Eclectic Views

    
This topic is mainly for my personal e-zine, Silicon Soapware, although I
may post other things here as well.  WELL members are welcome to post
comments.

For non-WELL people who wish to comment, I also run an email list.  For
the URL to join, look in any recent issue of the zine.  

For the complete archive, look in 

 http://www.well.com/~bubbles/SSList.html

If that URL ever changes, look in a recent issue for the URL for my main 
page and go from there.  
  

    
Let's start with the second "century" of SS, with issue #101:

                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #101
                        New Moon of April 1, 2003


Contents copyright 2003 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

You've probably all heard the little rhyme about what boys and girls are 
made of:  Sugar and spice and everything nice for girls, but snips and 
snails and puppy-dog tails for boys.  

Problem is, it doesn't cover all the bases.  Nowadays, what with growing 
public acceptance of alternative sexualities, I'm wondering about the 
transgendered, hermaphrodites, third-gender shamans, and other such new 
categories, many of which I probably haven't even heard of yet.  What are 
they made of?  And what other as yet unknown genders might be possible?  

I think it depends on what combinations of ingredients are allowed.  

Are we limited to the traditional six ingredients, in a strict format of 
"One from Column A, one from Column B, and one from Column C"?  If so, 
then there are only eight possibilities.  If, on the other hand, one can 
have any combination of any or all of the six then there are sixty-four 
possible mixes, although the one with no ingredients may not be very 
interesting.  Or maybe we need exactly three of the six, but are free to 
choose any three.  There are twenty ways to do that.  

And are other ingredients allowed?  If so, do they have to rhyme with the 
ones they replace?  Do they have to have similar initial consonants so as 
to preserve alliteration?  We just don't know.  We also don't know the 
relative proportions of the various items, and what effect that has.  

Clearly, more research is needed, on several fronts.  

First, we need to gather more data.  Are all girls really made of sugar 
and spice and everything nice, with all boys being made of snips and 
snails and puppy-dog tails, or are there some in whom these ingredients 
differ?  And if the ingredients do vary, are the variations associated 
with any observable physiological or behavioral traits?  

Unfortunately, we do not yet have the technology to screen large numbers 
of people for this kind of thing.  So before we can amass a statistically 
significant database we need to develop better analysis techniques and 
equipment.  The vast pool of unemployed talent in Silicon Valley might be 
able to accomplish this, but they would need funding.  And in the current 
climate of recession plus war, funding may be difficult to get.  

Another possible line of research might involve animal models.  That 
would let us do experiments that would not be allowed on humans.  But do 
we know what male and female mice or guinea pigs or whatever are made of?  
And again, we have the problem of funding.  

Perhaps we can take advantage of the war situation:  If, for example, one 
combatant were to spray the other side's troops with Everything Nice, 
would the victims follow the gender stereotype and become less inclined 
to fight?  In the event of an Everything Nice attack, would Puppy-Dog 
Tails be an effective antidote?  Even if we are prohibited by the Geneva 
Convention from using this type of weapon, we still need to be able to 
defend against it if others use it on us.  So research in this area is 
desperately needed, on a wartime crash-priority basis.  

I'm just an engineer, with no experience in writing grant applications or 
organizing scientific research projects.  So if you're experienced in 
those areas and want to help, please contact me.  


                          *********************

"I laughed so hard I snorted coffee out of my nose all over the keyboard.  
And that was very odd, because I was drinking Pepsi."


                          *********************

I have an old spring-wound alarm clock that seems to have gone wonky.  I 
hadn't used it for a while, and after I took it out of storage and wound 
it up it started gaining an hour or more a day.  

But it just occurred to me that it may not actually be broken.  Maybe 
what's really happened is that the rotation of the Earth has slowed, and 
They are keeping it secret and beaming some kind of hidden signals to 
slow down all the electronic clocks and watches in the world to match.  
People may notice that their work day seems to drag on longer, but nobody 
has any real evidence to point to because there are so few spring-wound 
non-electronic clocks left.  

So does anybody else reading this have a spring-wound non-electronic 
clock?  If so, does it agree with your electronic timepieces?  


                          *********************

Speaking of technologies that were common in years past but are now 
vanishing, how many of you have pressure cookers in your kitchens?  How 
many of your parents or grandparents had them?  

There was sort of a fad for pressure cookers around the early 1950's.  My 
parents had one, and there were a fair number of jokes about them in the 
funny papers and on TV situation comedies.  And then they sort of faded 
from use and from public consciousness.  I recall seeing my parents using 
the bottom part as just another ordinary pot, but I don't recall seeing 
it used as a pressure cooker once the novelty of it wore off.  

So why did pressure cookers fade from home kitchens?  Safety?  Despite 
jokes about them blowing up, I suspect there was really little danger 
since the one we had did have redundant safety features.  And they could 
have become even safer over time had the technology remained in demand.  

I suspect the real reason was that the main benefit, being able to cook 
some foods somewhat faster, was fairly minor compared to the cost and the 
hassle.  Also, you couldn't stir foods while cooking, and you couldn't 
watch while the cooking was going on.  And they were only good for things 
you wanted to boil or steam.  You couldn't use them for baking or frying, 
or defrosting processed frozen foods like those newfangled TV dinners.  

I think their limited applicability was what did them in.  They're still 
used in commercial food processing, but they were too specialized to 
appeal to very many homemakers.  

Microwave ovens, on the other hand, were useful for more different types 
of tasks and were simpler to deal with.  And even though there are real 
dangers if too much microwave energy escapes from the oven, the hazards 
are more abstract and harder to portray in situation comedies than 
explosions with food all over the kitchen ceiling.  

And now, with the market going more and more to processed foods and fewer 
people cooking from scratch, there is even less need for pressure cookers 
in the home.  There will probably always be a few people using them for 
specialized tasks like home canning, but they're unlikely to ever become 
common again.  


                          *********************

Thoughts of how pressure cookers failed to catch on among American 
homemakers leads me to think of other technologies we'll probably never 
see in the home.  

One that comes to mind is tiny x-ray machines at the dinner table so you 
can x-ray your fish for bones, bite by bite.  You could do other things 
with it as well, such as finding out which chocolates have nut centers 
and which don't.  But even with those other uses, it'll probably never 
catch on.  

It would be expensive to develop, especially with having to put in enough 
safety features to satisfy the gov't, and even if you can make it safe 
much of the public is paranoid about "radiation".  Since the benefits of 
the device are rather small compared to the costs, it will probably never 
come to the mass market.  

So that's another item I probably shouldn't be trying to push as a 
Silicon Valley start-up.  


                          *********************

There's also the bit of not-too-promising technology I dreamed about one 
night recently.  I had a mitten whose palm area was full of heating 
elements so I could cook food just by holding or touching it.  There was 
insulation inside under the heaters so my hands wouldn't get too hot.  I 
think I could also burn lumps of coal that way.  

In the dream I thought this was an old idea I'd thought of previously, 
but that seeming memory may have also been part of the dream.  

In any event, I suspect the commercial potential is quite limited, not 
worth trying to seek out major investors for.  


                          *********************

We just had Equinox a week or two ago.  Winter is winding down and spring 
is springing forth.  While there may still be ice in colder parts of the 
country, it's on its way out.  And the art piece of sculptured ice 
skaters that graced a little parkway near here during the holidays is 
long gone.  

All this somehow got me to wondering about a comic-book cliche:  Some 
ice-skaters or fishermen or some such go out on a frozen lake.  Near the 
middle of the lake is a sign:  DANGER -- THIN ICE.  Someone ventures too 
close to the sign, whereupon the ice breaks and they fall in, or suffer 
some other comic-book fate.  

This got me to wondering about that THIN ICE sign.  How does the person 
who puts it up every winter avoid the same fate as the skaters who 
venture too near it later on?  Or does he avoid it?  Falling in may not 
be all that bad if you know in advance when it's going to happen, so they 
can have the Rescue Squad and fresh dry clothes and all that good stuff 
waiting.  

Thing is, you never see the THIN ICE sign being put up, so there's no way 
of knowing how it's done.  

And what happens later on in spring when the ice is almost completely 
gone?  Does someone somehow take the sign and put it in storage for the 
summer?  Or is it just left to sink when the ice finally melts, with a 
new sign being put up every year?  

If it's just left there, then as the centuries pass won't the lake 
eventually fill up with THIN ICE signs?  

Or maybe they take a middle course:  Let the sign sink, but then sometime 
around late summer or early fall, just before the lake starts to freeze 
again, send a diver down to retrieve it.  That would minimize the time 
they would need to pay for storage space for it.  

So does anybody know how they really do it?  


                          *********************

There's a street near here that reminds me of some Fifties and early 
Sixties science fiction.  

It's a long block of duplexes, all apparently built by one developer.  
There are three or four different front facades, combined in various ways 
with three or four different designs for the rest of the building, so 
that no two of the ten or so houses are exactly alike.  But the overall 
effect is still one of cookie-cutter conformity.  

As I said, I'm reminded of science fiction from the Fifties and early 
Sixties where a common theme was persecution of whoever was Different 
from "Normal".  Maybe the neighbors and/or the authorities thought the 
protagonist was a Communist or something when in reality he was just 
someone who liked to think too much.  Or maybe he had better things to do 
with his money than buy all the latest consumer status symbols.  Or he 
didn't watch enough TV and didn't like the top-rated shows.  Be the 
details as they may, if you dared deviate from the norm, you were likely 
to end up in Big Trouble.  

This conformity theme may not have been prominent in the best-selling 
novels of the time, but it did show up in quite a few short stories in 
the science fiction magazines.  

Then all that pent-up individualism burst free into the Psychedelic 
Sixties.  

So what themes in today's science fiction might be pointing to the next 
big wave of social change?  


                          *********************


                            Alternate Routes

He was crazy.
We all knew that.
All his talk of strange exotic lands 
     he would someday run away to proved it,
Since it was well known
That here was the only place there was.
Still, he could be quite convincing
So we had to keep reminding ourselves
That he was crazy.

Further proof:
One night late, driving home from a party or something,
As he approached the curve in the road
We saw him signal to turn right.
He tried to explain about another road to the left
They had taught us not to see
But that only proved
How crazy he was.

And so we went,
Being careful not to look too hard as we passed the curve,
Until
One night late, driving home from a party or something,
As he approached the curve in the road
We saw him signal to turn left
And vanish.  

We all stood there, 
Telling each other that we could see,
Way down in the canyon,
His flaming wreckage.
I felt it best not to mention
That to me the faint red glow
Looked more like tail lights
Dwindling toward the horizon.


                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 0420 hr  5/17/80
                                        entered 2115 hr  2/08/92


                          *********************

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is 

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address 
will be posted.  That's the one you want if you like conversation.  
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
almost nothing in between.  Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.  

If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're 
getting the BCC version.  That's the one for those who want just Silicon 
Soapware with no banter.  The zine content is the same for both.  

To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to  

 http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi

and select the ss_talk list.  Enter your email address in the space 
provided and hit Signup.  When you receive an email confirmation request 
go to the URL it will give you.  (If you're already on the list and want 
to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list 
posting you receive.) 

To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or 
bubbles@well.com).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

    
Hot damn! Excellent addition to pre.vue.  Welcome, bubbles.
  

    
> spray the other side's troops with Everything Nice

Or tell them the Irresistible Joke.
  

    
Pressure cookers have recently made a comeback. I almost bought one a
few years ago, but realized I didn't need another kitchen gadget.
  

    
My mama's pressure cooker always scared the hell out of me. Always
seemed on the verge of blowing the house up.
  

    
They have much improved safety valves now.
  

    
                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #102
                         New Moon of May 1, 2003


Contents copyright 2003 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

This New Moon is on May Day, and that reminds me of a conversation at a 
recent social event.  One of the people I was talking with was a school 
teacher, and when the subject of May Day came up she said that they don't 
do Maypoles in public schools nowadays.  Too many people would object on 
religious grounds.  

That reminded me that back when I was little we did have Maypoles at 
school, and they had little or no religious significance.  A Maypole was 
just a thing people did to celebrate the season, like "Trick or Treat" 
for Halloween or turkey dinner for Thanksgiving.  If any of the adults 
were aware of the fertility symbolism of the Maypole they didn't tell us 
innocent children.  

I think my first Maypole experience was in kindergarten.  I have this 
memory fragment of a bunch of us kids holding ribbons that were attached 
to some kind of tall pole.  In retrospect it was probably a Maypole, 
although I suspect I didn't understand what was going on at the time.  

They also had one when I was in first grade, but I missed it.  I have 
this memory of being driven off in the car and looking back and seeing 
the other children standing around a pole holding ribbons.  I think I was 
being taken to the hospital to have my tonsils out.  

As far as I can recall they didn't have one the years I was in second and 
third grades.  May Day would have been on a weekend, although I don't 
know whether that was the reason.  

Then one year they did put up a Maypole, but the ceremony got rained out.  
Or maybe there was a thunderstorm, and they didn't want to take a chance 
with a tall pole and lightning.  Be that as it may, I recall being inside 
looking out through the window at the pole with its brightly colored 
ribbons under the threatening skies, and I recall that we never did get 
to actually do anything that May Day.  

Then the school quit having Maypoles.  This would have been the early 
1950's.  Was that when the Soviets started taking over May Day as a big 
military parade day?  I recall seeing pictures of May Day military 
parades on TV and in the papers, but few if any mentions of Maypoles.  
Maybe celebrating May Day had become somehow unpatriotic?  

Nobody seemed to be interested in doing Maypoles in college either.  

My next experience with Maypoles came after I got into Paganism.  
Nowadays Pagans and Witches and such do them, but public schools don't.  
Apparently the Maypole now belongs to that specific set of religions, so 
it's no longer allowable in the supposedly religiously neutral public 
schools.  

How things have changed.  


                          *********************

Something reminded me of the cartoon cliche of the hole in the bridge or 
whatever, with cartoon characters walking right across on thin air as 
long as they don't look down.  So some blind guy has a seeing-eye duck 
that can fly across such gaps, so he never notices the difference.  


                          *********************

This neighborhood has overhead phone lines and TV cables, some of which 
are visible from my window.  And as I sit at my computer I now and then 
see a squirrel running along the wires.  Do they have no fear of heights?  
Squirrels are fairly small, so falling from that height may not hurt 
them, for square-cube reasons.  And they seem pretty secure up there, 
what with their claws and all.  

In other places I've seen rats walking along overhead phone wires.  If a 
rat meets a squirrel on a wire, who gets the right of way?  Does it go by 
species, or direction of travel, or what?  

Now part of me is wondering if squirrels and rats and any other animals 
that travel along overhead wires might benefit from something like a 
railroad dispatcher to avoid right-of-way conflicts when two animals want 
to go in opposite directions on the same wire.  

One problem is language:  How does the dispatcher communicate with the 
traffic?  Maybe play the relevant animal noises for "come here" or "stay 
back"?  Or put nozzles around to spray pheromones to signal "Go" and 
"Don't Go"?  

Another problem is when an animal is already on a wire and then changes 
its mind about which way it wants to go.  That could really mess up 
traffic.  Does it happen often?  I think it does happen sometimes, such 
as when an animal sees a potential mate going the other way on another 
wire.  So we'll need some way to discourage that, or at least detect it 
and notify other traffic accordingly.  

An even bigger question is why bother in the first place?  The animals 
seem to be muddling through OK with the present non-system, at least with 
the rather low levels of traffic I see from my window.  

Deciding not to bother also solves the problem of how to pay for it.  The 
audio system for playing animal noises, along with that pheromone spray 
stuff, would probably cost a fair amount of money, not to mention 
operators' salaries and other expenses.  So there's a lot to be said for 
just letting the animals handle it themselves.  

But might there be reasons to do it, even with the problems?  Perhaps it 
would be a way to create jobs to boost the economy out of its present 
slump.  Nationwide there would be millions of openings for squirrel 
dispatchers, not to mention the business that could be generated building 
the equipment, so it could be a big economic boost.  

And the jobs don't need much in the way of special qualifications.  It's 
not like railroad dispatching or air traffic control, where a collision 
is Really Bad News.  So what if a squirrel gets into a fight or falls off 
a phone wire now and then?  It has a good chance of escaping uninjured, 
and even if it doesn't, what's one squirrel more or less?  So it's the 
kind of job almost anybody could do, even if they're not very good at it.  

Of course if the squirrel falls into the path of something like a 
Presidential motorcade, and the limo driver swerves to avoid it and ends 
up killing several bigwigs, that could be a problem.  But they could 
always put in temporary special operators for that kind of thing, so it's 
not a reason not to proceed with the program.  

So if you think this is a good idea to help the economy, write your 
Congressperson today.  


                          *********************

A few days ago the news from Iraq was about how we'd gotten hold of some 
Iraqi bigwig's personal phone book, with numbers for other high officials 
and such.  

Part of me wants to give the phone book to telemarketers.  That might be 
worse than anything our military could do to them.  Or would that violate 
the Geneva Convention?  


                          *********************

"The concept of gloobulon is hereby abolished."  -- Official Decree

Q:  What does "gloobulon" mean?  I'm not familiar with that word.  

A:  It doesn't mean anything.  The concept that it used to be the word 
for has been abolished.  

Q:  So it used to mean something?  

A:  Yes, at one time it did.  

Q:  So why don't I remember what it used to refer to?  

A:  Because you are a loyal subject of our Leader.  When the abolition 
decree came out, you immediately purged all memory of the former concept 
of gloobulon from your mind.  

Q:  But shouldn't I still be able to look it up in dictionaries and such?  

A:  Not really.  It is said that even the stars in the sky move in 
accordance with the will of our Leader.  So when the concept that the 
word gloobulon once referred to was abolished, it instantly vanished from 
all books and other documents, just as it faded from your memory.  

Q:  So how do I know there was ever such a thing as gloobulon in the 
first place?  

A:  Because our Leader says so.  


                          *********************

One email list I'm on has been having a flap about astrology and related 
matters.  Somebody posted something about seeing more snafus and such 
because Mercury was about to go retrograde, whereupon someone else 
responded with a rather scathing rant against "pseudo-science".  He went 
on at some length about how astrology was just a bunch of baloney 
(although he used a less polite word than "baloney").  

The original poster replied along the lines of "Astrology may be false 
for you, but it works for me," whereupon the other replied with 
"Astrology is false for everyone, including you, and you're just deluding 
yourself if you believe otherwise."  He then went into a discussion of 
how there is no plausible physical mechanism by which it can work, so 
therefore it must not work.  

I then chimed in with a few points.  

First, how do we know that what we think of as "reality" is real?  It 
seems real, and it usually works to our advantage to assume it's real, 
but do we really Know?  Perhaps I'm really some kind of creature that the 
present "me" has never heard of, somewhere off in the Fifth Zfexlthrop 
Dimension, and that creature is just dreaming that it is me.  If that's 
the case, how would "I" know it before the dreamer woke up?  I probably 
wouldn't.  

Or maybe we're the gods playing some game akin to "Dungeons and Dragons" 
to while away eternity.  If so, what can the characters (as opposed to 
the players) know about the rules of the game?  

And even if we are who we think we are and the world is pretty much what 
we think it is, there are limits to the scientific method.  

I'm reminded of the cartoon titled "One Froggy Evening" in which the 
protagonist (Porky Pig?) finds a singing dancing frog.  Problem is, it 
will perform for him but not for anybody else.  If anybody else is around 
the frog just sits there, maybe giving an occasional croak, but never 
doing anything resembling singing or dancing.  So all our hero ever 
succeeds in doing is making people think he's crazy.  He finally gives up 
and gets rid of the frog, leaving it for somebody else to find.  

Although the makers of the cartoon probably didn't intend it as such, 
it's a demonstration of one of the limits of the scientific method:  If a 
phenomenon is intelligent and doesn't want to be found, then the 
scientific method won't find it, even if it's real.  

So if whatever deities there may be don't want scientists to find them 
(and are smart enough not to be outsmarted by the scientists), they won't 
be found.  And those gods may also be hiding the whole realm of what we 
might call paranormal phenomena.  We just can't know.  


                          *********************


                              Cotton Clouds


We don't want to make the gods sad, 
But for the sake of the green earth 
We need to give them headaches.  

Headaches?  Why would the gods need headaches?  

Once upon a time there was no such thing as rain, 
And the world was all dry and brown. 
But then one god got a headache
And took pills to relieve it.  

He threw the cotton from the pill bottle
Away into our sky
Where it became a rain cloud.  

With the rain came green growing things
But they didn't last. 
After a while they withered back to brown
Until the next time some god got a headache 
And threw his pill-bottle cotton
Into our sky to make more clouds.  

When the gods decided they needed to have headaches more often
To keep the world green 
They created humanity.  

Our job is to do strange quirky amusing things
To get them thinking and wondering and laughing so hard
That they get constant headaches
And have to keep tossing pill-bottle cotton
To make rain clouds to keep the world green.  

But we have to be careful. 
If we go beyond the strange and quirky 
Into the truly hurtful
Like wars and murderous cruelty and taking evil advantage of others
It makes the gods sad
And they won't want to watch our strange amusing antics
And won't get headaches
And won't throw away pill-bottle cotton 
And the world will again be all dry and brown.  


                                   -- Tom Digby
                                   First draft 17:30 04/15/2003
                                   Entered     13:34 04/18/2003
                                   Revised     13:54 04/30/2003
                                   Revised     02:12 05/01/2003


                          *********************

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is 

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address 
will be posted.  That's the one you want if you like conversation.  
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
almost nothing in between.  Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.  

If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're 
getting the BCC version.  That's the one for those who want just Silicon 
Soapware with no banter.  The zine content is the same for both.  

To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to  

 http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi

and select the ss_talk list.  Enter your email address in the space 
provided and hit Signup.  When you receive an email confirmation request 
go to the URL it will give you.  (If you're already on the list and want 
to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list 
posting you receive.) 

To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or 
bubbles@well.com).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

    
                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #103
                        New Moon of May 30, 2003


Contents copyright 2003 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

Someone at a party showed an imitation Star Trek episode that some fans 
had made.  It was quite good for a fan-made amateur project.

It also reminded me of an idea I'd once had that might be good as an 
episode of some wacky comedy or something:  Someone loses a rental copy 
of a movie, and rather than pay for replacing it decides to re-create it 
themselves in hopes the rental company won't notice the difference.  

So they get their friends together in front of a camcorder, and act out 
what they remember of the movie as best they can, improvising sets and 
costumes and such as they go.  When they finally turn in the finished 
product the rental company doesn't really look at it, but just puts it on 
the shelf along with other copies of that same movie.  

The real fun comes when someone else rents it.  Will they be familiar 
enough with the original to realize that something isn't right?  If the 
original is something really bad, like "Plan Nine from Outer Space" it 
may not really matter.  

Or maybe this is one of those comedy worlds where that kind of thing 
happens all the time.  The climax could come when the original movie is 
shown at the local art theater, and they go to see it.  That's when they 
realize that the movie they'd rented and lost and re-created was itself 
somebody else's re-creation of a lost rental.  


                          *********************

Someone was talking about Programmable Gate Arrays, which are a type of 
electronics chip.  But I mis-heard it as "Programmable Gatorade"

That got me to wondering:  If there were such a thing as programmable 
Gatorade, what might it be?  

Might it be a sports drink spiked with nanobots?  Could you set it, 
perhaps by turning a dial on the bottle before you drink it, to favor 
some muscles or body systems at the expense of others?  This might be 
useful for tailoring it to a particular sport, such as track and field vs 
weight-lifting.  

Of course more nefarious uses come to mind, but hopefully there will be 
some kind of security to keep the chances of such misuse low.  


                          *********************

Am I still me?  

As far as I know I am, although if I had just now become me after having 
previously been someone else I would never know it if the memory swap 
upon becoming me had been good enough.  We tend to assume that we stay 
who we are, although that could be just an illusion.  Perhaps in reality 
we are constantly swapping identities, becoming somebody else every few 
days or hours or even minutes.   

Since there's no real way to know, all one can do is assume that one has 
always been whoever one seems to be at the moment.  


                          *********************

As you may know, a Bardic Circle is when a bunch of people sit around and 
take turns singing or reading poems or otherwise performing.  Sometimes 
the emphasis is on original work by the performer, but in some circles it 
can be anything a performer feels like doing, even if somebody else wrote 
it originally.  

So now I'm thinking of a Bardic Circle of the Gods.  A bunch of gods get 
together and take turns showing off worlds they've created.  They do this 
by temporarily putting aside knowledge of their godhood while living 
lives in each others' worlds.  Is that what this world is?  Is that what 
we are?  


                          *********************

Will digital technology, especially copy protection, cause the creative 
works of our age to be lost to posterity?  

For the most part we're no longer putting our words onto things like clay 
tablets that are likely to survive for centuries or even millennia after 
their creators are gone, and which can be read without special equipment 
by anybody who knows or can learn the language.  Instead we're trusting 
our thoughts and inspirations to digital media like CD's and DVD's.  

Not only are digital media less likely to withstand the ravages of time, 
but they require highly advanced technology to read.  And even if you 
have the technology, you won't get very far without knowledge of the 
digital coding system that was used.  Some error-correcting schemes, for 
example, make the bits look like random noise that make sense only if you 
know the code. 

Copy protection may be making the situation even worse.  While anybody 
with enough computer power may be able to take a brute-force approach to 
things like error-correction coding, trying various likely things almost 
at random until one produces something that looks like plausible data, 
some copy protection relies on encrypting the data.  The cryptographic 
keys are known to the makers of current generations of players, but 
they're kept more or less secret from the public.  So there's a good 
chance they'll be lost to posterity.  This may raise the difficulty of 
future archaeologists deciphering our digital media from "unlikely but 
possible" to "impossible".  

So umpty zillion years from now most of the 21st Century may be a blank 
chapter in the history books, alongside the likes of certain pre-
Christian religious mysteries whose practitioners did too good a job of 
keeping their cult secrets secret.  


                          *********************

What can be done to keep the art of our time from being lost to posterity 
because our descendants may not be able to read our digital media, 
especially the stuff that's copy-protected?  

Perhaps we need to start putting up pyramids full of some modern 
equivalent of clay tablets.  

I envision structures as massive and enduring as the Pyramids in Egypt, 
but containing art and literature instead of dead kings.  The material 
would be embodied in enduring analog media, or if there must be digital 
media, there would be instructions on how to read it.  These instructions 
would be in several languages, along with diagrams and pictures to aid in 
translation in case all of our current languages are lost.  

One thing I don't know what to do about is the grave-robber problem.  Can 
we get around it by creating enough duplicate sites that at least a few 
are likely to escape being looted?  Or do we just have to trust future 
ages to handle it?  Our present art and literature is, after all, their 
heritage.  Can we trust them to be good stewards of it?  


                          *********************

All this talk of preserving our art and literature for posterity leads to 
a question:  What kind of information density can you get with clay 
tablets? 

I was thinking about how computer floppies are much more ephemeral than 
clay tablets, which have been proven to remain readable after thousands 
of years.  But a typical ancient clay tablet holds at most a few 
kilobytes of data, compared to a megabyte or two on floppies and hundreds 
of megabytes on a CD.  The tablets were generally made by someone 
manually pressing a stylus into the clay, so the resolution was limited 
to what could be seen with the unaided eye and manipulated by hand.  That 
leads to a very low information density by modern standards.  

Can we improve the resolution?  Mass-produced CD's are, I believe, 
pressed from glass masters.  I suspect the glaze on porcelain might be 
capable of holding similar amounts of data.  The main problem would be 
chemical reactions that erode and roughen the surface, obscuring such 
fine detail.  Could this be gotten around by a transparent protective 
cover layer?  Even if that gets messed up, polishing the surface should 
allow the fine detail at the interface of the next layer down to be seen.  

But what if the finder doesn't know there's a message there?  There are 
ways to point it out.  Maybe start with a line of human-readable text, 
then gradually make the marks smaller and smaller until you're down to 
the size of the bulk of the information.  People are curious, so somebody 
will sooner or later put the tablet under a microscope to see how small 
the marks get.  The human-readable first line could also function like 
the human-readable label on a CD.  

Perhaps someone will want to set up a foundation to pursue this? 


                          *********************

As I was watching someone playing a didgeridoo I noticed a leaf hanging 
on spider webs or some such in the bell end.  When I mentioned it he said 
that there were spiders living in several of his instruments.  That 
inspired a couple of parodies of "Itsy-Bitsy Spider".  They were fun at 
the time, although probably not destined for poetic immortality.  

And now I'm wondering if the spiders would do better by moving to some 
other instrument.  A sousaphone, for example, could give an excellent 
opportunity to see the world from atop a marching band.  Or if the spider 
family wants a more sedate life, how about a church piano?  It would get 
played a lot on Sundays, and possibly for other classes and practice and 
such during the week, but it should be nice and quiet most nights after 
bedtime.  There's some danger of the children getting smushed between the 
hammers and the strings, but that's probably avoidable with proper 
parental supervision and boundaries on permissible play areas.  

I'd stay away from things like piccolos and kazoos:  In something that 
small a spider is too likely to be noticed, and few human musicians look 
kindly on the idea of spiders living in instruments they put their mouth 
on.  I don't know if the didgeridoo player was an exception, or if he had 
just sort of given up on getting rid of them short of using pesticides 
that may be worse in the long run than the spiders.  


                          *********************

An update on the thing I wrote up in SS 102 about squirrels and other 
small animals using telephone wires as walkways:  A few days ago I saw a 
couple of squirrels jump from one wire to another in mid-span.  So there 
may not be as big a need for animal traffic control as I thought there 
was, at least in places with multiple wires.  But what of places that 
only have one wire?  


                          *********************

                               Lost? Child

What did you say, son?
Why did I cut what?  Those flowers?
Because they were there.
We do need to clear this field before fire season.

But you say they weren't a fire hazard like the dry grass
So we didn't really have to cut them?
Maybe not, but it was easier to go cutting straight through
     than to stop and think about it.
If you really want flowers, you can buy flowers somewhere later.
Quit worrying about that kind of stuff.
Just forget all about it.  

Gateways for the Little People?
You say if you relax in a field of wildflowers
And let your eyes unfocus and your mind go blank
You may suddenly hear music and song and laughter,
And if you follow your ears and your heart
They'll lead you through the flowery gate 
Into the land of the Little People, 
Whose cares are different and perhaps more to your taste
Than the cares of this world?
I'd better not catch you telling that to the neighbors.
They'll think there's something strange about you.
Quit worrying about that kind of stuff.
Just forget all about it.  

We're almost half done.  Let's take a break.
Here's a tree we can sit under.

Son, do you hear somebody singing off behind me somewhere?
Are you going to meet them?
What are you laughing about?
Where did you disappear to?
Son?
Son? 
Answer me!
Wherever you are, come back here!
I am your father!

Please come back and tell me 
If I really did just hear a faint voice
Telling me
"Quit worrying about that kind of stuff.
Just forget all about it." 


                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        entered  1215 hr  4/29/92



                          *********************

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is 

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address 
will be posted.  That's the one you want if you like conversation.  
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
almost nothing in between.  Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.  

If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're 
getting the BCC version.  That's the one for those who want just Silicon 
Soapware with no banter.  The zine content is the same for both.  

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                                -- END --
  

    
>  A few days ago I saw a
>  couple of squirrels jump from one wire to another in mid-span.  So there
>  may not be as big a need for animal traffic control as I thought there
>  was, at least in places with multiple wires.

LOL! I love how your mind works, bubbles.
  

    
                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #104
                        New Moon of June 29, 2003


Contents copyright 2003 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

Solstice was a week or so ago, and various people celebrated it with 
various rituals, some with mention of it being part of some "eternal 
cycle".  But is it really?  

In a sense it is, in that it repeats from year to year with little change 
over any one person's lifetime.  

But in another sense it isn't.  Scientists tell us that in the distant 
past the whole universe was nonexistent until it suddenly exploded into 
being, and at some distant time in the future the Sun will grow old and 
die.  And even if you don't take that long a view, many places have seen 
fairly major climate changes over the last few millennia.  

So while it's OK for most ordinary people to speak of the eternal cycle 
of the seasons, it's not really appropriate if you're a cosmologist or 
paleontologist or maybe even an archaeologist.  


                          *********************

My thought on waking the morning after Solstice was "It's all downhill 
from here."  Even if it wasn't noticeable yet, the season of light would 
be starting to wane, down to the nadir of darkness at the December 
Solstice.  I always feel a bit of melancholy at this time of year.  The 
first instance of it that I recall was at a childhood Fourth of July 
party, when it occurred to me that summer vacation was almost half over.  
In a few more weeks it would be August, and then it would be September 
and school would be starting again.  

I don't have school nowadays, but I do like the long daylight.  And the 
days of long daylight are slipping away, even as the weather continues to 
get hotter.  By Equinox the feeling will probably have passed its peak 
and be giving way to anticipation of the various festivities of the dark 
time of the year.  And then after the December Solstice the light will 
start to return, and the cycle will repeat.  


                          *********************

"He that has himself for a dentist has a fool for a patient."  


                          *********************

I had kind of a weird experience at the Laundromat a few weeks ago.  

I was leafing through a religious magazine that was sitting around, and 
someone who looked like he might be homeless asked me if I was a 
Jehovah's Witness.  I said no, and we got into a bit of a discussion of 
religion.  He went on about how he had been beaten up and stabbed and 
shot and hit in the face with a baseball bat, and how he suspected 
whatever God may exist had put us here to suffer.  

I didn't say anything, but I was amazed by how much violence had been a 
part of his life.  Does it come as a normal part of living on the 
streets, or did he tend to get into fights for other reasons?  It left me 
feeling thankful for my life as it has been, even with all its flaws.  

The conversation sort of wound down as he drank the wine he had just 
bought and his speech got more and more slurred and harder to understand.  
And eventually he left.  


                          *********************

At a recent party we got into a discussion about how right or wrong 
Einstein was about relativity and the impossibility of exceeding the 
speed of light.  The person who thought Einstein was totally wrong was 
also going on about how doubt is taboo in that field among scientists.  

At one point he brought up something I had often heard before:  When 
doubt about some scientific "truth" is taboo then progress in that field 
is pretty much blocked until the current generation of scientists dies 
off and is replaced by others with fresher viewpoints.  

I'd also heard something similar said of other fields, such as the arts.

That got me to wondering:  If progress in some field of science or art or 
philosophy really does now and then get blocked until some Old Guard dies 
off, what happens if medical science eventually gives us some kind of 
near-immortality, especially if the birth rate also goes down to keep the 
population from getting too big?

If it takes a lot longer for those in control to be replaced, what 
happens to fresh thought?  Do things stagnate?  


                          *********************

I have this mental image of a future when scientists develop effective 
immortality, and everybody still alive as of a certain date is more or 
less guaranteed, barring accidents, to live forever.  

Friends of one of the last people to die before the immortality thing 
becomes generally available are mourning his passing and thinking about 
how lucky they were to have lived long enough to become immortal.  

But that last person to die is happily sitting up in Heaven, looking down 
on Earth and being thankful that he got out just in time.  


                          *********************

Back in the early part of the 20th Century scientists didn't know what 
they think they know now about the history of our solar system.  

In one prevailing theory the planets formed on the fringes of a cloud of 
dust and gas and other debris as the cloud collapsed to eventually form 
the sun.  This meant that the outer planets would have formed first, 
before the inner ones.  It was also believed that the sun started out 
much hotter than it is now and gradually cooled to what it is today.  

What both of these theories have in common is that if any planets other 
than Earth were ever habitable, the outer planets would have became 
habitable before the inner ones.  Thus life on Mars would be older than 
life on Earth, which would in turn be older than life on Venus.  

Many people also believed in some kind of orderly "ladder of evolution" 
from primeval slime through trilobites and dinosaurs to humans.  

This was all reflected in the science fiction of the time.  Thus you had 
tales of ancient civilizations on Mars and dinosaurs on Venus.  

This was before the current theory of the dinosaur-killing meteor crash 
took over.  And nowadays I don't think anyone much believes in an orderly 
"ladder" of evolution.  It was also before they knew how much of a 
greenhouse Venus's atmosphere was.  In addition, our understanding of how 
stars form and evolved has changed considerably.  So ancient Martians and 
Venusian dinosaurs are pretty much absent from contemporary science 
fiction.  

So what other previously dominant scientific theories that have since 
fallen out of favor are reflected in the science fiction of the past?


                          *********************

In a discussion about brainstorming on The WELL (http://www.well.com/ (or 
telnet to well.com and log in as "newuser" if you're comfortable with 
Unix)) someone said something about posting silly ideas like "making 
shoes out of bubble gum".  That eventually triggered some serious 
thought:  A shoe made out of bubble gum would stick to the floor, so 
you'd have to coat it with talcum powder or something.  But it still 
wouldn't hold its shape, so you'd probably need some kind of semi-rigid 
outer covering.  

That led to thoughts of boots filled with something the consistency of 
bubble gum so that even if the boot is a bit large it wouldn't wobble 
around on the foot, and the stuff could act as a lubricant so you 
wouldn't rub the skin and get blisters.  

Since this would be messy to put on and take off, it would probably be 
used mostly in cases where the boots would be worn continuously for long 
periods of time, such as on space missions or in the military.  

If it's to be worn for days or weeks at a time, it should probably 
include anti-fungal and anti-bacterial agents to prevent some of the foot 
problems soldiers have had in the past.  It could also be formulated to 
absorb and/or reduce perspiration.  

And it might well end up being more comfortable than socks, once you got 
used to it.  


                          *********************

Some people are saying that movies are setting a bad example for our 
youth by showing people smoking, and that they should not be doing this.  

But it may depend on the time and place the movie is set in.  More people 
smoked in the Fifties and Sixties than do now, at least in the US.  And 
smoking was pretty much accepted in most social settings.  So a movie set 
around then would not be true to life if it didn't show people smoking.  

On the other hand, most people go to the bathroom several times a day but 
many movies don't show people going to the bathroom at all.  So if movies 
can gloss over people going to the bathroom, why can't they also gloss 
over people smoking?  


                          *********************

I have one of those digital thermometers that shows the Fahrenheit 
temperature, inside and outside, to a tenth of a degree.  During much of 
this past week it looked a lot like a listing of FM radio stations:  
89.1, 93.7, 100.1 ..."  

Even late at night, when things usually cool down quite a bit around 
here, it was still in the 70's outside.  That reminded me of this issue's 
poem, even though, strictly speaking, the weather condition known as 
"Santa Ana winds" (aka "Santana winds") is a Southern California thing.  
Similar winds do occur elsewhere, but under different names.  


                          *********************


                                Santa Ana

Warm winds make the night itself seem restless.
The trees toss and turn as they cannot get to sleep:
They wish they had the freedom to go running through the night
Like the leaves they often lose
To a wanderlust
That they
Can only dream of.  

Warm winds make the night itself seem restless.
A whispered invitation not to try to sleep:
To let the wind caress me running naked through the night
Like the gentle touch of lovers,
Lovers past
Or yet-to-be
I often dream of.


                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 0340 hr  5/29/78
                                        typed   0505 hr  9/16/79
                                        entered 1245 hr  4/09/92


                          *********************

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is 

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address 
will be posted.  That's the one you want if you like conversation.  
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
almost nothing in between.  Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.  

If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're 
getting the BCC version.  That's the one for those who want just Silicon 
Soapware with no banter.  The zine content is the same for both.  

To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to  

 http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi

and select the ss_talk list.  Enter your email address in the space 
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                                -- END --
  

    
                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #105
                        New Moon of July 28, 2003


Contents copyright 2003 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

By law, the State of California is supposed to have its yearly budget 
approved before each new fiscal year begins on July 1.  However, it is 
not unusual for this deadline to be missed, and this is one of those 
years.  Although they may have a budget by the time you read this, as of 
this writing they're almost a month late.  I believe the record for 
lateness of the budget is about two months. 

Although they're likely to come to terms within another few days, the 
science fiction speculator in me wonders what would happen if they're 
never able to agree.  What would it be like after something like twenty 
or fifty or a hundred years of not being able to pass a budget?  

If the present members of the state government are all long dead but 
there's been no money budgeted for poll workers and ballots and such to 
elect their successors, who makes the rules?  With no money to pay 
judges' salaries, who settles disagreements?  If localities can still 
pass local budgets, would California become a bunch of semi-independent 
city-states, answering only to the Feds?  

Would one of the states or countries bordering California (Oregon, 
Nevada, Arizona, Mexico) try to move in and take over?  Or are the Feds 
likely to step in before things get that far?  

Or is that degree of decline unlikely to happen because the last couple 
of surviving legislators are too likely to be from the same party and 
thus will finally agree on a budget, assuming some successor to the 
governor is still alive to sign it?  

Has any science fiction writer written anything along these lines?  Even 
if it can't happen in the real world, it might be good material for some 
kind of comedy.  


                          *********************

Another thought on the no-budget scenario:  What if it's a world where 
magic works, and the budget impasse is due to some kind of spell cast by 
an evil wizard?  Then the hero has to find and vanquish the wizard in 
order to restore order before the kingdom falls apart completely.  

This might be especially good in a world where magic works but only 
magic-users are aware of it.  Could this happen in the California of 
Harry Potter's world?  Since the main Harry Potter action is in Britain, 
it's possible that something like this could be starting to happen in 
California but that the news hasn't made a big splash in Britain yet.  
That may be why we haven't seen it mentioned in any of the Harry Potter 
books so far.  Perhaps it will show up in the future?  


                          *********************

According to the thermometer and the radio, it looks like it's going to 
be one of those summer days when the song "Sunny Side of the Street" does 
not sound all that attractive. 


                          *********************

I saw something rather unusual a couple of weeks ago.  

I was on my way to a movie, and was turning left from Mary St. onto 
Central Expressway, which is one of those quasi-freeways where traffic 
moves at near-freeway speeds between the occasional traffic lights.  Just 
as I was completing the turn the pickup in front of me slowed to a stop.  
Then I saw the reason:  A mother duck was leading her ducklings across 
the road.  Once they reached the curb traffic proceeded.  

I found that interesting for two reasons:  First, that I was at the right 
place at the right time to see it at all, and second that the vehicle in 
front of me stopped for the ducks instead of just running over them.  
Come to think of it, cars in other lanes must have also stopped, or the 
ducks wouldn't have gotten that far.  Were they already stopped for the 
traffic light?  

Was the mother duck just lucky in that the light happened to be with her 
on her crossing, or was she smart enough to wait for the light before 
starting across?  

It may also be worth noting that nobody exhibited any sign of road rage 
as far as I could tell.  Was that because there were cute baby ducks 
involved?  Or is it that politeness is really the norm, with road rage 
being the occasional headline-grabbing exception?  


                          *********************

Q:  Shouldn't that ad for "double pain windows" read "double pane 
windows"?  

A:  No, "double pain" is correct.  The glass is impregnated with a 
chemical that blocks endorphins, so if you cut yourself on a broken piece 
it will hurt at least twice as much as with other broken glass.  It's an 
anti-burglar and anti-vandalism thing.  

Q:  So is that why the picture only shows one layer of glass?  

A:  Yes.  


                          *********************

There's an idea I've had off and on over the years for reforming welfare 
while also aiding students and artists and writers and the like:  Paying 
people to attend what amounts to Study Hall.  

You have an area like the reading room of a large public library, with 
plenty of books and magazines to read, along with comfortable chairs and 
tables.  You may also have a semi-separate area with computers on which 
people can type up and print documents without disturbing others.  For 
parents there could be designated areas in which children are welcome, 
leaving other areas child-free and quiet.  

And you have a time clock at the door.  When someone enters, they clock 
in.  They are allowed to stay as long as they like (until closing time) 
as long as they don't damage anything or cause a disturbance.  They can 
read, write, type on the computers and save their stuff to CD or floppy, 
knit, sew, draw, paint, or do any of a number of other things as long as 
they do it quietly and don't make a mess.  Then when they leave they 
clock out and get paid minimum wage for the time they were inside.  

There would be few, if any, questions asked about other income.  I 
suspect few wealthy people would want to spend their time there, so it's 
sort of self-policing in that regard.  If that turns out not to be the 
case then people's ID info can be collected at the door and the money 
they earn while inside taxed along with their other income.  Since the 
IRS already has the bureaucracy set up for this, there's no sense 
duplicating it.  

How would this help students?  They could come in and get paid to do 
their homework.  Likewise, artists and writers could get paid for time 
they spend creating their pictures and stories and such.  

It would also help improve working conditions for the working poor, since 
employers would be competing against the study hall for employees.  This 
might even eliminate the need for explicit minimum-wage laws.  

You wouldn't need to build a whole bunch of new buildings to implement 
this.  Just use the existing public libraries, at least in the pilot-
program stages.  People could still go to the library to read or to check 
books in and out, with the only difference being that they would earn 
some small amount of money while doing it.  

There would still be those who could not attend paid study halls because 
of physical disability or other reasons, but other parts of the existing 
welfare system could take care of them, much as is done now.  

Since this is a new way of doing things, it's bound to have problems.  
But let's try to approach them in the engineer's spirit of "How can we 
work around this problem to achieve the goal?" rather than the naysayer's 
spirit of "This can't be done because of Problem X."


                          *********************

Another thing in the news lately is the system for emailing comments to 
the White House.  Their whitehouse.gov Web site has a complicated set of 
forms where you enter personal ID info, check boxes for whether you are 
agreeing or disagreeing with existing policy, select from a menu of pre-
defined categories and sub-categories, and finally get to type your 
comments into a dialog box.  Some commentators have suggested that it may 
be deliberately designed to discourage emails.  

On further thought, I suspect it's designed to make the process of 
writing to the President less like letter-writing and more like voting.  

Few letter writers have anything truly original to say, and the staff 
doesn't really need to read "I agree with X" or "I don't like Y" over and 
over again.  All they really need to do is count up how many people are 
For or Against whatever the issue is.  Maybe they spot-check to see how 
many people are trying to say things the staff hadn't anticipated, but 
they don't need to read every single email that comes in.  

So what does this mean to someone with an original idea?  It means that 
you should not try to send it directly to someone like the President.  

Instead, try to get your idea into the public consciousness in other 
ways.  Tell your friends about it, and suggest that they tell their 
friends.  Write letters to the editor of your local paper.  Mention it to 
whatever local politicians you are in touch with.  If you're a writer, 
work it into your stories.  If you have a personal Web site, put 
something about it there.  And so on.  If the idea has merit, the people 
in power will hear about it sooner or later without your having to 
contact them directly.  

Then when the White House staff has heard enough about it to consider it 
worth asking about on their Web site, you and your friends can log on and 
"vote" for it. 


                          *********************

 ... and now for something completely different:  


                              Meter Madness


One morning recently on the way to work
I encountered a crew
cutting little holes in the sidewalk
and planting
parking meters.  

That brought back memories from high school days 
of a summer job on the parking meter farm
tending cuttings while they took root
and grew to the proper size
for the streets.

Cuttings?
Yes, you could grow them from seed
but they might not breed true.
They pick up pollen from wild strains
or even now and then mutate
to offer sixty-two thousand years for a quarter
or else maybe fourteen point three nanoseconds
for some coin not yet invented.
With cuttings you know what you're getting
and besides, most varieties are seedless
to allow no chance for a half-forgotten meter
on some deserted side street
to go to seed,
scattering to the wind
to sprout in the most awkward places.

Few things can match the fury
of some quiet suburban homeowner
finding his lawn infested
with parking meters,
not to mention the possibilities of interbreeding
with fire hydrants,
street lights,
and newspaper vending machines.  

So now they use the seedless types
and give them anti-growth hormones 
so they won't get too tall
and the roots won't invade the sewers.
Like, how would you like
to get up in the night for a call of nature
only to find, emerging straight and proud 
from the toilet bowl:
"TIME EXPIRED"?  
I hear it used to happen
and that's how they got the idea
for the pay toilet.

But that's another story,
along with the rumors that they're working on new breeds
for the indoor potted-plant market 
to replace African violets 
and cacti
and catnip
and even hanging plants
(by crossing them with Salvador Dali's watches).  
That sounds kind of interesting,
as long as no one comes around
to give out tickets. 


                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 0440 hr  1/29/79
                                        typed   0345 hr  3/25/79
                                        entered 2325 hr  3/16/92


                          *********************

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is 

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address 
will be posted.  That's the one you want if you like conversation.  
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
almost nothing in between.  Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.  

If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're 
getting the BCC version.  That's the one for those who want just Silicon 
Soapware with no banter.  The zine content is the same for both.  

To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to  

 http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi

and select the ss_talk list.  Enter your email address in the space 
provided and hit Signup.  When you receive an email confirmation request 
go to the URL it will give you.  (If you're already on the list and want 
to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list 
posting you receive.) 

To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or 
bubbles@well.com).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

    
These are great.
  

    
Expect another back issue to be posted every couple of days through issue
#111, by which time issue #112 should be coming out.  Then after this
topic has caught up with the actual zine there should be one new issue
every New Moon, give or take a day or so.
  

    
                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #106
                       New Moon of August 27,2003


Contents copyright 2003 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

The way gasoline prices have been going lately, I wonder if people will 
start wearing little vials or ampules of it as jewelry.  After all, it 
feels like it's getting up there with semi-precious stones, even if 
actual math calculations show otherwise.  


                          *********************

A dream a few nights back got me to thinking.  

In the dream, one of the neighborhood "regulars" was not very smart, but 
people loved him anyway.  His needs were somehow taken care of, perhaps 
with money from odd jobs and such, supplemented by occasional gifts.  
People were very kind to him, and he was always very happy.  

I don't think he knew about his condition.  Sometimes he would attempt 
something complex with computers or the like, and the people around him 
would arrange things so he didn't know the attempt had failed.  That kept 
him from being unhappy.  He never knew what he was missing.  

As I awoke from that I got to wondering to what degree, if any, intellect 
is required for a being to have emotions.  If "I think, therefore I am" 
has any truth to it, how much thought does a being have to be capable of 
thinking in order to be?  

A related question that drifted past with no real answer was whether 
there can be such a thing as pure happiness without awareness of what one 
is happy about.   

That in turn reminded me of a dream I had a long time ago about something 
called a "Concerner".  It was a plain gray box about the size of a small 
pizza box, maybe thicker.  

It used some of the same technology as artificial intelligence, except 
that instead of artificial intelligence it was artificial emotion.  If 
you owned one, it cared about you.  It wished for you to be happy.  
That's all it did.  It just sort of sat there being concerned.  

In the dream they were being mass-produced commercially.  I don't recall 
anything about how well they were or weren't selling.  

Once we develop the necessary Artificial Emotion technology might this 
become a computer-age equivalent of the Pet Rock?  


                          *********************

Thoughts of the Concerner also lead me to wonder about the ethics of it 
all.  For example, would it be unethical for a sadist to build an 
Artificial Emotion thing that did nothing but sit around feeling sad?  


                          *********************

At the Plergbistani Ministry of Information

Jr. Tech:  Ever since this router broke down and started losing data 
packets, traffic through this node has actually increased, despite the 
reduced capacity.  Any idea why? 

Sr. Tech:  You must be new to the Plergbistani way of doing things.  We 
believe in cooperating with those in authority.  Thus our version of the 
Internet sees damage as censorship and funnels traffic through it.  


                          *********************

Here's another recent dream:  

I think it started with me working on my car in the middle of a busy 
street.  There was some construction or something blocking traffic in 
that lane, so nobody really seemed to mind my working on my car there.  

But then I walked home to get some parts, and while I was gone the 
construction crew finished up and now my car was sitting there blocking a 
lane of an otherwise clear street.  So they towed it.   

So I walked down to the tow yard to get the car back.  Somewhere along 
the way I met a former co-worker.  I explained to him that I was 
converting my car (a 1993 Geo Metro in waking life) so that I could drive 
it on Mars as well as on Earth (the question of how I was going to get my 
car to Mars never came up). 

The co-worker said that the DMV had lots of rules for me to follow, 
including a speed limit of 24 mph on hills.  When I asked about major 
roads where traffic was moving a lot faster than that, he said that maybe 
I would be allowed to go 38 mph there.  I think this applied on Earth as 
well as Mars, although he thought the reason for the lower limit was the 
danger of losing tire traction in the lower gravity of Mars.  

Apparently he was my go-between to the DMV for such things.  Anyway, he 
said that the DMV had compiled a report on the subject.  I asked if he 
had a copy he could give me and he ran over the hill to his house and 
brought one back.  It was 8 1/2 by 11, spiral bound with light gray 
cardboard covers, and about an inch thick.  

I started looking through it.  I don't recall any details, but it was 
clear that somebody who liked science fiction had quite a bit of fun 
putting it together.  

Somehow some of the problems with Spring Break in Florida were relevant, 
and there was a section by the authorities there on things like handling 
crowds of onlookers.  And there was something about driving on Mars being 
similar to driving underwater on Earth, and that section had a map of the 
undersea terrain around the southeastern US.  I think it also got into 
sharks being an endangered species and mapped some of their habitat areas 
that Martian drivers shouldn't disturb.  Or something like that.  There 
was a certain amount of dream logic in some of this.  

I looked at northern Florida on the map to see if they included my old 
home town of Fernandina, but that area was a jumble of symbols for all 
sorts of things, with no room for city names. 

And along about there is when I woke up.  


                          *********************

In mundane news, part of Microsoft's response to the latest email virus 
has been to say that future versions of Windows may come with automatic 
downloading of updates turned on by default.  That way most people's 
machines will get all the latest security fixes without the user having 
to do anything.  

But I'm wondering how secure that arrangement is.  What if an attacker 
somehow manages to infiltrate Microsoft or otherwise get control of the 
Microsoft update site?  Or what if they subvert the part of the Internet 
that's sort of equivalent to the phone system's 411 and send users to the 
attacker's machines instead of Microsoft's? 

Might there be a science fiction story or two there?  


                          *********************

A couple of weeks ago I went to a big engineering trade show called 
"Wescon" at the convention center in SF.  

The show itself was somewhat disappointing, perhaps because of the 
economy or perhaps because the Web may be taking over some of the 
function of that type of trade show or perhaps because my interests have 
changed, but the trip was good nonetheless.  

On the way there and back I got to do some exploring around downtown SF 
and I got to blow soap bubbles in a park with lots of people around.

And while I was at the show I got to try out one of those Segway scooter 
things. 

The Segway wasn't quite what I expected, but wasn't all that big a 
surprise either once I thought about it a bit.  

You control your forward or backward motion by leaning, and it felt like 
I couldn't quite trust myself to lean backward to back up, or maybe 
couldn't quite trust the Segway not to let me fall backward.  Forward was 
less of a problem, but I could still feel myself not trusting myself or 
the machine.  Turns (controlled by a twist thingie on the left handlebar) 
were easier to get used to.  

Not being fully trusting while moving backward may be just as well 
because of the difficulty of seeing where I'm going.  As far as moving 
forward is concerned, the person running the demo says it typically takes 
a day or two to get used to it.  

I don't plan to buy one, although the thought did cross my mind as I was 
playing around on it.  Their Web site quotes a price around $5000, 
although I sort of expect that to come down with increased sales and 
production volume if it catches on.  

Now I'm wondering how useful this thing really is.  I could see riding it 
to some of the places I go to regularly that are up to a few miles away, 
but not much farther than that unless I can take it on the bus or 
something.  I suspect it's like a bicycle in that respect, with the main 
difference being that riding a bicycle takes different skills and 
involves more exercise.  So it may be possible for some people who can't 
ride a bike to use a Segway instead, but the Segway wouldn't give the 
health benefits of the exercise you get on a bicycle.  

I don't know about the environmental aspects.  I suspect that the impact 
of manufacturing one may not be all that different from that of 
manufacturing a bicycle, although it's probably more rather than less 
because of the electronics and the batteries.  And since it does run on 
batteries, there's a slight increase in the electric utility load from 
recharging them.  Figure maybe a bicycle plus a boom box for the 
environmental impact?  

So would large-scale use of the Segway be good for society?  To the 
extent it gets people out of cars, I would guess Yes.  But to the extent 
it gets people off of bicycles or out of walking shoes I would guess No.  
I suspect it will do some of both, although I have no idea which will 
predominate.  


                          *********************

They're putting up a fence around that new private school that's taking 
over the former Senior Center a couple of blocks from here.  That's not 
really surprising, although it didn't occur to me to think about it 
before they started setting the posts.  

The schools I went to as a child didn't have any fences around them.  But 
then that was a different place and time, a small town half a century 
ago.  Are small-town schools still unfenced, or have the fears and evils 
of the world caught up with them as with the big-city schools?  

Is this another reason to mourn lost childhood innocence? 


                          *********************

This next item is a bit out of season, but I thought I should include it 
anyway because a scientific study of this magnitude will need several 
months of lead time.  In fact it may already be too late for Christmas of 
2003 and we should probably be making plans for 2004.  

What is this project I'm proposing?  Collecting and analyzing DNA from no 
less a personage than Santa Claus.  

First some background:  

At a party last night (August 27, 2003) the conversation somehow got onto 
people leaving food and drink out for elves and such, whereupon somebody 
mentioned the custom of leaving treats out for Santa on Christmas Eve.  

That reminded me that when I was little we would set out an apple and a 
glass of milk for Santa.  On Christmas morning we would find the empty 
glass along with the apple core and a thank-you note, along with whatever 
toys and other gifts Santa would have left for us.  

It didn't occur to me back then because the relevant technology didn't 
exist, but last night I realized that the apple core and the glass might 
well contain some of Santa's DNA in cast-off cells in his saliva.  

My proposal is that children all over the world who normally set out 
treats for Santa be asked to turn the leftovers in for analysis, along 
with reference samples from their parents and other household members who 
might have acted as Santa's Helpers.  

I expect that many of the samples from the food and drink will match 
someone in the household.  These "Santa's Helper" samples would be 
excluded from further study.  Then the samples that didn't match a 
"Helper" would all be checked against each other.  If all goes well, 
many, if not all, should match each other.  This would be a fairly firm 
indication that we do indeed have Santa's DNA.  

There are rumors that Santa helps the Easter Bunny deliver baskets of 
eggs and such on Easter, in exchange for the Easter Bunny helping Santa 
deliver Christmas goodies.  If that's the case, the non-Helper DNA should 
match up into two groups, with one being consistent with rabbit DNA.  

Likewise, if Father Frost or other legendary gift-distributors are 
distinct from St. Nicholas, we should see it in our DNA samples.  

It's possible that the project won't find anything.  Since Santa is 
reputed to be a fairly powerful magic user, he may be able to make his 
DNA vanish or rearrange itself to match one of a child's parents.  But 
that would only prove that Santa is too smart for us.  

In any case this may be the first step toward answering many age-old 
questions about Santa Claus and Christmas.  

As I said earlier, I know it's a bit early to be talking about Christmas, 
but a project of this magnitude needs several months' lead time.  In 
fact, it may already be too late to do much for Christmas of 2003, 
although a small pilot project might still be possible.  But if we work 
at it, we might be able to have the required network of DNA collection 
and analysis sites in place for Christmas of 2004.  And by then the 
technology will have advanced another year's worth, so we'll be able to 
do even more next year than we could have done this year.  


                          *********************


                           Will You Write Me?


I can't see them or hear them or smell them, 
But I know they're there:  
Unwritten poems, waiting for some poet to come and write them. 

There's one at the end of that row of trees, 
Leading my gaze off into vague infinities 
Of memories and daydreams.  

And there's another lying in the gutter with that old tennis ball, 
Perhaps reminiscing about better days and laughing children 
While mourning the glory that was not to be 
At Wimbledon.  

And there are always several up in the sky, 
Floating around with the birds
Or the clouds
Or the stars.  

They wait, unseen, unheard, 
Until the right poet approaches.  
Then one will leap into the writer's brain, 
Or maybe sneak in on foggy cat feet
And slowly make its presence known over time.  

I'm usually not the poet they want.  
But now and then I am honored
When one does choose me.  

                                        -- Tom Digby 
                                        First draft 22:11 08/07/2003
                                        Revised     14:30 08/09/2003
                                        Revised     17:52 08/14/2003


                          *********************

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is 

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address 
will be posted.  That's the one you want if you like conversation.  
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
almost nothing in between.  Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.  

If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're 
getting the BCC version.  That's the one for those who want just Silicon 
Soapware with no banter.  The zine content is the same for both.  

To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to  

 http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi

and select the ss_talk list.  Enter your email address in the space 
provided and hit Signup.  When you receive an email confirmation request 
go to the URL it will give you.  (If you're already on the list and want 
to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list 
posting you receive.) 

To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or 
bubbles@well.com).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

    
                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #107
                     New Moon of September 25, 2003


Contents copyright 2003 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

This month marks forty years since I started my first job, at General 
Dynamics in Pomona.  I'd just graduated with my degree in Electrical 
Engineering, and was recruited by one of those recruiters who visit 
college campuses around graduation time.  The pay was around eight 
hundred dollars a month, which was good money back in 1963.  

I recall having a great Sense of Wonder about it all.  Here I was, 
thousands of miles from the home I grew up in, on the fringes of a major 
polyglot metropolis.  I had grown up in small-to-medium sized towns with 
a rather homogeneous WASP culture, so the climate here was quite 
different from what I was used to, both physically and culturally.  

That job lasted something like four or five months, at which point the 
contract my unit was working on got canceled and I got laid off.  Was 
this cancellation a result of Johnson becoming President, or was it just 
coincidence that I was laid off a couple of months after Kennedy died?  

In any case getting laid off may have been just as well, since the work 
was very boring.  It consisted basically of taking a sort of inventory of 
the load on each tiny part of a fairly large system, and passing the 
results on to another group that used it to calculate how reliable the 
system was likely to be.  It might have been a good way to learn one's 
way around the system, but it was still rather boring.  

In any event I was out of work for several months until I landed an 
engineering job on the design of the southern end of the State Water 
Project.  All those gates and valves and such along the canal needed 
lights and motors and other electrical stuff, so I was part of the 
Electrical Engineering section that did that.  We also did cost estimates 
and other preliminary design work for the pumping plants along that part 
of the system, along with the hydroelectric generating plants that 
recovered some of the pump energy as the water came down the destination 
side of the mountains it had to be pumped over.  The pumping plants and 
the generating plants were very similar, except for such things as the 
direction of water flow.  

That work was somewhat more interesting than the previous job, although 
it too had boring moments, especially toward the end as the work was 
winding down but they weren't ready to let people go yet.  

The pattern after that was similar, with various full-time jobs 
alternating with periods of unemployment.  The main difference was that 
the jobs were more interesting and were for smaller companies rather than 
large bureaucracies, and there was some part-time work-at-home stuff 
during the time between "regular" jobs, so I wasn't completely idle.  My 
longest stay at any one job was a few months short of fourteen years.  

Right now is another of those "between" times, and again I'm doing some 
work at home, this time writing computer programs.  Is there yet another 
full-time job in my future?  There's no way to know.  


                          *********************

The Fall Equinox was a few days ago, amid some of the hottest weather of 
the year.  That reminded me that a few months ago I was worried that a 
May Day celebration I was involved with would get rained on, because the 
latter part of April had been unusually cool and damp.  And I seem to 
recall it being cooler and wetter than usual around Summer Solstice as 
well.  Are the gods scrambling the days of the year around at random?  


                          *********************

Newcomer to Plergbistan:  What's with this bill I got in change?  It 
seems to be marked as "Minus three Plergbistani dollars".  

Old-timer:  It's a minus three dollar bill.  

Newcomer:  Huh?  

Old-timer:  Suppose I owe you four dollars, but I don't have any fours.  
So I might give you a seven and a minus three.  Seven minus three is 
four.  

Newcomer:  So what do I do with the minus three?  Nobody around here 
seems to want it.  

Old-timer:  You have to keep it for the time being.  Sooner or later 
someone will owe you money.  Then you can give it to them to satisfy 
three dollars' worth of the debt.  

Newcomer:  What if I slip it to a tourist who doesn't know the 
difference? 

Old-timer:  Don't do it!  That would be stealing.  Some apparent tourists 
are undercover cops, and the penalties for theft are quite severe.  
Likewise, you shouldn't throw it away where somebody might find it.  

Newcomer:  So what if I tear it up or burn it?  

Old-timer:  That would be counterfeiting!  That's even more serious than 
theft.  

Newcomer:  So does that explain that big organized-crime bust a couple of 
days ago where they caught that gang with a bunch of paper shredders and 
a pile of money-colored confetti?  

Old-timer:  Yes.  


                          *********************

There was an incident where some pro football player got into a fight 
with another and injured him severely enough to put him out of action for 
several weeks.  It was all over the news, to the extent that even I 
noticed it, even though I don't usually pay attention to sports stuff.  

There were quotes from coaches and managers about how they keep telling 
their players about the importance of not getting into fights with their 
teammates.  The way it was worded seemed to me to indicate that such 
fights aren't all that rare.  Does the kind of macho mentality that leads 
to success in pro football also tend to lead to personal fights?  

I'm also reminded that I now and then see items about this or that big-
name pro sports player getting arrested for assault or drunk driving or 
something similar.  And again I wonder if success in certain sports, 
especially football and basketball and maybe hockey, requires a sort of 
do-it-NOW mentality that doesn't "waste" time pondering the long-term 
consequences of actions.  

Has anybody actually studied this? 


                          *********************

The words "sex with a bass drum" just sort of popped into my head as I 
was waking up one morning.  It doesn't really make sense, but things like 
that do just sort of pop up sometimes.  But why a bass drum?  There's no 
obvious way to have sex with one, but then who would want to?  

A snare drum, perhaps?  Other musical instruments?  Who knows what kinds 
of perverted things bagpipes and theremins might get into.  And don't get 
me started on musical saws.  They're kind of on the fringe of the 
community anyway, so they're primed for outlaw stuff to begin with.  

Now a harp, being a symbol of Heaven and all, might be expected to stay 
on the straight and narrow.  But you never can really tell.  Some of them 
might surprise you.  

But of course we'll probably never really know, since they're all rather 
bashful about doing anything when humans are around.  


                          *********************

Questions abound.  Good answers are scarce.  Thus has it always been.  


                          *********************

Something I've thought about now and then is that when any living cell 
dies, it's the end of a billion-year lucky streak.  Cells reproduce by 
dividing, so in a sense both daughter cells are the same cell as the 
parent, and that cell is in turn the same cell as its parent, and so on, 
back to before the age of the trilobites.  

When you consider how few of the cells of any complex life form end up in 
seeds or as eggs or sperm, and how few of those seeds or eggs or sperm 
cells actually result in offspring that survive to maturity, and how many 
times a given cell has had to take that chance, you begin to realize how 
lucky that cell has been up to now.  

So here I am looking at this cell that had been alive since the days of 
primordial slime, and now it's dead.  Maybe it ended up as part of the 
food I'm eating, or maybe it's a cell in my body that had the bad luck to 
end up in a hair follicle where it was called upon to give its life to 
help form a strand of hair, or maybe it was just some germ that I 
massacred as part of disinfecting something.  In any case its ancestors 
had had the good luck to be in the right place at the right time to 
continue surviving, but now its luck has run out.  

I don't know if this has any bearing on the Meaning of Life, but part of 
me thinks it might.  


                          *********************

Now I'm wondering about entropy and heat death.  If you're willing to 
wait an infinite amount of time, does entropy still spell the final end 
of the universe (assuming the universe doesn't collapse first)?  Or will 
there eventually be some chance event that reverses entropy enough for 
another cycle to start?  

The example I recall seeing mentioned is that in theory it's possible for 
all the gas molecules in a room to all end up in one part of the room, 
leaving the rest of the room in vacuum, just by chance.  The chances of 
it happening are infinitesimal, but if you're willing to wait enough 
zillions of zillions of years it will eventually happen.  And then once 
it happens it will probably collapse into a state with all sorts of air 
currents eddying around the room, even if the air had been still before 
that.  

So I'm wondering if something like that can happen on a larger scale, 
with a "dead" universe eventually springing back into life again.  I 
suspect it can.  Perhaps it's already happened, but with nobody there to 
notice how long it took. 


                          *********************

                           Hard Act to Follow


Last week I arrived early at the poetry reading, 
And as the first poet got up to read 
I heard her mutter 
"That's a hard act to follow." 

That seemed odd, 
Because she didn't seem to be following anything at all. 

Later on I asked her.  


  "No, I wasn't following another poet.  
  But I wasn't following Nothing either.  
  I wasn't following Cosmic Emptiness,
  The wait for the birth of the universe. 

  I was following your day:
  The broken copier at the office, 
  The idiot who cut you off on the freeway,
  Whatever good or bad news had come in the day's mail.  
  And don't forget dinner and the trip here.  

  And it's not like following another poet,
  Because with another poet I can judge the mood
  And choose accordingly.  

  No, what I'm following is different for each of you,
  So there's no one thing I can do that will be right for all.  

  So that's why whoever goes first
  Has a hard act to follow."


                              Tom Digby
                              written  16:26 May 26, 1995


                          *********************

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is 

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address 
will be posted.  That's the one you want if you like conversation.  
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
almost nothing in between.  Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.  

If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're 
getting the BCC version.  That's the one for those who want just Silicon 
Soapware with no banter.  The zine content is the same for both.  

To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to  

 http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi

and select the ss_talk list.  Enter your email address in the space 
provided and hit Signup.  When you receive an email confirmation request 
go to the URL it will give you.  (If you're already on the list and want 
to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list 
posting you receive.) 

To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or 
bubbles@well.com).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

    
                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #108
                      New Moon of October 25, 2003


Contents copyright 2003 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

I sometimes go out walking at various times of day, and I notice that 
early mornings seem to just sort of feel different from late afternoons, 
even when the sun is the same height above the horizon.  Why is this?  

Is it because mornings are generally relatively cool while afternoons are 
generally warmer?  On some warm winter days I've had late-morning walks 
that reminded me of summer evenings. 

Is it because mornings are generally damp with dew while afternoons are 
usually dry, at least around here?  If that's the case, might a sunny 
afternoon after a rain feel like morning?  I don't recall noticing that, 
but it could be that I just hadn't been paying attention on those days.  
For what it's worth, I do think I've had a couple of foggy afternoons 
feel sort of like mornings.  

Is it that my subconscious knows which way is east or west and notices 
that the sun is in a different place in the sky and shadows are pointing 
in a different direction?  A test for that would be to see how mornings 
and afternoons feel in some unfamiliar neighborhood.  Or does that part 
of me also notice that the sun is climbing and the day is getting 
brighter rather than darker?  

Or it is entirely a circadian-rhythm thing, so that mornings will feel 
different from afternoons no matter what my surroundings are because I've 
just come out of spending several hours sleeping in the dark?  

I'll just have to keep noticing my feelings about mornings and afternoons 
whenever I'm out walking. 


                          *********************

A few weeks ago some of us were watching a videotape of the movie 
"Chocolat".  When it got to a scene where a dog was eating some 
unspecified treat while the people in the area were blissing out on 
chocolate, someone commented on the fact that chocolate is toxic to dogs.  
Did the movie-makers not know that?  Or was the dog's treat something 
other than chocolate?  I don't think any of the characters in the movie 
mentioned it either way.  

Later I started wondering whether chocolate is also toxic to related 
species such as wolves.  And if it's toxic to wolves, is it also toxic to 
werewolves?  If so, is it less toxic when the werewolf is in human form?  

Could chocolate toxicity be used as a test of who is or is not a 
werewolf?  It might make an interesting subplot in a werewolf movie.  


                          *********************

The movie "Chocolat" is about a Witch who comes to a small French town 
and upsets the established Christian-morality applecart.  For Pagans it 
has a happy ending, although at least one Christian movie-reviewing Web 
site ( http://www.capalert.com/ ) takes a much dimmer view of it.  

Later I got to thinking about it from the standpoint of Pagan ethics.  
Giving various characters magical or semi-magical chocolate looks to me 
sort of like casting spells without the consent of the person the spell 
is being cast on.  Even if you take a more material-world view, she was 
in effect dosing people with chemicals (chocolate plus chili peppers and 
maybe other exotic stuff) without their fully informed consent.  The 
combo was claimed to "unlock hidden desires".  But what if someone 
doesn't want their hidden desires unlocked?  Should it be done anyway?

So even if you think the overall effect of her workings is good, she 
might be doing it by not-good means.  


                          *********************

Daylight Saving Time (known as "Summer Time" in some other countries) 
will be ending, at least in the US, about the time this issue comes out.  

That reminds me of an idea I had years ago of slicing the Earth in half 
along the Equator, inserting a giant Lazy Susan bearing, and rotating 
whichever hemisphere is going into Summer westward relative to the Winter 
one, back and forth every year.  No more fumbling around resetting 
clocks.  As your hemisphere moves westward for Summer, sunset will come 
later because of the change in longitude, while the time of sunrise will 
stay roughly constant, at least in middle latitudes.  So we can get the 
benefits of Daylight Saving (more evening light) without the hassles of 
upsetting everybody's schedule.  

I wrote this up at greater length back in Silicon Soapware #51, which is 
archived in my Web area:  

  http://www.well.com/~bubbles/SS0051.txt

After it loads, scroll down to about the second row of asterisks.  

After you've found that item you may also want to read the rest of that 
issue.  It has a couple of other interesting things in it that I'd sort 
of forgotten about.  


                          *********************

I'm also reminded that in past years I would convert each issue into HTML 
and post that along with the plain text version, and I kept an index 
pointing to the topics in each issue.  If you saw something interesting 
in the index it would be linked to the issue (and even the place within 
that issue) it came from.  

But I fell behind in that endeavor, possibly due to pressures of various 
kinds in my life over the last few years.  I've now and then thought of 
resuming work on it, but with the likes of Google around I kind of 
suspect it would be redundant.  Why should I bother to index Silicon 
Soapware when Google and its competitors are indexing the world?  


                          *********************

One thing I don't think I've mentioned yet is that the hour one gains in 
the Fall is not the same as the hour one lost the previous Spring, at 
least in the US.  It's the hour before the one you lost.  

In the Spring you set your clocks ahead from 2am to 3am, and then in the 
Fall you set them back from 2am to 1am.  So you lose an hour from 2am to 
3am and in exchange for that you get an extra hour from 1am to 2am.  

But what if you did get back the same hour you lost?  Might the gods of 
time get confused, and now and then stick an hour of April into late 
October?  Maybe it's just as well that they're different hours.  


                          *********************

A bunch of us were eating at a restaurant when somebody mentioned how the 
standard American diet has gotten less and less healthy over the years, 
and the idea occurred to me that it may be deliberate.

Perhaps we are being infiltrated by extraterrestrials who are gradually 
modifying our diet to suit them rather than us.  All those chemicals 
they're putting in nowadays labeled as dyes and preservatives and 
thickeners, as well as stuff like partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, 
are actually essential nutrients for the ET's.  As those substances 
become more and more a part of our diet Earth-evolved humans will 
gradually die off as the infiltrators (who look just like us) increase in 
numbers until they own the world.  Bloodless conquest.  

And it's not just food and drink.  You know those pieces of furniture or 
equipment you now and then run into that seem to be ergonomic disasters?  
They're designed for the ET's.  It's the same with those housing 
developments you now and then hear about that were built on top of toxic 
waste sites:  ET kids living there grow up extra strong and healthy. 

They're also modifying our climate to be more like that of their home 
planet.  That's why we have smog and global warming.  

It still isn't too late to defeat them if enough people know about it.  
So spread the word to all your friends.  


                          *********************

I just got another idea for a movie, probably best done as a semi-comedy:  

Earth is invaded by beings from another planet, and all seems lost.  But 
then Earth's vampires realize they can't drink the aliens' blood, so they 
come to the rescue.  Since they're already dead they aren't affected by 
the invaders' death rays and such.  And even if the ET's know about 
wooden stakes and silver bullets and garlic, they can't do much with the 
knowledge:  Garlic doesn't grow on their world, wooden stakes can be 
blocked by Kevlar body armor (even if bows and arrows count), and silver 
is too expensive in the quantities they'd need.  

So the invaders give up and the vampires make peace with the remaining 
living people, and everybody lives (or stays undead) happily ever after. 
 

                          *********************

We're coming up on Halloween, also known by other names in various Pagan 
communities.  There they speak of "the wheel of the year."  But in a 
sense it isn't really a wheel because each year is, at least for most 
humans in this society, different from the last.  It's more of a helix, 
or maybe a spiral.  

That reminded me of this issue's poem, which I did a number of years ago 
and then sort of forgot about.  I'd somehow gotten the impression that I 
wasn't done with it yet.  But upon re-reading it I don't see the real 
need for any changes.  Maybe I'd been intending to write a tune for it, 
and some part of my mind interpreted the not-yet-written tune as the 
whole piece being "Not Done Yet"?  

Anyway, here are the words, even if I do decide to change them later.  


                          *********************


                         The Spiral of Your Life


You're so cozy in your cradle,
Everything is safe and warm,
You're the center of the only world you know.
Then your eyes begin to open
To the universe around
As the person you will be begins to grow.
Moving outward from the center you begin to see the world
As you dance around the spiral of your life.

There are places that are jungles,
There are people that are cruel,
And to stay alive you'd better be alert.
But the warmth of loving friendship
Is a joy you'll never know
If you never take the chance of being hurt.
And the love and joy you're giving will come back around to you
As you dance around the spiral of your life.

As you celebrate the seasons,
Watching summer turn to fall
And the dying winter world reborn in spring,
Times of joy and times of troubles,
Try to make the best you can
With whatever gifts the Fates decide to bring.
Try to let the dark of midnight be a promise of the dawn
As you dance around the spiral of your life.

Dance around the final turning
And your days on Earth are done
Though what lies beyond I cannot rightly say.
But I know you need not fear it
If you've lived a life of love
And you've made the best of every passing day,
Moving outward from the center through the boundless universe
As you dance around the spiral of your life.


                              Thomas G. Digby  

                              entered 2115 hr  12/25/89


                          *********************

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is 

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address 
will be posted.  That's the one you want if you like conversation.  
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
almost nothing in between.  Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.  

If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're 
getting the BCC version.  That's the one for those who want just Silicon 
Soapware with no banter.  The zine content is the same for both.  

To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to  

 http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi

and select the ss_talk list.  Enter your email address in the space 
provided and hit Signup.  When you receive an email confirmation request 
go to the URL it will give you.  (If you're already on the list and want 
to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list 
posting you receive.) 

To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or 
bubbles@well.com).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

    
                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #109
                      New Moon of November 23, 2003


Contents copyright 2003 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

This New Moon comes just a day after the 40th anniversary of the death of 
President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.  It used to be common for 
people to ask one another where they were when they got the news, but in 
recent years "I wasn't born yet" has become an increasingly common answer 
to that question.  Those of us who were at work are definitely in the 
minority nowadays.

Part of the aftermath, as I recall it, was an orgy of collective guilt, 
at least on the part of the media.  I recall editorials that said, in 
more or less these exact words, "We all pulled that trigger."  Of course 
we couldn't have all done that literally, but the claim was that we did 
it metaphorically by maintaining a "culture of violence":  Too many 
violent movies and TV shows and comic books and such.  There was also 
much talk about "mail-order guns" being too easy to get.  That helped set 
the stage for more restrictive gun-control laws.  

There was also widespread belief that it was the work of some sort of 
conspiracy, despite the official findings that Oswald acted alone.  Some 
continue to believe that to this day.  

Will we ever really know the truth?  I suspect we won't.  Perhaps if 
there was indeed a conspiracy and some members thereof documented it in 
their private papers with instructions to release the information some 
set number of years after their death, that might settle the matter.  But 
that seems unlikely to happen.  Even if one of the more popular theories 
happens to be the truth, enough will disbelieve it that in effect we will 
never know.  

I think it's plausible that Oswald acted alone.  But if that was indeed 
the case, proving it amounts to proving a negative.  While proving a 
negative is not always impossible, it's often extremely difficult.  

Another possibility is that there were conspiracies afoot, but Oswald, 
acting alone and not in contact with any of the conspirators, got there 
first.  Again, such a thing would be almost impossible to prove.  

Various other analysts have gone on about how this event helped set the 
stage for the rest of the Sixties, and of its lasting effects on American 
culture, so I won't attempt that here.  


                          *********************

My first thought upon hearing the news about JFK was "The Zero Year 
strikes again."  This refers to the fact that from Lincoln on, every 
President elected in a year ending in zero (1860, 1880 ... 1940) had died 
in office, and JFK had been elected in 1960.  

Then sometime in the late Sixties an astrologer I knew attempted to 
explain the jinx in astrological terms, something about how the outer 
planets were lining up.  I don't recall the details, but I do recall his 
prediction:  The jinx would skip whatever President gets elected in 1980, 
strike once more with the President elected in 2000, and then expire.  

So far the prediction has held:  The 1980 President was Reagan, who was 
shot but survived it.  

So now we have George W. Bush as the 2000 President.  With all the talk 
about the Patriot Act and other excesses of police-state thinking, it has 
occurred to some of the gloomier parts of me that if he gets himself 
appointed President for Life, then by definition he would die in office.  
And if we end up with some other form of government after that, there 
would be no more Zero Year Presidents for the jinx to act on.  So that's 
one way the rest of the prediction could come true.  


                          *********************

Ever notice how people who play air guitar never need to re-tune?  


                          *********************

It's coming up on Thanksgiving, which means people's thoughts will be 
turning to the year-end holidays.  That got me to thinking about what 
Santa Claus does the rest of the year.  

I suspect Santa's work year actually starts in early September, just as 
school is starting for most Northern Hemisphere children. 

I'd guess that September through November are taken up with more or less 
routine toy production.  They're busy making the things that go into 
pretty much everybody's stockings, or that they know many kids will be 
asking for.  

Then things really go into high gear in December.  

This is when most letters to Santa come in, so some elves are busy 
reading those.  Most of the requests can be filled from the stock of 
routine items so Santa himself doesn't need to get into the details 
beyond double-checking the Naughty & Nice lists and giving final approval 
for the elves' recommendations.  

The few special wishes from especially deserving children are flagged for 
Santa's personal attention.  If the wish is for a special kind of toy, or 
maybe medical equipment or something, or anything else that isn't in 
Santa's normal inventory, the toy factory builds it on an expedited 
custom basis.  They can do this because they will have pretty much 
finished up routine toy production by November. 

The high point of the year is the actual delivery, most of which takes 
place on Christmas Eve night.  

There are, however, some additional deliveries on other dates:  Hanukkah 
for some Jewish children, New Year's Eve instead of Christmas Eve in some 
countries, and Eastern Orthodox Christmas which comes in early January by 
the mainstream calendar.  For some of these other deliveries Santa wears 
different costumes and goes by other names, such as "Father Christmas".

Then everybody takes a well-deserved vacation for a couple of weeks 
before the springtime round of activity begins. 

It isn't widely advertised, but Santa and the Easter Bunny have a mutual 
aid agreement.  The Easter Bunny will have delivered some of the 
Christmas toys, while Santa will help deliver Easter baskets when that 
time of year comes.  And now, in the months between Christmas and Easter, 
Santa's elves are busy making Easter candy and baskets and artificial 
eggs and the like (the Easter Bunny produces any real eggs).

Then after Easter comes the elves' equivalent of school kids' summer 
vacation, from just after Easter through about July.  This is when you 
might encounter Santa on the beach on some tropical isle, perhaps 
accompanied by some people who look like they might be elves.  

Meanwhile the reindeer are roaming the tundra of various northern lands, 
getting back together with old friends they hadn't seen for most of a 
year.  

While most of the elves are on summer vacation, a few remain behind as 
caretakers.  Then as the summer progresses more and more elves return and 
set to work, making the toy factory ready for the coming year.  The North 
Pole is in constant daylight at this time of year, and the elves take 
full advantage of it, cleaning, painting, repairing, and remodeling.  By 
August nearly all are back on duty, ready to begin the cycle anew in 
September.  


                          *********************

A Web-related haiku:  

  Clock glows 4:04
  As I wake in the darkness
  Thinking "Dream Not Found"


                          *********************

A bit of seasonal trivia:  The dates of latest sunrise and earliest 
sunset are not the same, and neither is on the same date as the actual 
Solstice.  Latest sunrise is in early January (at least in the San 
Francisco area), while earliest sunset is in early December and the 
shortest day is in the vicinity of December 21.  During the days between 
earliest sunset and latest sunrise both sunrise and sunset are getting 
later day by day. 

If you want to know more of the science involved, try a Web search on 
"analemma", which is the name of the sort of figure eight that represents 
the position of the sun in the sky at a given time of day (by standard 
clock time) at different times of year.  


                          *********************

Because of the dates that New Moons come on this year, I was somewhat 
torn between running "The Christmas Cat" and/or "Birthday of the Light" a 
little early in the season versus waiting until just a couple of days 
before Christmas Day (and after Solstice).  I finally decided to err on 
the side of being early, in case any of you out there have friends or 
children you might like to share them with, or maybe just want something 
happier than dead Kennedys to think about.  So here they are.  


                          *********************

          Comes now the time for the traditional reprinting of


                            THE CHRISTMAS CAT


Once upon a time in a village
In a little mountain valley in Borschtenstein
Lived a wicked millionaire
Whose hobby was foreclosing mortgages
And sending people out into the snow.
He also took great pride in having
The best Christmas decorations in the village.

Also in this same village
In the little valley in Borschtenstein
Lived a poor family
Whose mortgage, which came due on Christmas,
Was designed to be impossible to pay off.
The Christmas weather forecast was for snow
And the millionaire's eviction lawyers were waiting.

Now this wicked millionaire
In the valley village etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,
Also had the monopoly on Christmas trees
To be sure of having the prettiest Christmas decorations
In the whole village.
Thus the poor family had nothing at all
To put their presents under.

Now by chance it so happened
In that village in etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,
The wicked millionaire had evicted his cat
Because its ears and tail were the wrong color
And it hadn't paid its mortgage.
And the poor family had taken it in
And given it a home.

So just before Christmas
When the Good Fairies asked the animals of the village
About people in need and deserving of help
The poor family got the highest recommendation.
"We will help them!" said the elves and fairies,
"They won't have to worry about that mortgage
And they'll have the prettiest Christmas decorations in town!"

The mortgage was really not much problem:
If the millionaire couldn't throw people out into the snow
He wouldn't bother throwing them out at all.
So the elves spoke to the North Wind and they agreed:
No more snow to throw people out into.
Some people in the village would have liked snow to play in
But agreed the sacrifice was for a good cause.

Christmas trees were more of a problem:
They had already given them out to other needy families
And there were none left at all.
They rummaged around in forgotten corners
But not a Christmas tree could they find.
Then someone had an idea:
"Let's decorate their cat!"

While one of the elves who spoke Feline
Worked out the details with the cat
The fairies flew around gathering decorations:
Borrowed bits of light from small stars nobody ever notices,
Streamers of leftover comet tails,
And other assorted trinkets
From odd corners of the universe.

So the poor family gathered around their Christmas cat
And sang songs and opened presents
And had the happiest Christmas imaginable
While all agreed they had the prettiest decorations
The village had ever seen
And the millionaire's eviction lawyers
Waited in vain for snow.

So that is why, to this day,
In that valley village in Borschtenstein,
It never snows
Unless the eviction lawyers are out of town
And every year the millionaire tries to decorate a Christmas cat
But gets nothing for his pains
But bleeding scratches.

EPILOGUE:

While overnight miracles are rare outside of story books,
Even those who learn slowly do learn.
So keep checking the weather reports for Borschtenstein.
If some Christmas it snows there
You will know the millionaire has given up being wicked
And has found a truer meaning 
Of Christmas.


        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                           May you have the happiest
             Yule/Christmas/Hanukkah/Solstice/Whatever imaginable!


                                Thomas G. Digby
        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


                                   first draft written 0115 hr 12/25/74
                                   this version edited 2320 hr 12/14/86


                          *********************


                        The Birthday of the Light


On the Christmas morning comics page
Two people slogging through the crowds of shoppers
 pause to ask one another
"Isn't this all supposed to be somebody's birthday?"

Yes, it is.
This is the birthday of the Light.

Different people see the Light differently:
To many the Light is a babe in a manger,
A child destined to grow into a great teacher and healer,
Bringing the light of love to a world lost in darkness.

To others the light is the light of freedom,
Seen in the miracle of a lamp burning
Far longer than its meager supply of oil should have lasted
After the conquerors were driven from the Temple.

And still others celebrate winter sunlight
Bringing the promise of springtime
And reminding us to look at endings
As opportunities for new beginnings.

But even though we see the light differently
And hold different days in this season sacred to it,
Let us all look into the light together
To see opportunities for new beginnings
For a world of freedom and healing and love.


                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 1230 hr 12/25/91
                                        entered 1905 hr 12/25/91


                          *********************

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is 

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address 
will be posted.  That's the one you want if you like conversation.  
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
almost nothing in between.  Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.  

If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're 
getting the BCC version.  That's the one for those who want just Silicon 
Soapware with no banter.  The zine content is the same for both.  

To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to  

 http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi

and select the ss_talk list.  Enter your email address in the space 
provided and hit Signup.  When you receive an email confirmation request 
go to the URL it will give you.  (If you're already on the list and want 
to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list 
posting you receive.) 

To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or 
bubbles@well.com).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

    
                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #110
                      New Moon of December 23, 2003


Contents copyright 2003 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

During the recent centennial of the Wright Brothers' first flight I saw 
articles describing how others had also been experimenting with various 
kinds of flying machines.  That reminded me of the old quote about how 
people will build steam engines when it comes to be Steam-Engine Time.  
So it looks like the early 1900's were Airplane Time.  It may have also 
been Time for other technologies as well, as they are not mutually 
exclusive.  

So what Time is it now?  Possibly some version of Internet Time?  Is it 
also coming up on DNA Time or Bio-technology Time in general?  


                          *********************

Many scientists agree:  It's later than it's ever been before.  


                          *********************

I had occasion to look up a word in the dictionary, and noticed that it 
was listed as originating before the 14th Century.  So that makes it more 
than 700 years old.  That's a long time.  

But even though 700 years is a long time in terms of human lives, to a 
geologist or cosmologist it's but an instant, and it's not all that long 
to an archaeologist.  On the other hand a few seconds can be an eternity 
in certain kinds of chemistry or atomic physics.  So whether a given time 
interval is long or short depends on your perspective.  

I'm reminded of that short film (there may be more than one) where the 
camera starts with a shot of a person and then zooms in to the atomic or 
even subatomic level, and then also zooms out to cosmological scales of 
distance.  Has anyone attempted a similar thing for time instead of 
space?  How would you do it?  

One thought is that since the film had differently scaled views of space 
arranged along an axis in time, one might have differently scaled views 
of time separated in space.  Maybe it could take the form of an exhibit 
with a number of film (video, whatever) loops running simultaneously, 
each at a different rate of speedup or slow motion.  

Perhaps the center screen could show a person walking down the street at 
normal speed, while to one side is another screen showing the sun moving 
across the sky to make day and night, while in one corner of this second 
screen there is that same person walking, but speeded up to the time rate 
of the day-night screen.  Then a third screen could show seasonal changes 
of trees and snow and such, while down in its corner is the scene from 
the day-night screen, speeded up to show the days and nights flickering 
by.  And so on, down to some final screen showing something like the 
expanding universe and the birth of galaxies.  

Then on the other side would be another series of screens, each showing 
the previous one in slow motion while it shows some phenomenon that some 
faster time scale applies to, down to subatomic stuff.  

This might make a good art project for somebody to do.  


                          *********************

Speaking of people's attitudes about time, I'm reminded me of an incident 
at a campout get-together some years back.  I was living in Los Angeles, 
and the event was out on some land near San Diego.  So I took the bus (or 
maybe it was the train) to San Diego, and then got a ride to the actual 
site with one of the locals who was part of a sort of semi-organized 
shuttle service they had set up.  

The whole transportation thing was kind of vague, so I was a little bit 
concerned about getting a ride back.  Some people said not to worry about 
it until the time comes, while I felt more like getting the arrangements 
over with now so I wouldn't have any need to worry about it later.  

That later led me to wonder whether there may be some kind of fundamental 
philosophical division between "Worry Now" and "Worry Later".  

In terms of being able to relax and enjoy the present moment, either 
policy by itself seems to work most of the time.  Once the Worry Now 
people have made their arrangements they're free to quit worrying.  And 
the Worry Later people seem to be able to put the matter out of their 
minds until it's time to worry about it.  

What's bad is when the two philosophies are mixed in one group.  The 
Worry Now people keep hassling the Worry Later people and ruining their 
enjoyment of the present moment, while the Worry Later people keep the 
Worry Now people in suspense by refusing to tend to the matter 
immediately.  

But then it occurs to me that I'm in one camp on some issues but in the 
other on others.  And on further thought it appears that my attitude on a 
particular item may depend on my estimate of how likely I am to have 
problems with it.  If I think it'll be easy, with little chance of any 
serious problem, I can wait and worry later.  But if I think there's a 
non-trivial chance I may fail if I wait until the last minute, I'll want 
to get it over with now.  Then if I run into problems I'll have more time 
in which to try to solve them.  

For example, if I want to go somewhere and for some reason driving isn't 
an option, if I know there's a bus or train that runs every few minutes 
and stops in the right places I can wait I'm almost ready to go to look 
up the details.  But if I need to get a ride from a friend I may or may 
not be able to reach on short notice, I would feel a need to get 
everything arranged well in advance.  

I suspect that some of the friction between Worry Now and Worry Later 
stems from conflicting estimates of how much trouble and difficulty the 
thing being worried about will eventually involve.  But even so, that may 
not be the whole story.  There may still be some personal differences in 
how people prefer to handle potential problems and pleasures.  


                          *********************

Here's something that might make a good public service announcement for 
an audience familiar with science fiction:  

Imagine stumbling into bed after a party, thankful you weren't picked up 
for drunk driving, and later being awakened by special effects in your 
bedroom.  Two police officers materialize, ask your name, and then 
explain that they're from an alternate world where you didn't make it 
home that night.  They say you're in the emergency room being prepared 
for surgery, blood is needed, and they'd like for you to donate since 
they already know you're the right type.  

While you're sitting there trying to decide whether to believe any of 
this, a brief message comes in on one officer's communicator.  He 
acknowledges and says something to his partner, who makes too-bad noises.  
They then apologize for waking you but it turns out not to be necessary 
after all.  Then they vanish.  


                          *********************

Someone brought a copy of "On Beyond Zebra" to a get-together, and read 
it aloud to a few other people who were there.  I sort of tried to listen 
to part of it, but I was too involved in a different conversation.  That 
prompted me to read it at the library later on.  

Dr. Seuss wrote that book before ASCII existed, or at least before it was 
well known.  Could he have written it today, were he still alive, or 
would ASCII and Unicode have been too mentally confining?  

Today's computer-nerd generation may tend to think of "beyond z" as the 
ASCII characters that fill up the Hex 50 and Hex 70 rows of numbers:  [, 
\, ], ^, and _, plus {, |, }, ~, and [delete].  That seems rather dull 
compared to what's in the book, even if you include the other so-called 
high-bit characters.  

So have our gains from computer technology been at the cost of a loss of 
silly things for our imaginations to play with?  


                          *********************

Speaking of science fiction, here's a Christmas thing from the viewpoint 
of a colonist on some distant world:  


                    Let's Imagine Christmas on Terra


Oh, Let's Imagine Christmas on Terra,
Carols 'round a real organic tree.
Someone's face aglow
Beneath the Mistletoe
Because you're someone they had hoped to see.

Yes, Let's Imagine Christmas on Terra,
Moonlight on the newly fallen snow.
Cold December night,
Candles burning bright
Give the room a warm romantic glow.

But Let's Imagine Christmas on Terra,
Walking down a busy street alone.
Over there's a tree
Like you had come to see
But somehow it just doesn't seem like home.

And Let's Imagine Christmas on Terra,
Carols on a jukebox in a bar.
All the folks you know
Who'd make your season glow
Are waiting on some far-off Christmas star.

So Let's Imagine Christmas on Terra,
That's the song that's really big this year.
Sing it if you will,
But please remember still,
If you go there you will dream of Christmas here.



                                   Tom Digby
                                   written 1215hr  12-28-86
                                   entered 2200hr   1-30-90



                          *********************

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is 

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address 
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There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
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                                -- END --
  

    
                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #111
                      New Moon of January 21, 2004


Contents copyright 2004 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

This seems to be the season for Mars probes.  One has landed successfully 
and is starting to explore the surface, another is due to land within a 
few days, while an earlier one seems to have been lost.  

There have been several Mars probes lost in the past, and some have 
speculated that Martians, or perhaps other space aliens residing on Mars, 
have been responsible.  I don't think that's very likely, but you never 
know.  I do think some part of my Inner Child, awash in memories of 
decades of science fiction on the radio and in magazines and other media, 
kind of wants aliens to be involved.  

But if Martians have been shooting down our space probes, why have some 
missions been allowed to succeed?  Could there be parts of Mars that are 
OK for us to look at while other parts are off-limits?  But then what of 
the orbiters, which I think have pretty much scanned the entire surface 
by now?  Maybe the Martians have camouflage that can fool an orbiter but 
wouldn't stand up to a lander?  

Nobody on Earth knows, except possibly the tabloid writers or maybe 
whoever is behind whatever conspiracies you may believe in.  

These thoughts raise another question:  Is our batting average for Mars 
missions worse than for Venus or the asteroids or the outer planets?  Is 
there enough space activity to make any such statistics meaningful?  


                          *********************

Years now start with "20" instead of "19".  A robot rover is trundling 
around on Mars, sending back pictures.  Computers with more computing 
power than Babbage ever dreamed of are being sold in the stores for less 
than a month's pay.  The future is here.  

And there's yet another sign:  The local movie theater is hiring, but 
they're not asking applicants to fill out a paper application.  Instead, 
they are to go to the office and pick up a sort of portable computer that 
will guide them through the application process.  

The on-screen ads don't give details, but they do show a picture of the 
device.  It's reminiscent of a laptop machine in the open position, but 
in one piece rather than hinged, and with a smaller screen.  Apparently 
the applicant enters data as requested by on-screen instructions, and 
then takes the machine back to the office where the information is 
transferred into a more conventional computer system.  The applicant may 
eventually be asked for paper documents, but I would guess that those 
come later, after the first round of eliminations has been passed.  

And that first round of eliminations may be automated, based on the 
applicant's answers to certain questions and how well the applicant 
seemed to have been able to follow the machine's directions.  Even if the 
machine doesn't make the final decision, it may flag certain items so 
that whatever human does the reviewing doesn't have to read the entire 
application in detail unless the applicant appears promising.  The ad was 
silent on that, but it seems logical to me that it might work that way.  

The future is here. 


                          *********************

Cartoon idea:  A robot beggar sitting on the sidewalk, holding a sign 
reading "Will Work for Batteries".  


                          *********************

At a recent holiday party one of the teen-agers in the host family had 
gotten a new sewing machine for Christmas, and people were talking about 
it.  Among its features was an internal computer chip with the ability to 
download files of stitching patterns.  

That led to the question of whether it could store other types of data.  
Nobody knew for certain, and we didn't feel like plunging into the 
instruction book right then, but the general belief among the computer 
experts present was that it probably could, even if the data didn't make 
sense when somebody tried to use that file to sew something.  

That led to thoughts of hiding secret messages by disguising them as 
stitch patterns.  Everybody there pretty much agreed that it would be 
fairly easy to do, at least if you were technically inclined.  And it's 
not limited to sewing machines:  You can hide secret messages in digital 
cameras and other types of computerized gizmos as well.  

More and more things we don't think of as computers have computer chips 
and data interfaces nowadays, and many of them have enough storage 
capacity to hold quite a few messages, secret or otherwise.  Depending on 
whether, when, and how the device checks data for validity it may be 
necessary to put the data into some specific format, but that's probably 
not all that big a problem if you know the requirements and can write a 
program to do the conversion.  You may end up with the embroidery 
equivalent of the million monkeys trying to write Shakespeare, but who 
among potential snoopers has time to go through all those files and check 
what the patterns look like?  


                          *********************

While I'm thinking about computers built into things, I'm reminded of 
some new tires I recently got for my car.  As part of the warranty the 
salesperson said I should have the tires checked every 5000 miles, but 
that the store wouldn't be sending out reminders. 

That led to an idea:  Since most newer cars have a number of computer 
chips in them, would it be possible to have them allow the owner to input 
personal reminder messages, triggered on the owner's choice of mileage or 
time or some combination thereof?  These could range from reminders about 
the tires to notes about things to buy on the way home from work that 
evening.  I think that would be a useful feature for manufacturers to 
include.  Does any car maker currently do this?  


                          *********************

I recently got a bill or something where the envelope I'm to send my 
check back in had a little rectangle in the upper right corner with the 
words "Place Stamp Here Before Mailing".  At first I wondered if they had 
a big problem with people mailing the envelope first and then going to 
the post office to try to have the stamp put on retroactively.  And then 
I recalled some online discussions where people thought that even the 
more common message "Place Stamp Here" was redundant.  

That reminded me of a trick I once saw a stage magician do.  He produced 
a strip of paper bearing the words "Fresh Fish Sold Here Today", and then 
proceeded to tell a story of how a fish merchant with such a sign was 
criticized by various passerby for having extra verbiage.  

The word "Today" at the end, for example, was unnecessary because it was 
obvious that a merchant with a pile of fish on his counter was probably 
intending to sell them that day.  And he was selling them there, not 
someplace else, so the "Here" was not necessary either.  

And so it went, with the fish obviously being for sale, and nobody 
expecting a fish merchant to claim to be selling stale fish, and the 
things piled on the counter obviously being fish and not books or 
whatever, until there was nothing left of the sign.  

As the magician told the story he tore the words from the strip of paper, 
until he had just the piece with the word "Fish" on it.  Then he tossed 
that away, standing there empty-handed.  

That left the merchant with no sign at all.  He didn't think that was the 
way to go, so he decided to keep the original sign.  At that the magician 
took the torn-up pieces of paper, crumpled them in his hands, said a few 
magic words, and triumphantly displayed the original strip of paper, un-
torn, with the words "Fresh Fish Sold Here Today".  

It feels to me like the little box marked "Place Stamp Here" is sort of 
like that fish merchant's sign.  No one part of it is indispensable, but 
the whole is sort of useful.  


                          *********************

A week or two ago I saw the third Lord of the Rings movie.  Afterward a 
rather silly question occurred to me:  Why didn't Frodo just FedEx the 
Ring to Mount Doom?  Judging from some FedEx ads that would have saved 
lots of time and worry.  

That reminds me of some other ideas I've had for FedEx ads.  For example, 
a cat owner might FedEx a pill to "Inside the Cat".  Or a football player 
might FedEx the ball to the opponent's end zone.  Of course these would 
be rather impractical in real life, but maybe they could be some FedEx 
employee's dreams or something.  

Too bad I'm not in the advertising industry.  Or maybe it's just as well. 


                          *********************

Back on the Mars probes, I saw a news item about a watchmaker who 
modified a bunch of wristwatches to run slow (by Earth standards) so as 
to keep Mars time.  The Martian day is about 39 minutes longer than an 
Earth day. 

That leads me to wonder if there is any official way to designate the 
time of day for a point on Mars.  Do they use 24 Mars hours, with each 
Mars hour being about a minute and a half longer than an Earth hour, or 
do they use Earth hours, with each day running from 00:00 through 24:39 
or thereabouts?  

If they use longer Mars hours, do they also have Mars minutes and Mars 
seconds?  This latter could get especially confusing, since the Earth 
second is a standard scientific unit in lots of physics formulas.  

Since the Martian watches were originally Earth watches, just modified to 
run slow, it follows that they display Martian hours and Martian minutes 
(and Martian seconds if they have a second hand).  You could get a 
similar result with a digital watch by replacing the original 32.768kHz 
crystal with one cut for about 31.9kHz.  

On the other hand, if you wanted to keep Earth hours and minutes and just 
have more of them in a Martian day you'd need to modify the logic chips 
in the digital watch.  This might not be practical for small quantities 
of wristwatches, but would be easy enough to do on computer displays with 
appropriate software.  

Does JPL or NASA or anybody else in a position of authority on this 
matter have a preference?  


                          *********************

Speaking of the passage of time, I recently saw a newspaper cartoon where 
the baby New Year was wearing what pretty definitely looked like a 
disposable diaper.  When did whoever does parenting for baby New Years 
(Father Time?) make the change from the traditional cloth diaper with the 
big safety pin?  


                          *********************

More thoughts on Mars:  If President Bush is in favor of a manned Mars 
mission, then the opposition may feel obligated to be against it.  If you 
subscribe to the Package Theory of politics, space travel could end up in 
the Right-Wing Package.  Then if you are in favor of space travel you 
will also be expected to favor things like the War on Drugs and to be 
against such Left-Wing things as gay marriage.  Can we prevent that kind 
of political packaging from happening?  


                          *********************

This was written for an earlier Mars mission, but seemed appropriate: 


                         Draining the Last Canal

"It's landed!
 It's finally landed!"

"Let's go see it!"

"What if it sees us?"

"Don't worry. 
 It has eyes only for the physical.
 We could form a mob
 and advance on it with pitchforks and torches
 and plaster it with posters and graffiti
 and make obscene gestures right into the lens
 and still it would ignore us."

"But surely among its masters
 are a few who are not blind.  
 Won't they see us?"  

"They have seen us for centuries already 
 without artificial aid. 
 Physical sight forms a barrier:
 If we want them to see us 
 we must approach from behind,
 lurking just outside the picture:
 Or else retreat behind a dune, 
 or better yet, the horizon." 

"Retreat, retreat, retreat.
 First to remote areas of their world, 
 then to here,
 and soon to places beyond.  
 Will it ever ens?" 

"Probably not, 
 since that is why they created us:
 To give them something to follow
 to remote lands, then here,
 and eventually the stars."

"The stars...
 Enough to last quite a while.  
 But then???"  

"We'll think of something."

"We always do."

                                   Thomas G. Digby
                                   written 0205 hr  7/24/76
                                   entered 2225 hr  2/08/92



                          *********************

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is 

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address 
will be posted.  That's the one you want if you like conversation.  
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
almost nothing in between.  Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.  

If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're 
getting the BCC version.  That's the one for those who want just Silicon 
Soapware with no banter.  The zine content is the same for both.  

To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to  

 http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi

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                                -- END --
  

    
> Draining the Last Canal

That's a lovely little piece, Tom. Thanks!
  

    
                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #112
                      New Moon of February 20, 2004


Contents copyright 2004 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

Something got me thinking about the dreams I've been having.  Most are 
relatively prosaic, at least compared to dreams I've heard others 
describe, although many of them are at least a bit at odds with the way 
things are done in the waking world.  

In one I was a designing a municipal water system, and I was following 
the latest recommendations from the experts, specifying cast-iron pipe 
with wooden valves.  These valves weren't in manholes or anything like 
that where you could get to them easily, but were just buried in the 
ground along with the rest of the pipe, so you would have to dig up the 
street to change the settings.  

Then as I was waking up I got to thinking of maybe twenty or thirty years 
down the road when the wood would be rotting and the system would be 
falling apart, and people would start asking me "You didn't fall for that 
bit about wooden valves, did you?"  

Although this does seem kind of strange compared to the way most water 
systems are designed, it's nothing compared to some of the things I've 
heard other people say they dream about. 


                          *********************

Somebody in an online discussion group I'm in posted a description of a 
malfunction in some kind of computerized speech device.  He said that 
instead of the normal perky female voice it spoke in a low husky bedroom 
kind of voice, with the syllables long and drawn out.  From the 
description it sounded to me like the speech samples were being played 
slower than normal, like a 45 RPM record being played at 33 1/3.  

Then I got to thinking.  I'm familiar with the sound of a phonograph 
record being played at the wrong speed, as is almost anyone who grew up 
before CD's took over.  I did my share of moving the little lever between 
"78" and "45" and "33" and even "16", taking some sort of childish 
pleasure in listening to how the voices and music changed.  I also did 
similar things with reel-to-reel tape recorders at 7 1/2 or 3 3/4 or even 
1 7/8 inches per second.  

But what of people born in the CD age?  Yes, there is software that will 
let you make a recording and play it back at a different speed.  But how 
many people other than musicians have played around with that?

Is this another childhood experience that is fading from public 
consciousness as technology marches on?  


                          *********************

In another dream I was supposed to be turning into a bear.

It was supposedly a normal stage in my existence.  I had withdrawn from 
my former home and friends, presumably to take up life as a bear in the 
woods.  But I didn't feel bear-like, and was hanging around some parked 
cars, perhaps thinking of sleeping in them, more like a homeless person 
than a bear.  

Then a woman I knew who was an expert in magical stuff came by.  She 
looked a little different from what she looks like in the waking world, 
sort of lumpy or something, but I still recognized her.  So I was telling 
her how I didn't feel like a bear, and she confirmed that by saying that 
I still looked "normal".  

So we went walking down the street, and whenever I passed something shiny 
I would look for my reflection.  And I still didn't look bear-like, 
even though I may have been walking on all fours.  

Then some sort of monstrously huge bear came down out of the mountains, 
and I was supposed to challenge it, or maybe protect the human settlement 
from it, or something like that.  It looked a bit like a large dog might 
in the waking world, or maybe like a cross between a dog and a bear, but 
in that world it was a bear.  And it was large, larger than an elephant 
would be in our waking world.  And it was growling, and I was going to 
challenge it.  

And then I woke up.  

So does this kind of dream mean anything?  Or was it just mental "noise"?  


                          *********************

As a cop is writing a parking ticket for a car, the owner walks up.  

Owner:  Why are you writing me a ticket?  I don't see any signs 
restricting parking.  

Cop:  There's a "NO PARKING WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE OF THIS SIGN" sign 
over on Ooleatrompt Street between Gloshnorth and Pisoulean.  

Owner:  But that's at least two miles away.  That doesn't sound like 
walking distance to me.  

Cop:  It's 2.3 miles to be exact.  You're in good shape so you could walk 
it easily if you really wanted to.  Don't you walk at least that much 
every day for exercise?  I've seen you out walking on Klooct Boulevard 
and Gleezlenorpt Lane.  

Owner:  I suppose you're right.  So are you going to ticket all these 
cars that are parked here this morning?  

Cop:  No.  These other guys are all lazy and out of shape.  Maybe some of 
them could walk a mile if their lives depended on it, but just barely.  
So they're OK parking here.  

Owner:  But how was I supposed to know that sign was there?  I don't get 
over to that part of town very often.  

Cop:  I don't make the rules, I just write tickets.  


                          *********************

In yet another dream I'm stuck at some fast-food place.  I'd lost too 
much weight, and now they think I'm one of the performing fries from 
their commercials and they won't let me leave.  At least I get free food, 
as long as it isn't fries.  They think that performing fries eating 
regular fries is too much like being a cannibal.  


                          *********************

Some thoughts on that Peter Pan movie that came out a month or two ago: 

They didn't give an exact date, but it looked like the story was set 
sometime in the latter part of the 19th Century.  One question that came 
up in my mind was whether something like that story could happen today.  

I hope I'm not giving away too much of the plot when I mention that at 
one point some children come back from Never-Never Land to live with 
various adults in our world.  Apparently the adults were going to just 
sort of quietly take them in with few if any formalities.  

Nobody mentioned anything about needing to explain anything to the 
authorities about the sudden appearance of those children.  Today there 
would be demands for birth certificates and immunization records and 
such, along with questions about why they weren't in any of the various 
databases that children get listed in nowadays.  Or maybe they were 
listed, but had been missing for several years.  Either way, the adults 
involved might find themselves in a rather uncomfortable position.  

Does that mean that the Peter Pan story couldn't happen today?  Or does 
it just mean that Tinker Bell would need to go flying around all over the 
planet, throwing Magic Fairy Dust into computers to create a plausible 
history for the children?  Does she know enough about computers to do 
that without causing massive crashes?  

Questions abound.  Answers do not. 


                          *********************

And so the dreams go on, from being some kind of super-villain taunting 
the police, to going through the leftovers after a banquet in hopes of 
finding bones to use as clubs for defense in case we're attacked.  Or 
maybe I'm building some kind of super laser setup that does something 
wonderful, except I'm not clear on what, if anything, that wonderful 
thing might be.  Or I'm in some exotic tropical land, watching the 
natives build an earthen dam for a giant artificial lake as part of a 
project to build a new radio telescope.  

So what does all this mean?  I've been told conflicting things by people 
who claim to know:  Some are sure that dreams are messages from the 
spirit world, wile others are equally certain that they're just the 
brain's way of sweeping up the debris of old discarded thoughts.  Is the 
real truth knowable?  I suspect there may be no one "real truth" at all.  


                          *********************

I recently got an email that mentioned "swamp gas" and came with an 
attached parody news article about Martians reacting to our space probes.  

What's interesting (aside from the article, which is probably making the 
Internet email rounds) was that I initially misread "swamp gas" as "swap 
gas" and then got to wondering what such a thing might be or do.  

Would swap gas cause random items to swap places?  Or would it work only 
on living things, perhaps causing them to swap identities?  This latter 
leads to an area that's had zillions of fantasy and sf stories already, 
but you never know if something like this could spark a new twist on an 
old idea.  


                          *********************

Dreams often seem to take place in worlds much different from the one we 
inhabit while awake.  That leads me to wonder if such worlds could 
actually exist.  

Scientists say that certain relatively small changes in the physical laws 
of our universe would make life as we know it impossible.  Change this or 
that constant by a few percent and stars wouldn't shine brightly enough 
or last long enough for life to evolve, or atoms of elements we need for 
life wouldn't hold together, or something else in this incredibly complex 
system wouldn't work.  

But scientists can only talk with confidence about the things they know.  
What about life as we don't know it, in realms wildly different from this 
universe?  

For example, imagine an endless flat plane, peopled with beings that are 
not made of what we think of as "atoms".  What are they made of?  We 
can't say.  Does their substance have some smallest possible unit 
analogous to our atoms even if they are structured differently, or can it 
be subdivided indefinitely while still maintaining its identity?  Again, 
we can't really say.  Neither can we say how the various substances in 
such a world might react with one another to be transformed into other 
substances that creatures in that world might be made of.  

And what of their heavens?  Gravity as we know it would not decrease as 
one rose above that endless plane, but might there be some different kind 
of force there that serves the purpose of what we think of as gravity?  
Perhaps there are a number of such forces, each affecting some substances 
but not others, so that things made of star-stuff can hang in that sky 
without needing to be in what we think of as orbits.  

And so on.  You can probably think of many reasons the world I've started 
to describe might not function, but then for each such problem someone 
else (if I'm not up to the task) might also be able to think of some way 
to change things so as to get around the problem and make things work.  

Such a world, if it can exist at all, will probably be at least as 
complex as ours.  And we're still trying to figure out how our world 
works.  Several times in the past we thought we knew, only to discover 
that what we thought we knew wasn't right after all.  And had the world 
been as we had thought it was, it wouldn't have worked.  

So just because you can't figure out how to make your dream world or 
fairyland work doesn't mean it isn't possible.  


                          *********************

One thought that came to me recently, perhaps as a result of seeing 
someone's comments about over-regulation of various small businesses, was 
that "cosmetologists" (who are licensed in many places) is only a couple 
of letters different from "cosmologists" (who generally are not licensed 
but are less likely to be self-employed).  Could I argue for licensing 
both or neither?  

And what kinds of "cosm[et]ologist" puns might I be able to make?  


                          *********************

The problem of physical laws in other possible worlds reminds me of those 
word games where you start with a word and change one letter to make a 
different word.  Then you change another letter to get a still different 
word, and so on until you reach some target word that's the object of the 
game.  The solution may not be obvious at first glance, but it's 
possible.  

But what if the starting word is in English and the target is in Greek or 
Russian?  These use different alphabets, and few if any words use mixed 
letters from both.  While it's true that the alphabets for English and 
Greek and Russian have some letters that look the same and can thus 
possibly serve as stepping stones from one language to the other, what 
of, say, English and Hebrew?  Not only are all the letters different, but 
they're read in opposite directions.  So which parts of what intermediate 
words would you read which way, assuming any intermediate words exist?  

These are cases where you can't get from one to the other by taking 
things one small step at a time.  You have to abandon the old rules and 
make one giant leap.  

Likewise, there may be other realities that are as different from this 
one as most English words are from their Hebrew counterparts.  And they 
may be peopled by beings who, if given a description of our reality, 
would laugh it off as impossible.  

There may indeed be more things outside Heaven and Earth than we can 
dream of in any of our philosophies.  


                          *********************


                          The Luck of the Light 


As I gaze at a twinkling star 
My mind wanders out into the void, 
Imagining one photon on its way across years of space 
To its final destiny in the rods and cones of my eye, 
Adding its small part to that star's twinkle.  

Then I think of the photons that were not so lucky  
As to find their way into my eye 
Or the eye of a friend, 
Or even some instrument at the observatory
Where they might contribute to our knowledge 
Even if their beauty is lost.  

Their doom may come in a dust cloud 
Halfway here from their star,
Or in a cold crater on the backside of the moon, 
Or perhaps a branch of that leafless tree
Silhouetted against the winter sky. 

And there are those sad few that almost make it, 
Ending up against my forehead or in my eyelashes, 
Or perhaps knocking in vain against an eyelid during a blink: 
So close, but yet so far.  

Do the gods of the night sky amuse themselves by riding photons, 
Taking bets on whose will fall where?  



                                     -- Tom Digby 
                                     Written 18:16 02/05/2004
                                     Edited  17:49 02/06/2004


                          *********************

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is 

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address 
will be posted.  That's the one you want if you like conversation.  
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
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If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're 
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                                -- END --
  

    
> Is this another childhood experience that is fading from
> public consciousness as technology marches on?

Like learning about "the big hand and the little hand" on clocks.
  

    
It may be worth noting that there's been some discussion on the email list
as to what kinds of FAA licenses and such Peter Pan would need to fly
legally today.  Would he qualify as an ultralight?  Would the children
flying with him count as passengers, or would the whole group be a
formation, or what?  And so on.


 http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi

and choose 

 ss talk

and do the Signup thing.  


The "View Archives" part may not be working right now, but the "Signup" 
part seems OK. 
  

    
                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #113
                       New Moon of March 20, 2004


Contents copyright 2004 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

I've mentioned this in Silicon Soapware before in 1996 and again in 2000, 
but it's relevant today and probably bears repeating (with some editing 
and updating).  

The Presidential primary hooraw is pretty much over, and I have no 
convention delegates.  That's as it should be, since I wasn't planning on 
running for President anyway.  

But since the major party conventions are still months away and 
surprising things can still happen, perhaps I'd better explain again why 
I'm not running.  

One question is whether my hippie-like appearance and my piercings would 
become a campaign issue.  Would I have to shave and get a corporate 
haircut and get rid of my nose ring in order to have a chance of winning?  

Would the opposition spend millions of dollars explaining to the most 
easily shocked voters what a Prince Albert piercing is, and hinting that 
were I to become President they would be the Latest Style and everybody 
would sort of have to get all sorts of strange piercings whether they 
wanted to or not, because of forces like workplace peer pressure?  "His 
doctor says he doesn't have any nipple or genital piercings.  What is he, 
a spy or something?"  

And I would have to wear a suit and tie much of the time.  Even when I 
could take the tie off, they'd probably expect me to wear long pants even 
when it's warm.  And they'd want me to wear clothes all day, even when 
I'm just sort of relaxing around the White House.  

And I probably wouldn't get to play around in the military's big 
computers even if I was Commander in Chief.  

More importantly, the politics of being President of a superpower would 
often require me to make decisions to hurt people.  We're talking big-
time hurt here.  Maybe even taking people who would rather be doing 
something else and making them shoot other people they don't even know 
with real bullets.  

So all in all, I don't think I'll run for President. 


                          *********************

Here's a "heads up" if you're working on things like programming for a 
science fiction convention in the coming year:  2005 is the centennial of 
Special Relativity.  

There's no one exact date.  Others, such as Michelson and Morley (who did 
the experiment that failed to find the "ether" that light was previously 
believed to propagate through) and Lorentz and Fitzgerald (for whom the 
length contraction effect is named) were working on bits and pieces of it 
during the preceding decades.  And when Einstein finally put the pieces 
together in 1905 he didn't do it all at once in one paper.  The part 
about the speed of light being invariant came first, with the famous "E 
equals M C squared" coming out in another paper later that year.  

But even though there's no one date for celebrating the anniversary, it 
does seem proper to say that the year 2005 in general is the centennial 
of Special Relativity.  

If you want to know more, there's a wealth of information about all this 
on the Web.  


                          *********************

The bit about Einstein reminds me that most humans (including me) seem to 
be unable to visualize things in more than three dimensions.  Maybe it's 
a limit hardwired into the visual centers of the human brain, or maybe 
it's from not having had any actual experience with more dimensions.  
It's kind of hard to say.  

Related to that, we may be on the verge of being able to construct 
computer-based systems that will be able to mimic, and perhaps even 
surpass, human intelligence.  They may lack whatever spiritual component 
humans possess, but that's not relevant to this discussion.  What's 
important is that we'll be able to ask them questions and they will be 
able to do some equivalent of thinking to arrive at an answer. 

Since we'll be designing these artificial intelligences, or at least 
telling early generations of them what we want in future generations that 
we may be unable to understand the details of well enough to design 
directly, can we come up with one that will be able to visualize things 
in four or more spatial dimensions?  

And once we do create something that can "think" in more than three 
dimensions, what new understandings of the universe might it give us?  


                          *********************

One line I now and again hear from politicians is "You're either with us 
or against us."  That leads to thoughts of the US and Al Qaida setting up 
a joint draft board.  If you're called you get your choice of which one 
to sign up with, but you have to join one or the other.  You're either 
with us or against us.  


                          *********************

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to people singing at a party when 
an inspiration occurred to me.  For years I'd made jokes about inventing 
a "negative capo" for guitars:  You would clamp it onto the neck of your 
guitar and it would make the strings longer.  Now I think I know, at 
least in theory, how such a thing might be built.  

It would use electronics and motion transducers.  

There would be a sensor touching each string near the first or second 
fret, feeding information about the string's motion to some kind of 
analog and/or digital computing circuitry.  This circuitry would, 
microsecond by microsecond, cause a signal to be fed back to an actuator, 
also in contact with the string, that would apply the correct force to 
the string to make the string vibrate as if it were longer.  

The setup would include an extra bit of fake guitar neck with sensors for 
the player's fingers.  This would tell the computer how much simulated 
length to add to each string at any given moment.  

I'm fairly sure it would be at least theoretically possible to do this, 
especially with the kinds of talent we have in Silicon Valley.  Whether 
it would be feasible to do it in a cost-effective manner is much less 
certain.  

I think the biggest problem would be arranging things mechanically so 
that the player could finger the added frets without too much of a 
discontinuity between the original guitar neck and the added length.  

Even if there are no venture capitalists out there nowadays who would be 
interested in such a thing, it's still kind of fun to think about.  


                          *********************

If identity theft continues to be a growing problem, and one's birthdate 
is part of the security information that helps verify that you are indeed 
you, will fewer people be willing to do public or semi-public birthday 
celebrations?  


                          *********************

Someone at a party mentioned that he used to attend a certain science 
fiction convention regularly but hadn't been for several years.  Others 
there then said that he should start going again, because every year it 
seemed to be better than the previous year.  

I got to thinking that such a streak was unlikely to continue forever, 
and that by Murphry's Law the first bad one would be the one where he 
finally decided to start attending again.  

That led to thoughts of a curse:  The convention would keep getting 
better and better as long as he stayed away, but would be terrible if he 
ever went back.  Or maybe it would be OK for him, but bad for everybody 
else.  

Others I mentioned this to suggested that if the convention committee 
knew about the curse they might try to ban that person from attending.  
But even if they didn't, the person's own conscience and sense of 
obligation to his friends might be enough.  At least I hope it would be.  


                          *********************

All the talk about Einstein and higher dimensions reminded me of this: 


                                TIME GUM


If you've always wanted to roam the corridors of time,
To meet Shakespeare,
Attend the original Olympics,
Or bumble around with dinosaurs,
And you're the kind of person who prefers hiking to driving,
Then I recommend
Time Gum.

Some flavors let you chew your way straight into the past
That you've always read about in history books
While others take you crookedly into other pasts
Of dragons
And wizards
And fairy-tale princesses
And still other flavors give you the future.

I could say more about futures,
But some people feel it's like telling the ending
To a movie you haven't seen yet,
Or opening your Christmas presents early
And having nothing to do on Christmas morning
But sit around wishing you'd waited,
So I won't.

In some ways Time Gum is very mysterious.
Like, nobody knows when or if
It was, or will be, or would have been invented.
But most futures are full of warehouses full of it
So nobody really worries about it.

Some people wonder if it's safe.
The main danger is cheap imitations
That aren't really Time Gum at all
But just regular gum with drugs in it
To make you think you're on a time trip
When you really aren't.

It seems, however,
That dealers in such bogus wares
Often suddenly find
That their grandparents had no children,
And their parents didn't either,
And neither will they, probably,
So it's never really been a problem.

Still, it's safer to buy from someone you trust.
Just ask your friends to recommend someone.
Chances are they can,
Since Time Gum is not as rare
As you might think.

F'rinstance,
If you've ever endured banquet speeches
That seemed to drone on and on forever,
Or been enjoying a concert
When it ended all too soon,
Chances are that some of the lumps
Stuck to the underside of your seat
Are, or were, or will be, or might have been,
Time Gum.

                                              Thomas G. Digby

                                    written 2340 hr Oct 26 83
                                    entered 0415 hr Nov 22 83



                          *********************

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is 

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address 
will be posted.  That's the one you want if you like conversation.  
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
almost nothing in between.  Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.  

If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're 
getting the BCC version.  That's the one for those who want just Silicon 
Soapware with no banter.  The zine content is the same for both.  

To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to  

 http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi

and select the ss_talk list.  Enter your email address in the space 
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To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or 
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                                -- END --
  

    
> one's birthdate is part of the security information that helps
> verify that you are indeed you

So is one's name, come to think of it;
I suppose we will all have to adopt pseuds.