucked.  But if I was a Saudi born person I would merely be executed with a blunt sword.  

The French invented the guillotine so that they could behead people in one cut every time, two hundred fifty years ago, but it never caught on.  Daesh uses a small knife to saw into your neck and cut between your vertebrae, if they are lucky, if not, they have to saw through your bones, because to them, you are not even human.  The Saudis use a scimitar, it takes more than a few wacks to get through your neck, if they don't hit your head first, or shoulders.  The Saudis are trying to get their executioners more practice, they executed people more than once every two days last year and this year they are giving them even more practice than that.  Amnesty International says that they executed 175 people in 2014 and more than that this year.

I say it is time for ground troops to be placed in Turkey and Kurdistan and to run over the Daesh and arrest those bastards.  Arrest not kill, they are criminals.  Continue on and remove Assad.  Then ask politely, ask Jordan to move through and remove the government in Saudi Arabia.  Not likely to happen. Maybe the first.  

Dawn

There was a couple of fantastic mornings this week, one before a storm and one after.  Both days I was out driving for work, but it was only the first that i was properly aligned to take a photograph of the sunrise.

Let me set the stage for these two mornings.  The air was filled with humidity.  I could feel the moisture in the air as I rode my bicycle through the pre-dawn air.  It was heavy in the air and it pressed on me as I rode.

There was no wind.  The air was still as I crossed the bridge.  No wind; the sounds of the birds were muted due to the lateness of the year but were heard clearly.  The sounds of my wheel echoed in my ears after rebounding off the edges of the roadway.  The sounds of distant cars was heard.  

It was warm.  Around five degrees when I started, but for early December, that is nearly hot.  with the moisture laden air you could say muggy December weather.  The ride was quite pleasant.  As I travelled North and further inland, the temperature steadily dropped.  The drop was more than just the distance inland, but the steady bleeding of heat into the clear air.  The temperature dropped to close to zero.  

Air stratified, the cooler heavier air close to the ground and the lighter warmer air on top.  because there was not wind, the layers did not mix and because the air was heavy with moisture*, the cooler air was at the dewpoint temperature for the air and the air became mist.  A thick heavy mist.  If the mist stirred and rose off the ground (because the ground was warmer than the air), its tendrils rose and disappeared slowly as they rose.  In the early light the mist radiated the light, it reflected it back in a bluish white to my eyes.  The trees and the fence posts sucked in the light, wetted by the mist, decreasing their albedo, they appeared quite black silhouetted amongst the white.  

The jet contrails stood out visible in the light of the new sky.  they did not dissipate like normal.  The moisture in the air at the surface was in the higher latitudes too, the slight southerly breeze in the higher air was moving the air mass as a whole, so there was little if any turbulence, so the contrails were very slowly diffusing and since the air was saturated they stayed present.  The cris-cross pattern, evidence that multiple plane passages had occurred and the stability of the air mass preserved them.  The light of the sun reached them first, but only the red light that bent around the Earth from the position of the Sun as the Earth turned; they glowed pink.  

As my work day started, I was on the road and the Sun had been threatening to peak for over an hour but had finally decide that it was time.  Because the Earth has a tilt to its axis it has seasons, but it also affects the dawn and twilight periods.  The day does not really change ever, it is twenty-four hours long.  Closer to the poles the Sun tracks closer to the horizon during that day and night than it does in the summer or in the tropics.  This means that it also takes longer to rise above the horizon too and longer to set, like a diver who plunges deeply into a pool versus a shallow dive.  

The Sun when it does cross the horizon, bulges and elongates as the light piles through the Earth’s gravitational field.  

It appears relatively larger too because we see it relative to things we see and understand as opposed to in the sky against the backdrop of nothing we know.  

iPhones have a crappy zoom feature

Why I don't trust the Liberals

So why do I not trust the Liberals as a government comes down to one thing.  And that one thing is that they ignored their own initiatives on the international front and that is unacceptable.  

Back in the last century there was an initiative in the World.  It was instigated by reports that a specific military force in Africa, I thinki it was The Lords Resistance Army, was going into villages and raping and killing the adults and forcing the male children into their ranks and the girl children were raped.  Appalling does not even get close to describing this horror.  The International Community rose to the occasion and signed into treaty the Rights of the Child into International Law.  There was an optional provision in it dealing with the right of a child not to be a soldier.  Canada signed this treaty and it signed the optional provision as well.

Then on September 11, 2001, the Taliban Government in Afghanistan and through its terrorist arm al-Qaeda, attacked the United States.  And then the United States declared war on Afghanistan and invaded.  And the Afghanistan government did not sign the treaty on the rights of the child and they had child soldiers in their ranks and the Americans and the Canadians killed these soldiers like the others and they captured them and then they ignored the treaty they signed.

The United States declared everyone in the country as terrorists.  Which is not true because they couldn't all be terrorists.  What they were doing was saying that they wanted to do things to people, do illegal things to people and justify it.

What is a terrorist?  What is an insurgent?  What is a soldier?  A soldier is a member of a military unit in a nationally recruited military force.  An insurgent is a rebel, an outlaw of a government that is fighting the government and attempting to overthrow said government.  Soldiers fight in wars against other soldiers and against rebels of their own country.  Rebels fight their own government soldiers.  Terrorists fight civilians to make people scared, sometimes they hit military targets but mostly they attack civilians.  Usually terrorists are civilians themselves, no wait they are always civilians.

The attackers on 9/11 were terrorists.  The American Soldiers invaded Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban government who had soldiers and al-Qaeda a terrorist organization.  When the USA won the war, the Taliban were reduced to insurgents and they fought against the occupation of Afghanistan. The American army fought the Afghanistan army in a mismatched fight and the Afghanistan military crumbled.  When the Americans captured people fighting them they called them terrorist and they tortured them.  If they recognised them for what they were, enemy soldiers, they would have to call them Prisoners of War and POWs have rights, like they can't be tortured and when the war is over they have to be repatriated.  The US broke International Law and they committed War Crimes.

Omar Khadr, age 15 was a child soldier.  In one account when his unit was attacked he was shot and in desperation he threw a hand grenade and killed and wounded a few of his attackers and was then captured.  The US would add the word 'maliciously' before the word: threw, and as previously stated, not recognise that he was in a National Army.  This was two international crimes.  They tortured a child soldier.  And the Canadian Government let them.  They knew that the US government had a child soldier in prison because he is and was a Canadian citizen.  

The Government that signed the Charter of the rights of a Child was the very same Liberal Government who ignored the child soldier in the custody of the Americans, who were torturing him.

People have short memories.  Sure this is a different Liberal government with a new leader, but it has members that are the same and the political machine is the same.  Moreover, they have not admitted guilt.  The test of a society is how they treat the most vulnerable members of their society.  

Canada Fails.