What is This World Coming to? 7

And we are back to water. It seems only fitting, since the globe is mostly covered by it.

As I was looking over information on Central America, one of my hard-copy magazines - Popular Science - had an entire issue on water. Including an article on the sudden and sustained lack of water in Colombia in the northern part of South America.

The northern part of South America is also definitely in the tropics, because that area straddles the Equator, and the tropics is generally 30° north to 30° south of the equator. That’s latitude degrees, not temperature degrees.

Colombia is also quite mountainous, but that doesn’t mean their water supply is assured. The article spoke of one city sitting in the heights below a ski resort. Until recently, that resort could exist because of a glacier that sat atop the mountain. That glacier also was the source of the water used by the city.

Guess what. That glacier is gone now. Not just receding, like so many glaciers are, it is GONE.

No more skiing on that mountain, no more water for that city. Now the water officials load up what water is available into tank trucks and deliver it around the area. When the truck pulls up and stops, everybody runs for whatever they have that will hold water; pots, barrels, bottles and jars. They may go home and empty those items into their sinks or bathtub and run back to see if the truck is still there. If it is, they fill their pots, barrels and jars again.

They don’t know how long it will be before the truck arrives to deliver more water, so they have to be stingy with every drop. It is all they have for cooking and possibly a sponge bath. In the meantime, they listen for notices from the government as to when the water in their taps may be turned on for a limited time.

At one point, the author was with a woman who had stayed home from work that afternoon. The water was supposed to be turned on in the pipes for 3 hours, and she wanted to get some laundry done. But the water never came from her pipes that afternoon. No laundry got done.

Did all the women in the city stay home that afternoon, hoping to get some laundry done?

The article ended with a brief mention of another Colombian city on another mountain, also depending on the mountain-top glacier for its water supply. That glacier is visibly shrunken, smaller than anybody has ever seen it before.

Perhaps they’ll figure out another source for water. The article didn’t mention any attempts to look, to figure something out. Everybody - even the water officials - just kept saying, “The rains will come.”

What are we, ostriches? Refusing to acknowledge a problem will not make it magically go away!

This is a depressing subject, and not the type I would usually spend time on trying to spin into an entertaining novel. I suffer from chronic depression and just found an anti-depressant that actually works for me. I don’t know if I’m done researching this subject or not... my constant companion - depression - keeps telling me to stick my head in the sand and think of pretty things. But the story for the novel is beginning to take shape in my head. I think I’ll start thinking out scenes and where they would go, and speak of other things in this blog for a while. If I need to, I can still do more research.

So, next time, the subject will be... Oh, who knows? Whatever I find interesting between now and then.

Martian Shelter 4

We’re going to look at a different style of shelter this time. Something a little more complicated to build, I suppose, but which could be more... comfy, should we say?

This shelter is underground. Deep underground, not just some sand kicked over it. Building it would take tunnel-boring machines, which are quite heavy. Perhaps these would be shipped before people were sent, along with some robots to use the machines to bore out a network of tunnels and living quarters. Yes, apparently, some people are ready to go back to living in caves.

But ‘underground’ does not need to mean dark and unwelcoming. I watched an episode of a science show on Netflicks a couple weeks back, where the people were digging out a series of tunnels under New York City. They had some complicated equipment on the roof of a warehouse that gathered and concentrated sunlight before it was piped into the tunnels. Yes, I did say concentrated and piped. The tunnels they created were fully lighted, and with smooth, level floors, ceilings and walls, seemed far distant from a creepy cave.

The theory about living in man-made tunnels on Mars is that the gravity is weak and Mars doesn’t have any quakes, so you wouldn’t need as much support to hold up the ceilings; and there ‘probably’ would not be any moisture seepage. But, this plan does call for some heavy-duty insulation. Martian air may be thin, but Martian dirt and rocks are cold! Even without that insulation, the dirt and rocks would keep that nasty radiation out.

Of course, there are some drawbacks to this idea. There always are, right? All that equipment would be expensive to get there. And once it finishes digging out that first small habitat, then what? Oh, if there’s a big influx of immigrants, the equipment could be busy for years or decades, forming a city here, a city there... But eventually, one assumes, it will become obsolete or unneeded. A lot of money to just let rust away.

And it’s possible there’s more water on Mars than we think, so seepage could be a problem. With all the insulation installed to keep the internal temperature agreeable, we might not even know if seepage was occurring. I hear some of you thinking ‘Then it’s not a problem,’ but that’s not necessarily true. There could be some kind of mold, fungus or other organism that could start growing, possibly leading to health problems for our colonists. Water flows, and ice can expand and create cracks. This could - over time - undermine (so to speak) our efforts at adequate support.

If you own a house, you know you need to keep an eye open for such things, and if you don’t deal with small problems that crop up, you’ll eventually pay for it with a huge repair bill. But these tunnels would not be for an individual’s use; it sounds more like they would be cities, as least to begin with. Owned by committee, you might say. Would that ‘committee’ have the foresight to watch for and deal with these types of problems while they were small? Or would they be political entities, always kicking the financial can down the road?

Okay, if you don’t like the idea of a cave-dwelling, we’ll keep looking. I’ll see what else I can ‘dig up’ for you to consider.

http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zine/mars-makeshelter.html

Political Mess

Earlier this month, I did something I had never done before. In fact, it was something I didn’t think you could do in Nebraska, but since I did it, I obviously was wrong about that. I did have to make a change - one I thought I would never do - in order to accomplish it, but that turned out to be simple to do. And I knew there was no way I would vote Republican this year, so I went ahead and changed my affiliation from Independent to Democratic.

I attended a caucus.

I’d heard about caucuses in Iowa, but I thought Nebraska had primaries. Turns out the Republicans have a primary; the Democrats have a caucus. I don’t know when they started that.

Since this was my first time, I don’t know if this was a ‘typical’ caucus or not, but it was a mess!

First, it was held in the auditorium of an elementary school. Bad choice. Obviously, there was not enough parking at an elementary school for the number of people who showed up. We got there half an hour before it started, and had to park on the street 3 blocks away. Why not a high school auditorium or a movie theater? Either of those would have had more parking, and the theater might have had enough parking.

Second, the auditorium had 3 sections of seating. Bernie supporters sat in one section, Hillary supporters in another, and the Undecided in the middle. But there were so many people there who were Not Undecided, they eventually had to open the middle section up for everyone. And still, one candidate had supporters standing up, lining the wall and closing the aisle between sections. Good thing no fire marshal checked in; I’m pretty sure he would have shut it down. That room was holding WAY over its fire code limit! They should have had a larger place, with far more parking.

Third, we had to decide who was going to ‘run’ the caucus. What a waste of time! There was only one guy nominated! I don’t know who nominated him, but I figured he had done this before, so he knew what needed to be done.

He may have known what to do, but he didn’t know how to use the microphone. Or he chose not to use it correctly. I was seated near the back, and 95% of the time, people were yelling, “Louder!” or “Use the mic!” He never seemed to do it correctly - so that we could hear him - for more than one sentence, if that long.

And then we ‘voted’, group by group. What a farce! Each supporter had to hold up their hand until their ‘leader’ pointed to them, and then they said the next number and put their hand down. If they didn’t yell their number, the rest of the group got restless, wondering what the number was now, and how much longer did they have to hold their arm in the air?

The result of this straw poll was announced. The Bernie and Hillary groups were deemed ‘viable’, the Undecided group was not, so the Undecided people had to choose which group they would join. Supporters of the 2 candidates were allowed a certain amount of time to talk to them. The rest of us chaffed at how long this caucus was taking.

Then another ‘vote’, just like before, and the results tallied. Then the mail-in votes were added. What? One was allowed to mail in their vote and not have to sit through all this? Why didn’t anyone tell the rest of us?

Eventually, a ‘winner’ was declared, and we were allowed to file out. We wasted 2-3 hours that morning. I much prefer a primary, which takes 5-10 minutes of a person’s time. Maybe longer, if there’s a line. But this caucus had a long line, and could not start until everybody was in, which was at least 20 minutes after the announced start time.

There were a large number of young people in attendance. I hope this experience didn’t spoil their enthusiasm for participating in the process. (I’m a cranky old woman, so I tend to complain a lot.) 99% of the people - young and not-so-young - were well behaved, despite our frustration levels.

But please, Democratic Party, if you insist on caucuses, find a venue big enough, with plenty of parking. Nominate someone to run the caucus who knows how to use a microphone. And find some way to make the process faster!

Surprise!

Even though I have plenty of projects I am currently trying to work on, the back of my mind has been entertaining itself fitting bits and pieces together into another. Over the last few days, I've caught a glimpse or two of what it was working on.

The setting is dystopian. Huge corporations do whatever they want to do, in order to make another buck. The rich higher officials of those corporations are hardly even aware of the workers who actually do the work, and don't give it a second thought when given the opportunity to cut jobs, ship jobs some place where they payroll would be cheaper, or even replace workers completely with automation. They own so many politicians that laws don't get passed without their approval first. In fact, politicians don't get elected without their help. Meanwhile, the middle class shrivels as prices go up and salaries stagnate or even shrink. It gets so bad, even those families who manage to keep two full-time jobs are homeless. City streets - and even small towns - become war zones because working hard and being good people doesn't get anybody anywhere. They have to fight to keep what they have, and fight even harder to get what they want.

What is going on? I don't like dystopian works; I find them depressing, and I fight my own depression every day, so why inflict more of it on myself? I don't like books/movies/tv shows with 'a cast of thousands', as I find it impossible to sort out who is whom. I don't like political intrigue; it all boils down to greed, and I like to think that some people have other motivations than that. I hate the idea that working hard gets you nowhere.

This plot had everything I hated. Why would my subconscious even consider such a story?

And then it dawned on me. It wasn't. I'd been paying some attention to the nightly news lately, and my subconscious was on overload: Welcome to the modern world.