Eclectic Views

    
I really like the Time Gum poem, <bubbles>. It explains so much.
  

    
                            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 #114
                       New Moon of April 19, 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.  


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

Back at the beginning of the month the bigwigs at a regional Bay Area 
transit agency held a meeting and adopted some resolutions about 
upgrading service.  

Then they put out a press release that started out "Caltrain's board of 
directors voted today to adopt the highest service levels in the 
railroad's 140-year history."  After a description of the details it 
concludes "The service will be evaluated after the first six months to 
ensure that it is meeting passenger expectations and Caltrain's 
operational objectives."  

So far, so good.  But then the page finishes up with the date in bold 
type:  "4/1/04".  

After the cynical humorist in me had a bit of a laugh, I got to wondering 
about the more general question of what happens when some real news event 
happens on April Fool's Day.  Are people inclined to dismiss the first 
reports they hear?  Do the media worry about whether the story will be 
believed?  Or has the tradition of publishing April Fool news items waned 
to the point that it is no longer a problem?  


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

Another April date that has recently passed is Tax Day.  That, plus a 
report in the news a few weeks ago about somebody winning a huge state 
lottery jackpot, got me to wondering if there is such a thing as having 
too much money.  

First, some background:  One idle fantasy I've now and then entertained 
is to invent a reactionless space-drive thruster.  The chances of this 
actually happening are probably slim to none, but still I've now and then 
daydreamed about how it would make space travel almost trivially easy as 
well as making cars quiet and non-polluting.  

In the process of daydreaming various applications for the thing, I came 
to the conclusion that if such a device were possible it would quite 
likely be a loophole in Conservation of Energy, leading to a Perpetual 
Motion Machine that would actually work.  Thus if I were to discover a 
way to build such a thing, it would bring me huge amounts of money, 
probably well up into the billions and possibly even as much as a 
trillion.  

But would I want that?  Having that amount of money makes one a public 
figure more or less automatically, even if one doesn't do anything else 
but sit there and have money.  And being in the public eye with lots of 
money will draw the attention of people who want to get hold of some of 
it, often without much regard for the feelings or welfare of the person 
currently holding it.  

Since those people can be good at faking friendship or even love, and 
there's no easy way to tell who's sincere and who isn't, a large fortune 
can in effect become a barrier between the person and the outside world.  
I believe this happens to a degree even with relatively small lottery 
winners, although it may be less of a problem when there isn't the big 
media splash lottery winners often get.  

So while it may be appropriate to be thankful for whatever money one does 
have, it may also be appropriate to be thankful for not having too much. 


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

I notice that people are starting to refer to the Richard Clarke who's 
head of Homeland Security as "Dick Clarke".  That leads me to wonder how 
many of those people do or don't recall the Dick Clark (no final "e") of 
American Bandstand fame.  

I have this mental image of the Homeland Security people sitting around 
in whatever room they have their top secret meetings in, reviewing the 
latest top secret counter-terrorism strategy, when a voice from the back 
of the room calls out "It's a good plan, but can you dance to it?" 


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

Something got me to thinking about the old guessing game "Animal, 
Vegetable, or Mineral".  As you may recall, at the start of a round the 
person thinking of the thing to be guessed would give a hint by 
announcing whether it was "Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral".  Anything in 
the animal kingdom (or derived from it, like a leather belt) was 
"Animal", any plant or anything derived from plants was "Vegetable", and 
anything that had never been living was "Mineral".  

Life was simpler then.  Biologists hadn't yet put fungi and yeasts and 
bacteria and such into separate kingdoms, or if they had, that news 
hadn't filtered into the general consciousness.  So, for example, a 
toadstool or a bacterium would be "vegetable" while an amoeba would be 
"animal".  I don't know how the game would have classified viruses.  I 
suspect they would have been shoehorned into one of the two living 
kingdoms, but I don't know which one.  

But nowadays if you look at a "tree of life" in any modern scientific 
publication you'll see a huge sprawling maze with dozens of branches for 
things most of us have never heard of, and then off in one corner you'll 
find twigs labeled "Fungi", "Plants", and "Animals".  And nobody seems to 
play the "Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral" game any more.  

I suspect that few scientists give much priority to worrying about 
whether some new discovery or change in nomenclature or new way of 
classifying things will mess up the traditional games that have been 
passed down through generations of children.  Should they?  Probably not.  
Children are pretty adaptable, and their games are too.  


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

Many Christian prayers include the phrase "Not my will but Thine."  Why 
is it phrased that way?  

I'm not quarreling with the idea that if there's a conflict, God's will 
should take precedence over any ordinary person's.  But still, why do 
people need to explicitly ask that their will not be done?  Why be so 
pessimistically either-or about it?  Why not pray something like "Help me 
to resolve any conflicts between us so that both my will and Thine can be 
done"?  


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

When you go out for an evening that includes dinner and a movie, do you 
usually prefer to have dinner first and then the movie, or would you 
rather see the movie first and then have dinner?  There are pros and cons 
both ways, and it may be largely a matter of personal preference.  

I personally prefer dinner after the movie.  This preference may be 
largely a matter of habit, although I can offer two arguments for it:  

First, you don't have to worry about whether you will finish your dinner 
in time to make it to the movie.  Slow service or other restaurant 
glitches won't have you biting your fingernails in suspense as show-time 
grows inexorably closer and closer.  

Second, it provides a handy topic for dinner conversation.  If you can't 
find anything else to talk about, you can always discuss the movie you 
just saw.  

The downside is that there may be few restaurants open as late as you 
would like.  Also, people with early bedtimes are more likely to opt out 
of the dinner portion of the evening completely.  

Does this vary regionally?  As I recall, my usual pattern when I was 
living in Los Angeles was to have dinner after the movie.  But here in 
the Bay Area that option seems to be almost unheard of, at least among 
the people I've gone to movies with.  

Or is it a subculture thing?  In Los Angeles most of my movie expeditions 
were with science fiction fans.  Here in the Bay Area they tend to be 
with other subcultures such as Pagans and Polyamorists, or, when I had a 
"regular" job, co-workers.  

Your thoughts? 


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

A house over in the next block had a FOR RENT sign:  

  2bdr/2bth laundry fireplace
  newly renovated pets
  fenced yard non-smokers 
  $1650/month

What got my attention was the way the words in the first two lines could 
take alternate meanings from what was probably meant:  "Throw another 
shirt on the fire while our newly renovated cat curls up by the hearth."  


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

Inspired by the antics of some politicians:  

"Once you've opened your mouth and inserted your foot, do you spit it 
back out and get on with your life, or do you continue to wiggle it 
around and chew on it and make gagging noises while pretending that it's 
good food?"


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

Quantum physics question:  

Suppose some hypothetical country punishes criminals by subjecting them 
to a possible death penalty:  The condemned is put into a box like that 
Schrodinger's cat is put into.  If they're still alive when the box is 
opened, they're considered to have paid their debt to society.  

Does the probability matter?  Maybe it isn't 50-50.  Perhaps someone 
convicted of a minor crime may get a 1% or less chance of death, while 
the most heinous crimes merit a 99% or better chance of dying.  Does this 
change the fact of reality being different or not different inside and 
outside the box?  I suspect it changes magnitudes of wave functions, but 
not the essential nature of the setup.  

So is the person alive while they are in the box?  If they are still 
alive, do they count as an observer?  If they die, and there was no video 
recorder or anything like that in the box with them, does their observer 
status vanish retroactively to when the box was sealed?  

And what of the other side of the coin?  Suppose that before being 
arrested the condemned had bought a lottery ticket, and that the drawing 
will take place while the box is doing its random life-or-death thing.  
The world (including the prisoner's potential heirs) will know who wins 
as soon as the numbers are drawn, but the prisoner will not know until 
the box opens.  

So during the time between when the lottery numbers are drawn and the box 
opens does our reality have a probability of existing in two versions for 
the prisoner just as the prisoner's reality exists (or doesn't exist) in 
two versions for us?  

There are lots of questions here.


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

I was typing something and noticed that I had typoed "example" to 
"exmaple".  That reminded me that my fingers had made that same error a 
number of times before.  

That got me to wondering what "exmaple" might be.  Could it be a tree 
that has had some kind of species-change operation?  It used to be a 
maple, but it had always felt it was a pine, so it finally went through 
the change and now it's living a happier life?  


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


                                  Walls


I was born in a country of thrown stones
And spent my days retreating into exotic lands
Of imagination
Or else hiding behind walls
Of forced wit and nervous laughter
Listening to the pitter-patter of pebbles
Against my stronghold.

I eventually fled that land
And wandered in poverty
Until I found a realm
Where my fortune in strange coin
Would be accepted.

Still I built walls --
Until I noticed that here thrown stones were few
And bruises healed easier
And the view, fresh air, and sunshine
Were more than worth sweeping up
An occasional broken window.

No more walls?
But I am by nature a builder,
Scheduled for frequent deliveries
Of lumber, nails, bricks, and mortar:
All the materials for building walls.
No more walls?
No more walls.
But the materials for building walls
Can also be used
To build bridges.

                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 0315 hr  3/05/77
                                        typed   0410 hr  5/22/77
                                        entered 2210 hr  4/12/92


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

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                                -- END --
  

    
Virgin Airlines published a press release on 4/1/04 announcing a new
benefit; hypnotherapy for all passengers in coach class.  They would awake
believing they had been upgraded to business class and had more leg room.
  

    
Heh!
  

    
Thanks for the poem.  Rings true.
  

    
                            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 #115
                        New Moon of May 18, 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.  


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

There was something on the radio about how "They" believe Silicon Valley 
may be on the verge of a comeback, and how the next big thing will be 
"biotechnology", whatever that turns out to mean.  

That reminds me of a posting I made on the WELL several years ago, back 
in September of 1997 in the Brainstorm conference:  

   I think the analogy of computer languages still holds, even if it's 
   rather loose.

   Assuming we have all the tools, a top-down designer would specify some 
   desired type of organism:  System spec, basically.  Some kind of meta-
   compiler would turn that top-level design into detailed lists of cell 
   types and their locations.  Then the next lower level tool would 
   figure out the steps the embryo would have to go through, what cells 
   differentiate, migrate, and/or die off, and when.  That information 
   would go to a protein compiler that would design the various proteins 
   the cells would need to make, and would figure out which cells make 
   which ones when.  Then the protein list would go to the DNA compiler.

   Not all of this need be computed anew each time.  Some standard 
   libraries might well exist.

   That output file would then go to a chain of de-compilers that 
   calculates from DNA to proteins to cell types, etc., to predict what 
   kind of organism the DNA would produce.  Once human designers have 
   approved the output of this check step the DNA file could be fed to 
   hardware to actually create the organism.

   Even if the nature of the chemistry at the molecular level is such 
   that some steps have somewhat random outcomes, the check step could 
   give a list of probabilities of various good and bad results.  Then 
   humans could judge that.

   And yes, we do have a long, long way to go.

   Note that this is not an either-or game.  While one group of 
   researchers is creating the tools I've listed above (and others in the 
   set I've sort of glossed over) other researchers could be pursuing 
   more pragmatic approaches aimed more at the short term.  And both 
   groups will learn useful things from each other's interim findings.

So now I wonder when, if ever, we'll get to that point.  I suspect it 
will be at least another ten or twenty years, but probably less than a 
century, unless something drastic happens to civilization.  

And I also wonder what gyrations the economies of Silicon Valley and 
other parts of the world will have gone through by that time.  


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

It was kind of windy a few nights ago.  I could hear it in the trees, 
some of which may be willows.  

That leads me to wonder if wind in willows sounds any different from wind 
in palms or pines or oaks or sycamores or any other kind of trees they 
might have around here.  I suspect they all sound pretty similar to the 
untrained ear even if scientists can measure some differences.  

And I'm also wondering if this timeline may be missing out on a whole 
series of "The Wind in the [species of tree]" books that might have been 
written in other timelines.  


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

The radio was talking about a Congressional hearing on the Iraq torture 
scandal.  Someone cited a classic study done at Stanford back around 
1971.  They set up a fake "prison" in the basement of some building, with 
some of the experimental subjects assigned roles as "prisoners" and 
others as "guards".  

They were going to run the experiment for a couple of weeks, but cut it 
short because the "guards" were getting too brutal toward the 
"prisoners".  This apparently showed that the veneer of civilization can 
be thin, with monsters that can surface within all of us.  

So what if that (or something like it) is one of the tests that ET's 
visiting any new planet do before contacting the inhabitants openly?  I 
don't recall anything similar to that in the stories I've heard from 
supposed UFO abductees, although since such accounts are much farther 
removed than second-hand they could have gotten lost.  Or could the 
aliens have tinkered with people's memories, substituting the physical 
probes you usually hear about in connection with UFO abductions?  

This all might make sense if they did such tests on some Earthlings when 
they first found Earth, and we failed.  Had we passed, there would have 
been little or no need for the physical tests.  They could have just 
opened contact and asked us for scientific data on this planet and its 
people.  But if we failed they may be afraid to make themselves known.  

It's an interesting thought, even if I don't know how likely it is to be 
true.  

Another thought:  What if the UFO space aliens conducted an experiment 
similar to the one I was talking about, but with them as the "guards" and 
us as the "prisoners", and their inner monsters manifested to a degree 
that they considered unacceptable?  

What if how they interact with other types of beings varies from species 
to species, and they concluded that if they were to open contact with us 
they would not be able to resist the temptation to mistreat us?  That 
could explain the apparently senseless tortures described by many 
abductees.  It was the alien experimental subjects failing the test.  And 
it could explain why they haven't opened contact.  They don't trust 
themselves to deal fairly with us.  

They might still eventually open contact, if we continue to progress 
technologically to where we're less powerless relative to them, but that 
time may still be a long way off.  


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

It's a future where we have colonies on several planets.  A ship carrying 
meteorites from Earth to Mars, perhaps for a museum exhibit or something, 
gets into trouble and ends up jettisoning (or otherwise losing) its cargo 
in mid-trajectory.  

Are the meteorites still meteorites even though they're now floating free 
in space, or are they back to being meteoroids again?  


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

After I finished with some minor medical stuff I felt a need for some 
stress reduction.  So there I was, on a walkway leading to the Stanford 
hospital, blowing bubbles.  I was getting smiles from many of those who 
passed by.

Then a clump of people came up from behind me.  As they were passing, I 
heard one of them say, presumably to the others, "Welcome to California."  
I kind of smiled at that, and as some of them turned to look at me I saw 
they were smiling too.  That kind of made my day.  


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

As I was gathering up stuff to take to a lunch get-together the word 
"plenelhestic" popped into my head.  What does it mean?  I don't know, 
and I suspect nobody else does either.  Maybe it's sort of homeless, 
wandering around looking for a definition, maybe butting into sentences 
here and there seeing if it will fit?  Did Humpty Dumpty have that 
problem with homeless words?  


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

From a creative writing exercise a few weeks ago:  

   And maybe I should just start typing, even if I'm not writing "about" 
   anything.  Just see what happens.  

   Artichoke asparagus equivalent in Morrison.  Blat Blat Blat!  Be that 
   as it may, it will be May in a few more days, after which comes June, 
   with the rest of the year following in due course.  At least that's 
   how it's gone in previous years, and there doesn't seem to be much 
   reason to suspect that the pattern will change for this year.  

   Bloomptothrage galactarabus.  Glormulong.  And other stuff like that.  
   Even if I don't know what that might be, there may well be other stuff 
   like it somewhere in the universe, or maybe elsewhere if not in this 
   one.  Again, if you have no idea what something is you have no way of 
   knowing there isn't any of it around.  

   And the spelling checker is probably going to hate me, except that 
   such things aren't supposed to have emotions.  

   It's probably a good thing that spelling checkers and other computer 
   programs don't have emotions.  Otherwise they would get too impatient 
   with us imperfect humans.  There may be few things worse than a 
   spelling checker that has decided it's had enough of humans who either 
   don't know how to spell or are clumsy typists.  

And from the following day: 

   And keep those typing fingers moving.  Don't stop for too long.  

   Scalamorth galoompaborg camamon.  Gleeg?  Korphro.  

   And I notice that while I'm quite fluent at speaking such nonsense 
   words, if I try to type them I have to stop and work out the spelling, 
   and then consciously type each letter.  They're not like ordinary 
   words where the spelling is already stored somewhere and just sort of 
   flows into the muscles controlling the fingers.  

How are the rest of you at making up nonsense words?  Do they flow easily 
from your tongue as they do from mine, or is it more difficult?  Is it 
easier for you to type them than it is for me?  Or have you tried it? 


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

A WELL posting about children talking while watching a play and later 
claiming that they could hear the actors OK despite the talking got me to 
thinking.  Maybe new generations are growing up more proficient at 
auditory multitasking, so that talking at movies and plays doesn't 
detract from their enjoyment of it like it does for us elders.  

We got our first TV a little before my eleventh birthday, and the rule, 
at least for the first few years, was that we talked only during 
commercials.  In other words, we treated the TV almost with the respect 
we gave a theater.  

But it appears that as familiarity bred contempt the rule was relaxed, at 
least in some families, so that the following generation grew up 
accustomed to talking with the TV going.  That may have caused their 
children to grow up even more accustomed to splitting their auditory 
attention.  So even if the adults were more or less ignoring the TV as 
they talked, their children were taking in both the programs and the 
conversations.  

This might have not made too much noticeable difference at home, but the 
younger people who could split their attention better would have less of 
a problem with people talking at the movies and at plays, and might thus 
be more inclined to talk.  

So maybe in the future audience conversation in the theater will become 
as acceptable as conversation around the TV is now?  


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

Something for this area's present and future:  


                 Thoughts Inspired by a Vacant Building


With plate-glass eyes staring blankly, 
Silicon Valley sleeps, 
Awaiting new dreams 
That will awaken it 
To another joyfully hectic morning.  


                           --- Tom Digby 
                           Written 15:50 05/07/2004
                           Entered 18:04 05/07/2004
                           Edited  21:02 05/18/2004


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

 ... take two, they're small ...


               Incident Along Fantasy Way 0830 hr 7/30/74
                            Arithmetic Lesson

Arithmetic along Fantasy Way is Different.
You CAN add apples and oranges.

TEACHER:  "What do you get when you add coaches
     and pumpkins?"
"Cinderella!" the class shouts back.
"But what else?"
Everybody talking at once:
"You can turn those old junk cars into ..."
"But you'll get rotten pumpkins!"
"But they're still biodegradable!"
"Make costumes for cars at Halloween!"
"And string lights on them at Christmas!"
"And hide them at Easter!"

Arithmetic along Fantasy Way is Different.
There are no wrong answers.

                                   Thomas G. Digby
                                   written 0830 hr  7/30/74
                                   entered 2125 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 

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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 
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                                -- END --
  

    
>>How are the rest of you at making up nonsense words? 

In college, I made up a word and then tried to include it in as many
papers as possible. Only once was it questioned. It's pretty flexible,
meaning-wise.

CONTRASCUSE
  

    
I've had some slight success getting others to use the word Plergb.  Do a
Google search on it and see what shows up besides my site.
  

    
I'm delighted that you managed to put "contrascuse" into your college essays
and the word went unquestioned so many times, wellelp. That's hilarious!
  

    
Go figure!  I would sometimes get questioned for perfectly legitimate
words!
  

    
                            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 #116
                        New Moon of June 17, 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.  


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

A few blocks from a restaurant I eat at fairly often is an orchard, one 
of the few remaining bits of Silicon Valley's agricultural past.  It's 
part of some kind of park or Historic Site or something, which is why it 
has never sprouted condominiums.  I like to walk around it now and then.  

One day recently I was noticing how the orchard had been plowed to get 
rid of the undergrowth between the trees.  I can now see farther along 
the rows, with fewer hidden areas and fewer apparent obstacles, but the 
view doesn't seem to be as pretty with all the wildflowers gone.  
I'm also reminded of how I once, many years ago, noticed that a then-new 
Interstate was less scenic than the narrow road that it replaced, where 
the trees hung over both sides of the road and it was nice and shady on 
hot summer days.  Yes, the Interstate may be faster and safer and able to 
handle higher volumes of traffic, but it was less appealing to me 
emotionally than that narrow winding road.  

I think other areas of life are like that as well.  Clear out the 
underbrush and you will have, to mix metaphors, smoother sailing.  But 
you won't have that sense of adventure, the vague anticipation of some 
pleasant surprise lurking just around the next bend.  There is much to be 
said for not seeing too much of the future.  


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

With all the hoopla about the recent Venus transit coming on the heels of 
the hoopla about the Mars rovers, I got to wondering how often an 
observer on Mars would see Earth transiting the Sun.  A little Google 
searching found answers at 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Earth_from_Mars

The last one was in 1984, with the next one due in November of 2084.  

It also occurred to me to think about what significance, if any, 
colonists on Mars would give to transits of Earth.  It probably depends 
on how they feel about Earth:  Is Earth mainly a symbol of political 
oppression that they've escaped?  Is it a sacred Mother whose womb they 
have worked their way out of?  Is it a lost Eden?  Or is it some 
combination of those, or something in between, or something else 
entirely?  

In the first case they may not consider transits of Earth worth noting 
except for possible scientific value to astronomers, while in the latter 
cases a transit of Earth could be an occasion for a major religious 
observance.  

There has been some science fiction written about this, but there's 
probably still room for more.  


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

One recent word puzzle gave a list of words, perhaps including "trough" 
and "twine" and "gas" and "slaughter", and asked what they had in common.  
The answer was that if you removed the first letter, what remained would 
be another word:  trough -> rough, twine -> wine, and so on.    

So now the question is, how many words are there for which you can do 
this twice?  For example there's spray -> pray -> ray, that -> hat -> at, 
and slate -> late -> ate, among the dozen or so I've come up with so far.  

And are there any from which you can remove three or more letters, with 
each beheading leaving another word?  The best I've come up with so far 
is there -> here -> ere -> re, in which at least one of the words is sort 
of rare in modern English.  Knowing Murphy's Law, a better one may pop 
into my head just after I've sent this issue out.  But don't count on it. 


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

One panel at a recent science fiction convention was on preserving movies 
in light of things like colorizing.  I didn't go to it because I had 
something else I wanted to do at the same time, so I don't know what, if 
anything, they came up with.  

But be that panel as it may, one thought that has occurred to me is to 
combine Truth in Advertising with the kind of version control one sees in 
software.  In other words, label movies and novels and songs and such 
with version and revision numbers, and keep some sort of database of 
which is what.  

This could go well with DVD technology, since the differences between 
versions can be stored and linked to some default version, such that the 
user would have the choice of which version to watch.  It should also go 
well with the tendency to market DVDs of movie versions that should have 
been released in theaters but weren't, often (so they say) because the 
money people had the last word over the artistic people.  

Who would keep the database and assign the numbers?  The Library of 
Congress, along with its counterparts abroad?  Some new nonprofit 
foundation?  Some industry consortium?  That remains to be determined, 
along with details of the numbering format.  

But be the details as they may, I think the basic idea has merit.  


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

February 13.  August 18.  April 8.  These are dates that match area codes 
I've lived in:  213, 818, and 408, respectively.  Does your area code 
match a date?  If so, are you planning any special observance?  


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

Someone on an email list I'm on brought up the claim that the drug 
companies don't want to develop cures for diseases they can instead 
manage as chronic conditions, because the latter course of action gets 
them more long-term income.  

So how do we prove or disprove that charge, and if there's truth to it, 
how do we change the situation?  

Do we need to pass new laws (or taxes or whatever) to change the present 
worth of long-term investments to make emphasis on the short term less 
attractive?  Do we need to form advocacy groups that are also mutual 
funds that buy shares in the companies they're trying to influence, so as 
to gain standing to apply pressure?  Other?  


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

Back at that science fiction convention, a panel on present and future 
medical technology wandered off onto discussing the evils of American 
health-care insurance.  Is it better in Canada and the UK?  Yes and no.  
People don't have to pay as much for medical care, but on the other hand 
the system takes some medical decisions out of the hands of the patients.  
One example sounded sort of like rationing some of the more expensive 
treatments where the prognosis was poor.  Or something like that.  

That led me to wonder:  It has supposedly been proved, in the math and 
logic sense of theorems and such (Google "Arrow's Theorem" with the 
quotes), that there can be no perfect system for holding elections.  You 
can address some of the evils of whatever system you happen to have, but 
only by allowing other evils to become possible.  

So is it possible that something similar applies to health care systems?  
Perhaps you can choose which flaws to accept, but you can't have a system 
without at least some flaws.  Has anybody done any real research on this 
question?  


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

I had the radio on earlier, and it was giving a traffic report about 
protesters at some big biotech convention.  That reminded me that biotech 
is getting to be rather controversial.  

There's concern that genetically engineered foods might not really be as 
safe as we think they are.  Even if there's no apparent danger now, there 
may be some pitfalls we haven't seen yet that could manifest years or 
decades down the road.  And by the time any now-hidden dangers become 
evident, there may be no going back.  

For one thing, genetically modified crops may not stay where they're 
planted.  There have been cases of pollen from modified crops finding its 
way into other nearby fields whose owners didn't want the modifications 
but got some of them anyway through the stray pollen.  There's also 
concern about traits like herbicide resistance getting into weeds, making 
them harder to control.  

So there may well be legitimate grounds for protesting immediate 
deployment of biotech food crops.  

The problem with that is that some are beginning to label biotechnology 
in general as somehow evil.  

Even if one is willing to forgo biotech as the next big new thing to 
stimulate the economy, there may be other aspects of it we won't want to 
give up.  For example, it may bring us a whole array of new medicines, or 
much less expensive ways to make some of the ones we already have.  

So how do we make sure the baby (biotech in general) is not thrown out 
with the bath water (engineered food crops)?  


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

I'm kind of worried that biotechnology and nanotechnology may go the way 
of klaftnoglastics, a technology whose potential for evil was so feared 
that, despite its almost unlimited potential for good, it was totally 
banned.  All research, use, and even mention of it was suppressed, until 
today practically no one even remembers its name, let alone its nature.  

Some may wonder how I can get away with mentioning the forbidden name on 
the Internet.  Don't they have filters and such to catch people like me?  

Time was, back in Arpanet days, when they did.  But back then the Net was 
largely government-run, and they could put trusted people with the 
appropriate security clearances in charge of the filtering.  But the 
filters caught so few mentions of the forbidden words that when the less 
secure Internet came in they decided that the risk of not having filters 
was less than the risk of letting civilian sysops with no security 
clearances have access to the filter codes.  So that's why I can mention 
such things on the Internet today.  Of course, it doesn't hurt to 
misspell it slightly just in case there's still a stray robo-spy or two 
snooping around.  


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

Speaking of things with the potential for both good and evil, and having 
the wisdom to use them wisely ...


                       Incident Along Fantasy Way 
                         The Recycler of Dreams

I had often seen him,
In expected places and in unlikely ones --
A kindly old man
Who by his looks ought to be running the toy shop
     in some quaint European village,
Always with a large sack
Filled with things picked up from the ground
And an ornate German pipe
Whose smoke he would now and then
Blow into someone's face,
Always without being noticed.  

Driven by curiosity, I made inquiries
And we were eventually introduced.
He is the one known,
In those mythologies in which he is known at all,
As the Recycler of Dreams.

Through the ages he has wandered
Through the halls of kings' palaces,
Along the quiet lanes where lovers linger,
Into bars and taverns and the "In Places",
Or like a phantom through the walls of prisons
Or corporate boardrooms
Or research laboratories,
And even along glittering Broadway --
All the places where dreams
Have been dreamed
And broken.

There he wanders,
Not always in the form I saw,
Collecting pieces of broken dreams
To make into new dreams
To distribute around the world.

Humanity needs its dreams,
And cannot grow or prosper without them.  
But reality is hard on dreams
And on dreamers.

"Take 'Flight'," he says for an example,
"I must have picked that one up a thousand times
From the bottom of this or that windswept hill
And blown it, like smoke,
Into the head of another dreamer
Until it finally bore fruit.
And others, like 'Perpetual Motion'
Or 'World Peace'
Or 'Immortality'
I may be recycling forever,
Along with 'True Love'
And 'Winning the Sweepstakes'
And 'Being a Movie Star'.
That one has gotten many of you
Through some dark and stormy nights."

"Yes, I see the need for the grand dreams
And the smaller dreams
And even the silly dreams.
But what of the darker dreams?
The visions of world conquest,
The elusive Perfect Crime,
The glory of the Master Race?
Do you handle these also?"

"I'm afraid I must," he sighed,
"Regardless of how horrible the possibilities
I cannot label a dream as 'evil' 
And put it away on a shelf.  
The gods by whose authority I operate
Say that that judgment may only be made,
Not by themselves, as you might expect,
But by you mortals."


                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 0140 hr  9/29/74
                                        revised 0245 hr  3/17/83
                                        entered 1230 hr  4/09/92


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

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

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                                -- END --
  

    

>Is Earth mainly a symbol of political oppression that they've
escaped?

Now, everyone knows that President Clark is going to bomb the Mars
Colony when they try to break away from the Earth Alliance.  Where've
you been?
  

    
>>klaftnoglastics

OK, I fiddled with the spelling somewhat and never got a single hit on
Google.  Please enlighten us, Tom.
  

    
The correct spelling of "klaftnoglastics" is somewhere between "zromac"  
and "quengoognog" and "spliige".  I probably shouldn't get closer than
that because this is a vue topic and anybody could be reading this.

But be the spelling details as they may, searching the Web is probably
futile.  The people enforcing the ban have most likely put secret filters
in all the major search engines to prevent any hits on the correct
spelling from showing, even if you do guess it.

You might try looking for old dictionaries at yard sales and such, and
then look through them for pages that appear to have been cut out and
replaced with edited versions.  That may give you a hint as to where in 
the dictionary it used to be.  
  

    
> And are there any from which you can remove three or more letters, with 
>  each beheading leaving another word?  

  wheat -> heat -> eat -> at
  

    
Hmmmmmm.
  

    
ROFL
  

    
                            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 #117
                        New Moon of July 17, 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.  


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

The Fourth of July is over for another year, and the sound of fireworks 
has pretty much faded from this neighborhood, perhaps to return around 
New Year's.  

As usual in recent years, the media ran lots of stories about how even 
"Safe and Sane" fireworks are dangerous, and how people should go to the 
professionally-run displays instead.  But, as usual, people weren't 
buying it.  Why is that?  I have a theory.  

Imagine a group of people sitting around in their living room singing, 
perhaps with two or three of them strumming along on guitars.  They may 
not all be the best singers and guitar players in the world, but they're 
friends and the songs are songs that the people in the group know and 
love.  They enjoy participating.  

Then along comes the landlord or a condo association agent or some such 
and says that there's a No Singing rule.  If you want music, here are 
some free passes to some symphony concerts that will be coming up soon.  

Some of the group may take the passes, and some may actually like 
symphonic music, but it's just not the same as sitting around in your 
living room singing along with friends.  So they continue to do it, 
perhaps a little less loudly so the authorities will be less likely to 
notice, but even so they still do it.   

I believe backyard fireworks are the same way.  The anti-fireworks laws 
have somewhat more grounding in legitimate public policy, in that the 
costs to society of injuries and fires from fireworks are higher than the 
costs to society of a little loud music by people of less than world-
class talent, but that's just a difference in degree.  The pleasures 
being given up to reduce those costs are similar in that people are being 
asked to refrain from participating in an activity they enjoy, and 
instead go be passive observers of something that's only sort of vaguely 
similar.

So that's why people continue to defy their local anti-fireworks laws.  


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

How about a mad scientist who has a thing about tree-huggers, so he 
develops a giant carnivorous plant that hugs back?  


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

As a recent restaurant get-together was winding down and people were 
starting to leave I heard several of them saying things like "I'm over on 
that other street" in reference to where their cars were parked.  It's a 
common figure of speech that we usually don't even think about.  

But I got to wondering:  To what degree is it just a figure of speech, 
and to what degree does it stem from some kind of subconscious feeling 
that one's car is part of oneself?  

Did they use that same speech pattern back in pre-motor days when they 
might need to tell others where their horse was?  How often would you 
have heard someone say something like "I'm tied up across the street"? 

And what of other kinds of possessions?  As I try to think of examples I 
get the impression that there aren't all that many cases where one leaves 
major possessions some distance away and then needs to tell others where 
they are.  But even so, with the few I can think of it seems that people 
would be more likely to say "My stuff is over there [pointing or giving 
coordinates or whatever]" than "I'm over there."  

So as I was wondering, is this form of expression unique to cars?  And 
does it exist in languages other than English?  If so, is it used in 
those other languages the same way it's used here, or is it different?  


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

Another movie idea:  Anti-American fanatics buying up stock in major 
fast-food chains.  Their plan is to gain control and then embark on a 
major marketing push that's even less healthy for consumers than what the 
fast-food chains are already doing.  


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

The new neighbor in the downstairs apartment is still bringing stuff in, 
weeks after the initial move-in.  Most of it is boxes of books.  

He seems to have a lot of books, even by fannish standards, and these 
apartments aren't all that big.  Does he have room for them all?  

Maybe he has some kind of secret dimensional portal in his apartment, 
leading to an alternate world where he has a castle or mansion or some 
such to store books in.  

Perhaps he's one of those wizards who reside mainly in other worlds but 
are occasionally seen in this one.  They do now and then come here, but 
for various reasons tend to keep a low profile. 

Why do they come here?  They come because magic is relatively weak in 
this world compared to most other more or less civilized worlds.  
Although that does make this world less interesting and less comfortable 
for them, it also makes it a good neutral meeting place for wizards who 
often find themselves embroiled in various conflicts and intrigues.  The 
weak magic makes it harder for an opponent to cast any really harmful 
spells.  

Also, weak magic has led us to develop a strong technology, and most of 
that technology still works in most other worlds, even where magic is 
stronger.  In many of those other worlds you can disrupt technological 
stuff with specific spells, but computers and video cameras and microwave 
ovens and such normally work quite well if there are no spells being cast 
against them or if they are otherwise suitably protected.  So the wizards 
come here to buy tech gadgetry to use back home.  

That applies to chemistry and medicine as well.  Even for a wizard, it's 
often easier to take Tylenol for a headache than to work up a healing 
spell.  And many of our over-the-counter medicines do stranger and more 
wonderful things than their makers dreamed of when used as an ingredient 
in the right magical potion.  

So major magic-users from myriads of exotic worlds are walking our 
streets, with most of us being none the wiser. 


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

That leads to more thoughts about my neighbor's books.  Maybe they aren't 
really books from this world at all, but strange spells and such from 
other worlds and times and realities.  

But even if you could get a look at them, you wouldn't learn much.  
Assuming they're in English (or some other language you know), they may 
not pertain to this reality.  Some of the spells and recipes and such 
will only work in certain other worlds whose physical and/or magical laws 
are different from those of our world.  And you can't always tell what 
reality a book was written for by looking at it, because its authors may 
not have known about any realities other than their own.  So you just 
have to sort of know which things will work where.  

Or maybe somebody has compiled a list, and has written their own book 
about it.  Even then you have to be careful because there's no consistent 
naming convention for the various worlds and dimensions and timelines and 
realities.  

And even if someone does start to categorize them, is the set finite?  
Can all the myriad worlds and realities be fully cataloged, or will there 
always be gaps and inconsistencies?  And how often do things change?  
That may be another complicating factor.  

So even if he brings in an infinite number of books from the libraries of 
other wizards in realms whose portals open to other parts of our world, 
he may never really complete his library.  

Such is life, whether or not you're a wizard.  


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

Do creative vampires speak of "Thinking outside the casket"?  


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

Somebody at a party was complaining that movies and TV drama didn't seem 
realistic because (with a few recent exceptions) the characters never 
went to the bathroom.  

After some twists and turns in the conversation I brought up a way that 
ships in the Star Trek universe might not need bathrooms:  Beam the waste 
matter from out of people's bodies into whatever bio-recycling system the 
ship uses, so nobody has to ever do what we think of a normal bodily 
functions.  Even if the original ST technology wasn't good enough, it 
might be by the time we get to NG or thereabouts.  It would require some 
real-time way of sensing what parts of the body are where and being able 
to distinguish the container from the contents, but it still should be 
possible given sufficiently sophisticated scanners.  

The user may not even need to go to a special part of the ship.  Just 
announce into the air "I need to go to the bathroom" and remain 
relatively still for a couple of seconds, and the ship's computers will 
hear you and do the necessary scanning and beaming.  

Another feature which might be possible given good enough remote 
molecular scanning, is to teleport dirt and dead cells and such off of 
people's skin so they don't have to take showers either.  Similarly, they 
may never need to brush their teeth.  

I'd previously thought of futures where people have little teleporters 
implanted in their bodies for getting rid of wastes and such, so in a way 
this is just an extension of that idea.  But this may have much broader 
potential.  

But either way, imagine how barbaric people accustomed to such things 
from early childhood would think of us as being.  


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

Do vampire travel agents sell Yuletide tours of places like Alaska and 
Scandinavia as "The land of the midday dark"?


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

At one point in a movie I saw recently the main character was faced with 
the prospect of the woman he was in love with marrying someone else.  She 
really would have preferred him, but he had some hidden reasons for 
feeling it wouldn't be fair for him to marry her.  At that point I 
noticed that nobody in the whole cast ever said anything about Polyamory.  
Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference in this particular case, but I 
was reminded of how seldom the concept comes up in this society.  

That later led to thoughts that to the degree the Polyamory movement 
succeeds, it will deprive movies (and stage plays and other forms of 
storytelling) of one of their old dramatic standbys:  The hero's 
girlfriend about to be married to somebody else, often a villain.   

Of course this has already been weakened from a few decades ago when 
marriage was generally assumed to be for life.  Now there's at least the 
possibility that she will end up divorced later on, perhaps in a sequel.  
And if Polyamory ever does catch on, the finality of the lady love 
forsaking the hero for some other man will be weakened even further.  

Of course there may be compensations, such as the possibility of new 
dramatic situations in a household with several husbands and/or wives 
sharing various partners of various genders.  But will any of those equal 
the drama of a preacher being interrupted just as he starts to say "I now 
pronounce you ..."? 


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

Once again the Olympics are coming up, reminding me of this: 


                             TORCH SONG SOLO


The last man on Earth(?) sits alone in his camp
On the way to the Olympics.
How he has come to be Torch-bearer is kind of hazy,
Along with why there seem to be no crowds along the way
To cheer him on.

He's not really sure where the Games are,
And even if he knew for certain
It wouldn't seem right to go straight there
Without first finding people along the way
That he can show the Torch to.

A secret part of him also suspects
That if he ever did arrive at the stadium
He would find no pomp and pageantry,
No cheering crowds,
And nothing to do
But collect all the medals by default
And ever after
Have nothing to do.

So he will run the Torch forever,
Taking whichever road looks most tempting,
On the chance that somewhere 
The cheering crowds
Are waiting.


                                        -- Tom Digby
                                        Composed 0215hr 7/25/84


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

               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 --
  

    

>But I got to wondering:  To what degree is it just a figure of
speech, 
and to what degree does it stem from some kind of subconscious feeling

that one's car is part of oneself?

I was reading something the other day that people's "personal space"
expands to include their car when they are driving.  So, I think the
subconscious feeling is a part of it.
  

    
>>How about a mad scientist who has a thing about tree-huggers, so he 
develops a giant carnivorous plant that hugs back?  

Love this image, Tom. I really enjoy reading Silicon Soapware.
  

    
                            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 #118
                       New Moon of August 15, 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.  


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

Someone on an online conferencing system I'm on was bemoaning the lack of 
archives from the system's early days.  Such things weren't kept then 
because computer storage technology wasn't up to doing it in a cost-
effective manner.  Thus some potentially valuable history was lost. 

That led me to wonder about the future.  

We seem to be heading in the direction of more surveillance in the name 
of security and crime prevention and protection against terrorism and 
such.  If people come to accept that, and if the technology continues to 
improve and the cost continues to drop, will posterity criticize our 
generation (and those that went before us) for not saving every possible 
scrap of info?  

Will our children wonder why Grandma and Grandpa didn't save the 
honeymoon hotel's surveillance videos of their wedding night?  Will they 
be unable to comprehend the economic chaos of not having a permanent 
record of family finances six generations back?  Will they wonder how we 
were able to choose marriage partners without a full DNA screening?  

Someone I mentioned this to brought up the question of who would be able 
to sort through such a mountain of data.  Wouldn't the gems get lost 
amidst the sludge?  I don't think that will be a problem because by then 
we'll have what amounts to robots (even if they're just computer programs 
without physical bodies) to do the searching and sorting for us.  

So how will future generations view our times, and will they wish we had 
kept more and better backups?  


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

I'm also reminded of thoughts about the mortality or immortality of 
ideas.  Do bits and pieces of ideas linger in the idea pool forever, or 
do some of them vanish completely?  I like to think that some of mine 
will be among those bits that will be around forever, but how likely is 
that to really be the case?  

Will there be a time when no one remembers that there was once such a 
place as Earth, even if there are still beings around who are somehow 
descended from us?  

It's something to wonder about, even if the probable answers are a bit 
depressing.  


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

Speaking of ideas, here is something too short to use as a featured poem: 


                                 R? X??

Most sunsets are still rated
for General Audiences.

                                   written 0255 hr  9/16/76
                                   entered 1210 hr  4/09/92


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

The July 2004 issue of IEEE Spectrum has a science fiction story (with 
accompanying technical commentary) where the characters are wearing 
computer stuff as part of their clothing.  

This is not a new idea, but it may now be starting to actually become 
practical.  The story and accompanying articles mentioned things like 
picking up electrical signals from tiny muscle twitches that others 
nearby wouldn't notice, and interpreting them as commands.  

The question that this raises in my mind is, if "everybody" is wearing 
clothing with computer interfaces built in, and it's become more or less 
the norm in society, what happens to nudists?  

Will there be other types of interfaces available that don't require 
clothing as part of their structure, and that aren't so physically 
intrusive that one might as well be wearing clothing?  

Sure, people may be willing to go offline for a few minutes a day in the 
shower, and maybe even for an occasional couple of hours at clothing-
optional hot-tub parties and such, but what of those whose normal 
everyday at-home garb is their birthday suit?  Will they lose the ability 
to communicate with their new computers in what may by then be the 
"standard" mode?  

Of course this whole problem may be transitory, until implants take over, 
but it still could be an awkward few years for those who feel that 
clothing is only for certain social situations and for keeping warm in 
cold weather.  

This is an issue I haven't seen talked about.  Is it time to bring it up?  


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

That recent "I Robot" movie, like many other science fiction and fantasy 
movies I've seen that are set in something more or less like our real 
world, got me to thinking of what happens after the movie ends.  

In this particular case, given a world that has pretty thoroughly woven 
robots into its socio-economic fabric, what happens when they are 
suddenly no longer available, or at least no longer to be trusted?  How 
will that society cope in the short term?  And how will society adjust 
over the longer term?  

What economic dislocations will there be?  How will the kinds of jobs 
that had been filled by robots be handled?  Will people be willing to 
take those jobs, or will they go unfilled?  

Will those who had been afraid of robots all along but had their fears 
discounted as "phobias" start saying "I told you so"?  Will there be a 
greater incidence of certain kinds of stress-related mental health 
problems?  Social unrest?  Insistence that certain kinds of jobs remain 
in the hands of humans?  Changes in various laws?  

And since the company seems to be American ("US Robotics"), how will 
people in other nations change their views of it and the US as a whole?  

These may not be the kinds of questions that make good movie sequels, but 
they might make good text stories.  


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

One reason there aren't more movies and books about the aftermath of the 
events in movies like "I, Robot" is that such sequels may not be quite 
the same genre.  

The original "I, Robot" is an "action" movie mixed with a mystery, but as 
I envision the aftermath you would have more stories about human emotions 
and relationships and such, with fewer opportunities for car chases and 
explosions and the like.  These could be compelling stories in their own 
right, but they might not appeal to the same audiences that went for the 
original.  Could that different audience be brought in? 

In a way it's a marketing problem.  Can it be solved?  


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

Something reminded me of the backyard Fourth of July fireworks that I 
wrote about last issue.  Even though they are illegal in this area, 
people continue to set them off.  

This time I got to thinking about fireworks in the world of "I, Robot".  
Might home-style fireworks be considered OK, if managed and lit by 
robots?  Presumably a robot would be less likely to suffer burns than a 
flesh-and-blood human, and injuries like blown-off fingers can be 
repaired.  

There's still the matter of fire safety when people set off fireworks in 
the midst of stuff that is likely to catch fire.  Perhaps a robot manager 
would be in a better position to judge that than a human, because of the 
robot's ability to measure things by eye and do complex math stuff in 
their heads, especially if they are equipped with real-time links to 
weather reports and such.   

So maybe humans could be allowed to set off their own fireworks, but only 
under robot supervision?  

Another point:  One of the human characters in the movie has an 
artificial arm, as a result of an injury.  It uses robot technology, and 
works well enough that most people around him don't know he has it.  If 
that kind of injury can be repaired that well, might some of the safety-
related arguments for banning amateur fireworks be weakened?  

Something to think about.  


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

All the recent hooraw about gay marriage reminds me of this.  Although it 
was written long ago when the world was much less friendly to people who 
weren't "normal", it probably still applies in many places.  


                             To Be a Martian

Let me tell you a little of what it feels like
To be a Martian,
One of the millions exiled to Earth and passing as human,
All shapes, all sizes, all colors.
I cannot tell you the reason we were sent here
Except that we mean no harm
And that nothing could be further from the truth
Than the endlessly repeated tales of
Horrors from the Red Planet.

Although that's an annoyance,
What really hurts is having to hold my tongue
When someone I consider a friend
Starts bad-mouthing Martians
And telling how he would prove his loyalty to Earth
By tearing tentacle from slimy tentacle
Anything he meets
That looks like his idea of a Martian. 

Even that would be bearable
Except that most Martians,
All but a few who venture
To congregate in desolate places,
Are disguised so well
That they are seldom known even to one another.
And there is a tradition,
As old as the Martian race
And established with good reason,
That a Martian may love
Only another Martian.  


                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 0220 hr  1/20/70
                                        typed   0355 hr  5/07/77
                                        entered 2205 hr  4/12/92


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

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

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  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 --
  

    
_IEEE Spectrum_ has science fiction now?  If it had done that 13 years
ago, I might have paid more attention to my free issues.

<Will there be a time when no one remembers that there was once such a
place as Earth, even if there are still beings around who are somehow
descended from us?>

What, you've never heard the ancient legends?  Of how our ancestors
traveled across the Great Expanse from the fabled Blue Ball... oh,
sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself.
  

    
                            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 #119
                     New Moon of September 14, 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.  


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

What if you had a school or work assignment to "Write about something 
other than the story of Mama Bear and Papa Tiger and Little Baby Bear-
Tiger who's really an adopted camel"?  What would you do?  

The problem comes if whoever is grading it sees some kind of connection 
between your writing and the forbidden topic.  

For example, if you mention smoking, they can say Camel is a major brand 
of cigarettes so that's an indirect mention of the baby camel who had his 
name changed to "Bear-Tiger" when he was adopted.  

Likewise, if you have a character grinning, the reviewer can bring up the 
phrase "Grin and bear it" which leads to puns about bears.  

And so on.  So do we have something like the "Six Degrees of Separation" 
thing but with story topics instead of people?  

This could be turned into a contest where one side tries to discuss Topic 
A without getting into Topic B, while the other side's mission is to find 
connections, however tenuous, between their opponent's words and the 
forbidden topic.  That could get interesting.  


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

Last issue I did a piece on how we may be becoming a surveillance-based 
society.  This may not be a totally bad development, as long as Big 
Brother doesn't own all the cameras.  If enough cameras are in the hands 
of the people, wrongdoing on the part of police and other public servants 
will be much better documented than in the past, making governments more 
accountable to those they are supposed to serve.  

Think of Rodney King as a poster boy for this concept.  

What reminded me of this was a friend who had gone to New York to protest 
at the Republican Convention.  He says the police did some illegal things 
like rounding up and mass-arresting whole blocks full of people without 
first ordering them to disperse.  I asked if people documented the 
illegal arrests with their cell-phone cameras and such, and he gave a 
definite Yes.  And the lawsuits are already starting to be filed.  Things 
should get real interesting in the courts in coming months and years.  

So the trend the Rodney King case was an early hint of may be starting to 
bear fruit on a larger scale.  


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

"It's as out of place as a theremin at a Renaissance Pleasure Faire."


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

Various news stories related to the upcoming election and the recent 
political conventions, as well as some comic strips that were being shown 
around at a lunch get-together, gave rise to some thoughts about who 
really determines which direction things move in this country.  

I think it boils down to whoever can sway public opinion.  This is partly 
the people who own the large media companies and TV networks, but also 
includes some individual celebrities such as major pop singers, who can 
exert some force for change once they have a large enough following and 
are high enough up the career ladder that the record companies are not 
choosing their material for them.  

At the grass-roots level there are people who are able to persuade their 
friends and neighbors one way or another.  I think this tends to 
correlate with intelligence and education, but not always.  

Then on a sort of in-between level there's a new factor, people with Web 
sites and various kinds of online forums.  If someone puts something 
interesting up and enough others agree with it to spread pointers around, 
it can reach quite a few people.  This wasn't the case a generation ago.  

I think this latter is mostly for the good, to the degree that it's more 
an upward extension of the grassroots than a downward extension of Big 
Media.  Thus the grip of the wealthy elite on the controls is weakening. 

Will that lead to mob rule?  Possibly, although there's a fair amount of 
bias in favor of those who are at least rational enough to express 
themselves coherently in writing.  That, and the technical expertise 
required, may tend to weed out some of the least qualified, although the 
tech stuff is getting to be less and less of a factor.  

Whatever happens, the future is going to be Interesting Times. 


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

The human body has cells called osteoblasts that build up bone and other 
cells called osteoclasts that break it down.  They're both constantly at 
work, keeping things in a sort of equilibrium.  

Society has iconoclasts, people who break down established ideas.  Does 
it also have iconoblasts?  If so, they don't seem to be called that.  


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

There was a news story about a tribe in the Amazon jungle whose members 
don't know how to count above two.  Their language has words for "one", 
"two", and "many", but not for specific numbers above two.  Scientists 
who visited them reported that the adults can't seem to handle larger 
numbers when tested.  

The scientists were able to teach the tribe's children to count to higher 
numbers, even though they couldn't teach the adults.  It's as if some 
part of the brain that handles learning basic cognitive skills shuts down 
after childhood.  

Something like this has been demonstrated in other areas for humans in 
general, not just that tribe.  For example, it seems to be the case that 
children learn new languages more readily than adults do.  Some adults 
are good at learning languages, but they are the exception.  Again, some 
sort of language-learning system seems to shut down after childhood.  

If you look at what is known of human pre-history, there is a long period 
during which humans appear to have been physically modern but probably 
didn't have writing or arithmetic skills that we now take for granted.  
Could some of those hundreds of thousands of years have been spent 
slowly, through trial and error, inventing skills and concepts that could 
then be taught only to the children, thus taking a generation or more to 
spread through the tribe even if the tribe had a use for them?  

That leads me to wonder if there may be other skills and concepts that 
humans today would be easily capable of learning were they to be taught 
in childhood, but which are essentially unknown because no one has ever 
learned them.  No one has stumbled onto them yet, or if they have, they 
haven't managed to teach them to enough children.  

Could some of the fringe things like telepathy and psychic channeling 
whose existence is a matter of debate be in this category?  


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

Do people in metric countries still speak of film "footage"?


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

Something reminded me of one of the Moon landers or space probes or some 
such that had the legend "We come in peace for all mankind" on a plaque.  
I was also reminded of the science fiction cliche of saying "We come in 
peace" at any first-contact situation.  

Now it occurs to me that being too quick to say "We come in peace" when 
making contact with new cultures betrays a warlike nature, because to a 
truly peaceful people it would go without saying.  Saying it at least 
hints that it may not be the default option.  And if the beings you're 
making contact with are capable of fearing that your intentions may not 
be peaceful, saying it without some kind of proof that you're saying it 
truthfully is kind of meaningless.  

Or is this one of those formalities that everybody just sort of expects, 
no matter what either side's true intentions are?  


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

One interesting point someone made in some postings on the WELL was to 
compare the last half-century or so of UFO sightings with the religious 
manifestations of previous generations.  Are UFO's and angels and Virgin 
Mary apparitions all part of the same underlying thing that we as yet 
know little or nothing about?  That makes some sense to me.  

In fact, it probably makes more sense than the idea that we are being 
visited by alien civilizations that are mostly keeping themselves hidden 
from us but are doing a clumsy job of it, with layers and layers of 
secret conspiracies and government cover-ups and all that.  And it makes 
more sense than space aliens grabbing people to do various kinds of 
"experiments" on, again with clumsy attempts at concealment by memory-
editing and such.  

I was also thinking that perhaps crop circles should also be on that 
list.  While humans have claimed responsibility for some of them, that 
doesn't necessarily mean that they're all human-made, Occam's Razor to 
the contrary.  

One difference between crop circles and the other things on the list is 
that crop circles are physical things that have some objective existence, 
with the main question being their origin, while flying saucers and 
angels and such may or may not exist in this objective reality at all.  

But then again, haven't UFO's now and then shown up on radar? 


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


                       Incident Along Fantasy Way 
                               Projections


Last night I went to the Planetarium.
They were doing a travelogue:
"The heavens as seen from Oz, Trantor, Middle Earth,
     Lankhmar, Hollywood,
And other legendary places."
As an added attraction they had images of UFO's:
Lights, disks, streaks, and various other forms
Of mysterious heavenly apparitions.

But something departed from the script --
A spot of light grew and grew and grew 
Until a door opened and a Thing emerged.
"Our home planet is overcrowded," it said,
"And we want you to put a brighter bulb in your projector
To make our world larger and roomier."

"But that would exceed our budget
And besides you don't have tickets."
A bureaucrat forever.

Suddenly, with a flurry of tentacles into a projector
     previously unnoticed,
The attendant was extinguished
And with a quick change of slides
A more cooperative one created.

Request granted, farewell, and off into the artificial night
Leaving me to wonder:
Which projector am I coming from?


                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 0200  8/01/74
                                        entered 1205  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.  

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 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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bubbles@well.com).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

    
Tom, your piece concerning the influences on voters warrants more
discussion. 

For the first time in my life, I'm a union worker. And I've already
seen a couple flyers at work that make recommendations on candidates
and ballot measures. I will add the union's position to the mix of
things I consider when deciding how to vote. 

I wonder how many people automatically vote a straight (party, union,
religious, whatever) ticket?
  

    
                            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 #120
                      New Moon of October 13, 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.  


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

It's starting to look like Fall in Silicon Valley, even though the past 
couple of days have been among the warmest of the year, with temperatures 
in the upper 80's to lower 90's F (around 30 C), and even though most of 
the trees are still green.  

Yes, despite the summer-like weather, there are definite signs of Fall.  

The vacant lot on a nearby busy street has sprouted lights and inflatable 
play structures for the children as their parents choose from the many 
hundreds of pumpkins for sale.  Likewise, the local supermarkets are 
featuring pumpkins, along with Halloween decorations and bags of Trick or 
Treat candy.  I'm also seeing seasonal Halloween-only stores, in full 
bloom for now but doomed to wither away when November arrives.  

In residential areas I'm starting to see tombstones and witch cauldrons 
and skeletons in people's front yards, often festooned with spiderwebs or 
strings of lights.  Halloween is nigh.  

Santa has also been spotted in some stores here and there, usually an 
aisle or two over from the witches and pumpkins, patiently (or perhaps 
impatiently) awaiting his turn in the spotlight.  

Oh yes, I almost forgot.  There's one more sign of Fall:  The days are 
getting shorter.  


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

"What do you think of cow-tipping?"

"I figure maybe a dime for each quart of milk.  That may seem low, but 
cows don't have much use for money."


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

The science fiction club I was active in for many years when I was living 
in Los Angeles ( http://www.lasfs.org/ ) has been host to something 
called "APA-L".  The "APA" in the name stands for "Amateur Press 
Association", of which there have been many in science fiction fandom.  

Those who grew up with computers can think of an apa as something like an 
email list or online forum, but based on paper instead of the Internet.  
Every so often (weekly in this case, but at other intervals for other 
apas) you write up whatever you want to say, including responses to what 
others have written previously, then print up and deliver the required 
number of copies, usually a few dozen.  In return you get back one copy 
of everybody else's contribution.  

What reminded me of this is that APA-L is celebrating its fortieth 
anniversary later this month.  It is by no means the oldest such entity 
around, but it was the first one I joined, when I first got into fandom 
back in the mid-Sixties.  

Later, when I got a computer and started joining online forums (first via 
dial-up modem, later via the Internet) I felt pretty much at home.  Even 
though the online computer groups were in some ways a new medium of 
communication, in other ways they were very much like the paper-based 
apas I'd had decades of experience with by then.  Much of what I'd 
learned, including how to disagree with others without starting a flame 
war, still applied.

So as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  


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

Although most people who are not heavily into computers start any lists 
they make with item number one, the Major Arcana in the Tarot deck are 
numbered starting from zero.  Are there other well-known zero-based 
series dating from pre-computer days, or is that pretty much It?  


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

At this late date it's probably not giving away too much of the plot to 
mention that in the film "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" there's 
a bit about a sort of space-going Noah's Ark, built by scientists.  A 
giant rocket ship is seen being loaded with pairs of various sorts of 
animals.  The idea was that Earth was about to be devastated and this 
shipload of animals would restore it to the state of some Eden, complete 
with a new Adam and Eve.  

Afterwards I got to thinking about potential problems with this.  For 
example, what happens if, sometime during the first few days after 
release, one of your two mice gets eaten by one of your two cats or 
rattlesnakes or hawks or whatever?  Do you have a Plan B, or are you just 
out of luck, mouse-wise?  And what do your predators eat if your prey 
species are off-limits for a while?  

And even without the predator-prey problem, what of genetic bottlenecks 
and the resulting inbreeding?  Will that hurt the ability of the various 
species to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by the post-
disaster world?  

In the Bible Noah did OK with a seemingly simple setup, but he had Divine 
Help that modern scientists may well have to do without.  

If you were designing such a project today, and not expecting any sort of 
miracles, how would you do it, based on what we know now or are likely to 
know within the next couple of decades?  Assume that you have access to 
pretty much unlimited robot help, but few if any humans, at least in the 
years right after the landing.  


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

Think of the trips to the grocery store you could save if all new homes 
had various flavors of pudding and gravy and salad dressings and ketchup 
and such piped in.  


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

There's been a debate on the WELL about the merits of closing some BART 
restrooms because of terrorism.  A BART board member with training in law 
stated that safety was their first priority, and that their policy was to 
eliminate even the slightest risk.  

My thought was that if they really wanted to eliminate all risk, why were 
they running trains and letting people ride them?  

Maybe I should have replied, as someone with training in engineering, 
that there is no such thing as making something completely safe.  

With a certain amount of effort and passenger inconvenience you can (for 
example) eliminate half the risk.  Then with somewhat greater effort and 
inconvenience you can eliminate half the remaining risk.  And with truly 
stupendous effort you can eliminate half of whatever risk is left.  And 
so on, with the effort and inconvenience growing by leaps and bounds with 
each step.  But you'll never get rid of all the risk.  

And it's not like Zeno's Paradox where you do eventually get there 
because the time for each halving of the distance is itself being halved 
as you go.  If anything, the effort gets greater with each step.  

So how should agencies like BART judge the acceptable degree of risk?  


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

A thought came to me a few nights back:  Fake commuters.  

The government could hire thousands of people to get up every morning, 
drive an hour or two-hour loop around area freeways and streets during 
the morning commute, and then do it again in the opposite direction 
during the evening commute.  

This would make the rest of the public think the economy is picking up 
and more people have jobs.  That in turn would give various corporate 
decision-makers more confidence, which would lead to increased hiring.  

Thus would we be led back into prosperity.  

Should I have suggested this to President Bush before the last debate?  


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

I saw something interesting a few days ago:  A bumper sticker that read

  My child wasn't
  Citizen of the month 
  [at some school]

with the "n't" looking like it had been added by hand with a marking pen.  
Was this some parents expressing disappointment in their child, or an 
attempt at satire, or what?  


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

There's an organization called StarDate ( http://www.stardate.org/ ) that 
does short educational radio spots.  

One recent one (September 24) was about how if you were to shine a 
flashlight at Arcturus some few of the photons would eventually reach 
that star.  Then most of those that didn't hit the star itself would 
continue onward for cosmologically large distances because there's 
essentially nothing to stop them.  They may be too widely scattered for 
any technology we know of to detect them, but in theory they'd still be 
there.  

On the other hand, if you shine a flashlight at Vega there are gas and 
dust clouds that will act as a backstop, so your photons won't get very 
far, cosmologically speaking, even though "not very far" is still many 
times any Earthly distance.  

This wasn't really all that much in the way of new knowledge other than 
the database trivia of which stars are backstopped by dust clouds and 
which aren't, but it did give a definite "sense of wonder" feeling to 
think about it in those terms.  


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

Since Halloween is approaching, I might mention that a few mornings ago I 
had an interesting semi-dream as I was waking up:  Some kind of space 
alien with a tool that might be something like a scythe, although it was 
kind of hard to tell.  The creature was some other planet's version of 
Death, temporarily assisting ours because some catastrophe is about to be 
too much for our Death to handle alone.  

Maybe every planet with sentient life has its own version of Death and 
the Stork and other such hemidemisemigods, and maybe they occasionally 
help each other out when peaks of activity occur.  So having some other 
planet's Death coming for you is an ill omen indeed, even worse than just 
you being dead.  

Since every planet (and indeed every culture on any one planet) has its 
own legends and symbols, they'll get a lot of the details wrong, assuming 
they make any effort at all in that direction.  But hopefully they'll at 
least know how to get you to the right Hereafter.  


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

The incident that inspired this issue's poem also leads me to wonder what 
things from our culture will be treated in some future in ways that might 
make us laugh or cry were we to see them now.  We probably won't know 
until we get there.  


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


                              Going to Seed


On a mild October evening I browse the Halloween store, 
A place of gore and gravestones, 
  spiderwebs and skeletons, 
  costumes and cauldrons.  

A packet catches my eye, 
Stirring up memories of days almost forty years gone. 
It is a "HIPPIE KIT":  
  A headband with the word "PEACE" on it, 
  A large peace-sign neck pendant,
  And a pair of rose-colored glasses, 
  All marked "Made in China".  

The tie-dyed T-shirt and longhaired wig are not included, 
But no doubt await me down another nearby aisle.  

As a plastic skull 
  blares a tinny rendition of the well-known Funeral March 
Part of me dreams of taking a time machine 
  back to those days of overwhelming optimism
  in the face of overwhelming adversity. 

Would those I would show it to laugh or cry
  to see all their grand world-changing dreams 
  summed up in a pack of trinkets in a costume shop?  

To those who would cry I have words of consolation:  
While the bloom of the Flower Children has faded,
  their seeds continue to grow and spread, 
  flowering anew into a rainbow of colors 
  beyond what they could have ever imagined.   


                                -- Tom Digby
                                written  Tue Oct  5 20:54:34 PDT 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 
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.  


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