Music.

How to say the words? How can one thing be the most pervading part of all human societies and yet affect me so little. This is a lie, and a truth. It must have started when my sister told me that I was tone deaf, but I thought that she could not carry a note, so that begs that question is she tone deaf or is it a family affliction?

My mother learned piano as a child and when we were growing up and when we had a piano, we used to spend a night a week singing songs around it. Sounds rather rustic, but back then there was no cable where we lived and that meant we only had three channels for TV and that changed with the weather. I loved those nights.

When my younger sister got old enough, she was sent to get piano lessons, I was not. I never spoke up, that I wanted to learn, I wanted them, but the AS was strong and unknown in me then. This is funny, because a lot of my play in those days was around the piano. I played for hours, sometimes an hour at a time making sounds on the piano. I would try to make a story out of the sounds. But, my mom had lessons so my sister had lessons, boys did not get lessons. Boys had to do sports and such, which I hated and my sister loved.

When I was in grade five, my teacher played us this record that I fell in love with. I told my mom and she went to the store and bought it for me. She bought it for me because she shared a like for this kind of music and she wanted to encourage it in me. The sounds wafted over me and the sounds were so new and exciting.

Perhaps I should go back. My mother tried to push this music on us as children sometimes subtly. When we were younger she would borrow children's music from the library, but not traditional children's music. There were the Just So stories on vinyl and there was Peter and the Wolf, which was an orchestral piece. Then the was her record collection kept on a bookshelf on the lowest level with the record player, right at easy access level for children. We could listen to any of her music. My mother liked Edith Piaf, the Beetles, and classical music. The one that I liked to play the most was the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I grew up thinking this is what adults liked to listen to, that and that is what people played at dinner time on TV.

In grade 8, I had to select a piece of music and present it with some questions to the class I selected a piece and asked questions and if I had to do it again I might have selected a classical piece and asked my peers to listen to the music and tell me what they see from music, but everyone else had done current song and so I had to find a current song that I liked and there were a few, but for me music has always been a deep part of my soul and very private. So when I shared with them, I was sharing something about me and an AS person can sometimes not understand things correctly when people make comments. One person afterwards asked me if I really liked this music. At the time I viewed the asker as asking in derision, but perhaps it was admiration. The problem was that I did not know and I buried it within me and hid music deep inside me and promised never to show it.

Musical score has always mystified me though, so in high school I took art, even though all the girls I liked were in the band. Maybe if I had taken piano lessons when younger it could have been different, I have big hands that would have been great for a keyboard, but then again who knows. I could always learn now I suppose. Still when the Commodore 64 came out with a three voice music program, I spent hours testing and trying original compositions and dissecting some music trying to figure it out.

So when I got my first stereo in university it had a CD player and I started buying used CDs and some new CDs. I looked for the stuff that I always wondered about but never explored. I got Beethoven's Fifth, and his Fifth lead to the Fourth and Sixth, and soon it lead to the rest. The thing was I did not know what else there was, because I never learned and because I would never ask and never share. I picked up, thanks to Christmas presents, hated snippets of music, the best of series in classical music. I hate them because they are only part of a story and rarely the beginning. But they did allow me to look for the rest of the stories.

I found that my loves have moved around a little but there are some that will never change. I like 70s music like ABBA and Erasure which is not 70s music but is in a similar style. I love NIN, because he writes songs about my life. I like Gordon Lightfoot and Stan Rogers, because I grew up with them and because folk music tells me real stories. I love Tchaikovsky because the Romantic style of music that he optimizes is the sound of my soul. And I admire Ludwig van Beethoven as the transition from Classical to Romantic styles; the greatest of his era, born one hundred fifty years before he was truly appreciated the supreme master composer. For those that doubt, name another from any time that premiered five unheard albums worth of music on one day, in one concert including the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. Add that he was rapidly losing his hearing…. Add that some of his music was considered unplayable by people at the time and has only now, in the past fifty years has his genius been realized. Some would suggest that a genius should be able present their ideas so their audience can understand them, but few rare people ask that their audiences rise to understand what they wrote.

Response to Mercury in Vaccine Article

I hate having to do this. I like learning, but hate proving that I learned things. I hate even more putting down what I have learned into an essay format complete with citations, but this is the way of science. In science it is not enough to say something, one has to prove it and such was the power of the scientific method that essays had to be backed up with actual proof and not here-say or supposition. Proof means going to original sources and citing them in the correct form so that someone can check the fact used to prove your statements. Your sources have reputable and original. Simply stating that something is this way because I say it is so, is not reputable nor is it a valid source.

I once had a professor in university who painted a picture for us of what happens when people start sourcing their papers in this manner. It started with a 'historian' who wrote a book about the Huron Nation, a group of Native Americans who lived at one time near the present town of Midland, Ontario. He wrote the definitive book on what the Huron people were all about, only he was not sure about what they were about, because he was the first to write about them in modern times and he never once talked to or even participated in a single archeological dig on the site where they were thought to live. In short he made it up. Then a couple years later he wrote another book on the Huron’s and in that book he cited his original book as a source. He wrote a third book which he cited the two previous books as sources. His third book looked like a more proper researched book, it had multiple sources, but the sources were useless. If I wrote an essay on the age of the planet and used only 'Young Earth Creationist' sources, the essay would look well researched but would not be worth the paper it was printed on.

So back to the article, this is a deceptive piece, it seems to report things as is, but it has some key words in it that raise suspicion in the title: truth, uncorrupted and the phrase Big Pharma. The funny thing is that the first two words are false. It is not giving anyone the truth and it is corrupting the truth by only giving people part of the truth. Maybe the authors believe what they are saying is the truth or maybe they do not have enough base knowledge to actually give their readers a true picture. In either case, they are still occluding the truth and causing harm.

In order to pick apart their statements it is important to see where their information is coming from. Luckily for us, they want to appear to have scientific credibility, so they link their statements with the relevant articles. Unfortunately for them following the trail of documents leads not to a scientific journal that holds weight, but to an anti-vaccination group that attributes that vaccination causes ASD. Here are the links, one here then here.  The organization behind these claims is here.

At the crux of their argument, stretching back nearly a decade is that vaccines contain mercury and everyone knows mercury is bad. I know mercury is bad. I know that it bioaccumulates which means that it sits in the body and just adds up until at some point it causes the victim to die. It is a long process and it interferes with the brain, link here. But there is more to it than that. Bioaccumulation is not as simple as filling a cup with water. It is more like filling a sieve with water, depending on how small the holes are the water empties before the sieve can be filled. Sometimes, depending on the substance it leaves the body faster than it can accumulate and sometimes it does not.

There is more than one type of mercury found in the world and very little of it is in a pure form. For the purposes of this article we will be talking about two forms, methyl-mercury and ethyl-mercury. They are different, substantially so. Methyl-mercury is the form the mercury takes in the environment, when mercury bearing rock is weathered, when plants take up mercury from the soil and when these plants are then burned, it is the mercury that is released into the air. When coal is burnt for any purpose, it releases methyl-mercury into the air. Methyl-mercury is the dangerous mercury that people talk about bioaccumulating inside people and all types of animals. Methyl-mercury stays in the body for a long time, as measured by scientists it has a half life in the body of 70 days.

Half life in the body is the length of time it takes the body to remove half the substance. In the case of Methyl-mercury this means that if one ingested a gram of material, after 70 days only half a gram would be left and after 140 days a quarter left, 210 days and eighth left and so on. This means that a small dose will last a long time and if someone is eating methyl-mercury contaminated food, every day, the toxic mercury will continue to accumulate in the body. And it would take a long time for it to leave the body. For the record, the body leaves the body in the feces, which is the reason why human excrement is not used on farm fields, as humans are the pinnacle of the food chain out feces tends to contain a lot of methyl-mercury. Methyl-mercury is often shortened to Me-mercury, but I chose not to so I could hammer in the name.

The other type of mercury in this article is Ethyl-mercury. Even though it lacks only one letter from the other, the chemical form is quite a bit different. Ethyl-mercury is removed from the body quite a bit faster than its more sinister cousin. Ethyl-mercury has a half life in the body of about 3.7 days meaning it quite quickly leaves the body in comparison to me-mercury. Literally a million times faster, really. By the time me-mercury has removed half the original dose, by comparison e-mercury has removed all but two millionths of the original dose. For those that hate math it is like this:

70 days is divided by about 3.7 days about 19 times and half multiplied by a half 19 times is about 2 millionths or two over a million as a fraction.

But why is this important? Some Vaccines, not all, but some use Thimerosal as a preservative. Thimerosal has antiseptic properties that kill bacteria. Thimerosal is ethyl-mercury attached to a compound similar to aspirin. When it is introduced to the body it is metabolized leaving the e-mercury as a waste product. Thimerosal is used in the vaccine so that more than one dose can be stored in the same bottle. Vaccines are stored this way to be more efficient. Without the Thimerosal, the vaccine would need to be stored smaller single dose containers.

The dose of Thimerosal in each dose of vaccine is very small and the resulting ethyl-mercury is quickly expelled from the body of even the smallest child. Furthermore, Thimerosal is not present in most vaccines, currently according to the Center of Disease Control Thimerosal is not being used in childhood vaccines, nor was it ever used MMR, Inactive Polio, Chicken pox and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines. Currently it is used in some of the Influenza vaccines until production of the Thimerosal free vaccines can be increased.

The article where that started this long rant does not mention any of this. It lumps both types of mercury together. It does not mention that Thimerosal is not present in some vaccines and it fails to mention anything constructive. It only mentions that 'Big Pharma' and the American Academy of Pediatrics agree with the World Health Organizations recommendation to use Thimerosal in vaccine production.

That is the first part, explaining mercury and its forms and how it is present in vaccines. The second part I will devote to the claim of the Autism groups and the true danger that they pose.

ASD is a behavioral disorder that many people have.  The effects are broad and range greatly in severity. The severe cases are delayed severely and have many social problems, while the mildest cases appear to be normal but have many difficulties fitting into society but can otherwise appear quite intelligent. Many people suggest that some of the greatest thinkers the world has seen such as Newton, Einstein and Gates. Others suggest that the rare genetic abnormality might be the reason why humans were able to rise to dominance over all the other creatures. I think that both of these groups have been smoking something that has affected their perceptions. I have ASD, so I know that even if it were true, it does not matter squat. I would rather be normal.

ASD is an invisible disorder; on the outside all sufferers appear normal. We are not like those that have Down Syndrome; we do not have a distinctive appearance. Our social skills develop on a time scale that is different from normal people and we think differently too. Our physiology is slightly different and this may mean that drugs do not work the same way as they do with others, but then it is not uncommon for many drugs to have different effects on different people. The thing is parents always think that their child is special and normal at the same time, but when ASD becomes apparent it is often not until a child becomes older, after the age of two and often much later.

Some parents, look at what has changed in their child's life in the six or more months before the diagnosis and recently many of them have placed the blame on vaccinations, because they often start early in a child's life. This assertion is patently false. To understand where ASD comes from one must look to their parents. It is genetic. My father for example has many of my traits which I consider part of ASD. I will not go into this in depth, I blog about a lot about these things as it is, needless to say the signs are present if you are observant.

There is great harm in saying that ASD is caused by vaccines, because since vaccines have become prevalent in society, many diseases that were common have all but disappeared. As a child I suffered through Chicken Pox, the proscribed method of vaccination in those days was for the family to throw a pox party, where all the neighbourhood children would play with the infected kid where they would then catch the disease and gain immunity to it. Even in the mild cases Chicken Pox can cause scarring and in the adult form call shingles it is painful and can cause a lot of scarring, thus the Pox Party. I even suffered through a form of mumps or measles, not sure which, the one that gives you large, brown, quarter sized welts all over your body.

In my father's day, some children caught Polio, a lovely disease that could cripple and kill sufferers with the nasty habit of coming back decades after the original infection with similar effects. There is the HPV vaccine, just developed a few years ago that could wipe out the most common strain and in the future there may be a vaccine for HIV and quite possibly the entire influenza virus, right now we can only get a vaccine for individual flu strains as the mutation rate is so high. On a mild year, influenza kills thousands of people and in a bad year it kills millions

In the article, it mentions that the AAP recommends that boys should get the HPV vaccine, even though boys cannot get the cancer that is causes, cervix cancer, on account of all men lacking a cervix. The article is critical of them for this fact, but never mentions why the AAP believes that boys should be immunized, Herd Immunity.

Herd immunity is the level of resistance within the group to prevent a plague of cases within the group. For example, if two towns of ten thousand people are given the vaccine for Diphtheria, but in one town only 80% of the town get vaccinated and in the other town 85% of the people are vaccinated. If someone from out of town should arrive who has Diphtheria, the towns will fair differently. Since the Herd Immunity Threshold for Diphtheria is 85%, the first town is much more likely to have an outbreak of the disease. The first case ran into enough people without protection that it spread quickly within the town, while in the other town one a few people caught the disease and all the cases were minor. In the first town, some of the cases were severe. Historically between 5-15% of all cases of diphtheria were fatal.

Giving boys and girls the HPV vaccine would increase the likelihood that if a case of HPV came in contact with the population it would not spread and the disease would die out.

Since the Anti-Vaccination crowd has gained traction in a communities that feared their claims that vaccination leads to ASD, herd immunity has dropped below the levels needed to prevent the spread of diseases like whopping cough, an illness that is in no way as jolly as the name suggests, from gaining a foothold. Deaths have occurred, preventable deaths. It should be noted that I am forty years old and my father is seventy; we are still alive and well as ASD has never been a dangerous condition.

Expectations Lost

It seems that my depression, the one I have right now, is a result of AS.  It is like every move that I made in my life has come down the funnel and piled up at where I am now and the result is my depression.  To be clear I have been depressed all the way and through all the time, but the t does not make it less so.

This is not me feeling pity for myself or exactly just obsessing over my depression.  Well it is that, but it is also realizing the depths of it.  It comes from trying to dat women on PoF.  All of them within ten years of me have already had children.  They have been married.  They have been doing all the things that I have only wanted to do and that IS the problem.  I have been obsessing over the wrong thing.  I am not a woman, even though a lot of men and a few women think that I am a woman, it is not my lot in life to pick up and have sex when ever I want to.  My lot in life should have been making money only.  By not concentrating on the pursuit of money or the pursuit of material goals I have priced myself out of the rest.  By obsessing over women, I have guaranteed that I do not get what I want most from life.

The best way to get the girl in our society is to become successful in what you are trying to do.  You get relationships in high school by being hot, or by being interesting.  In high school I was a table top RPG geek at a time where being a geek was the worst thing to be.  I did not see the girls that were interested in me, I could only see the girl that I was obsessing over, the one least likely to date me.

In university you get in relationships by being passionate about something and by being hot.  But I was still obsessed with one or two women and could not see anyone else.  And there were other people that saw me as someone they wanted to, in the very least have sex with, but because I was so obsessed I never saw them, but being blessed with a near perfect memory, I know what I missed.  It also helped that I could not communicate my desires to the women that I felt I loved and when they asked me who I loved I lied, to deflect them, because they had their eye on someone else; I became very adept at making the people I loved friends.

After school there are two paths take your current lover and marry them have a child or three then an affair and divorce them or in my case be very happy until the end of time, if it were me.  Or the second path, you get relationships by looking good, hot always works, but looking good is about showing women that you have a good job, or that you save money well, that you could afford to treat her well.  That was the only option that was really open to me, the option that my father took.  You have to be able to get a job and do well in it and rise to heights or pay so that women look at your suit, you shoes, your new car, the nice house you own, even crappy house you own is still better than nothing.  Because it shows you are successful.  Admittedly I would probably become obsessed with one woman early on, but that is okay, because she would have seen me as someone with a future likely.  Or maybe not.  Maybe I would have been more socially knowledgeable likei am now and I could have seen it.  But not likely.

Now, @40, it is over.  Most of the women out there looking for relationships are through having children.  That is fine, I can deal with that.  The ones that still want children want someone who is well off, well they all want someone who is well off.  The ones that grew up expecting the man to make more than them, still mostly expect that, except they are usually making more than most men.

Right now I look back and see that what I most want could only be achieved by not focussing on it.  I see everything I have done as the wrong decision and I have lost all that I could have wanted.  The other thing that I always see is what I missed by deciding to take one course of action, I can see the other the other result. Clearly.  If I had decided to brush off my parents for thanksgiving years ago, a girlfriend would have resulted.  If I had stayed in Smallville instead of going to BigSmoke a few years ago, MPTR would have been with me now.  If I had gone and dog sat in Big Smoke this last Christmas, Seventh would have been with me now.  Well even I can see that the last one, is a bit tenuous as she is so flighty that all I would have gotten was a night.  But that is all I want now, a night with someone I love.  Gone are the expectation of children, gone is the expectation of a relationship.  I just want a night.  A week would be bliss.

But I don't expect that either.

Quite alone

When I am not interested in sex, you know that my depression is bad.  Partially it is PoF.  Someone told me that wanted to meet me today and then they proofed on me.  I try not to take personally, but it is kind of tough.  I get the feeling that it is time to surrender and die.

I try to be nice to the people I love, but it is clear that they don't love me.  And the people who don't know me will never love me either.  I live too far away from real people like me.  People who would date me wont because of the distance.  

The last time I attempted suicide it was cold out and I decided that I should die of exposure.  So I walked out and went into the woods and took my clothes off and waited to die.  If I had been successful my parents would have recovered by now and they would have been happy and I would not have had them constantly worrying about me.  I know that they would not be happier without me, but they would be better off without me.  And all the people that know me now, save four, would not have met me, and few of them have I made a impact on their life.

I had just spent a partial day with a friend, and had a date with someone in the morning, but it feels like nothing is going well.  Everything is in fact stable.  Stable some people would say is good, but right now stable is just above rock bottom; I am tired of being just above rock bottom.  Granted there are a lot of people worse off than me, but my current projection is more of the same for years to come and later it gets worse.

What will keep me alive is that I do not have the money to afford my cremation and so I would never want to impose on my parents.

Maybe sleep will help, but tomorrow I have to start Cat sitting for a friend, and that means being even more isolated than I am now.  I like cats, but I am allergic.  And it is so quiet there.  And I will be more alone there.  With myself alone.

Water

The most important substance on Earth is Water and these some of its properties:

Maximum density at 4 °C - 1,000 kg/m3, 1.940 slugs/ft3

Specific Weight at 4 °C - 9.807 kN/m3, 62.43 Lbs./Cu.Ft, 8.33 Lbs./Gal., 0.1337 Cu.Ft./Gal.

Freezing temperature - 0 °C (Official Ice at 0 °C)

Boiling temperature - 100 °C

Latent heat of melting - 334 kJ/kg

Latent heat of evaporation - 2,270 kJ/kg

Critical temperature - 380 °C - 386 °C

Critical pressure - 221.2 bar, 22.1 MPa (MN/m2)

Specific heat water - 4.187 kJ/kgK

Specific heat ice - 2.108 kJ/kgK

Specific heat water vapor - 1.996 kJ/kgK

From: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-thermal-properties-d_162.html

Always good to site your sources.

What these numbers mean is how you can explain the weather of this planet and how the heat from the Tropics gets transferred to the Arctic.

For the purposes of weather we just need to look at a few of these numbers, the Specific heat and the Latent heat.  

Specific heat refers to the amount of energy one needs to put into or take out of water to change the temperature by one degree Kelvin or Celsius.  And for the record, one adds energy to make it warmer and removes it to make it colder.  So from the number above we see that it takes about twice as much energy to warm a kilo of water than to warm a kilo of ice or water vapour.  To complete the picture if you took a kilo of ice cooled down to -20°C and dropped it into ten kilos of water at 1°C both the ice and the water would be at 0°C when everything evened out.  If one bubbled a kilo of steam at 100°C through fifty kilos liquid water at 0°C, both the steam and the water would be at 1°C afterwards.

Latent heat is the amount of energy that is required to change the state of the substance or in this case water, solid, liquid and gas.  There are two state changes of water naturally on earth, liquid to solid and the reverse, and liquid to  gas and the reverse.  There is a third special kind that happens regularly, sublimation solid to gas and the reverse.

The latent heat of melting is 334 kJ/kg or about eighty times the specific heat of liquid water or over one hundred fifty times the specific heat of ice.  This is energy that must be put into the water to get it to melt or removed to freeze the water.  That is one of the reasons why, if you are in an area where water freezes, it takes water to freeze a long time.  Don't believe me get a thermometer and an ice cube tray.  The water cools to zero relatively quickly and it takes hours for the water to freeze solid.

The latent heat of evaporation is 2,270 kJ/kg or about five hundred and forty times the specific heat of liquid water or over one thousand one hundred times the specific heat of water vapour.  This is the amount of energy that you need to put into water to make it change to gas.  Again with the real world example. Put water in a pot on the stove and put the thermometer in it.  Turn up the heat.  The water starts to boil quickly, all the water is about 100°C, but it does not instantly turn to gas and it won't until the latent cost of turning the liquid to gas.  The energy needs to be removed to turn the vapour to water as well.  

Here is an interesting thought, if you put ice water in a pot and it takes ten minutes to bring it to the boiling point, it would take about fourteen minutes for you to boil the pot dry.

So if you want to melt a kilo of ice at 0°C you could put it in ten kilos of liquid water at 8°C and in the end you will have eleven kilos of water at 0°C .  But, if you  took a little less than seven kilos of ice at 0°C and condensed a kilo of water vapour at 0°C,  you would have eight kilos of liquid water at 0°C.  Rain does not melt snow, it is the condensation that accompanies the rain that melts the snow and ice.

How this applies to weather?  Tropical heat evaporates water, the water vapour is transported elsewhere.  When it rains, the gas turns to water and the air is heated up, warmer air is more turbulent and creates more violent storms. In cooler areas the gas turns to snow and that warms the air up even more.  Some people may have noticed that it rarely snows when it is very cold and the air will warm up if there is a snow storm.  This is simplistic, as warm air holds more water vapour and cold air holds little water vapour so it can not snow a lot unless it is warmer.

Another interesting example of latent heat is a glass of ice tea on a hot and humid summer day.  The ice tea is cold and there is a lot of ice in it.  The ice keeps the ice tea cool but there is a battle of latent heat.  The ice would keep the tea cold longer on a dry summer day than a humid one.  The humid air condenses on the glass the water vapour transfers its energy to the tea through the glass warming the tea the ice in the tea melts taking the heat out of the tea.  Hot humid air has a lot more water vapour than dry air, obviously, so more condensation occurs and the ice melts faster and disappears sooner.

If it was coke or any carbonated beverage, as the liquid gets warmer, the carbon dioxide content drops and the drink becomes flat faster.

PoF

I am getting tired of PoF.  The women here are great for talking to, but as soon as you get close to setting a date, they vanish.  Every time.  Not every time, there was one whose smart phone was stolen and the thief was on PoF and would not chat with me and I assumed that she, the person I was going to try to date was just like every other girl I tried to date on PoF.  Now she refuses my attempted apology.  How could I tell she was any different than the ten other women that left the conversation mid sentence and never replied.  How could I tell she was different from them when I did not know that her cell phone was stolen?  Since then I have had a few more conversations.

I am going to suggest a name change for PoF; it should be called PooF, because you are talking one moment then poof, they are gone.

Ranma 1/2

So I am not sure if this is an Asperger's trait or not.  I get very obsessive about watching television, the largest reason I have for not having a TV actually.  The biggest reason I have for not starting new programs also.  I am very obsessive.

Back in the dawn of time, about 1996, I was at a friend's house doing some role playing. It was a game called Mage.  White Wolf game designed in the eighties, the golden age of game design.  And after that session, he pulled out some anima.  A show called Ranma 1/2.  This was what Japanese children were watching at the time and it was trickling over to North America just as their cars were starting to be driven a lot too.  

Ranma was this boy unlike any other boy as he was a martial artist.  He was a martial artist of the Anything Goes School of martial arts.  His father had arranged that Ranma should marry his father's friend's daughter in an arranged marriage.  He had a choice of the three daughters.  Kasume, Nabuki, and Akane, aged 19, 17 and 16 respectfully.  Ranma aged 16 picked Akane who was also a martial artist.  Things would be set for Ranma if he was not cursed.  He was cursed with his father who would be politely called a buffoon.  

So cursed, he had decided to train Ranma in an odd Chinese shrine: a valley filled with a thousand springs with tall bamboo poles in each one and each pool was especially cursed.  Ranma's father fell in one while training, where a thousand years before a panda had drowned and he became a panda.  Enraged he kicked Ranma into a different pool, where a young girl had drowned two thousand years ago, and he transformed into a young girl.

So began the trials of Ranma.  Cold water turned him into a girl and hot water into a boy again. Same for his father and anyone else who was stupid enough to fall in to a pool.  And one would think he would be the only ones, but no there were a lot of people in Ranma's life who trained there.  A pig, a cat and a duck trained their too.  

Well I found Ranma on YouTube a month ago and I started watching them from start to finish all 161 episodes.  They are only twenty minutes long and the plots are simple, but strangely addictive, but maybe that is just me.  The graphics are lame, but you have to remember that this was done all before computers started doing all the graphics so they were all hand drawn and there was a lot of reuse of footage and simple graphics used.

They also provide some insight into the culture.  There are scenes of nature and natural themes that are not connected to the plot, like a carp jumping in a pond.  A leaf waving in the wind.  A tree covered with cherry blossoms.  All these things have nothing to do with the plot but were obviously important to be animated from the cultural perspective.  There are animation concepts to show emotion the tear drop on the side of the face to show exasperation or annoyance, a bubble coming from someone's nose to show that they are sleeping and others.  Plus the less obvious, Japanese people must find gender as humorous; Ranma changes sex often in the course of an episode, there are female characters that dress like men and male characters that dress like women

Here is the first episode:

Winters of Yore

I remember in the past, I REMEMBER the past, growing up in the boonies we had a lot of snow every year.  I remember that it was a physical workout going to the neighbour's house because the snow was so deep and snow pants were required.  The neighbour's house was less than one hundred meters away and I would be talking about new snow, the path to their house would have to be 'broken in' more than once a week sometimes.  We always looked forward to the January Thaw, which usually happened every year.  The sun would be out and short sleeves would not come out, but we would look at them wistfully.   and a little bit of the snow would melt.  Usually around the edges, on the trees, along the roads and on the top.  It would not last long but it would be a great break from minus twenty.  

The best part was that when it was over in a couple of days and the temperature drops back down to normal temperatures like -20°C, the melted wet snow on the surface would freeze solid and traveling the space between houses got fun, trying to balance on top of the snow, speeding the travel time considerably and proving that you did not weigh a thing.

But today, the second day of the January Thaw of 2013, it is all wrong.  Instead of a a day of melt after two months of snow, it is a week of thaw after two weeks of snow.  It is expected to rain in a couple of days, 10-15mm, a downpour in the winter.  In a regular winter of yore, that would have been a dumping of 10-30cm of snow, but no longer.  Will the lake freeze this year?  

Smallville is a tourist town and traditionally there were two tourist times Summer and Winter.  Summertime the source is obvious, cottages coming to the lakes and city people coming for the day or the week.  In the Wintertime they would be coming to ski cross country, snowmobile across the trails and fish in the ice fishing derbies.  Lately the winter tourism has been hit hard.  There have been years where the snowmobile trials have not opened up or opened late.  The bay that skimmed over in December and froze deep enough to drive on by early January, now might not freeze over at all.  This prolonged thaw, with rain, is a bad sign.

Not many people realize that the Great Lakes, used to freeze over regularly.  Well some of them froze over almost every year and some almost never.  Lake Ontario froze over only three times in recorded history.  Lake Superior almost every year before recent times.

Now we are hearing that things are bad in the Australian Summer, where they have had to add temperature gradients to their temperature maps to show temperatures over 50°C.  And over 54°C.  The optimist in me says that this is a great time for Green Energy in Australia, think of all that solar power that they can generate.  Here is another benefit for the Australians, every bit of solar energy converted into power is sunlight not heating the ground.

That does not help people around here.  Unless we use all Australia's green energy to refrigerate the air and use the heat from the refrigeration to heat the homes and stop other heating methods that are adding to the problem.  Yes I know, a silly idea! 

Jihad

 Jihad was defined as the spiritual struggle within oneself against sin.

Sin is defined as an act regarded to be a serious regrettable fault, offense or omission.

After 9-11, Jihad became known as a a global struggle against The West.

The West, was America and all it's satellite nations that had a similar wealth and lifestyle; all the developed nations, most of Europe and North America.

Which form of Jihad do you think is the right one? 

New Game System idea

So I have been thinking about the story in my head.  Part of the idea is coming from a way to show the effects of the characters in the story.  It is a story that combines two of the games I have played in the past, Dungeons and Dragons and Exalted.  The problem is the games systems are not compatible. So I have to choose one or create a new one, so I choose to do both, one plus new.  

The D&D system is very linear, one level leads to another and once you choose a progression tree, it is difficult to change your direction and it would hurt your character.  Exalted, on the other hand, does not share these restrictions, but there are no rigid career choices. 

My idea is that using a frame work where the characters are free to grow many areas but have career skills that are easier for them to advance.  Twenty-five skills ranging from combat to oration to knowledge and technical like skills.  Basic attributes, physical, mental and social added to the skill level gets a dice pool.  The dice have ten sides and these dice are rolled with dice showing a number value of 6-10 count as a success and go towards the difficulty do the skill roll.  Just like in an Exalted game.  

But the maximum dice pool would be ten, five skill and five attribute dice.  Unless they specialize.  To specialize they must reduce a skill level by one to increase a specific aspect of that skill by two.  Example, soldier dude can use any melee weapon well, four dice, but if he should want to spend more time concentrating on the Sword, he would lower his melee skill by one to three, but increase his sword to two.  If his Speed was four, then his Melee would be 7 (3+4) but his Melee-Sword would be 9 (3+2+4). Theoretically you could reduce the skill by more, but never below a skill of one.  But the skill maximum has also been reduced so soldier dude, would ultimately have a maximum skill of five minus specialty level.  So soldier dude could have a specialty rating of four in sword but that would mean that he would next to useless with a club or an axe.  There are times that soldier dude might need to use other weapons, like in a duel where swords are not used.  And you can only specialize in one thing with every skill.  It would be possible to unspecialize for a cost.

Magic, every character could use magic, but magic would be different for different character types.  Every character can invest in magic but does not have to, because magic is expensive, prohibitively so.  And advancement in magic is also expensive, every level of magic allows you to use more magic but only in skills that you have specialties in.  Example cleric boy is a trained healer and he has medicine skill of two and a specialty in magic of three.  He can, at a basic level, heal three health at a cost of one magic point until he runs out of magic points.  If he reduced increased his medicine magic to five he could heal five health points for one magic point, but would not be able to treat anyone without magic.  The cost of spells could be something like this, heal and set bones 1mp, heal disease 2mp, reattach limbs 3mp, regenerate limbs 4mp, true heal 5mp.  Or the reverse.  Magic points are based on the level of magic trait.  Something expensive to learn, so that the magic practitioner who wants to max out his magic potential could not afford to train in other skills.  But a character that wished to minimize magical learning and increase their skill base instead.  A Bard character might specialize in oration type skills magically at a low level, a specialty of presence magic of only one allowing bard to awe audiences, possibly performance magic of one that is a song that strengthens listeners resolve in battle and medicine magic of one and a whole bunch of low level types of magic based around Bard magic, but all low level and no chance of mundane excellence.  Soldier dude could be a much better with the sword than the Bard, 12 dice verses 9 dice with swords and it is unlikely a bard would have five Speed, so less than 9 dice.

Cost of skills first dot costs 2xp, second costs 4xp, third costs 8xp, fourth 16xp and fifth 32xp.  Specialties cost 2xp for the first dot, 4xp for the second, 6xp for the third, 8xp for the fourth and 10xp for the fifth.  So, if someone were to want to get a skill up to five specialty it would cost 92xp.  But soldier dude with melee-sword of one and melee of four would cost him 64xp.  Except, soldier dude gets a break on fighting skills of half.  Soldier dude chooses to max out his fighting skills, archery, martial arts, melee, throwing and war would cost him 155xp but would only be just a war fighter and would be not able to sneak up on an enemy, could not survive in the woods. Lone warrior could have melee, archery, athletics, survival and endurance. Cleric boy could have skill of one and skill-magic of four in three skills, all at half cost or 41xp each, for 123xp.

Magic power would be expensive, costing ten times the cost of a skill and only clerics and wizards would get magic power at half price.  Magic points are equal to willpower times Magic Power.  Willpower is what you would use to resist magic and influences.  For magic one must roll your willpower and get more successes than the skill-magic rating of the caster.  Magic points can be used like willpower to get on automatic success as well.  Magic points recharge at a rate equal to magic power per hour.

Wizards learn two or more elemental skill-magic, but at least two.  There is not an applicable skill so each skill point is a specialty, so each dot costs 4, 8, 14, 24 and 42 experience respectfully for each dot but for two at half cost.  Fire, water, air, earth, life, death etc. which can be used on their own, and mixed together.  Wizards can learn two elements and a skill-magic, or three elemental types that are not in opposition.  A wizard can learn additional elements at the regular cost unless they are in opposition to a skill already known, then they cost double.  Other classes can learn wizard skills, but need to have magic power first.

Soldier dude after maxing out his soldier skills, decides that having his weapons bursting on fire in battle would aid him a lot.  It costs him additionally to his other skills 20xp for his first magic power point and 4xp for fire-magic and he can ignite his sword for one attack combo for 1mp.

The elements are not like other skills, life is not healing and death is not hurting, rather life is controlling living things and death would be like controlling dead things.  Fire is in opposition to water, air and earth, life and death.  Elemental magic can be combined to do different things and elemental magic can be combined with other skill magic.  Opposition elements can be combined as well and because they are in opposition they are all the cooler, steam magic, ooze magic, animation magic

In the story, there is no real difference between the types of magic, only the philosophies of them. Clerics can learn one element as a favored skill, but only one.  Wizards are knowledge attribute primary, while Clerics are social attribute primary.  

Different types of magic can be made from all sorts of combination, Warding magic would be based around language-magic specialty, while Enchanters would be based around craft-magic specialty

Having a system in my head helps me make the laws of the world, but also because I love to game and I have been creating different systems for years, around twenty years, using many different systems for years longer and role-playing for about thirty years.

Golden Moments

Spent the weekend in one of the suburbs of Big Smoke.  I was told by my friend that his daughter told him, "Greenpsychopomp is coming home!" in her little two year old voice.  She remembers me from a year ago.  She has my heart.  

My friend told me that he envies my single life.  He says that a lot of the time he would like to have the freedom to go anywhere.  He told me that if he were I, he would travel the world, go to China and all the places he wanted to do.  I laughed at him.  He has everything that I have always wanted.  Two wonderful children a great life partner, in short a reason to get up in the morning.  I reminded him that it was not all bad that there are golden moments.  He countered that they are far and few between.  

He told me that the day before his daughter woke up and asked him for cupcakes, out of the blue.  He told me that she reminded him three times before he headed in to Big Smoke for work.  When she was in the car waiting for him to get off the train, she asked her mother where he was? And then answered her own question, he is probably eating my cupcakes!  If I was the first person he told, I heard him recounting that story three times that day.  Later that afternoon, his daughter climbed into his lap after a sleep and hugged and cuddled him.  He stated, that that was one of the golden moments.  To me, from his words, I think they come every day, certainly much more frequent than my golden moments.

I then went and met my friend Miss Fly.  She likes me as a friend, but she doesn't often show it.  She has a lot of friends and she receives a lot of texts and calls.  If I can catch her interest for longer than thirty seconds. I feel like I have accomplished something.  It had been over ten months since I last saw her, even though I have tried to over the months.  I wanted to tell her about Seventh, but really sometimes there is not enough time or need.  I told her about Magic Eyes and MPTR, whom she has at least met.  She told me about her love life, well she told me that she has one at least.  

I texted Seventh.  I wanted to go see her, but I did not want to ask and have her tell me that she did not want to see me, so I just went home.  I did not even attempt to purchase samosas.

I tried more dating on my sites, I received messages from two people while I was in the south, and both people blocked me before I could read what they wrote me.  Another responded to a message and deleted her self from the site. Am I getting through to you what the dating scene is like in Smallville?  In Big Smoke I checked out the scene and there were hundreds of people online on all the sites.  One of the people that I was talking to said that she wanted to meet me though and then she told me her price list.  This is what it is like sometimes.

Miss Fly and my friend are living the life.  Great jobs, great kids, great relationships, certainly not all roses but compared to me coming home, shooting off a few texts and dating site inquiries.  No reply from the texts, on e reply from the dating sites, but that was a polite not interested.

What is left for me?  Try to write, try to conquer my dialogue problems.  Try to write a good story for my friend to play; it has gotten more difficult, he wants multiple players who are filling in different parts of the story, potentially future antagonists.  Sigh!  Good thing I did not mention that I was working on his story.

Power cord on PC is fried.  Life.

Trials of dating in the modern age

It is the feeling that I get that I am the person of last resort that I get from some people.  It is the feeling that all I am good for is a friend for other people.  From what I get from dating sites is that all I am good for is a brief fantasy in the safety of their home and then they just want me to go away.  It is the reason why I immerse myself in the the dating world for brief periods and then I stop, because I can't take it anymore. The people who go there are not interested in dating me they do like to jerk me around a lot though.

Maybe  I should never share my life with anyone again.  Maybe I should lie on every profile.  New profile: 25 years old, training for my twelfth Iron Man win, 6'4" black hair, fresh out of Medschool with a specialty in Oncology, but I can't post a picture because I work in a small town…

That is what the women want.  Once upon a time, back when dating sites first came out, I wanted to know what exactly was the ratio of men to women on the  site, so I created a fake account, a young woman.  After I created it, it was a pay site mind you, you pay every time you send a message, I recieved tens of messages in one hour one day and then I started panicking.  

Because as a male, I can't compete with all that.  Most men, according to the women on these sites, are fakers.  They use fake photos, they tell lies, they exaggerate too much, just to get there foot in the door.  An then there are the ones that offer up honesty.  The problem with honesty is that women don't want honesty, they want their dreams and it appears they want to be taken in by the dream man, on the off chance he is not a faker.  Because if you can have the early twenties doctor who is tall and dark and fit like a fireman, why would you want reality?  

And there are many different sites, and I have tried almost all of them.  So far the best one is OkCupid.  You enter your info, you answer questions, an algorithm rates your answers with others answers and gives you a match rating, enemy, friend and match.  And you can pick from those choices it gives you.  There are thousands of questions, I have only answered about 900.  I have met more people from this site than any other combined: two.

There are sites that are paid and there are sites that are paid.  Two types actually.  Reputable and Dishonest.  Most of them are dishonest.  Dishonest sites seek out men.  You can join for free and search for free, but you have to pay to send a message.  I have joined one of these sites once, who says I can't learn?  This is what they do: you fill out a profile and they accept it.  And then they send bots at you.  These bots all have pictures of pretty women, who are always interested in chatting with you, or sleeping with you depending on the site, and they have naughty pictures that you can see in one centimeter squares.  And they live in your neighbourhood.  All of them live within walking distance.  And if you pay your money they evaporate.  What is happening is the site seeing that you are not a paid member and it is registering your IPaddress and it is using its bank of fake accounts and attaching your IPaddress area code to them as where they are from. And when you sign up, all you get is crickets chirping in the bushes, with African women trying to get you to send them money so she can come to you and be your wife.  Russian women too.

The reputable sites make you pay up front and don't send bots at you, but they do inform you of all the sexy singles joining in your area.  In rural  areas this means anywhere from next door to a thousand km away.  It gets better sometimes they view the entire nation as close to you.  There is one site that sent me people in my area that live 5000 km from me! The honour of living in a country with one of the lowest average population densities.  Funny thing is they had the gall to tell me that they only live 5376 km from me and I had better pay up and contact them before someone else does.

There are more sites, but you are getting the jist and I have been writing for a while now and I am no longer super depressed about life anymore.  I don't blame women, because a knight in shining armour is waiting around the corner, only most of them are wearing thin wood with a veneer of gilt, to make them look shiny.  Maybe one of them will have some metal in their profile, but you have had your chance with this old dating warrior with heavy, rusting and damaged armour, but made with real steel.

Exalted story against the Slave states

A friend wanted me to run a game for him.  Exalted.  I have been delaying, because when you start a game you have to have the setting down well, at least I need this.  I should also have a series of characters that they will run in to or could run into, but I have not gotten up to that point.  This is just the setting for the nations he wishes the game to be in:

Second Adventure based in the north

Nameless is a former slave that shook off the effects of chemical addiction and exalted in secret .  he desires to foment a rebellion in these slave provinces and have the slaves overthrow their own masters.  He found a manse that he attuned to, that in another life he owned.  He eschewed his own given name because it represents his old life.

The region that he was enslaved was formerly called the Fire Opal Principality, now called Dehenna.  Built in the mountains it is the least populous with only about 660,000 slaves and two cities, Dehenna 60,000, the capital and smelting operation for the produce and Jade Depot 10,000, the transfer site to the Realm of all goods produced.  The latifundiae here mostly have 300 people set in five mountain valleys along the coast.  Each valley runs north south and each valley has several mountain spurs.  This all means that rebellion rarely spreads here. Mining here is a combination of open pit, shaft and placer mines; it is all dangerous and with a drugged out workforce, little safety is enforced.   All the agricultural output is consumed by the populous and all the minerals are exported with some food and drugs imported.

Inahjal still rugged, but the mountains are far to the west, this is an agricultural tributary.  The land is flat and thus the latifundiae are more evenly placed, but still lightly populated at close to 300.  The total population of the satrap is over 1.5 million, Inahjal in the center 70,000, and two costal ports with 15,000 apiece. 

Serrat less rugged but still poor landscape manages to average out to 600 per latifundiae and about three million slaves, more in the south and less in the north towards the shadowland.  Serrat located on the coast has 90,000 slaves and two small cities to the east and west on the coast of about 10,000, with third centrally located administrative city in the center at 30,000 slaves.

Amber River is lush by comparison; the hinterlands forested and the river plain fertile.  The average latifundiae has about a thousand slaves, more in the river valley and more toward the coast.  Four cities line the river valley, three averaging 25,000 and the capital, Amber River 100,000 on the coast bring the population to in excess of fifteen million slaves.

Latifundiae are 300-3000 slaves strong.  Ten percent are guards or soldiers and one percent are administrators.  Most of the guards work the same hours as the slaves but one in ten work nights and tend the roving attack dogs.  Guards do not get the debilitating drugs but are still high most of the time.  The administrators are on still another set of drugs.  The administrators own all the slaves in the latifundiae, guards actually owning a portion of the slaves that the administrators do not own.  There is one overseer in each latifundiae and they in turn own the guards and the administrators. 

Overseer owns three administrators,àAdministrator owns ten guards and thirty-nine labourers , àGuards own five labourers.

Each latifundiae is surrounded by a thick hedge where possible, in the mountains a difficult to pass rise or wall and there is one road leading to the outside.  This road leads to a central road circles until it meets itself.  There are a total of seven latifundiae connected to this road in this manner and one road that heads out into the rest of the Satrapy.  A Patrician typically owns the seven overseers for this cluster in his manor there are the house guards and servants about twenty total all slaves and there are the resident Monks for the cluster or grape.  The Monks and Patrician family are not slaves. This would mean that one Patrician would own 2100 - 21,000 slaves.  Seven Patricians report to a higher level Dynast, patrician or lost egg who might actually own those slaves or more (14,700 – 147,000).  This higher level would be more important in determining quotas for the region or grape cluster.  Seven of these regional managers have a provincial, or grape vine, leader who is without doubt exalted and has a direct hand in managing the area at least in theory, controls the provinces slaves (102,900 – 1,029,000).  One final layer in the clusters brings it to farm level, and one further Satrap or plantation.  The bureaucracy at the two final levels includes a lot of duplication of the lower levels and lots of opportunity for corruption, but still the majority of the work is still done with slaves and there are even in Amber river. No more than a few thousand citizens and a dozen Dynasts.

As above save change the cities so that the largest city is on the coast, where a Dragon of the Eighth Legion is present along with their auxiliary units, sappers, siege units and cavalry which is used primarily as messengers.  Also in the Capitol are enough naval ships to carry the Dragon if the need arises.  In addition at any time there are up to a dozen ships of the Blue Feet in port providing escort to trade ships and patrolling the waters nearby.  Also there may be a few Guild trade ships carrying drugs and other items of trade.

The hedges are made of holly, which is evergreen and would help against undead, and additionally is very dense and prickly good for stopping slaves from escaping.  Moreover, in regions with undead problems there are ward posts set outside the hedges to ward of the dead.  In the mountains, regions outside the hedges are warded with salt if it is an area of importance.  

The important buildings in the village are the Manor, if there is one, the administration house, the temple, the barracks for the Scale from the Eighth Legion (25 legionaries, one cavalry and one engineer who maintains the walls and one scatter catapult plus one Scalelord), the barracks of the guards, the kitchens, the slave dormitories and the warehouses.  The portions of the town that are critical to the operation of the plantation are built of stone, and the rest are built of wood.  The barracks, the manor, administration and drug warehouse are made of stone.  The drug warehouse is warded against fire and is kept locked at all times, but it is in no way especially secure, as if there is a revolt, the Dynasts hope that the slaves would break into this building over the rest.  

The priest in the temple is the Thaumatugy expert in the plantation and it is their responsibility to maintain the wards as well as conduct the services to the gods.

There were additional measures put in place in different slave states.  One such measure was to isolate the slaves from other groups.  Within Dehenna each of the plantations or mining center clusters operates in a different language.  The slaves know dialects from Woodspeak, Firespeak, Waterspeak and Riverspeak, but the communication between the administrators is in Low Realm.  The city language is generally Low Realm.  Further from the Coast and far from Guild interaction, Riverspeak is another language used, but none of the slaves is taught Airspeak.  The idea was that rumours would spread slower inside the state and escapees would have difficulty dealing with outsiders.  Also since the language taught to the slaves is of an obscure dialect.