Had a story idea involving kid's games.

I know that some forms of tag have a safe zone thing. If you can get to the tree, rock or whatever you are safe from getting tagged.

I have vague recollections of something similar in some games of hide & seek.

What I'm wondering does anyone recall any other games that incorporate a similar rule/concept.

I had occasion to look up nightshade family plants. Quite a list (but not as huge as cruciferous vegeatable!).

Anyway, I got to wondering. Would it be *possible* (not practical, just possible) to graft things so the same plant was producing, say, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers?

No funny gene stuff, just "grafting".

Also, are there any nightshade family plants that will last more than a year (so you don't have to replant every year)?

And is the answer different for L-America and T-America?

So I'm reading this story. Setting seems to be somewhat medieval. Guards carry swords, that sort of thing. Palace, queen, etc.

So We're in kingdom A. Queen receives a messenger from neighboring kingdom B. After various back and forth messenger relectantly tells Queen of A that Queen of B is demading...

... one hundred tons of food.

Queen of A complains that this would be *half* of their reserves.

Cue record scratch in my head.

Ok, lets think this through (which the author obviously didn't). Just rough calcs to get ballpark figures.

A ton is 2000 pounds (~1000 kilos). So they are asking for 200,000 pounds of food.

Say a person needs a pound (half a kilo). Say there are only 1000 people in Kingdom B (a ridiculously low figure).

That'd mean they'd need 1000 pounds a day. So that food would last for a whole 200 days.

Note that they are demanding the food because of a drought. So they may need food until the harvests come in (if they do).

So this is outright ridiculous. It was so far off that I knew it was stupid *before* I double checked by running the calcs above.

Please folks, stop and *think* before you throw around numbers in a story.

Also during negotiations, the messenger was talking about sending bread, and maybe a bit of meat. Arrgh.

Before modern times (and I mean the last century or two) you did *not* send bread any great distance. At *best* it'd be stale and like a rock. At worst, it'd be moldy and inedible.

Yes, hardtack will "keep" longer, but its a pain to make, and not commonly prepared.

Meat wasn't shipped except "on the hoof" because it spoiled even faster.

There are *reasons* why butcher and bakers were *neighborhood* businesses.

Fresh food was *not* shipped. It was brought in from *local* (very local) farms or grown in the city.

Preserved meats (salt, jerked, dried, smoked) are more transportable but...

Again, failure to consider the milllieu.

Yeah, yeah, you don't need to be an *expert* about these things. But try to avoid things that will jerk a reader out of the story.

I'm playing with an idea fir a gizmo for stories, and figured I'd try to get some "user feedback" on the design.

The device is a "water purifier". That's what they are sold as, though they do have other uses.

Their first appearance was donations to isolated medical clinics in third world countries. They later started being sold in such areas and slowly spread.

They are about the size & shape of a mid-size tower case for a computer, but turned sideways. The front has two vertical recesses. It comes with a pair of pitchers with tight fitting lids. They are different shapes. (I'm thinking that the recesses have a sliding cover for when the pitchers aren't going to be in them)

One (for input) fits in the left hand recess. The inside is basically square but with the corners and edges rounded with about a 1 cm radius). This is to make it easier to clean. No corners for things to catch in.

The second (for output) only fits in the right hand recess. Its inside is cylindrical with a hemispherical bottom.

Both hold one liter. Extra pitchers are cheap.

If switched on, a power light goes on. With no pitchers in place in a pair of rectangles in the area between where they would go light up around the edges. The rectangles are next to the slots for the pitchers.

The one on the left flashes red. The one on the right flashes blue. When you place an empty output pitcher in the in the right, the outline of the rectangle quits flashing and stays steady.

When you place an empty pitcher in the input side the outline of the rectangle goes red.

If you put something in the input pitcher and then put it in its slot, The rectangle flashes solid red, and then if their is any water in the contents it turns solid green. Then a button lights up (with an icon?). If you press the button the rectangle flashes again and then the top of the green rectangle starts turning red. And the same time the hollow blue rectangle next to the output pitcher starts turning blue from the bottom.

As the water is removed from the input side, the rectangle has the red process down until the rectangle is solid red when all the water has been extracted.

The blue output rectangle will fill from the bottom as the water is extracted. It won't go solid blue until the pitcher has a liter of water in it.

When the input rectangle is solid red, the start button goes out, and you can remove either pitcher.

If you remove the input pitcher, you can put another one in and repeat the process until the output pitcher is full. At that point the start button goes out, and the blue output rectangle is solid blue and flashing. You can remove the output pitcher and transfer the water inside to another container.

The water inside is chemically pure and sterile.

The leftover stuff in the input pitcher is dry unless there were liquids other than water in it. Solids, silt, mud, etc and dissolved substances are a powders (again unless there were other liquids in there) if animal or vegetable material was in there it looks the same, except the water is gone.

The input will even works with minerals that contain "bound" water. Though in that case, the rocks may change appearance or crumble due to the missing water.

Oh yeah the contents of the input pitcher while still contain any infectious material that there originally, but it'll be dehydrated. That will kill most organisms, but won't affect viruses, prions and some spores.

That's one reason for having multiple pitchers. You can use one pitcher for chemically or biologically hazardous materials, and others for things like foodstuffs you want to dry. And yes, someone early on discovered that if you put beer or wine in the input pitcher, what got left behind was mostly alcohol and flavorings. :-)

Oh yeah, if there's anything in the output pitcher when you place it in its slot, the blue rectangle outline will keep flashing until you replace it with an empty one.

And you can remove a partially filled output pitcher when the input pitcher needs changing.

Likewise if the output pitcher is full and the input pitcher display still shows some green.
you can replace the full pitcher with an empty and and press the start button again.

So, any suggestions for changes or questions about how it operates?

note: they are your classic "black box" system. *What* they do is known. How to operate them is known (and hopefully very obvious). *how* they do it is not known

I've just realized that I forgot a point I was going to make in my last post.

Earth has several moons, but Luna isn't one of them.

Yes, really.
Compare the Terra/Luna pair with any other moon & planet in the solar system, and you find a number of *glaring* differences.

First of all the center of mass of the Terra/Luna pair is *outside* of Earth. Not true for any other planet/moon pair. Well, maybe Pluto/Charon, but that may be another special case like Terra/Luna.

Second and far more telling is that if you plot the orbit of the planet with respect to the sun, and plot the path of the moon on the same plot, for all the other moons (again, with the possible exception of Charon) you'll see that the orbits of the various moons have a number of points where they are falling *away* from the sun. At those points the satellite's orbit is convex with respect to the sun rather than concave.

But you do this with Terra and Luna, and Luna's orbit is always concave with respect to the sun. at the points where it is closer to the sun than Terra, the orbit is flatter, but still concave.

Terra/Luna is a binary planet, *not* a planet and moon.

This has a nuimber of interesting effects. For one, Luna stabilizes Terra's axis. We still get things like precession of the equinoxes and other long term cycles, but they are both longer term and less drastic than they would be without Luna's influence.

Mars doesn't have such stabilizing factor and its axis has flip-floped a lot over the millennia, making it a lot less suitable for life.

Also, Luna has stripped of some of Earth's atmosphere , especially in the early days. This may be a reason we didn't wind up like Venus.

So, binary planets may be a *lot* more favorable to life than other planets. Which reduces the odds of finding life in other star systems, as binary planets in the habitable zone aren't likely. Not impossible, just a lot less likely.


So other habitable worlds are less likely to have huge "moons" in the the sky (much less multiple ones).

If binary planets are *necessary* for life, then that biases things in favor of a huge "moon". But lowers the number of planets suitable for humans (and other, similar lifeforms) a *lot*.

If habitable planets are common, then most won't have the huge "moons".

I've been thinking on yet another variation on the "people stumble across a spaceship and get it working" trope.

I'm trying to figure ways this (not alien, but from the future) spacecraft could be hidden yet findable. I figure it should have been hidden several hundred years ago, after getting sent back to the past via [much handwaving]

I figure that about the only practical way is for it to be in an underground location. Probably one that was excavated, not natural. I'm sorta stuck on how to hide the entrance since most of the ways that come to mind would either require gear they wouldn't have or look suspicious to surveyors ("Looks like somebody blasted down that cliff face, Charlie.")

So I'm asking for ideas.

Technology is pretty much that of the Treveller RPG, but with somewhat better computers.

This is the prologue to a story I'm working on. Possibly set in T-America, but not necessarily.

The old wolf was slowly making his way to what he knew would be his final resting place. He was careful to not leave any traces, though doing so in his condition was straining his already diminished powers.

His wounds were painful, but not as painful as the memories. The last of the People were gone. The men slain, the women taken as captives.

He'd done his best, but there were too many enemies. First it had been other tribes moving into the People's territory. Then the rumors of the white skinned strangers and their new weapons. And the horse creatures they rode.

His predecessors had done their best as had he. But despite their best efforts the People were fewer and fewer with each generation. And now they were no more.

At last he reached to hidden cave. He cast around to be sure no one was around. Satisfied he carefully made his way through the rocks and underbrush that hid the opening.

At last he was in the back of the cave,his eyes didn't need the light to see the sacred paintings on the walls. He nestled himself next to the sacred objects that had been hidden here when it became obvious that the People might not survive.

At last he relaxed the iron control he'd held on his body. His wounds started seeping blood again. The end would come soon. He had failed, but at least the enemies of the People would not be able to take the power he bore.

The last guardian of the People died alone without being able to pass on his duty.

This is a setiup I've been playing with for the Swarm shared universe.

In that universe humans were contacted by a confederation of aliens (who are scared silly of us) because There's an even *more* scary species moving down the galactic arm.

The Sa'arm are some sort of hive-mind, and nobody has been able to communicate with them. They discover a suitable planet ("Earthlike") land, and start harvesting all the resources in sight. This includes the inhabitants, if any.

They dig in *literally) and start producing more Sa'arm, and more ships. Eventually they've used up all the resources they can get at and abandon the planet. the ships they've produced go hunting more worlds to exploit.

The aliens (and humans) are often ignored, until they get in the way, or encounter a food harvesting party. If they attack, they get swarmed and killed.

Being pacifists, the member races of the Confederacy get slaughtered. so they contact us. We weren't their first choice, but that species suicided upon contact because they were *extremely* xenophobic.

Contact with us has a lot of problems. But a deal of sort is worked out. We get access to some technology, and ion return we go fight the Sa'arm (and try to build defenses on Earth).

Anyway, the Confederacy names systems for the jmajor inhabited planet by adding the suffix "-at" to the name of the world. So we live in the Earthat system. this is important...

So there are ships surveying space to look for planets we might colonize, planets the Sa'arm have colonized, and anything else that may be useful. The prelim stuff is done by ships popping out of hyperspace every so often and taking scan of the surrounding sky. These get combined to make 3D maps and decide which stars bear a closer look.

( Discovery of the system )

( system stats )

( A bit of local color )

Got a variant on an idea I had in the past.

Both Luna and Mars are capable of retaining an atmosphere and hydrosphere for significant periods of time if they were somehow given them.

For Luna it's hundreds to thousands of years. For Mars it'd be *much* long, both because of the higher gravity and being farther from the sun.

Lot's of authors have written about terraforming Mars. I can think of only one who tried it with Luna.

But my new thought was what if Someone (aliens?) did it in the distant past and set up some maintenance methods.

So both Mars and Luna are habitable and have been stocked with terran life forms (including humans)

This wouldn't be obvious to folks on earth until at 1600s or later. Without telescopes, you might notice some clouds and the like on Luna, but that'd be about it.

Mars would likely take until the 1800s or so.

I'm assuming that Luna doesn't have tech beyond Medieval if that. Mars might be more advanced. But no radio at least.

Given all this, History would be mostly the same until recently.

I'm wondering what things you folks think would change in that universe. The big cvhanges would be in the last 100-150 years.

I'm also interested in folks take on how civilizations might develop on Luna and Mars.

ps. I have vague memories of some site that would display maps of Mars and Luna with oceans of various depths. If anybody knows what they are, I'd be grateful for the info.

Playing around with an idea for a humanoid race. May be related to humans. Or maybe not.

I'm deliberately obscuring some stuff just to see what people make of them.

While humans are (mostly) described as "man" or "woman", things are a bit more complex for them.

There's a "base" term thon. There are three modifiers. a prefix, nur- and two suffixes -et and -in.

All are born thon. At some point (usually but not always at adolescence) some become thonin, others become thonet. And some remain thon.

Later in life, thonin can become nurthonin. Likewise, thonet can become nurthonet, though this is rarer. And thon can become nurthon if necessary.

Nurthon can go further to become nurthonin or nurthonet if there's a need.

Finally, on rare occasions other transitions are possibly.

thonin -> thoninet
thonet -> thonetin

likewise
nurthonin -> nurthoninet
nurthonet -> nurthonetin

Perfectly normal for them, somewhat confusing to humans.

Oh yes, they consider men to be thonet, and women to be nurthonin.

I'm curious to see if anybody figures out what nur-, -in and -et represent.