Selections from the Press Archives

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Alicorn
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Selections from the Press Archives

Post by Alicorn »

There follow excerpts of miscellaneous periodicals circulated in all or part of Mevwan. Years are given in Archipelago standard format, as are volume numbers (indicating how many years the periodical has been available) and issue numbers (indicating which issue of the volume is excerpted). Exact dates cannot be derived from this information, but it is safe to assume that most periodicals have between one and four hundred issues per year, relatively evenly distributed, which can provide a clue.
Last edited by Alicorn on Wed Jun 01, 2011 10:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Alicorn
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Re: Selections from the Press Archives

Post by Alicorn »

Year 2
Divine Population: Volume 118, Issue 9 excerpt (Editor's Introduction) wrote: Hello, readers! May your patrons bless you and earn their keep. This is an exciting issue of Divine Population. In addition to 1,216 recorded deific deaths and 102 calls for starvation this week, we also have a record number of new gods to tell you about, more than have ever been packed into a single issue before! Some of them are a little redundant - see pp. 48-51 for new rain gods, here's hoping one of them steps up and takes care of the drought in the inland provinces! - but others have unheard-of new portfolios (I'm going to start making offerings to Kirikash, god of getting magazines to print on time [p. 12], myself!). I'd also like to point out a new god of trains, Retathtim [p. 61], credited with the miraculous survival of every single passenger aboard the crashed Postal Express 401 last month (created right after the train jumped its tracks). We would have told everyone about him earlier, but his inventor was in the hospital with minor injuries and didn't make it to a meeting to share until just after the last issue went to press. (Don't worry, Retathtim was kept full and happy by the creator's family! He's still there to keep you safe next time you hop on your commuter rail!)

This week we also have an ad on the very last page for a beautiful set of offering bowls. I've already ordered mine. The names of the gods you're feeding can be inked on the sides, but the ink wipes right off when you're done with that deity - amazing! The bowls won't tip or char when offerings are burned in them, and they come in four different sizes - how hungry are your patrons? Also, check out the Letters page. A highlight: Cashenti E. L. K. T. Prath has submitted an amazing story about inventing the right god at the right time and how it can help you find success - and love! Our favorite columnist, Sebla G. Hanthdreis, has a great article [p. 82] about the best way to tell which one of your patrons is responsible for something good that's happened to you - and when it can be a different god, trying to curry favor with you and get its own bowl on your altar! We've also got a guest article this week [p. 87] about children, helping them create their first gods, and practicing fire safety with the little ones.

Thanks so much for subscribing,
Thio M. M. W. Juair
(See also Religion and the contest thereabout.)

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Alicorn
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Re: Selections from the Press Archives

Post by Alicorn »

Year 7

[quote="Still Minds: Volume 9, Issue 3, excerpt (contributor's essay titled "Employment for Still Minds")"]
Bias against non-psions in the workplace is worse than ever (see fig. 1 for statistics). Ten percent of power company employees are astrapitors; five percent of law enforcement are telepaths (see inset for a summary of how poorly their hiring process screens out poor-control telepaths!); perturbers constitute a whopping fifteen percent of transportation employees; and anticipaths who can control their powers at all are sought after in every field. The unemployment rate among psions after excluding institutionalized anticipaths approaches zero, while among those of us with still minds, it's over six percent!

In only a handful of fields can any anti-psion bias be detected statistically, and it's invariably for legitimate safety reasons and restricted to specific kinds of psions (e.g. telepaths may not be hired to work around people who know sensitive information, and, oh poor things, are forced into the arms of the thousands of businesses eagerly competing for their talents). Psions are not systematically derided for uselessness the way still minds are. And no business in Mevwan anywhere specifically seeks non-psionic employees; the ones that exclude specific disciplines will eagerly accept the applications of others.

Psions are paid more to do work with equivalent job descriptions. Employers claim that this is because psions get more done, but this is a lie! Psions are paid more even when paid by the hour and not per work completed. Psions are paid more even when their powers are comparatively weak: some perturbers can't carry any more than I can, but have you ever seen a job application that asked for that kind of detail under the "Are you a psion? Check all that apply" section? No! They want psions' Kwe rubric scores, which give only the vaguest idea of how well they perform at any given subtask! Kwe scores do correlate with pay, but the specific breakdown of skills don't (see fig. 2). The simple truth is that psions get paid more because everyone wants them, whether they're useful or not. Psions are a status symbol. Corporations like to advertise that they can send a team of psions to accomplish a task that could be done by still minds with comparable training and equipment. The public buys into the psion superiority myth and feels more comfortable with psions of every stripe in enforcers' uniforms.

Guess what the Shter-Dwat department of enforcement did in response to the incident of psychic abuse by a pair of telepath cops (see last issue for coverage). If you guessed "anything at all", sorry, you're wrong. The cops are still employed and nothing has changed about their selection policies when they go looking to add new police. Still minds could not possibly have perpetrated the attack on the (unidentified for her protection) victim, but Shter-Dwat's hiring officers are going to go on discriminating against us anyway, because the people of their city (even though ninety-seven percent of them are themselves still minds, and that's if you count the riddled-with-psions Zaee population!) prefer to have mind-rapists walking the streets rather than still minds who might miss an opportunity to read their thoughts.

Someone wrote in a couple of issues ago to point out that if corporations had to hire ninety-eight percent still mind employees to eliminate the pervasive bias, services would cost more - trains and power companies would have to burn more fuel to move from place to place and to supply electricity, more interrogators for the justice system would need to be trained to read body language, more costly accidents would go unforeseen. This writer misses the point. Saving a few kuo on the train doesn't much help a still mind who can't afford to take the train at all because his job was taken by a less-qualified psion. This is not about economics! This is about justice!

I don't propose discriminating against psions, mind. They're two percent of the population, and as far as I'm concerned, they're entitled to two percent of the jobs (less any that they can't safely do as described above), at the same pay rate as everyone else. Go to your council meeting, and say so. Say it loud. Say you support oversight to ensure that businesses have fair hiring practices. There can be no consensus while still minds are oppressed. No consensus. No consensus.

By: Cashan E. L. M. F. Distari
[/quote]

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Alicorn
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Re: Selections from the Press Archives

Post by Alicorn »

Year 14
Current Events Mevwan: Volume 56, Issue 220 wrote: MIARA, SEDSESH PROVINCE - The village of Miara was burnt to the ground in less than a minute yesterday, said an exclusive eyewitness from neighboring town Kembar. The blaze is understood to be the fault of a young low-control astrapitor, whose identity is being kept confidential for safety purposes. The astrapitor appears to have lost control of his or her powers and let loose a conflagration that rapidly lit up the surrounding buildings and several whitegrass fields. The same astrapitor was able to rein in the fire, preventing it from spreading beyond Miara, but not before it destroyed the town and killed nearly 400 people. CEM reporters and sources have located and confirmed 17 surviving Miara residents who were out of town at the time, none of whom were personally acquainted with the astrapitor.

Miara was a small community, and the loss, while tragic, is not expected to have major economic effects beyond northern Sesdesh Province. "We're just lucky this didn't happen in Cothdin or Delo-Kyan, or some other big city," said Cashan E. L. M. F. Distari, who represents himself as an expert in the societal effects of psionics. "There's no telling if this astrapitor - did you mention the psion's name, by the way? - could have torched an entire metropolis, or maybe all of Mainland. If you ask me it's suspicious that only other Miari, who the perpetrator would have known personally, may not have gotten along with, were affected. Did the astrapitor just happen to be standing in the exact center of a perfectly round village, to explain why it didn't get anyone farther out? Did its - did you mention if it's a man or a woman? - its range just happen to exactly equal the radius of its hometown?"

A team of regional police, including two astrapitors capable of intercepting further power surges by the Miari astrapitor, collected the individual responsible. As of press time, it was undecided what would be done. Juvenile psions are normally not held responsible for plausibly accidental outbursts of their abilities, but Mevwan has never seen psionic destruction on this scale in its history. The nearest comparable event occurred 48 years ago in Shter-Dwat, when a playful six-year-old human perturber knocked a (fuel-burning) train off its tracks and killed 34 passengers. (See CEM, Volume 8, Issue 94, for coverage of that incident.) Astrapitors, unlike perturbers, can unleash their powers accidentally, but because control is most commonly commensurate with strength, their failures of restraint do not tend to operate on this scale.

Hinsi T. R. H. Absirel, spokesperson for the Bureau of Psi, Defense, and Energy, urges Mevwan's citizens to remain calm. "Astrapitors with that amount of strength, not to mention the speed and range necessary to set an entire town on fire in seconds from a stationary position, are vanishingly rare," she said. "I wouldn't expect another to be born in a hundred years. Someone might train up to that point, but anyone who trained to that level would also have the control necessary to prevent outbursts. If you have a friend or neighbor who manipulates energies, there is no need to be any warier of him or her than you were last week; many astrapitors have enough thermal power in them to boil a pot of tea over a couple of minutes, and that's all. This is an isolated psion, and the police have the culprit in hand to prevent the incident from repeating itself."

Kost C. C. Eldrami of Delo-Kyan's Fortune House confirmed that several of her staff foresaw the fire and filed an appropriate report with the BPDE, but they were not able to recognize the Miara as the settlement affected, nor could they identify the astrapitor, and so the Bureau was unable to react preventatively. Other anticipaths are likely to have experienced similarly vague premonitions. Absirel said that her Bureau is working on a system to send telepaths to astrapitors who file reports of disasters on this scale, to collect copies of the visions and show them to others who might be able to determine the subjects of the prophecies. "We all agreed that it would be a good idea, although we don't know if it could have prevented the destruction of Miara if we'd implemented it sooner," Absirel said.

The survivors of Miara (excepting the astrapitor, whose destination is unknown) are being resettled at charitable expense in nearby towns by Sedsesh Sunlight for All. The organization's revelator, Misko D. M. O. L. S. A. Keskarshen, said, "We are deeply saddened by the loss of so many souls in Miara. We hope that our sharing of Light can be of some help to those who are left, and to the poor astrapitor who is faced with the burden of having caused such a tragedy through no malicious intent."

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Re: Selections from the Press Archives

Post by Winged One »

Year 14
Still Minds: Volume 9, Issue 3, excerpt (contributor's essay, untitled) wrote:Fellow citizens of Mevwan, I have recently learned of a disturbing development in the Miara Astrapitor's case. As you probably know, the village of Miara was razed and its people burnt alive by an astrapitor less than a month ago, in what has since been conclusively proven to be a tragic accident. What you don't know is the killer's sentence. In flagrant violation of precedent both within the Sedsesh province and in Mevwan as a whole, the perpetrator was not placed within a detention facility, but instead ordered to be fostered.

I understand the reasoning behind the judgement. It is a proven fact that upsetting the guilty party further could lead to additional tragedy. Implementing the extreme isolation measures that would mitigate more uncontrolled psionic activity would itself be such an upset, and hazardous to attempt. Sometimes, the preservation of sapient life must come before justice. However, this was not necessarily the case. The killer could have served their sentence while unconscious, or even been killed to eliminate the threat they pose altogether. They already killed anyone who would have missed them.

You may call me a coward for refusing to reveal my identity. You may be correct. Would you let someone like that know who you are if you had said what I have?

Submitted by an anonymous journalist

Adelene
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Re: Selections from the Press Archives

Post by Adelene »

Excerpt from the Zwiakwo School for Psions Student Handbook, p. 14, printed as an inset in the Delo-Kyan Observer: Volume 67, Issue 222 wrote:
* All new students are considered uncontrolled by default.

* Students may request a control test from their Head Teacher at any time. Tests are usually held every Friday in the north gym. Students who pass this test are considered controlled.

* Students may resume uncontrolled status at any time. Students who find themselves having difficulty with their powers are advised to do so, as any significant mishap that happens while a student is in controlled status will result in the student being returned to uncontrolled status and barred from taking the control test for a minimum of one month, along with any punishments deemed appropriate.

* Uncontrolled students are to wear a safety scarf at all times when not in their dorm building. These scarves are available at all times in room 50H. Students who are prone to losing things may be issued a buttoning scarf.

* Uncontrolled students and students under the age of 14 (human) or 25 (Zaee) may not leave the campus without a school-provided escort or legal guardian or the written permission of their Head Teacher.

* Students who have maintained controlled status for a full month may check items out from the library.

* Students who have maintained controlled status for a full six months may request a private room in the upperclass dorms; these are assigned on a first-come-first-served basis.
Zwiakwo School for Psions Student Newsletter: Volume 187, Issue 36 wrote: Notice: All Students

Due to the recent events at Miara and subsequent Stillmind Society activity, the following policy changes are in effect until further notice (anticipath consensus: 3 months): All uncontrolled students are confined to school grounds unless accompanied by a legal guardian. Controlled students may leave school grounds only with a school-supplied escort or legal guardian. Exceptions to this policy may be granted on a per-outing basis by Head Teachers.

Students who have been going off-campus for after-class entertainment are reminded that the symphonic telepathy club performs in the green auditorium every Wednesday at 4pm and the perturber gymnastics team performs in the west gym on the first and third Thursday of each month from 6-7pm. Other clubs are encouraged to see the event coordinator (in room 35D from 12-1 and 3-4pm on weekdays) if they would like to reserve the use of school facilities to provide entertainment to their fellow students. Also, students who have been shopping off-campus are reminded that the campus store, between D and G buildings, is able to fulfill requests for items that it does not regularly stock.

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Re: Selections from the Press Archives

Post by Alicorn »

The Channeler: Volume 1, Issue 1, excerpt (Editor's Introduction) wrote: Thank you for picking up the inaugural issue of The Channeler! This magazine is going to be about anything and everything to do with the Mevwan Channel and how it affects Island and even Mainland life. (Yeah, kind of a weird topic, I'm only going to put out an issue every month until I get enough reader submissions to supplement my own stuff!) I do mean everything to do with the Channel. Send me articles about fishing and whaling and oyster-diving, about ferries and regattas and houseboats, about bridges and swimmers and buoys, about beaches and - you get the idea! Like, in this issue, I (and two of my brothers and my cousin and my aunt who helped get this off the ground, thanks you guys!) wrote about the following:

- Comparing and contrasting traditional Islander and Mainlander attitudes towards the waterway (hint: Mainlanders worshipped it, but Islanders used it for its resources!) (p. 2)
- The history of fish farming in the Channel (p. 5)
- Tips for if you want to go swimming in it (here's tip: it's not actually a good idea unless you're the right kind of astrapitor!) (p. 9)
- A directory of all the ferry services that cross the Channel (I'm going to make this a regular feature, with schedule inserts even, once the ferry people answer my letters!) (p. 15)
- The annual Katha J. Theritsa Memorial Floating Light Ceremony (p. 23)
- The decline of salmon fisheries (p. 27)
- 50 household uses for saltwater (so you don't have to overtax your desalinization appliance) (p. 30)
- An interview with the representative of a community of linked houseboats on the Channel (p. 35)
- Submission guidelines on how to send in an article about the Channel (p. 46)

I also reprinted (with permission) an article from "Smoke Offerings" (it's an Elehaithi magazine if you don't know!) about Elehaithi gods that have to do with the Channel (p. 12), and part of an article from the Crash Museum Newsletter about how Zaee have adapted to Mevwan's geography (obviously I just reprinted the part about the Channel!) (p. 21), and an article from "The Mevwani Athlete" about the Leafmonth Nebatsen Race (p. 42)!

Instructions about how to subscribe so you get the next issue of The Channeler right when it comes out are on the back cover! I hope you subscribe! Sincerely,
Mard E. R. S. M. L. Tambin

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