My take on the Australian election.

We live in an age of political upsets. Trump won in the USA, Brexit in Britain, and now Scott Morrison won in Australia. This is the story that everyone is talking about. The pollsters got it wrong yet again. They predicted a win for a leftist party and the party on the right that had no chance won. 
However this is not just happening in these three case. In hundreds of cases in State & local votes its happening. Its happening with Viktor Orban in Hungary, the destruction of the left in Poland, and nationalist parties from Greece though France and Germany to Scandinavia. In a few places the left still holds on at the top or in the bureaucracy but the ground is falling out from under them.

 Scott Morrison, above, is the parliamentary leader of the Liberal party of Australia. In Australia we never gave the term ‘liberal’ away to the Marxists. Only America has made that mistake; most liberal parties worldwide, that are older than 50 years old are centre right not on the left. This is written for my american friends.

The Labor party was supposed to win last week. Bill Shorten was the man of the hour. He has been a leftwing union lawyer since leaving law school. He ran with a mix of policies including a variation of the green new deal, promises of free stuff that would make AOC blush. He talked up new taxes on capital gains and a franking tax, a tax on dividends, and mining taxes. His party had attacked the church, anti-abortion campaigners, and anybody warning about the Islamic lobby. They talked about trade deals with communist China that would bankrupt exporters. China still owes us for food and resources the last Labor government sold it at a, ‘workers of the world unite’, loss. It can be argued that the rise of China is due to resources never paid for in the 1990’s. Over 50% of the stuff from China is re-packaged Australian resources.

They expected to win. This was their prediction. 

Malcolm Turnbull was the previous parliamentary leader of that party and was the PM that got into an argument with Trump while congratulating him on his election. Scott Morrison replaced Malcolm Turnbull in a parliamentary vote 8 months ago.

Malcolm Turnbull was a “wet” in Australian liberal party context “wets” are the equivalent of RINO’s in the Republican party. Conservative members of the liberal party are called “dry’s” in contrast. Historically wets loose to Labor, then drys win back a majority once they retake control of the party from the wets. John Menzies, the founder of the party in the 1940’s, John Howard the longest serving finance minister and PM, Tony Abbott his chosen successor, and now Scott Morrison are all drys. Free market, free press, Christian morality and free trade but using protectionist tools where you’re being taken advantage of. Trumps platform and some elements of his speeches are directly from John Menzies late 1940 policy or more likely his biography.

So why did the election go so badly for Labor?
This is the result today:

Australia is a country of coalitions. The liberal party and the national party (a rural right farmers party) rule in coalition when they win. In some states they are merged. More mergers can be expected with this win. In Australian politics we use the term Coalition almost as if it was a party name.

Labor once ruled outright but has been shrinking. We had a the post EU collapse of Australian industry, exports to England stopped as the EU banned them, so fewer workers and smaller less financial unions. With the fall of the Soviet block the Australian labor party has been shrinking fast. It now needs a coalition with the greens and a few confused independents to rule. It just lost several seats and some of their green partners.

Australia also has a preferential voting system. This means you number your preferred candidate/ party in order. If your candidate fails to get 50% (comes third) part of his vote goes to your next preference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_voting

We have what the US calls instant run off. 

This leads to preference deals. The liberals preference the nationals then other centre right parties. Everyone reciprocates. This year the liberals listed the Nationals, Palmer United (a mining magnates party), Pauline Hanson One Nation (nationalist but accused of racism), etc. This year preference deals mattered.

In this election both Liberal and Labor lost votes to Pauline Hanson's One Nation. However One Nation was preferencing the liberals so the votes flowed back from One Nation. Greens lost votes both to Labor and other leftist micro parties. Thus votes were going from Labor to One Nation and on to the liberals. Previous Coalition parties have attacked One Nation this time they were disciplined, did not and it worked.

So the coalition has won a working majority and is on track to a bigger majority.

Scott Morrison called it a miracle. 

His platform was simple: “it’s working, lets not change course now.” 

Labor called it the Climate Change election. Yet the left lost massively. Even Al Gore was over here to help and they lost massively. Its over for the lefts agenda and they have no other agenda. Common sense prevailed. There is no anthropogenic global warming.

Why were the polls wrong? Because they are not really anonymous like secret ballots. The pollsters know your number. The left threatens the right when they loose an argument. This election we had several assaults, one stabling of a conservative and a campaign van burned.

The right knows this and knows that the pollsters are using uni students to do the drudge work. These university students who can see the data and can find the address of the number if they choose to. 

We all know this. So conservatives and others on the right hang up. Most pollsters count only those that complete the survey. With conservatives rejecting calls and the left eagerly wanting to be heard, the bias is immediate and almost unresolvable.
I can however see a solution to this; Getting a ratio of call attempts to call connections, both to call completions and count a percentage of those rejected calls as conservatives and then creating a bias adjusted number. I need to form a company. A dyslexic pollster is a really bad idea. So's a dyslectic blogger.

Rowan Dean an editor, pundit and comedian did predict it and called the election. 

https://www.spectator.com.au/2019/05/rowan-dean-i-predicted-all-along-that-morrison-would-win/

Sky news called it too. https://www.skynews.com.au/

The left is vocal while the right is quiet. This is worldwide. We are a people of solutions not debate. We are notoriously bad at debate. Commonsense, free market, and morality is hard to teach, easy to loose. We need to take back the schools. Where we stand for Nation and equal opportunity we are called racist and sexist by the globalists and the social justice warriors. We are thus invisible to polls but strong in secret ballots. Polls still have a value in guiding campaigns. The first person to fix them will get rich but the left will call you racist for just trying.

This is very good news for Trump in 2020.

Valley or Low world houses.

Wesley Bruce

Many people see Mars as a nice place to visit but you would not want to live there. Many can’t even see the point of visiting. To win these peoples hearts and minds to the idea of a multi-planet civilisation we need to show them how Mars can be made habitable with technology they know and understand and with economics that they find believable.  

Some have proposed a worldhouse or para-terraforming. Richard L. S. Taylor outlined the technology some years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming#Paraterraforming

A world house is where you roof an area of mars, or another planet, with a roof a kilometre or two high. The area enclosed is made earth like with cities and farms and perhaps even wilderness. A world house is technically possible even today but it is an enormous feat of engineering costing quadrillions of dollars.

There is a cheaper more achievable option. We could roof a smaller area at a height of 15 to 100 meters relatively cheaply. A low world house or valley house is a normal feat of civil engineering on a par with normal urban or suburban civil-engineering. Like a modern cities: roads, drainage; the reticulation of power, water, sewerage and communications. Roofing an area is a doable land development task, that would be operational at the private corporate level and not the government megaproject level. It is incremental; expanding step by step. Hectare by hectare.  It is therefore more likely to happen.
The image says more than I can say in words. Part of gale crater canopied over.

The roofed area is on an urban scale but the city extends beyond it in a controlled way. The roof in this case is 60 meters high. The edge is anchored to a ledge on the hillsides and a berm with a concrete core and top. Like a raised road or dam wall the edge walls are complex works of engineering but ones we build regularly. The multiple plastic sheets that form the roof are anchored with care with concrete blocks and sealant.

The roof has vertical composite supports every few hundred meters and rafters that can support a light vehicle loaded with robots and replacement plastic. If the upper plastic is to be replaced. Cables laid from rafter to rafter allow the sheets to be drawn over the old sheet. Sealed in place and then the old sheet removed from below.   

There would be several sheets bedded in the wall at two levels. The upper sheet is called the canopy. It is designed to take the damage of the wind, dust and UV. It is designed to be replaced regularly and is not pressurised. This upper layer could be designed to support small robots or  soft "snowshoed" astronauts. The robots clean and check the canopy. They may patch small holes and may even be able to strip off a few micrometers of dust or UV damaged plastic and lay down a new smooth layer in its place. The astronauts might be used for major repairs, emergency retrieval of a disabled robot, etc. Most work would be very light robots.

 If you have a roofed valley wandering around in a space suit would be rare. Extra vehicular activities (eva) would still occur particularly for geologists and engineers.

The lower sheet is the envelope. It is pressurised and ideally it should also be able to at least support the cleaning and patch robots. It is pushed up against the rafters by the internal atmospheric pressure and is locked in place against the rafters lower edge. Vibration, Curvature and pressure sensors are used to detect leaks and stretching.

A roof of less than 100 meters allows us another option. A fire engine like vehicle with a telescoping boom capable of reaching the envelope with a bed sized adhesive patch. This would patch a small hole in minutes. Additional poles could be assembled to lock the patch in place freeing the truck to race to the next hole if there is more than one. With a higher roof this becomes much more challenging; very fast airborne patches would be required. We are experienced with the use of emergency service vehicles and have learned to trust fire services. On the earth the danger of things like fire and automotive accident are handled each day without panic. The danger of a micrometeorite hits on Mars can be coped with and thus reduced in a similar way.  

The buildings under the roof  would be pressurised and alarms would get everyone in side in an emergency and seal the buildings. Airlocks added to such structures would allow trained emergency workers to pick up stragglers and support the patch teams. Both teams would be in protective suits. Livestock barns and other facilities such as farm pump houses would also be pressurisable to protect the farmers and fauna. Some species would be lost but not people or key livestock. A pressure breach would produce a rapid drop in pressure but the volume under a 60 meter roof is 0.06 cubic km or 60000000 cubic meters of air per square kilometre. It would take several dozen minutes to vent through a 10 cm hole.

A second expedient sealing technique would be set of hydrogen/ helium balloons tethered in each area. If a pressure breach occurs the resulting wind triggers the balloons release. It is drawn by the wind to the hole but can’t pass through. Adhesive patches activated by pressure and wind effects seal the balloon over the breach creating a temporary patch. Balloons stuck to the “sky” due to accidental activation will be a minor inconvenience.

My first design. Done partly in Second Life with editing in gimp.

The accompanying picture shows several buildings. They are; 

• Top left on the hill. Communication towers. Local positioning systems (GPS without the satellites.) 
•  Left in the hill. Mines and storage tunnels; some pressurised. Back in second hill an early tunnelled complex. A base during the construction of the cities roof. 
•  Left foreground. A mars vehicle construction building. For trucks, mining vehicles and heavy equipment. This structure is earth covered for cosmic ray protection. 
•  Next door is laboratory complex that is vehicle access only. This provides quarantine protections allowing experiments you don’t what to do in the roofed area. I.e. Fruit fly and lab rat work, testing toxic ore samples, working with dangerous chemicals or making explosives for the miners. 
•  The larger structure on the right of this is a reactor complex if required or a large volume chemical processor and gas liquefier. Storage is underground out side the dome. 
•  Centre left foreground is a cluster of interconnecting structures that serve as the main base entry and exit point. It includes vehicle and robot garages. Light vehicle cleaning and maintenance. EVA training. General laboratories. Etc. 
•  The small tower outside on the right is a back up command centre and roof maintenance control.

Inside the “dome” The low buildings near the entry/exit structures would be training facilities, robot assembly and perhaps a café for the workers in the adjacent external buildings. 

• The smaller towers are just simple support structures with perhaps some lighting, emergency sirens and communication relays.  
•  The fat blue towers are accommodation and office space. 
•  The main mall is open air [no rain] near the three fat towers serves as the main recreational and commercial section o the city. 
•  There is extensive earth roofed housing near the mall. (dotted lines). The earth on the roof is used to block cosmic rays so that most indoor activities are radiation free. Plants can be grown on these roofs; this maximises growing space for plants even if it is only grass. All the larger buildings are similarly roofed, even the towers. 
• The yellow area above the mall is incomplete housing. 
•  The rest is farming: crops, orchids, gardens, coppiced trees, and fish ponds. Cosmic ray's do damage plants but only on a cell by cell basis so it rarely kills them, mutations are pruned off or just fail, beneficial mutations are so rare that they are irreverent.  Livestock barns if they are needed can be roofed with dirt or concrete. Water shields most fish. 

All the radiation on mars is a near vertical cosmic ray flux a little greater that Denver Colorado or Nepal. The plastic does not stop it. By roofing the buildings with earth, stone or concrete you block that flux completely. If your wandering around in the open you are at a small risk but if half your time is indoors under the shielding of a building halves the dose. The target is to get the cosmic ray dose down to the levels found in Denver.  

A totally biological life support system is possible; the ongoing work of Biosphere 2 has proved that. I prefer a hybrid system. Fine tuning the life-support with electrolysis and some plumbing. A set of distributed electrolysis cells turning water into oxygen for the atmosphere. The resulting hydrogen is fed to sabatier reaction units making methane which then feeds to a grid of pipes that link to storage. If the carbon and hydrogen is needed the methane is burned to yield the CO2 and water back to the ecosystem. 

If the Methane is not needed back in the atmosphere, it can be made into plastics, fullerene composites, graphite's or diamond composite. Some of the hydrogen is retrieved in these processes. 

The colonisation of Mars must ultimately be reduced to a simple problem of civil engineering. On achieving this the colony will quickly become self sufficient assuming each finds a product or service to sell to the others or to mother earth. Such a low roofed environment is also more easily explained to those that see the problems first and don’t grasp the opportunities.

We have done something like it on earth.

Another design. Early bad art. 

The roads under the canopy are brown, the houses are all earth roofed and are the multi-coloured areas. In the fore ground just under the canopy is an area of housing and equipment bays for inner canopy maintenance. 

In this case the valley is deeper allowing a more natural sylvan [forested] landscape. The roof is supported on steel or fullerene cables anchored deep in the hills. 

There is the option for a lake and recreations such as hang gliding. Birds and other fauna are possible. Repairs are by truck near the edges and airship inside the domes main valley over the lake. A surface repair car wide enough to spread its weight across three or more cables should be possible. This can support another vehicle via magnetic fields below the canopy. A magnetic repair vehicle slung under the canopy may also be an option if the cables are steel or have a magnetised track under them. A set of vacuum pumps, an inverted hovercraft skirt could create an inverted hovercraft.

If all else fails and a set of cables to three points just under the canopies edge can reach anywhere under the canopy defined by the three points. Abseiling anchor rings added to the underside of the cables would be mandatory. Base jumping from the inside of the canopy would be fun. Insane but fun.

Part of gale crater roofed.

Low world houses are not the first stage of mars colonisation. It may not be the last. It would however make living on mars normal in most senses. It reduces risks. Its kid safe if your air lock is not designed by idiots. It looks normal. It is doable with today's technology and free market capital processes.

For the earlier stages of mars colonisation read this:
http://appliedimpossibilies.blogspot.com/2010/10/building-first-generation-of-buildings.html

For the first stage see my NASA innocentive submission:
Coming.

Aquatic Techlevels.

An under water industrial revolution one eel at a time.
By Wesley Bruce

Many science fiction writers can not imagine how an aquatic alien race could develop technology so in many cases the underwater race is either primitive or fanatically advanced with unexplained and unexplainable technology. In Traveller the several aquatic races are described as primitive, eg. The Schalli of Aubaine [Vras](0738/Aubaine/Old Expanses ) were primitive until humans gave them technology. A second example is the Githiaskio of Githiaski (0806 Githiaski/Dartho) These were described by Phil Masters in 'the Journal of the Travellers Aid Society.' (No.16 pp 12 - 14,27 ) as having "developed several distinct, complex cultures at around tech level 1-2 but lacking metals except for an occasional nearly pure lump which could be worked into something useful or decorative." With due respect to these authors they have uniformly associated metallurgy with fire and assuming fire is impossible, they have then assumed that metal refining is impossible. It is in fact possible to have a technology based society at TL 6 or 7 (WW2- modern) where fire in not yet a useful tool. See below.

The table below assumes the species has no manipulators and can not walk on land, ie. a Dolphin or fish. The first tool required is a pair of mouth tongs for manipulating things; these become automatic Grippers and then mechanical hands at higher tech levels. Using a variant of the Traveller RPG technology level system With some Gurps high technology and ultra-technology gadgets.
If the race has hands or other manipulators, i.e. an Otter, then progress is easier if not faster. If it can move on land easily the land carts are only used for long expeditions.


1. Mouth tongs [A pair of tongs that is held in the mouth and is opened and closed with the tongue ] Hammer-stone, Fish traps and free stone break walls in shallows. Pokers and daggers made from sharp coral, shell and bone. Naked eye study of Astronomy and land vegetation. Trained land crab sent to retrieve small coastal vegetation items.

2. Raw hide skin. Woven seaweeds. Sculpting of living coral by feeding, covering & abrading.
Bagtube: a streamlined woven basket/bag that has a loop on each end to allow it to be towed. Seagrass rope lines. Oscillating lines as a power transmission system. Oscillating wave and current mills. Drop hammer. Diamond headed bow drills. Assembly frame and jigs [A set of mounted spring loaded grippers used for assembling complex items]. Pipette and short coral/shell pipes. Oil sack. [Oil filled bladder or fish gut tube that allows chemicals to be mixed in a bubble within the oil. The oil keeps the sea water out]. Spears made from sculpted coral, drift wood and sea side trees.

3. The breeding of seaweeds, seagrasses, coral, fishes and molluscs. Dry bells air filled bells over a working surface or gripers. The bell allows the dry working of materials. Gold Crafting with small drop hammers in dry bells. Clay sealed coral tubes. Early cements and grouts dried on drying rafts or poles. Clockwork powered general gripper and special propose mouth tools. Weapon harness allows spear-guns and lances to be used with the mouth free. Early hydraulic and pneumatic tools with rigid pipes. The periscope to aid the study of things above water level.  Wave powered surface vessels. Sailing vessels with submerged hulls and exposed rigging. Acclamation to fresh water: Exploration up rivers.
The first studies of electric eels, rays, etc lead to animal powered capacitors and electric arcs.

4. Industrial dry box with mechanical tele-operated arms, lathes and drills (an advance from the drybell with periscopes and multi-function grippers). Chemical dry box with scoops and stirrers for manufacturing compounds in the absence of sea water. Rubber like extracts from sea weeds. Flexible hydraulic and pneumatic lines. Spear guns. Rotary Wave and current mills. First experimental batteries. Electrodeposition of calcium carbonates produce first large structures. Canal building with locks in low lands and estuaries.

5. Age of electrolysis. The Key industrial technology. Insulated Wire & big battery arrays. Electroplating, Hydrogen, Oxygen cutting and welding, Direct reduction of ores using hydrogen and carbon. Glass, Steel, Copper, Aluminium, Electric servo's & solenoids. Iron is not of much use due to rust except in alkali iron batteries.
Wheeled carts drawn by large amphibious animals used to explore land and shallows.

6. Electric motors. Gun Engines [Explosive charge powered compressors driving pneumatic systems]. Electric and Gun Engine  powered boats, submarines, Bathy-crawlers & landcarts. Hydrogen powered Airships. Full range basic of chemicals produced in dry boxes including Ammonia, Nitrates, Acids and Alkalies. Cellulose based polymers produced: Bakelite, cellophane & Nylon. Explosive torpedo and spear head.
Hyper oxygenated recovery tank [This quarters recovery time for external injuries].

7. Titanium and concrete. Electronics: Sonar, Radar & Radio. Microhydraulic circuitry [Fluidics] Early sonic weapons. Coast and mangrove farming. Solar, wind, or methane powered bathy pumps lift nutrient rich deep sea water to the surface as fertiliser.  First permanent land based structures: Pool houses.
Hydrogen powered Boats, Land Trains, and Seaplanes. Oceanic noise pollution crisis.

8. Oil discovered: plastics, petrol and Diesel. Large ships ply the seas. Nuclear isotopes discovered and nuclear lights developed [isotopes and phosphorous sealed in a glass clad aerogel. One such light lasts for a decade without significant fading.]
Touch feed back systems for robotic limbs, vibration based.
{In Traveller true Antigravity is TL 8}

9. Cold Fusion experiments linked to electrolytic deuterium experiments. First fission reactors. Genetics.
Sea launch space craft. Full lifesupport technology. Microelectronics. Optic fibres. Hovercraft. Personal wheeled landcarts. Shower suit to keep the user wet on dry land.
Smart robotic limbs. Bionics: Nerve impulse controller for vehicles and robot limbs. Powered speargun with autoloader. {Early Traveller Jump drive is TL 9.}

10. Cheap legged personal land 'carts'. Flexibody drive train. Fusion vehicles. Early stardrive {non traveller} Fully functional Robotics. Long range Encrypted Digital Acoustic communication.  Early work on gravity ripple {or Meson} communicators. Sonar Blinder grenades (micro torpedoes.)

11. Radio-wave based submarine power transmission system, Ultra Low Frequency. Tractor Beams. Flow Ways: Tractor beam driven artificial currents.
Smart Gels [Bioplastic] Cheap gravity ripple {or Meson} communicators. Implantable robotics controller [interface jack]

12. Antigravity. Hydrostatic force fields [Surface tension increased 1000 fold, water/air interface only]
Tractor beams that work in air. Elemental Teleportation & Disintegrators [Objects are destroyed by teleportation but elements can be teleported intact arriving as a pure element sample stream].

13. Force Fields, Shape changing Bioplastic walkers, landcarts and limbs, Nano technology medicine. Technologically achieved telepathy [implanted cellphones with direct brain interface.]

14. 'Elemental' or Robotic water [Nanoswarm with force field  and sensor capability.] Force field and antigravity limpet. [Personal force field and the ability to fly with little apparent technology]. Regeneration Globe. Slave Dart [Dominator nanoswarm.] Implant limbs (retractable),

15. Force field and antigravity implants. Full teleportation ( traveller teleportals) Teleguns.
Techno Telekinesis: Virtual Matter Limbs. [A configuration of tractor beams and force fields with the appearance of invisible mind controlled limbs].

Your Fishy stories will never be the same again.

Don't ask me how they evolved I'm a creationist.