The Concrete problem

Podcasts are wonderful things.  Where else can you here an hour or people talking about concrete and the science behind it.  I was listening to an episode of Science for the People about Concrete.  I actually listened to it last week, but it had a very large impact on my thinking.  What is there to know about concrete?  Lots.

Concrete is the most common building material that Humans use. More common than brick, more common than wood.  Really.  Every sidewalk, every high rise, every sports stadium.  So much that it is the number one building material used everywhere and it is the third biggest source for Carbon Dioxide production, after power plants and transportation.  One last thing we are doing it wrong.  

The history of Concrete is at the dawn of time, the first use of Concrete was about twelve thousand years ago.  People knew that if you burned limestone in a kiln and combined it with water, the mud would heat up and turn to rock again.  People think that shamans might have used this as a show of power.  But we quickly learned that it could be used to create building materials.  It was the Romans where the use of Concrete hit its height.  Seriously, the Romans were used Concrete better than we do.  The Romans built structures with concrete that are still being used today.  They built a dome in Rome called the Pantheon that is still structurally sound.  

But we say they did not build skyscrapers.  They did not use reinforced concrete like we do.  And they didn't, that is true, but it is because they did build with reinforced concrete and they discovered that it did not last very long.  Under ideal conditions, steel reinforced concrete will last a century on average.  The Romans did not build things to last a century, they built them to last millennia.  It was recently discovered that the harbour of Caesarea in Palestine was constructed of concrete, the harbour sunk into the sea when the land subsided, but it has lasted for the better part of two millennia in the salt water.  Concrete and saltwater are considered a bad combination for building today.  

Why are we so bad at making concrete?  It is the materials we use.  We use steel as a reinforcement of the concrete.  Concrete manufacturers in the early part of the twentieth century, sold builder on e strength of their product by claiming that the concrete would seal the steel completely in the concrete and the alkaline environment of the setting concrete would prevent the steel from rusting.  Perfect.  Except that the concrete only remains alkaline for a few months and the concrete cracks.  Water enters the concrete and oxidizes the steel.  The steel expands as it rusts, creating bigger cracks, and eventually the steel breaks.  When the steel breaks the strength of the concrete is lost and the structure begins to crumble.  Additionally, construction workers leave the steel out in the elements when they are building with them, so they start to rust before they go into the structure.  The Romans made reinforced concrete, they used materials that did not rust, they were just not as strong as steel.  We could make buildings that retain their strength and will last longer, but they are a little bit more expensive, so we don't.  We use materials that will last between fifty and a hundred fifty years.  Which means that everything that we build these days will have to be torn down and rebuilt in another hundred years.  When we do that we will see that the Pantheon will still be there and working, the harbour of Caesarea beneath the waves will still be intact.  

What it would take to stop this now is a few simple pen strokes.  Simply make all reinforcement out of materials that do not rust, do not lose strength over time.  Like aluminum, stainless steel, and anything else; even plastic covered steel would be better.

Philanthropy for the future

Elon musk just offered to supply a battery to solve Australia's power issues.  When installed, if it is installed what this battery system would do is buffer the electricity supply of the nation.  Australia's problem is that there is no other nation to buy excess energy from, so when people use the power unexpectantly, a brown out occurs.  In a closed system this is very important, the battery that is, because it allows for a larger window of supply to be increased.  It is good sense.  I hope they let Elon Musk do it.

The thing is Australia is a nation in a great position make all of its energy clean and it has a lot of space to make that clean energy.  Millions of hectares of hot deserts could allow the generation massive amounts of solar power, which as critics point out cant be used at night, but since most power is used during the day, this is not a problem.  Moreover, the Geothermal potential in Australia is quite high, this could provide more power for the day, but also power at night, which would be the real benefit currently.  The use of solar in the day and Geothermal at night along with battery storage to supplement, would make Australia self sufficient in clean energy.  

Australia has so much potential for clean energy independence that it is in a unique position that it could think about more frivolous uses for the excess power.  They could use the power to desalinate ocean water and use it for drinking water, or irrigation water.  They could green up the deserts.  I am serious.  The changes that they make would even become sustainable after a time.  Half of the rain that falls in the Amazon Rainforest was recycled from the forest itself, over half.  It may be possible to pioneer this technology in Australia and then export it to other nations, like those of the Sahara and the Middle East.  Those are all dry regions that were desertifide by humans with poor farming practices and climate change. They are also regions with lots of solar power potential and access to large bodies of water, albeit salt water.  Canals may have to be built in the case of Africa, but I believe that with effort we could green these deserts, solve food needs and provide great Carbon storage with plant matter.

Hodgepodge

Not sure what I want to write about today.  There are lots of stuff in my head.  Some just interesting and short.

The local Tim Horton's I have been hanging out in has a little character.  There are a bunch of older men that come here and sit down in the morning and talk on various things.  They are all over the retirement age, some are in their eighties.  They are mostly Croatian.  The sit there in the mornings and chat in Croatian.  They have been in this country for years, most still have an accent and they prefer to speak their own language.  I love it.  It is a diversity that exists in many countries that have been receiving regular immigration for decades.  Like the United States and Canada.  The group is not exclusive to that country of origin or language.  There is Joe, who migrated from Germany in the fifties or sixties.  His Wife died a couple years ago and he likes to talk about how smart she was and how they never fought or disagreed, memory editing for sure, but acceptable if he wishes to remember her that way.  He has two daughters.  He grew up in Nazis Germany and has a few of the ideas from that time that have not been removed, because that is what happened to children; they grow up thinking the state of the world they grow up in is normal and everything afterwards is the change.  There is an older gentleman who sometimes comes in with his wife and joins the group when he is alone.  They are people.  Mostly immigrants with interests and community. They are a microcosm of the way the world works and the way that people work.  

I love it.

My girlfriend has told me to use her Netflix Account. She told me to do it months ago.  Months and months ago.  I resisted.  But I started a few weeks ago.  I have been watching Star Trek in all it's various forms.  Because I love SciFi.  I loved Voyager when I watched it, while it was on.  But I have started watching Deep Space Nine.  Mostly because the is a plot that threads it's way though the series that did not thread through the other Star Treks.  Until Enterprise, but be then people were getting tired of Star Trek.  There was something like 26 seasons and a dozen movies, not even mentioning the original series.  They started having to offer snatches and glimpses of female characters taking their clothes off to get ratings.  So I am using her Netflix account and loving it.  Last week, Marvel's Ironfist was released and I finished watching it last night.  It was interesting, but I did not find it as compelling as Luke Cage or Jessica Jones.  I really did enjoy that there were characters from Dare Devil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage in it, but it felt like it was centered on yet another rich kid who saw his parents killed before his eyes.  Another Oliver Queen, a Batman with less gadgets.  A white man.  Not a minority, a woman or a disabled person.  You know what I mean?  Next coming soon is the Punisher, who debuted on Dare Devil.  I can't watch Legion, because the cable company that is hosting it has an iron grip on it.  There is a Justice League like series coming up with those minor characters coming soon.  Then we get more with JJ, DD, and LC in their own series next year.  IronFist did advance the understanding of one of the super villains in the series.  So not a total loss.

My girlfriend, Natural20, has gotten me into applying for education jobs.  It is a good thing.  Landscaping really sucks.  And I really love children, especially in a white wine sauce!  Most of the jobs are tutoring jobs.  I have had two interviews and four or five phone calls.  I have one interview later this week.  Had to miss it earlier this week because I had to take apart a landscaping display at the Home Show in Big Smoke.  I really like the interviews as they allowed me to talk about something I am passionate about.  She asked me about some pretty difficult things in education, like how to deal with developmentally delayed students and autistic children.  I suggested additional ways to help them learn that she had not considered and when asked how i would teach multiple people at different learning levels the same, I responded with the same way that they performed the task.  I felt energized after that brief encounter.  The half hour interview actually lasted for more than an hour. 

My Exalted game has had some bumps.  One of my new players is an old friend and the problem is that he is having a clash with my changes and his personality quirks.  My game is darker than he was used to Exalted being, more mature and quite frankly he is not that mature.  He has stated to the players that he wants to do things to destroy the world that I had created.  I find that unsettling.  He feels that that is his duty as a player.  I don't like that.  His play style is irrational too.  He does not move in a straight line plot wise.  He likes to jump and picks tiny plot points and makes them his focus, which makes him difficult to predict.  And he is arrogant.  He is upset that he has no artifact toys, neglecting to understand that none of the players have any toys.  It is like saying to your Parents, "I can't get a job, because I don't have a car," or telling his Girlfriend that he can't marry her because he does not own a house.  He is so material, that when he voiced his ideas that his Character was poorly made, I made his character, because it did not have any artifacts, one of the players told him that he could have her artifacts.  Which was a really nice gesture, but then he spoiled it by saying no, because it was not good enough for him.  The direction the went in was one that I was not prepared to go to, but I try to only tell people no once a session and they already asked to go one location where I had nothing, instead they went into a location where I had almost no preparation, I had read a lot of material about the place once many years ago and a friend ran a campaign the once so I had something.  They went to Rathess, which is a really big city in ruins with a bunch of really big mysteries and a lot of prep work required.  I had to do it cold and on the fly.  And my subtle suggestions about where going other places on the way failed.  So I ran the adventure off the top of my head.  They had fun.  I just told my player, that if he is unhappy with his character he can remake it, but I foresee this just ending in him not wanting to play anymore.  Which I am fine with.  Except that his wife seems to be enjoying the interaction with one of the other players and he is one of those people that won't let his wife out of his sight, not because of anything nefarious, but general insecurities and immaturity.

More dreams

You dream Akri

After centuries of training and nearly a millennia of practice, you had never been in a war.  The old ones regale people with stories of of their cunning and daring as they defeated the greatest foes that anyone could meet, the Fetch Souls of the Primordials.  Their story's inspire the troops and the Terrestrials look up to them as mentors then they turn to you and you have to turn away.  The only battle you fought was the great cat that gained you an exaltation.  You are the lesser brother of greater men and everyone knows it.  Creation has been preparing for lifetimes for the next great battle.  You have a Daiklave who has no equal, a Warstrider of your own design, and a warship that cruises the skies, whose only service it seems is to provide afternoon shade for the wealthy of towns across the East; its essence cannons have never been fired in anger.  This will change.

It has been in the works for about twenty years, the war machines have been retooled and made ready.  All that remains yet to be determined is the when.  There have been hold ups in the Deliberative to get it approved, all is ready.  The Deliberative is where the hold up has been.  The arguments as been that nothing has been tested in real battle since the end of the Primordial War and if something should come, Creation will not be ready to repulse any invasion, unless we are sure that it will work.  It is a hollow argument, all the Solars know it, the elders point out that they had nothing like the war machine we have now and they won a great victory.  The elders are diminishing, though and it is the Lunars that are holding us back now.  The Preservation group is lead by the woman who shares your bed now, your mate, who is sly as her totem animal is and more a veteran of e Primordial War.  The last vote is to be held tonight, and her vote has been the tying vote for the past few attempts.  She has humiliated you enough now, you are being called her young pup, by your faction. Deal with her they tell you.

She told you last night that opening the walls of Creation to an invasion of Rakasha, is a betrayal to all the millions of people that will be killed, just to test a few weapons out on real foes.  You can blast away on mountains to test your cannons, everyone knows they work.  "You are just looking for personal Glory, that can only be found defeating a foe, that you unleashed yourself on the people you are defending.  If you vote for that, you are not worthy of that Exaltation you wear, your predecessor was clearly a better man."  You apologized, that was not your intent.  The makeup sex was the best you ever had, perhaps because it was the last you were going to have with her.

You stabbed her under the chin into her head as she slept.  Looks like you were going to get your war.

You Dream Practitioner

It was her last wish that you lay her to rest in the forest of her youth; her last wish.  She had been a loyal lover and Lunar Mate.  She was a survivor of two Solar Mates of the Primordial War.  She said that she did not get to know the first well as they were constantly training and then fighting.  When he died, it was another tradgedy of war.  The second was a better fighter and lived through to the end, but she was cold to her and uninterested in her at all.  Such was the luck of exaltation.  When she died unexpectantly and you exalted she was not sure what was going to happen.  She said that it was a surprise that you two were so perfectly matched.  The last few centuries were the happiest of her life.

The stand had been her home for nearly two thousand years.  The great tree in the centre was the focus of the great Demesne and it was tall, filled with many rooms that made up her living palace.  The birds that only lived in its branches were painstakingly bred by her to sing in a haunting melody of her youth, she said it was the song that her mother sung to her when she was a baby.  The runes carved in the trunk with sorcery, written in a secret language that she taught only you, described how much that she loved you and only you.

She wanted to be buried in the roots of her tree, where she would provide nourishment to it.  So that you would always know where to find her, when you were lonely.  It was her last wish, her only desire of her husband and the only thing she ever asked of you.

The Manse you designed made use of the powerful Dragon lines that met there,  a line of Wood and one of Solar.  Under the roots of the great tree you found a rich deposit if Orichalcum and Green Jade.  The wood of the tree was used to make a rustic road through the newly cleared land.  The birds were wonderfully tasty.  The Hearthstone would grant you immortality and she wanted to be buried there, ha!

You Dream Jaguar

The waters of this northern coast are windswept and barren.  No one lives there on purpose, except for the inhabitants of a small island a few leagues off the coast.  There a village sits making a living in the dreadful weather.  They clamber and bow to you as your cloud rests on the beach.  After a few questions they point you towards their village elder and priest.  After a few minutes of speaking with him you are able to determine that they worship a local sea god, a walrus headed god who in exchange for worship ensures that the people her never starve.  The local herd of walrus hunt off shore and that action scares many of the fish into the shallow waters where the fishermen catch them.  The excess is left to the walrus and the older walrus are easier to catch, their blubber provides oil for winter heating and the ivory is used for trading.  The God, the people and the walrus benefit from this arrangement, but the problem is that that does not suit your purposes.  

After a few minutes of negotiation you swear an oath that you will provide the god a better source of worship than the small enclave of humans could provide and the the humans would be relocated to a city in the South Seas where they will never have to be cold and will have better food to eat.  You sanctify the Oath to the the Unconquered Sun and everyone seemed to be happy.  

That was a year ago.  The Manse that you are erecting will be done soon, the former God's Sanctum lay empty after you brought trumped up charges on him for violations of breaking his authority.  His Starmetal remains were divided up between the gods that sentenced him.  One has to be careful when they make an Oath with you, there are always loopholes.  The people have been taken care of, they are servants in your estates, and the god was worshipped well for a few days before his execution.  One has to be careful not to claim a sanctum above their stature.  This manse will make a fine addition to your many.

You dream Nix

The last couple of encounters with the Wyld Hunt had been close.  It had taken all the skill you never knew that you had and a very large amount of Luck.  It was luck.  You will have to make an offering to the Goddess of Luck if you have time.  Your Father had been very insistent that in mercantile trade, you made your own luck, but he had never been trying to evade a professional band of fanatics whose only goal was to hunt her down and kill you with religious devotion.  Your father always told you that it was best to avoid religious fanatics, they could be very profitable clients, but erratic and prone to betrayal.  Your luck came in the form of a flash flood that filled the stone canyon they were chasing you with churning water and bouncing boulders.  One person traveling light could evade, many in armor, no such luck.  Still it was doubly lucky that you collapsed outside this town and they took you in.

The people were kind and they had a natural distrust of Dragon Blooded and the Realm.  The town was founded by people who fled a rebellion of a local Satrapy and were paranoid that the Realm would one day come to take them back.  The village had been isolated for a century and had grown slowly but steadily with people fleeing oppression, but as far as you knew, no-one knew that anyone was out here, the common people even had an idiom, Running to the Sands, meant a hopeless situation where death was the only possible conclusion.  No one was looking for these people.  You knew that your pursuers would soon be following you and they would catch you for sure unless you made your own luck.

You wove them a story that told the people that the town was well known for its opposition to the the Realm, but the Realm had not known where to strike before.  Word had gotten out that there was a small group of elite scouts coming this way and they were going to report the location of the town as soon as they found it.  The citizens of the Satrapy were determined to keep the town, the glorious dissidents of the Realm a safe haven and sent you to warn them.  The only hope was for the town to destroy the scouts utterly to prevent it's discovery.  You burned enough essence into the story that it seemed plausible and more to make them desire to stand and fight.  

You told them that you would take their children into the hills for protection while they fought.  The Unconquered Sun shone down upon your story and they quickly determined that this was the only option they had open to them.  That night you took their children with you as you fled the town.  Near dawn you used your essence to scare the children in every direction so that you could flee.  Your small betrayals would let you live long enough that you might get someplace where you would be safe.

Messenger you Dream

The rules that you played by are simple, never use your social charms to intice people to break the laws that you will convict them of.  Your mentor showed you how that was possible, that she convinced a mortal that he would be safe if he threw himself off a wall into crucible of boiling metal.  The sickening sloppy impact served all these years to remind you that you could convince mortals hot was cold and cold was hot.  So you never did that.  You cam into a city and worked beside the common folk for a few months and became their friends.  Making friends was one thing you justified as an ethical use of Social Charms. Once you were friends, you introduced them to the tenants of demon worship.

Sometimes, they turned you in and you revealed yourself and thanked them for doing their civic duty.  Mostly they did not.  Mostly they tried to distance themselves from you, but sometimes they listened to what you had to say.  These were the moments that you worked for.  There was an invisible chink in society that needed to be gently prodded so that it could show itself.  Once discovered it only took a little bit of extra time spent with these people to allow them to flourish.  From there you were able to expand the cabal from you and that person to three or four, from there it would expand quickly until it reached a critical mass.  From years of practice you could suss out the best candidates, the ones most open to corruption.  Single men in there thirties.  Most often the best route to opening them to corruption was to places where there were single women.  You got your best successes when you took the appearance of a young woman, but not always, sometimes a youthful male worked best.  

Strangely, the most frequent emotion you saw on their faces was disappointment and their most often excuse was they were doing it for me.  Clearly, they were deluded and weak that they would betray Creation for someone they only knew for a few months.  I uncovered these weaknesses before they could do real damage and their execution would serve to remind people to be always vigilant.  

Ontario Power, Do Your Part

Last year I moved back to Little Smoke against my will.  That it I had to or starve.  I had to move too.  I found a room in a house and I began a long and odd stay with a crazy person.  All people are crazy, for the record, therefore, I am crazy too, but this guy I could quantify his crazy.  He is electricity crazy.  He unplugs his microwave so that it won't suck electricity all the time.  

To be fair, all appliances with lights and clocks suck out electricity when not in use to fuel these lights and clocks.  It actually has a name; it is called Vampire Electricity Use and it is real.  A microwave can suck out up to one watt of electricity per hour while not in use and more if the door is open and there is a light in it.  Ovens and coffee makers the same, computers, and power bars as well.  It is no wonder that my new roommate told me when I left the house I had to unplug everything.  I respected his wishes, as I wanted to be a good roommate.  But, I looked in to it.  It turns out that if you turn off a power bar, you stop the appliances plugged in to it from draining power, the power bar still drains power though.  So, I did that, because unplugging the power bars was a real pain.  Two power bars, two watts per hour during the day.  

Okay, so I just painted a picture of not a crazy guy but a power wise person that we all should follow because it is smart.  Except, he did not actually follow what he preached.  He had a very big screen TV in the living room and a stereo system that he never unplugged, because it would wipe his settings, he said.  Plus, when he worked from home, the TV and the stereo we're both on while he worked on his computer.  So they were draining power all the time.  The Vampire drain of those appliances is about fifty watts per hour when not in use.  Additionally, he had another TV and stereo in his bedroom that I assume he did not unplug as well.  So, the Vampire drain of his appliances when he was not using them, like when he was out is about 150-200 watts per hour, and mine is 2.  I am not sure, but I suspect that there is a battery that will save your settings in your TV and stereo for power outages.  The other thing that makes him crazy is that he only changes some of his power usage behaviours.  Like washing during off peak times, but he showers when ever he wants a shower.  Hot water generation is the most expensive part of your electric bill.  It costs 4200J to raise one liter of water 1°C.  Typically hot water is 60°C and starts out cold at 5°C, so since a Joule is a Watt second, it costs 55x4.2kw per liter of water used.  A tank is drained in 20 minutes so, enter math, a 100L tank costs about 23,000 Kw.  My roommate showers in peak costs.  So I call him crazy because he worries about the small stuff to the point of anger, but ignores the huge costs because they inconvenience him.  Crazy.

The other reason why I call him crazy is that he constantly complains about the cost of electricity and he blames the current Government.  The government did do a few things that upped the cost of electricity, but so did every other government in the last thirty years.  To be clear, there is a urban/rural divide in the cost of electricity and this is unfair.  I have a friend who moved to the city and her rent in the city is 33% higher than her hydro bill in the country.  Did you catch that?  The cost of living in a rural location is much much more expensive.  Land taxes, home ownership costs, heating, water and other little things are all covered in her City apartment as well as electricity.  The cost of living in the expensive city is less than the country.  When you pay for electricity in general you pay for the distribution too.  I don't know how they calculate that, but I assume that it is the cost of the distribution network divided amongst the people who use it.  So, in the city the network costs millions to maintain, but it is divided by millions of users, so the cost is low.  In the country the cost is much less, because there are less lines, but the numbers of people are in the thousands, so the millions are divided by much less people, so the costs are much higher than in the city.  The theory is that you pay per kilowatt hour that you use.  You use less and you are charged less for your delivery too.  The problem is that there is a wealth disparity in that.  Wealthy people have more efficient homes so they use less electricity, poor people have cheaper homes that use more electricity and so they pay more too.  Country homes tend to be less energy efficient, so country homes cost more than city homes in this respect too.  Also, city homes are newer, because the cities have been growing steadily over the century.  Rural populations have been dropping, so the homes are older on average and less efficient.  

Governments.  In Ontario it started with the Conservatives in the late 70s, Bill Davis.  I remember his election ads contained a bright new technology of solar cells, but when he gained power he did not go solar, he went Nuclear.  Nuclear is the way to go.  All power generation results in pollution, all or it.  Flooding of land to create hydro reservoirs creates methane from rotting plants, trees and soil.  Solar and Wind produce pollution when the materials are made.  Nuclear produces tiny amounts of difficult to store waste material.  Fossil Fuel power is the worst by producing waste at all stages of the process. The Conservatives started to build massive Nuclear power plants, which produce very little pollution compared to coal, but are very expensive ways to make power.  The Liberals who replaced them continued to build the power from nuclear.  The NDP deferred passing the cost on to the public for the future, and the Conservatives cut taxes that went to service the cost of the electricity and keep it inexpensive.  

The current government, did a few things, first they closed the coal and the other fossil fuel plants, they created cheaper energy with hidden costs; the savings future governments will get from lower health care cost will pay for that move.  They pushed a plan to get more private citizens to produce electricity and sell it to the grid.  The homeowner would sell the power at a better rate than they would charge someone for it for a little while.  Then they would sell it at the current rates.  They introduced three rates for electricity that reflected when electricity was used.  When the greatest usage occurred, the rates were the highest, when usage was the lowest, the rates were the lowest.  People started doing the wash at night when the costs were lower and turned lights off during the day.  People started using power wisely.  

Here is the facts that are obvious, but have been thrown out there as reasons why renewables are bad:

Solar power does not generate power at night, so it can't be used to replace power plants.  Solar power is only generated when the sun is out, and that is when people are active and using power and it is when people turn on their air conditioners in the Summer.  So building Solar capacity, reduces the amount of power generation needed during the day.

The Liberal plan to buy home owner produced power at three times the rate, passed the costs to other consumers with higher rates.  This is true.  Obviously true.  Here though is the next question, how much would ratepayers have to pay to get another Nuclear power plant operational just for peak demands in the day, billions of dollars.  So, increasing the supply of power with homeowner generated power that is bough at three times that rate, is saving people money.

The wind does not blow all the time, so wind generation is not dependable.  Up that is correct again.  In fact the wind blows mostly at night and more in the Winter.  What does having a wind source do then?  It reduces the amount of power that is created from Hydroelectric power plants, when the wind blows.  Hydroelectric power relies on water storage and once the water is out of e storage area, it most be replenished before it is used again.  So, every Kw of power that wind creates is a Kw of hydroelectric power that can be used when the wind is not blowing.  Extending the duration that hydroelectric power can be used, reduces the need to create new power for the system, which costs a lot of money, billions.

Okay so, how is power generated?  We have two main types of power generation.  We have constant power and peak power.  Constant background power generation is cheaper power.  The maintenance costs of a power plant are constant and the more power that is generated lowers the cost of that power plant.  Peak power generation must be turned on and turned off again.  This power is more expensive, and the cost of maintaining the plant is the same as the power that is produced all the time.  Ideally we would want to have less power plants creating peak power and more creating background power.  Solar power is peak power generation and the more of it we have the less we need peak power generation.  

There is another problem with peak power generation, it has a lag.  It takes time for the system to detect an increase of usage and engage the power plant to create energy.  The closer the power system matches the demand the more efficient the system is.  Over production can be sold and under production can be bought from other systems, but if the power is not there, it results in brown outs that damage electronics, probably if they can't sell excess energy a similar amount of damage could occur.  There is a solution to this issue and it is called storage.

Storage can occur in two ways, battery storage and storage of potential energy.  Potential energy storage is the most efficient.  Excess power is used to pump water up a gradient into a hydroelectric reservoir to be used later.  This is 60% efficient, meaning that it costs 100 watts to pump the water that would generate 60 watts of power, but it is not the most responsive solution.  The most responsive is a battery storage.  Battery storage would allow instant storage of excess energy and instant release of power for the time that it takes to get the generation of power up and running and to turn off excess production.  Which brings up another interesting thing, home batteries.

Home batteries like the ones Elon Musk is touting, can do a number of things they can store your energy production and allow you to stay off the grid forever, or make you money.  You could buy energy to store on your battery and sell it during the day, provided that the battery is efficient enough.  Electric car batteries could be used the same way, recharge at off-peak times and sell at peak times.  You would just have to know ahead of time if you were going to be using the car that day.  

The ultimate goal of the Government is have power generation by power plants to be flat all day long and to rely on solar, wind, hydroelectric plants, and storage to provide peak power.  Eventually through efficiencies reduce the expensive sources to nothing.  It is time for us to do our part and generate as much power as we can, reducing our costs and reducing the demand for new power generation on the government.  

Calling all Writers

I saw a video on Facebook yesterday.  The video was trying to sell books to parents with girl children.  The book was filled with biographies about women that succeeded and were scientists and were not recognized.  But the way they started the ad was great and the way they finished it was weak.  

The ad started with a parent and a little girl going through her bookshelf and removing all the books that did not have girls in them.  Next they went through and removed all the books that had a female character in them, but they did not speak.  Next they removed the books where females characters spoke only bit parts.  Next they removed the books about Princesses waiting to meet their Prince.  The bookcase was nearly empty. From there they could separate all the books that only had female characters and the ones that have strong equal characters; two small piles.  That was the strong, potent statement that the ad made.  It failed when they offered a book of one page biographies and called it a book of rebels.  Rebels, meaning what ever you want to mean when you say rebels.

But is it?  It is and it isn't.  There are a lot of books out there with strong female role models for girls.  A lot of the characters are animals, gendered animals but still role models for children.  This child and mother team pulling books from a shelf, may be pulling books from her shelf or they may be people pulling books from a shelf.  The girl, might have an older brother and those were his books first.  There is so much that there is not known from the ad.  And it IS an ad, the shelves might have been stacked to reflect the result that they wanted to show, or since we never saw the titles removed from the shelf, we don't know if this is a true reflection of the way things are.  So we don't know anything more from this ad than we knew coming in for sure.  

Just saw the movie, Hidden Figures, about the women of African descent behind the Space Program.  Three in particular.  Three women, 40 minutes apiece to tell their stories on film, for one or two years.  Really it is not the size of their contribution that should be emphasized—don't get me wrong, they were very important in the entire process, they contributed a lot.  They contributed a life's worth of things, maybe more than a life's worth of contributions.  They were Pioneers and they broke barriers and that was great, no IS great.  That is not the issue.  The issue is that we are only talking about them now.  

But, back to the original thought, the book these women are flouting, is not the solution for the problem that they say they are trying to address.  It is meant for children, this book, but it is a book of page long biographies.  What children want to read and be read to are stories.  Like the once that were removed from the child's bookshelf.  It is a fact that women read more than men.  Girls read sooner on average than boys and they read more than boys too.  The take away is that most books for children only have male characters or bit parts for girls; most books are written for boys.  Of the rest, most of those books are girls waiting for their life to be completed by a man, and that their life is incomplete without men.  Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Jasmine, Ariel and all the rest, waiting.  For the man and when he comes, they live happily eve after.  Except the Paper Bag Princess, she goes out and rescues her Prince, then when he is found wanting, she leaves him on the spot.  Do you see?  

When I grew up I was a reader, a late blooming reader, but when I got into it I was a determined reader and a stubborn reader.  But my reading experience was different from what a girls might have been, because I was not a girl.  My mother read to my sister every night while my father read the newspaper in the living room.  Great practice btw, it is called scaffolding, you tell your children what is important by showing them that it is important to you.  I digress.  Most of the Narnia series was a mix, but centered around male characters.  Lloyd Alexander's series was male centered.  Bridge of Tabathia, was a male narrator but a female central character.   The Druid's Tune, was two characters, brother and sister, with story that was more male centered with a mix of secondary characters.  The story was male centered to me as a boy.  Novels written before 1950 were almost all male centered.  Jules Verne, with Around the Moon and Back Again and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, no female characters.  Guliver's Travels, Robinson Caruso, Treasure Island, Call of the Wild, The Tales of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn all female void books.  Frankenstein.  War and Peace.  Shogun, was mostly about a man, it was a love story, but it was male perspective.  Lord of the Rings.  All of Tolkien.  Science Fiction mostly male centered.  Fantasy books, mostly male characters.  Even SciFi/Fantasy Written by women tends to be male centered, Robin Hobbs.  Star Trek.  Only one captain a woman and she is often said to be the worst one, not by me, I really liked Voyager.  Most women in Star Trek are sexualized to appeal to male viewers (tight fitting unitards fake boob enhancers)   The one problem I have with Roleplaying groups is the number of women involved, but is that really a surprise?  There is little appeal for most women in the genre, where women are absent or sexualized at best mostly.

I feel that it needs to change.  There have been women SciFi writers who have written strong Female characters and I read those, they are awesome.  There is even a SciFi series that is genderless and that is awesome too, written by Ann Leckie.  The pronoun used for every gender is female, so it feels that everyone is a woman and although you are trying to figure out our binary genders.  It was very interesting by-the-way.  Brandon Sanderson, I have noticed that he is good at making strong female characters, but there are more male characters.  

If I were to suggest an area for people to write in, I would suggest that they write about strong female characters who push against a male dominated society, who suffer, but knuckle down to succeed and when they succeed they are recognized.  Because we all have women in our lives and all our future women are going to be children first and we need them to feel they have a right to contribute in our society because they are needed.  Because they are half of the population and they are important.  They need to know that any role is possible for a woman, not just the ones that men want them to fill.  They can be the lead warrior with the magic sword that slays the dragon.  Ideally, they need to feel that they with their male friend are a team that can tackle any problem that is before them and at their ideas are just as important as the ideas of the man beside them, that they are equals, or that they could be equals.  

What the books our children read at all ages should reflect the place that we want our society to reflect.  Our boys need to see girls as equals and that they need to rely on them as leaders and contributors as often as they see them as helpers and wives.  And our girls need to see that there are Princes out there that at not for them and they don't need to settle for anyone.  The Paper Bag Princess saved her Prince from the dragon and then left him to find the Prince that would treat her as well as she deserved, when she found him wanting, maybe even another Princess.  Robert Munsch.

Virtual Democracy

Many years ago I bought a game called Civilization: Call to Power.  It was a knock off of Sid Myers Civilization and it was better.  It had several differences including a slaver unit that allowed you to steal citizens from other nation's cities and put them to work in your cities and later an abolitionist who freed slaves and brought them to your nation.  The other great aspect of that game was that it had a future tech tree that allowed you to build tubes across your empire, cities in Space, cities underwater.  Force fields.  Orbital bombardment.  Orbital invasions.  Space elevators.  Virtual Democracy.

Virtual Democracy.  Think about it.  We are so close.  I had this thought again today because of something from Facebook.  The idea of a virtual democracy comes from everyone plugging in their own ideas for every vote in government.  Legislators would only be needed to propose legislation and to explore the nuances of all aspects of the legislation, then informed citizens punch in their yeas or nays and the legislation is passed or fails.  

The problem is getting people to inform themselves and participate in the governance of themselves.  People would rather not, which is why we have people who do that job for us and we elect them.  Democracies are not really democracies, they are Representative Democracies.  And they are flawed.  As people quote, Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.  

So today, I saw a post from a friend on Facebook and it said she participated in one of those online questionaires and her results were posted on her profile.  What kind of Hair Style is yours.  I said to my self, sure I have a few minutes, let's see what they think I would like.  And I did not answer a single question.  It looked at my profile and told me what my Hair Style was best for me.  I then clicked Best Career and My Hashtag.  Three wrong answers, but then my Facebook is carefully censored by me, there is not even a picture of me on there anywhere.  But then I started to think.  What if?

What if everyone had a profile and there were a set of questions, thousands of questions and you could answer as many of them as you wished to answer.  Your answers formed a profile.  It could be something like Facebook, except where when you write comments you assign a strength of agreement ratio to the item: love, wow, like, sad, angry, and hate.  Every question you answer, every post you comment on gets added to your profile and then, when a law comes up, the government submits it to the program and the system votes based on everyone's profiles.  A Virtual Democracy.

Problems would be many, some profiles could be ambiguous, so like on other social platforms like OkCupid, Not Sufficient Data would be a possibility.  Also there would need to be an email sent to each profile each day to show them how they voted each day, and allow them to call into question the vote; this would be a measure to prevent outside manipulation of the data.  Participation would not be dependent on one platform.  Facebook is the preferred social media platform of most 30+ year olds, but the younger crowd prefers other things.  Pinterest and Instagram and every other platform can be integrated into one general platform.  

People change as they age.  People change as they get new information, as they meet new people.  Someone who never met someone from a Muslim majority government, might be against immigration from those countries, but upon meeting one or more of those people, they could change their mind.  This could be reflected upon when they get the email about how they voted and they decide that they want to change their vote, the profile shows them why they voted that way and offers to allow them to alter their answers on these questions.  Their former profile is saved and can be accessed later.

Change is coming.  The election of a majority government in Canada with only 27% of the eligible voters.  The election of a president in the United States with less than a majority of voters.  It is coming.

Fringe vote

Natural20's husband met Justin Trudeau the other day and got to shake his hand.  I am not sure how I would have handled that situation.  I am still quite angry that he decided not to honour his promise of electoral reform.  His stated reason was that it would give the balance of power to the fringes of society.  

That is complete Bullshit.

What Trudeau is suggesting is that if the larger parties did not get a clear majority of the votes, they would have to pander to smaller parties desires and not get their own agenda passed.  Coalition governments in the past and in the present in almost every other Democratic government in the world do not work that way.  It is a straw-man argument.  Coalition governments work because they have a common core that is similar and they will pass legislation that is common to each and they will pass one of each major concerns.  This way government can actually be more democratic.  Instead of one agenda being the course of the government it would be government of a larger slice of the people.  

It would mean the end of Partisan Politics in Canada, before it gets as bad as it is in the States.  The Liberal party and the Conservative party do not have to align with the fringes of their parties, they could just align with each other.  If the Liberals and the Conservatives each had 30% of the popular vote, they could work together to pass both of their agendas.  Hell, they could seek the support of the left for some things and the support of the right for others.  Or they could make the laws fit the views of the majority of parliament, the way that a democracy was supposed to work in the first place, before parties.

Let's be clear, no one was really suggesting to give the Fringe power at all.  Most of the free world with a Proportional Representation style election require any representative party to get 5% of the popular vote before they get a voice.  5% of the total voting public.  Regional parties would have to meet this requirement, like the Bloc Québécois did.  A regional party would have to accrue enough votes to get a total of 5% of the national vote.  That makes sense, they are representing a region and wish to have a national impact. 

In 2015 there were about twenty-five million eligible voters, 5% of that is 1.25 million voters.  For the Bloc to be represented on a national level, they would have to get that many or more people to vote for them.  That is a lot of people, which brings up another interesting point, if five percent of the voters is a fringe group, what does Trudeau think of people.  To me, that sounds like a lot of people and a large group of people that deserve a voice.

That is of course assuming they vote, which is another part of Electoral Reform, Compulsory Voting.  A law that makes voting compulsory.  This comes with a few caveats.  The first is that the first spot on a ballot is a spoil option.  I Don't Know/Protest/None of these.  Simply put, everyone needs to vote, but no one is forced to vote for anyone.  The second is that there needs to be two sections, you can vote for a Party or you can vote for a person who can be part of a Political Party or could be an Independent.  When the representatives for parliament are selected, the people with the most personal votes get to go.  A vote for a person also counts for a political party if they have one.  

So Electoral Reform is two things, Compulsory Voting and Proportional Representation.  The means of forcing people to vote is up to the politicians, but I would be in favour of a soft enforcement, like a tax rebate rather than hard enforcement like a fine.  I am 44 and I have voted in every election Federally and Provincially that I was eligible to vote in.  I have never had my vote count for anything.  Every time I vote, I have voted for a party that accrued more than 10% of the popular vote.  I never voted for a 'Fringe' group. I want my vote to count for something.

Recap of last election. 25 million eligible voters.  Voted for: Liberals 6.75 million, Conservatives 5.45 million, NDP 3.36 million, other 1.52 million.  

Liberals get an absolute majority government with less than 27% of the eligible voters.  This is the real reason why Trudeau has decided that the current Electoral System works just fine.  Only in Canada do 6.75 million voters get to tell 18.25 million voters what to do.  

What good Trump is doing

Thank you Trump.

Really.

I am talking about your attacks on Fake News.  They way I heard it is that in the old days a reporter worked on two or three stories a day, that were well erase arched and well thought out.  That investigations could last for weeks and that the reporters spent that time trying to prove things and backing the story up with facts.  You know, like they did in Watergate and how news reporters are depicted in movies.  

The truth is that most news agencies have been run for profit in the past few years and that has meant less investigations and more stories written by less people.  What do I mean.  I mean news people who have to write a story every hour for the paper and that is not enough time to check the facts for each story.  Fact checking includes calling up the people in the story and verifying that that was what they said.  

One of the things that news people are relying on is reporting agencies, like Associates Press.  They assume that AP has done that fact checking and that it passed muster, so it must be true, but these are Reporting Agencies, they Report what people said.  Which is why I have not referred to news people as reporters; I was making a distinction, one that I should not have been making, because when they use AP as a source, that is all they are doing.

Reporting what people said is not telling any one what they are doing, it is just about what people are saying.  It does not provide any background as to why they said it either.  It tells us nothing except what they said.  People say anything, they mig even be telling you lies and if you are reporting those lies, you are legitimizing those lies.  Example?  Someone tells you that diamonds are coal that has been pressed together for millions of years.  If the person is a teacher, then it is held as fact, even though coal and diamonds are not related.  Diamonds are crystallized carbon, found in igneous rock.  Coal is sedimentary, but for many years teachers have been telling children that diamonds come from coal.  Lies repeated so that everyone believes them.  

News agencies, of all medias, need to not just report what was said, but provide context and analysis, otherwise they are just repeating what has been said and then people would not need anyone to buy the media, we would just need to get a recording to what was said and people could make up what they think people should know.  Does that sound right?  Would you want me telling you what you should believe, or would you like to make up your own mind with all the facts?

President Trump talked to the press and this is what he said: "!". 

President Trump talked to the press and he stated :"!", which is odd because he stated in the past that "!" was bad.  Current Economists feel that this was a great idea, even though in the past it was linked to a meltdown "here".  Leading opponents believe that "!" will lead to "x" and not "y".

The whole point of partisan political bent on the media is you know that a news source will slant the analysis one way and another media source will slant it another direction.  You read both sources and you chose the one that fits your own ideas best, but you read both to get a full picture.  Or you can just read one and trust them to not steer you wrong, but then that is how we got here in the first place.  

Trump telling the media that they are all liars and produce fake news has done a good thing.  The good thing is that it points out that if you are just focused on reporting what was said you are doing your readers a disservice.  If you provide a background and an analysis in every news story you are letting the reader decide and you are treating them like a thinking person rather than just a receptacle for data.  People respect that and they will pay for it.  Because it is their job to inform us and do the fact checking.  It is our job to do what we do, not to fact check for them.  

It is AP's job to report what people said.  It is the investigative news person to provide the background, the fact checking, and the analysis.  We the people, we buy their news.

Dreams of beginnings

Dreams of past life beginnings…

Practitioner

Looking up, you see the same sight that you have seen every day of your life, the great Pole of Earth, the centre of the Blessed Isle, and the ring that circles near its summit, the city of Meru.  When you were younger the ring was smaller and when you are old and feeble it will be wider and bigger.  When you started work on it your foreman told you that you were helping to build the greatest city in Creation and when you were yourself the foreman you knew that it would one day be the very biggest city anywhere, and the new capital of the great Solar Deliberative.  When you were the Overseer of a project you were aware that the truth was greater.  The Solars were creating Demesne out of thin air to fuel The superstructure that was to be the centre of artifact creation everywhere.  And there was for the creation of an intelligence that would aid all and bring Creation into a new age of prosperity!

Your life thus far was one step built upon another that you might reach a level of skill that you might aid the Great Solars in their tasks.  The schools you attended to learn skills beyond your understanding.  Thousands of you packed into auditorium to hear the instruction of Solar Luminaries.  Nearly a year of instruction that was mandatory to work in the great Factory Cathedrals of the rapidly expanding Meru.  Some, like you, were segregated for special streams of additional learning.  After the year you and your fellows entered the newly minted structure and began to turn out new materials that held the power of essence that made them stronger.  Once powered the a thread was made ridged so that it could support hundreds of tonnes without bowing or failing.  Once a web of this material was made a city could be built upon it.

The process was strenuous and difficult and at any stage things could go wrong that would cause the thread to have a flaw and create a weak spot that could cause the entire city to crumble; everything had to be perfect.  After working for five years you were permitted to a vacation while the factory cathedral was given a thorough cleaning and refit.  More than the standard maintenance that was run between ten hour shifts, the seventh day maintenance, the seasonal week of maintenance and the yearly maintenance at Calibration.  It is a time of skill refreshing and learning new skill acquisition, as an Overseer, I have been streamed for skill in Essence Use.  If I do well in these courses I could be selected for Enlightenment or body modification for heavy machine work.  A little vacation to An Teng is due as well, because when I get back I will be sent to a different factory to use my new skills.

An Teng was very relaxing and the advanced massage techniques they used to help open my Chakras to enlightenment must have been helpful as I was alert to notice that two carriers of reagents were making the ascent to Meru contained chemicals that need be stored separately.  There was a bump in the trip, there often is, and one of the reagent containers toppled and spilled corroding the others.  I leapt the barrier, knowing if I did not falling off the mountain would be more likely to survive than doing nothing.  The personnel did not know the threat.  I began tipping containers that I knew would counteract the spilled chemicals.  I neutralized most of the problem but I could not stop it all in time.  The furthest container from me smouldered and burst into flames.  I knew that it was too late to flee to safety and I saw my flurry of activity did not bring concern but instead curiosity and if I did not risk everything, the hundreds in my tram as well as bottom superstructure near the connection to the Mountain would be at risk too.  I acted and ran into the flames.  The air was toxic and my clothing quickly caught fire.  Still I braved the flames knocking the burning contained off the tram and spilling others to neutralize the acids.  After my flurry of actions I did not feel tired, but energized.  I was standing naked in amongst the wreckage of the tram.  The people stood watching me.  I was not hurt in the slightest bit.  I felt no shame, but was upset that I was the only person to risk myself.  I also realized that the transport of these reagents was very dangerous and that the workers needed to have better protection, inflammable clothing and better training.  The processes in the factory could be altered slightly to create this clothing.

I had a thousand projects planned before I realized I had been Exalted by the Sun sometime in the crisis.


Messenger

Todma worked at the mill southwest of Chiaroscuro city centre.  He moved here because things were getting hot back in Hollow, there was a cult to Adorjan and things were starting to heat up.  The decision was made to send acolytes out to spread the word to the sister cults across Creation.  You knew the words to say and the places to be overheard saying them and you new that acceptance was unlikely, but things were heating up.  There were people snooping around, suspected agents of the Solar Deliberative.  They caught one, and where there is one there are many, so the inner circle headed for the hills and left the second stringers to cover the trails and take the fall.  That was your cover story and you knew it better than your former life.  You had all the correct tattoos and you knew the summoning rituals that were used in the Riverlands.  And knew what to look for from the other directions.  Your cover was complete.

More specifically without a wakened essence, your mortal identification, you could not be mistaken for one of the Celestial Exalted.

Deep cover with no net.  You had to operate in the shadows and when the raid came, you would die in all likelihood.  The price of service for the greater good.  There were many prices.  The innocents that you killed to gain their trust.  It was all necessary to gain their trust and get them to reveal more about their organization.  The ancillary groups have been revealed to you and you have become known here.

There is something big happening soon and you made the sign to summon the end.  All there is to do is wait and continue as before.

The Ritual has begun, the sacrifices have been brought forth and the silk garrotted been sanctified, thin and strong, they do not strangle as much as sever.  You know your part in this ritual.  You know that they are bringing forth one of the Daughters of Adorjan.

The ritual begins and the chanting of the pieces and the blood pours from the fresh sacrifices.  Now is the time for the ritual to be broken and coven to be rooted out, but it does not come.  Was the message not received, were you found out.

No time to find out a few more words and the city will learn of the Cultists the worst way imaginable.  You mime preparing the last victim and then act.  The art you learned as a child flows into motion, it is important not to spill anymore blood, lest the ritual be completed.  Your fist crumples the leader's throat, stunning him and hopefully suffocating him.  Your blur of motion moves you to the second and third cultist, that man that you recruited from the disaffected poor.

The first were easy, the were not ready.  The next wave have armed themselves and they are ready.  They cut you half as often as you kill with you hands, there are many of them and many die, but you grow weak from their knives.  Worse, your blood is adding to the sacrifice; it draws to completion.

The loss of blood is leaving you light headed.  You push on.  You strike your foe hard, his head snaps back.  The blade of you hand slashes the next painting the walls with his blood.  Three then four men and women fall in the space of as many heartbeats.  The last stabs you from behind, you spin and thrust his blade deep into his brain, as you blood sprays over the last of the bare summoning glyph.  You dive under the blood, gathering it with your hand as it falls.  You skid to a halt in the blood.  The only sound is the blood pumping in you ears and the last four bodies squelching to a final rest.

The ancillary redoubts you hit hard the rest of the night.  When morning comes you feel alive, the sun warming the dried blood that creates a second skin.  The Dawn never looked as fine as when sitting a top a glass tower after a night of saving people who never knew the danger they missed.


Jaguar

Day 35 in the Expedition Dawn's Cleansing Light, Eastern 319 Troop, Medical Log.

The passage through the newly minted land that was opened just recently has seen a few non life threatening causalities, but the wear on the troop has started to show.  The further we travel from the Reality Engines, the stranger things have become.  Last night one of the trees approached the overnight sentries and conversed for an hour about the steps it needed to go through to get its play produced, but all through that time the tree was pollinating them.  It is clear that we have come too far but the Manliu, the expedition leader, desires one more Demesne location found so that the bonus will be assured.

Day 36 in the Expedition Dawn's Cleansing Light, Eastern 319 Troop, Medical Log.

The tragic death of Manliu, the expedition leader, has called for a brief halt and the call for a pickup by the Supply Ship.  We have passed too far from the Reality Engines and it took tragedy for consensus to be reached.  Manliu died while investigating a promising  outcropping.  The stones were some sort of Wyld manifestation and they crushed his body for a transgression.

Amendment

The creatures have surrounded the group of us and are demanding a toll of not less than half of our people as sacrifices.  The crime we have been accused of is actively seeking Pollination by the Trees.  It is absurd, but we are at their mercy as the calling beacon has failed, the technician believes that the essence power source had flown away in the night.

Day 37 in the Expedition Dawn's Cleansing Light, Eastern 319 Troop, Medical Log.

As ranking officer in the troop, it is my duty to treat with our captors.  I will attempt to negotiate with them.   I will bluff them that our expedition is overdue and our oversight leader Dawn's Cleansing Light, will want vengeance upon any who waylay his subjects or will reward those that deliver us to him unharmed.

Amendment

The negotiations went surprisingly well.  A miracle occurred as our captors revealed themselves as Rakasha.  They told us that Dawn's Cleansing Light held no power over them and the threat was a great insult that deserved the immediate deaths of all our people.  I saw that standing as from a position of strength where I had none was a mistake, but as having nothing more to lose, it pushed forward and  berated our captors for abusing the rights granted envoys of the Unconquered Sun by the Treaty of Spilt Smoking Rock.  They laughed and said that that Treaty only applied to when dealing with Celestial Exalted, and not their envoys.  I retorted that this was true but that I was amending the Treaty to include such provisions as it was clearly an oversight.

The Rakasha all stepped back at my words.  The felt right in my head and I knew that I had the power and strength to make it so.  Stand aside and let the expedition through.  They stood aside.  I gave to them the body of Manliu, as by rights, they took him fairly by the Treaty, which we must all abide by else all order will collapse.



Arik

Your family lived on the outskirts of the City Bluelake, in the South-East Expansion Zone, in the village of Best Hope, nearly 2000 miles from Rathess.  That's how you learned to say it.  You had only ever gone to Bluelake once in the last five years.  It is huge!  There are nearly five thousand people there, way more than Best Hope, which has about fifty.  Rathess is said to be much bigger than Bluelake, so there must be… ten thousand people there?  Your father said that your Grandfather took him there once.  It is hard to believe that so many people could live there all at once.

Your Father and Mother always tell you that you need to stick close to home, but home is so boring and school is so boring too.  All you do is sit and do sums.  Learn East Common and South Common.  Next year they say that you will be joining your sister in Bluelake and learning the basics in Spirit Common so that if you have aptitude you can go to a college.  So, this is really the last year you have to be free.  And there is so much to see in the Jungle.

Again, your parents say that this area was not here when you were born, but that is silly talk.  There are trees that are hundreds of feet high and they are filled with all sorts of bugs.  The apricot trees that your mother planted when you moved here are not much taller than them, so you know they must be exaggerating.

The Forest is cool.  There are hundreds of types of bugs and dozens of types of snakes.  Just yesterday you watched a snake sneak into a bird nest and gobble down the eggs.  Yesterday you found a small troop of chicken raptors, lizard the size of chickens but half as fast.  You hope no one finds out that you put one of them in the chicken coop!

You were not clearly paying attention and you stopped short of a Lioger stalking some prey.  The lioger is a big cat that you learned about in school.  It has a big green mane and green fur with Orange stripes.  It blends in with the jungle really well and it's foot long claws and teeth make short work of it prey, hippopotami and anything else it can catch, like you!

You knew that even if you could in a few jumps, so you recalled what you are supposed to do in this case, band together with your fellow students and let the overseer activate the shock stick to make noise and scare it away.  But you are alone and you are not old enough to carry a shock stick.  You did the next best thing, you pretended to be Jainor Farseer, Boy Exalted, from the Novels and charged.

It worked, but in a way you only dreamed possible.  The shadows leapt up away from you and the Lioger ran in terror, but not wanting to be left behind you gave chase and caught the wild cat.  When you the fight was awesome and when you finished you had won.  He was your Lioger now!

Your mother dropped the dishes when you asked if you could keep it.  That was the last night you spent in Best Hope.



Nix

The paper press was working overtime in the shop.  The fine linens that you had purchased from Great Forks were sorted.  The best paper is made from the best raw materials, used linens made better and stronger paper than rice fibre and wood pulp.  There was a good strong market for rice paper, but for durability, linen.   There was an order for account books and your books were known through through the Satrapy as among the best.  This was an important contract.  House Veneef was looking for a new supplier in Greyfalls. So there was pressure.  The linens had to be sorted correctly by grade and they had to be soaked the correct amount of time to be relaxed so the fibres could be retrieved.  The wet material was pounded to pulp and the pulp was screened and soaked more.  Silk screens were set and the pulp applied to them and set to dry.  Each sheet was set with a particular shallow design illustrating the future owner's mark.  The columns were added to the pages as requested according to the particular style of accounting style of House Veneef.

When the books were complete they would fine account books, with a hundred pages on paper that was durable enough to allow removal of mistakes and except a second number.  Not that any of your clients needed to change there accounts….

A hundred pages, a standard of the industry.  Your books were a little thinner and lighter than the standard, due to your innovations.

Inspiration took you suddenly after completing these masterwork ledgers.  What if you could uses silk?  The fibres are considered too long to create good paper, but there is nothing finer in this Age.  In past Ages the spinning of opal would make a thinner and more durable page and there were metals that could be pounded thinner too, thin and durable, like aluminum.  Where did this stray thought come from?  But silk was what you had to work with and there was plenty of that.  Used silks among the linens.  It was really quite simple.

First you unmade the garments and dissolved the silk by adding a few of the items you had on hand, removed the dyes.  Strained the liquid and smoothed out the material by hand.  It was all so simple and easy to do.  By the end of the night you had a new shipment ready that was far superior to the labour you and your crew had taken weeks to make.  These books where twice as durable and thinner to boot.  At half the size these books would not appear to be account books and your clients would not need to surrender them for inspection.

The one oversight was that you did not realize that the oil lamps you used for night work were off to the side unlit.  The symbol on your forehead marked you as Anathema, in the heart of a Realm Satrapy.

You fled.