Fore-note:
It took almost a month for Google's Adsense to adapt to the change in content. This may mean I have to produce this article less often, or it may be more complicated than that. In the mean time, I apologize to anyone expecting a bi-weekly article. A more regular schedule will be adopted when I get a feel for Adsense. She's a tough mistress, she is.
In other news, the blog is now Internet Explorer ready. But it doesn't look as pretty, so download a Mozilla derivative (like Firefox) anyway.
Links Generated:
N e w s p r i n t
Newsprint in this case refers to a specific type of paper that is very pulpy, cheap, and easily degradable. Newsprint is made through physical grinding of stones on soft woods while submerged in water. This which produces an assortment of intertwined cellulose fibers when pressed and dried. Lignen, a gluey substance that yellows in sunlight, remains in the newsprint because newsprint is not cooked. For strength, other materials such as rayon fibrils, nylon, metal, or glass can be added. It is called newsprint because newspapers often use it to print on.
In general, I use newsprint as often as I can. It's easily recyclable, has many uses, and leaves only a small dent on the environment. Uses include:
- Art sketches
- Personal communication (i.e. letters or notes)
- Mass communication (i.e. newspapers)
My friends have a tiered approach to communication. For close, interpersonal communication that isn't necessarily important, newsprint that already has writing on it is used. For more important communication, new newsprint is used. For even more important information, we use a larger piece of a stronger stock of paper grown from harder and rarer trees, and we add artistic touches. For historically significant information of course, paper isn't used at all. When a communication is considered complete, the newsprint is recycled for less important information. In this way, historically significant information is remembered as it is reused for common communication.
The Lendreites also use newsprint to communicate with. They often prefer it over electronic communication for communication over short distances. Newsprint is so cheep and easy. Its biodegradable quality makes it leave little if any undue trace, environmentally speaking. Once the transient communication is completed, the paper can be burnt in order to start heat fires, or used as insulation.
Elves, myself included, use newsprint and newsprint derivitives as a type of currency, with the degree of empty space corresponding to a degree of worth. Since newsprint is simultaneously abundantly available and abundantly useful, and has a high turnover rate, it makes for a perfect currency. One can cheaply build a grinding apparatus to generate pulp for a pulpy, newsprint-like substance. Not anyone can mine Sulfate and refine the paper to the degree necessary for historical material.
Men historically have had a wholely different concept of "paper currency." Men (or Humans as some call them) take pains to make sure money doesn't "grow on trees," and thereby increase the money's value (i.e. a unit of Man money is worth quite a bit of newsprint.) This is because Men are proud and like to communicate their pride through superficially elevated worth. Incidentally, fatness in Man society is often communicative of happiness and/or high social standing, because fat people logically have access to a great deal of food, and therefore must have an asset of great worth in order to have come across so much food. Men sometimes even have a tendency to be gleeful over something that nobody else in the world has, not because it's useful or appealing, but simply because nobody else in the world has it. I still find it painfully difficult to understand Men. What about you, Lendria?
They can be shallow at times, but they are also at times useful. Confused is the word I'd use for most of them.
