Eclectic Views
Topic 71: Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #51 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Sun 14 Nov 04 14:45
permalink #51 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Sun 14 Nov 04 14:45
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 #121
New Moon of November 12, 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 recent issue of Newsweek had a cover story on Bob Dylan.
The thing that struck me was that after a certain point in his career he
found fame to be a burden, with fans in effect stalking him and prowling
around his home, seldom giving him or his family a moment's peace.
It turns out that some of his less comprehensible songs were in effect an
attempt at self-sabotage. If he could somehow become less famous, he
wouldn't get all that unwanted attention.
But it didn't work. He had attained some critical degree of fame where a
sort of "Emperor's New Clothes" effect came into play. If one of his
songs seemed to make no sense, it must be because its meaning was too
profound for the listener to understand, which meant it must be really
good. The idea that the song inherently made no sense was no longer
allowed. So his fame continued to grow. At least that's how I
interpreted that part of the article.
That all makes me thankful that I didn't become a famous pop music star
back in the Sixties. For a while it seemed possible that it might
happen, and it looked like a grand dream at the time, but with what I've
since seen and heard about greedy and manipulative business people, as
well as some of the effects of major public attention, it's probably for
the best that it never came to fruition, especially when I was as young
as I was back then.
*********************
The bit about Bob Dylan finding fame to be a burden, combined with the
upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, leads to the thought that many of the
things I have to be thankful for didn't look at all good at the time. Is
it like that for other people as well?
*********************
[sound of radio being turned on]
... the victim has been transferred from Central Emergency to Forest
Lawn, where his condition is reported as Extremely Stable.
This is Radio Pollyanna, where the news always sounds good even when it's
bad.
[sound of radio being turned off]
*********************
As many of you may know, there's been a big murder trial going on a few
miles up the road. The big news a few days ago was that a couple of
jurors got kicked off the jury. Of course the part about kicking is just
a figure of speech, at least in our world. But what about the courts in
Cartoonland?
The courts where most small-to-medium trials are held have a couple of
bailiffs who used to be professional football players. When a juror
needs to be kicked off the jury, a football bailiff drop-kicks them
through one of the courthouse windows. Then the court bills the ex-juror
for the cost of replacing the broken glass.
There have been a couple of discrimination lawsuits because some kickers
kick harder than others, so they're thinking of going to some sort of
steam-powered mechanical arm with a giant boot on it to deliver a
precisely standardized kick. It will be taken around to the various
courtrooms as needed.
But that project is on hold because a maker of trebuchets is suing over
alleged irregularities in the contract-awarding process. Even though the
action of the trebuchet is more like throwing than kicking, they argue
that they should have been allowed to bid.
On the other hand, the courts that do the big sensational trials have a
different system. There the chairs in the jury box are all ejection
seats. If the judge doesn't like a particular juror, he (or she) just
presses a button and SPROING!!! Next candidate, please?
These ejectors are generally aimed toward a nearby industrial area, where
the ejectee can land in any of several interesting vats or junk piles or
bits of humorously traumatic machinery.
But there's a problem: The trapdoor in the ceiling that's supposed to
open to let the juror through doesn't always synchronize properly with
the ejection seat. This is especially bad with downstairs courtrooms
where trapdoors in several upper floors have to open in sequence.
Engineers had been working on it, but the work is on hold because of
pending litigation about the contract, or rejected jurors' hospital
bills, or something like that. And that litigation is on hold because
they can't do juror selection as long as the juror ejection system isn't
working right. It's kind of an impasse.
There's talk of getting a change of venue to some outdoor location, but
it's getting into Rainy Season so that may not be too good an idea
either.
Stay tuned for further developments, but don't hold your breath.
*********************
"It turns out that that part of the spaceport had been built over an old
Twentieth Century cemetery."
How come you practically never hear that line in the movies?
*********************
Here's a possible consequence if this Administration has its way on the
use of stem cells.
Imagine a future where researchers abroad, using stem cells, have found a
cure for some major degenerative disease, possibly MS or Parkinson's or
Alzheimer's.
But the US has outlawed the use of fetal stem cells.
So the standard description of the disease ends with "... although it is
curable in many countries, in the US there is no lawful cure."
Then what?
*********************
If you're not into computer geekery, you might want to skip to the next
row of asterisks.
The flap about electronic voting machines and the difficulty of verifying
their programming got me wondering whether anybody has ever tried writing
a compilation auditor. It would check a binary file against the source
code that was supposed to have produced it, and give an indication of how
consistent or inconsistent they are.
This would need to have some aspects of a compiler along with aspects of
a reverse compiler. Both of those tools exist, but I don't know if
anyone has ever tried to combine them like that.
Or would it be better to compare two binary files for functional
equivalence? That way you wouldn't be limited to programs written in a
particular language, as long as you had a trusted compiler for the
language in question. You could also compile the same source code with
two different compilers, to catch compiler problems.
Either way, this would be a rather complex piece of software, especially
when you consider things like optimized code. But it might be possible.
Or it might not. Perhaps this is one of those tasks that turns out to
have no limit on how complex the calculations can turn out to be. But
even if that's the case, if it could handle the easy parts and flag the
rest, it might make the job of verifying executable code easier.
Uses for this wouldn't necessarily be limited to voting machine software.
Some spacecraft and aircraft have redundant computer systems controlling
critical aspects of flight. Each of these was written by a different
party, in hopes that they won't all make the same mistakes.
A cross-checker could verify that the different versions of the code are
indeed functionally equivalent. A difference would indicate that at
least one version may be wrong, and thus point out places that need
further scrutiny.
So has anybody tried to write something like this?
*********************
Do cat fights follow Meowquis of Queensbury rules?
*********************
That big murder trial I mentioned earlier has just returned a verdict:
Guilty. Now comes a second phase in which they determine whether or not
the defendant gets the death penalty.
That reminds me of an article I read some time back with a description,
by one of the official witnesses, of an execution by lethal injection.
It reminded me less of a traditional execution than of a sick pet being
"put to sleep".
That leads me to more thoughts on the death penalty. What function(s),
if any, should it be serving in a civilized society?
If it's mainly to rid the world of people who are too dangerous to be
allowed to live, should it still be treated as a sentence for the
criminal courts to hand down for a specific act, or should it become more
of a civil matter, analogous to commitment to an asylum? And should it
perhaps be based not on any single act but rather on the subject's entire
record, along with expert evaluation as to the likelihood of eventual
rehabilitation?
If it is still to be thought of a punishment for crime, has it gotten too
sanitized? Might some ancient reptilian part of our brain still need the
barbaric images of the gallows, the axe, or the electric chair? The same
medical technology that now gives us lethal injection should be able to
render a more traditional-looking execution painless, while keeping the
savage imagery.
Or maybe it's time to stop actually killing people, but still keep the
symbolism of the condemned's life being forfeit. Sentence them to death,
then send them off to Death Row where they are never heard from again.
There they would live out their lives out of the public eye, perhaps
already legally dead for such purposes as inheritance.
The state would issue no news releases as to their condition or eventual
demise. They would be allowed few visitors, mostly close relatives, and
those visitors would be discouraged from discussing the matter with the
media. As far as the outside world is concerned, the condemned would
just vanish, possibly after some sort of ceremony designed to give
closure to victims and others.
They could be brought back from this "death" if new evidence turns up
that results in overturning their conviction, but short of something of
that sort they would be gone forever.
Of course we may still have to allow monitoring of prison conditions by
anti-cruelty groups such as the Red Cross and Amnesty International, but
if we treat our "dead and gone" prisoners reasonably well that shouldn't
make much of a media splash.
Could such a "living death" plan be made to work? Would it be something
we as a society would want to do?
*********************
Shining Around
In the beginning was the Light,
And the Light brought forth life and love
Upon the earth.
But then came those whose thirst for power
Was stronger than their love of the Light.
They began to do evil in the name of the Light,
And so doomed many to darkness,
Their view of the Light blocked by the evil done in its name.
But the Light would not long be blocked.
It sprang forth from a new direction,
In glorious new colors,
Again bringing life and love to the world.
But again came those whose thirst for power
Was stronger than their love of the Light.
And again their evil blinded many
To the glory of the Light.
Yet again the light would not long be blocked.
It began to shine from yet another direction
In ever more glorious colors,
To bring more life and love to the world.
And so goes the eternal cycle:
Evil ones find new ways to block the Light,
But the Light always springs forth anew,
In new colors,
From new directions.
So if for you the Light
Does not seem to come from the same source
As it does for your neighbor,
It is the Light's way of making sure
That it will never be completely blocked.
-- Tom Digby
Written 12:20 November 6, 2004
Edited 00:20 November 9, 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.
-- END --
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #52 of 140: Gail Williams (gail) Mon 15 Nov 04 16:02
permalink #52 of 140: Gail Williams (gail) Mon 15 Nov 04 16:02
I love this:
> "It turns out that that part of the spaceport had been built over an old
> Twentieth Century cemetery."
>
> How come you practically never hear that line in the movies?
Brilliant.
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #53 of 140: My desert island would still have a bozofilter. (tinymonster) Tue 16 Nov 04 08:09
permalink #53 of 140: My desert island would still have a bozofilter. (tinymonster) Tue 16 Nov 04 08:09
Me too. I just loved the way it was worded.
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #54 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Sun 12 Dec 04 02:02
permalink #54 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Sun 12 Dec 04 02:02
SILICON SOAPWARE
wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
from Bubbles = Tom Digby
= bubbles@well.com
Issue #122
New Moon of December 11, 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.
*********************
In these days of rampant fears of what various and sundry terrorists may
be plotting even as I type this, I wonder if the Homeland Security people
have thought of recruiting Santa Claus. After all, according to at least
one song about him:
"He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake.
He knows when you've been bad or good ..."
so it's obvious that he has the necessary surveillance capabilities.
One possible sticking point might be how Santa's definitions of "good"
and "bad" compare to the Homeland Security people's. I suspect there may
be differences, especially in the area of political disagreements. But
even so, I would imagine that in general plotting to blow up people who
aren't soldiers or otherwise directly involved in combat would count as
"bad". So even if there are lots of non-terrorists on Santa's "bad"
list, being able to pretty much eliminate anybody on his "good" list as
not being a terrorist would be a big help.
*********************
There was an article in a local paper with a headline about "traffic
calming" measures being taken in certain residential neighborhoods that
are popular routes for commuters.
That phrase makes me think of a street lined with eastern-religion monks
or gurus or whatever sitting there in their orange robes, playing
meditation music on sitars. Would that really help? I kind of doubt it,
and besides, that's not quite what the people who made up the term
"traffic calming" seem to mean by it.
But it's still an amusing mental image.
*********************
Last year a family I know had a party on Christmas Eve, and we got to
talking about how they do Christmas Morning with their children.
Their custom is for the children to be given a starting time, such as 6
or 6:30 am. They have to stay upstairs until that time, but once the
time comes they're free to go downstairs and start opening whatever gifts
they find under the tree and in their stockings.
That is quite different from the way my parents managed Christmas morning
when I was a child.
We would wake up at some fairly early time that was determined by some
sort of unspoken agreement (perhaps triggered by the sounds of one person
getting up?), and gather in the central hallway. Then we would sing
"Jingle Bells" as Dad would open the door and lead us out into the living
room where the tree was.
After a brief period of individually going through the unwrapped presents
that Santa had left around the tree during the night, we would start a
more structured thing of opening the gift-wrapped items from under the
tree. Most of these were from one family member to another, although a
few were "from Santa" to one of the kids.
This was done one present at a time, with Dad acting as a Master of
Ceremonies to decide which gift would be opened next. Thus everybody
watched everybody else opening things, and the morning's fun was sort of
spread out over time.
So how did your family do Christmas (if they did) when you were a child?
*********************
One thing I've noticed is that the Christmas season is a time you're more
likely to hear lots of what I tend to think of as non-rock instruments on
the pop-music stations. During most of the year those stations are
dominated by guitars and drums and synthesizers and such, but during the
holiday season you're more likely to hear trumpets and French horns and
harps and chimes and a variety of other instruments.
Enjoy the variety while you can.
*********************
Would a medical clinic specializing in obesity be a hazardous waist
facility?
*********************
One group of poets I know of rents space in a church building for their
monthly readings. Most months they meet in one particular room, but
every December they meet in a smaller room in another building, because
the church is using the regular room to feed and house homeless people.
I think they're supposed to be back to normal for the January reading.
Now part of me is thinking that for the homeless, "back to normal" means
back to sleeping in alleys or under dumpsters or whatever after being
given temporary shelter for the holiday season. Something better than
that ought to be possible, but I don't know how to bring it about.
I don't think it's a problem any one person can solve. Can it be solved
at all?
*********************
I'm reminded of an item I read in a recent (Nov/Dec 2004) Mensa Bulletin.
The writer was reminiscing about an experience he had in college.
There was this professor who was pretty much a general object of
ridicule, mainly for his physical appearance and for walking with a limp.
The students the writer hung out with felt they didn't need to really
study for his courses (organic chemistry) because their fraternity had
files of old exams so they could study just the test questions rather
than really learning the material.
Then the writer happened to ask the professor's daughter to some big
dance or something, without knowing of the relationship until it was too
late to back out. So there he was on the night of the dance, sitting in
the professor's living room waiting for the daughter to finish getting
ready, when he noticed a couple of framed documents: Military
commendations for heroism in WWII.
So he read them as he was waiting, and that somehow gave him new respect
for this man, and he was able to communicate that new respect to his
classmates, who in turn passed it on to future classes through their
fraternity.
This was presented as a tale with a happy ending, but it got me to
thinking about society's values. Why should someone who had killed half
a dozen men get more respect for taking those lives than for learning
enough about a complex field like organic chemistry to teach it to
others?
True, the killings were only part of a series of heroic acts done while
severely wounded (which is where he got the limp), and thus could
exemplify a spirit of doing what needed to be done and never giving up,
but there's still the question of why that particular episode was
considered so worthy of remembering.
It can probably be explained in Darwinian terms: By surviving the attack
and living to raise a family, he was passing on his genes. And even had
he later died from his wounds, by killing enemy soldiers and helping his
men survive he was helping pass on genes that were more closely related
to his than the genes of the enemy. So humans may be genetically
programmed to value that type of heroic act.
But it still leads the old hippie in me to wonder if what has been handed
down to us in our genes is always what we really want to hand down to our
descendants.
*********************
At a recent Christmas party we were going around reading poetry and
stories and such, and it occurred to me that my story about "How the
Porcupines Learned to be Teddy Bears Again" felt kind of appropriate to
the season, even though it doesn't have an explicit holiday theme. It
just sort of felt like it belonged there amidst talk of Peace on Earth
and loving families and the like.
It's a bit long to include here, but you can read it at
http://www.well.com/~bubbles/TeddyBear.html
*********************
I was noticing that as of this Christmas "The Christmas Cat" (see below)
will be thirty years old. That's longer than most real-world cats live.
Along toward the end of 1974 the phrase "Christmas Cat" had somehow taken
root in my brain. I kept trying to figure out a way to make it into a
song or something, but nothing seemed to want to come.
Then on Christmas Eve I was at a Christmas party at a Los Angeles area
coffee house called "The Wampeter" (see below). Along about midnight
there was a lull in the conversations when I didn't have anybody to talk
to, and then all of a sudden the basic plot of the piece just sort of
popped into my head.
I don't know where the idea came from. Did something somebody else said
trigger it? Or had my subconscious been working on it all along, with
this somehow being the right moment to unveil it?
I grabbed a piece of blank paper (the backside of a flyer?) and wrote a
first draft right then and there, in the small hours of Christmas
morning.
Did I tell anybody about it at the time? Did I read it or show it to
anyone? I don't recall. I do recall that the Epilogue came years later,
because it hadn't felt quite right to just leave the wicked millionaire
sitting there all scratched up, even if he was wicked.
So that's how that piece came to be.
*********************
It looks like this issue of SS will have more poetry than usual. I think
that's partly because I have a couple of pieces that I traditionally do
for the holidays, and partly because the story of how one poem came to be
triggered memories of another I'd sort of forgotten about.
And a reminder: Just about all my poetry is up in my Web site. If you
forget the URL just do a Google search on whatever words or phrases you
can remember, and chances are good it'll show up in the search results.
*********************
IN MEMORIAM
WAMPETER COFFEE HOUSE
DEPARTED THIS WORLD
JULY 1976
I keep expecting them to send a crew
To extract Melrose Avenue
And sew up the hole it will leave.
After all,
With no place for me to go to
The street has no further reason to be there.
Thomas G. Digby
written 0415 hr 9/17/76
typed 2300 hr 9/21/76
entered 1650 hr 2/27/92
*********************
Comes now the time for the traditional reprinting of
THE CHRISTMAS CAT
Once upon a time in a village
In a little mountain valley in Borschtenstein
Lived a wicked millionaire
Whose hobby was foreclosing mortgages
And sending people out into the snow.
He also took great pride in having
The best Christmas decorations in the village.
Also in this same village
In the little valley in Borschtenstein
Lived a poor family
Whose mortgage, which came due on Christmas,
Was designed to be impossible to pay off.
The Christmas weather forecast was for snow
And the millionaire's eviction lawyers were waiting.
Now this wicked millionaire
In the valley village etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,
Also had the monopoly on Christmas trees
To be sure of having the prettiest Christmas decorations
In the whole village.
Thus the poor family had nothing at all
To put their presents under.
Now by chance it so happened
In that village in etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,
The wicked millionaire had evicted his cat
Because its ears and tail were the wrong color
And it hadn't paid its mortgage.
And the poor family had taken it in
And given it a home.
So just before Christmas
When the Good Fairies asked the animals of the village
About people in need and deserving of help
The poor family got the highest recommendation.
"We will help them!" said the elves and fairies,
"They won't have to worry about that mortgage
And they'll have the prettiest Christmas decorations in town!"
The mortgage was really not much problem:
If the millionaire couldn't throw people out into the snow
He wouldn't bother throwing them out at all.
So the elves spoke to the North Wind and they agreed:
No more snow to throw people out into.
Some people in the village would have liked snow to play in
But agreed the sacrifice was for a good cause.
Christmas trees were more of a problem:
They had already given them out to other needy families
And there were none left at all.
They rummaged around in forgotten corners
But not a Christmas tree could they find.
Then someone had an idea:
"Let's decorate their cat!"
While one of the elves who spoke Feline
Worked out the details with the cat
The fairies flew around gathering decorations:
Borrowed bits of light from small stars nobody ever notices,
Streamers of leftover comet tails,
And other assorted trinkets
From odd corners of the universe.
So the poor family gathered around their Christmas cat
And sang songs and opened presents
And had the happiest Christmas imaginable
While all agreed they had the prettiest decorations
The village had ever seen
And the millionaire's eviction lawyers
Waited in vain for snow.
So that is why, to this day,
In that valley village in Borschtenstein,
It never snows
Unless the eviction lawyers are out of town
And every year the millionaire tries to decorate a Christmas cat
But gets nothing for his pains
But bleeding scratches.
EPILOGUE:
While overnight miracles are rare outside of story books,
Even those who learn slowly do learn.
So keep checking the weather reports for Borschtenstein.
If some Christmas it snows there
You will know the millionaire has given up being wicked
And has found a truer meaning
Of Christmas.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
May you have the happiest
Yule/Christmas/Hanukkah/Solstice/Whatever imaginable!
Thomas G. Digby
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
first draft written 0115 hr 12/25/74
this version edited 2320 hr 12/14/86
*********************
The Birthday of the Light
On the Christmas morning comics page
Two people slogging through the crowds of shoppers
pause to ask one another
"Isn't this all supposed to be somebody's birthday?"
Yes, it is.
This is the birthday of the Light.
Different people see the Light differently:
To many the Light is a babe in a manger,
A child destined to grow into a great teacher and healer,
Bringing the light of love to a world lost in darkness.
To others the light is the light of freedom,
Seen in the miracle of a lamp burning
Far longer than its meager supply of oil should have lasted
After the conquerors were driven from the Temple.
And still others celebrate winter sunlight
Bringing the promise of springtime
And reminding us to look at endings
As opportunities for new beginnings.
But even though we see the light differently
And hold different days in this season sacred to it,
Let us all look into the light together
To see opportunities for new beginnings
For a world of freedom and healing and love.
Thomas G. Digby
written 1230 hr 12/25/91
entered 1905 hr 12/25/91
*********************
HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU
If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is
ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net
you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address
will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation.
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to
almost nothing in between. Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.
If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're
getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon
Soapware with no banter. The zine content is the same for both.
To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to
http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi
and select the ss_talk list. Enter your email address in the space
provided and hit Signup. When you receive an email confirmation request
go to the URL it will give you. (If you're already on the list and want
to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list
posting you receive.)
To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or
bubbles@well.com). I currently do that one manually.
-- END --
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #55 of 140: Cynthia Dyer-Bennet (cdb) Tue 14 Dec 04 11:01
permalink #55 of 140: Cynthia Dyer-Bennet (cdb) Tue 14 Dec 04 11:01
> The Birthday of the Light
Very nice, Tom.
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #56 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Mon 10 Jan 05 20:35
permalink #56 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Mon 10 Jan 05 20:35
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 #123
New Moon of January 10, 2005
Contents copyright 2005 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 days ago I had another of those round-number no-longer-young
birthdays: 65. Now, by some standards, I am Officially Old. But for
some reason it didn't hit me as hard emotionally as I expected it to.
The one that did hit me hard was five years ago, when I turned 60. I
think there were several reasons for that.
First, 60 may have been a bit more significant than 65 because the first
digit changed, leading into the set of years I'd long thought of as
"old". But that was just a minor part of it. The big thing was the date
itself.
Ever since I started getting into science fiction as a child in the late
1940's I'd thought of 2000 as a sort of magic year. I thought of that
year the way someone watching TV in some small town in Middle America
while dreaming of stardom might think of Hollywood. Or imagine a would-
be astronaut dreaming of going to Huntsville or Houston or the Cape or
even some Space Station.
True, 2000 wasn't the only such year. Just about every year that ended
in zero or five from 1970 through 1995 had a little of the magic, as did
1984 in its own perverse way. But 2000 was the biggie, and there weren't
going to be any more after that.
And then when it finally got here it didn't feel all that different from
1999. Think of the would-be movie star who finally goes to Hollywood and
ends up in some mundane job there.
True, there would still be 2001, but it had long felt like sort of an
anticlimax, even before it got here. There may have been a few more 20xx
years mentioned in this or that story or movie or whatever, but they,
like 2001, didn't have the same enchantment as 2000 did.
Also, depending on what medical science does or doesn't accomplish in the
next few decades, there's a good chance I won't live to see the second
half of the 21st Century, let alone Buck Rogers's 25th or the Space
Patrol's 30th. So scratch more future stuff off the list of things to
look forward to.
Of course the end of this physical body may not be the end of "me". I
was brought up to believe in Christian Heaven, and I still sort of assume
there will be some sort of afterlife that I will be at least somewhat
happy with, but there's too little data to really support looking forward
to anything specific.
So when 2000 came and brought my 60th birthday it meant the end of a
string of enchanted science-fiction years to look forward to as well as
the end of the last remnants of my youth. So that's why that birthday
five years ago hit so hard while this one didn't.
*********************
Speaking of the New Year, did I mention that "2005" has mirror-image
symmetry in that seven-segment font they use for digital clocks and such?
The next such won't be until 2115, although 2112 will have rotational
symmetry like 1961 and 2002 had.
*********************
Since this is a natural time of year for thoughts about the past and
future, hence about time in general, I thought I'd bring up some thoughts
I'd had about time zones on the Moon.
Some scoffers will say "Why bother?" They would prefer to ignore the
actual lunar conditions and have the camp or base or colony or whatever
go by some form of Earth time. Although that makes sense, it's no fun.
So let's continue.
A lunar day is about an Earth month, roughly 700 Earth hours. Since the
Moon's circumference is just a bit over six thousand miles, time zones
based on Earth hours would be less than ten miles wide at the equator,
narrower near the poles.
Although jet lag may not be a problem on the moon because there isn't
enough of an atmosphere to let jet engines work, a good athlete in a
well-designed moon suit might be able to cover enough of those narrow
time zones on foot quickly enough to get hiking lag. And even non-
athletes can get car lag. So this may need to be thought through
carefully.
I suspect this is an area that most scientists have not given much
thought to. But it's likely to be years before the question becomes more
than merely academic, so there's probably no need to hurry.
*********************
As I was sitting here wondering what else to write about I noticed a bird
on the neighbor's roof, apparently just sitting there not doing anything
in particular. Was it bored? Or was it just tired, feeling grateful for
the chance to rest? One seldom really knows what birds are thinking.
And even those who think they do know may well be wrong.
Could the bird be dreaming of being human, perhaps a powerful wizard with
an enchanted castle on a mountain peak somewhere, with the larger birds
like hawks and eagles that the smaller birds normally fear being slaves
to the wizard's will?
Or instead of a wizard in a magical world, it could be a mad scientist in
some secret underground laboratory, working on some super-weapon that
will prove invincible against hawks, cats, and humans alike.
Or perhaps the dreams are mixed, with the bird being a mad wizard in an
enchanted laboratory, with forces both physical and magical at his (or
her) command.
Maybe. Probably not, but maybe. With birds' dreams you never really
know.
*********************
"That bit about needing ratification from thirty-eight states only
applies to unclassified amendments. For classified ones you only need
three-fourths of those state legislatures that are cleared to know about
such matters."
"And how many might that be?"
"Sorry. That information is classified."
*********************
Something got me to thinking about mad scientists bent on world
domination, and the question of what kind of education such a person
would need.
The most obvious thing is science, with emphasis on fringe areas that
most non-mad scientists tend to ignore but which might have untapped
potential for hitherto undreamed-of super-weapons and the like.
But science alone isn't enough. If you're going to build your demented
destructo-rays and cook up your hypnotic dominance potions all by
yourself, you'll need a solid background in engineering. Much of the
public may not be aware of the distinction, but it could mean the
difference between success and failure.
And since you're less likely to specialize in one narrow area than most
engineers and scientists, you'll need a broad sampling from diverse areas
such as electronics and chemistry and biology and probably even civil
engineering and geology, especially if you plan on building your secret
lair all by yourself.
And there's more: You'll need management skills to work effectively with
whatever assistants, demented or otherwise, you acquire in your climb up
the ladder of mad-scientist success, as well as a good grounding in
military strategy and tactics for the wars of conquest. And then once
you do end up ruling the world, you'll need even more management skills,
along with a good grasp of economics and civics and political history and
the like so you can set up an empire that won't fall apart.
You'll also need some knowledge of theatrical presentation and public
speaking skills for your speeches to the vanquished masses that you'll be
ruling over. You may also want to become at least moderately fluent in
several major languages.
And don't forget home economics, especially if you plan on sewing your
own super-villain costumes.
There's probably more that I haven't thought of yet, but I think you get
the general idea.
And it does make clear why almost all mad scientists are "Doctor"
something or other -- you'll need to learn enough stuff to leave you with
at least a PhD by the time you're done.
There's another possible problem: Many mainstream colleges and
universities would look askance at the prospect of offering such a
curriculum. So who would teach this? Miskatonic is a possibility, but
my impression is that they tend to deal more in the supernatural realm.
What other likely schools are there?
*********************
There's something in the news about some murder conviction being
overturned because an expert witness testified about working on a TV
episode that, according to later evidence, never existed.
Or at least it never existed in this timeline.
What of a society where travel between different timelines is at least
moderately commonplace, and some of the people involved in a particular
trial may be from timelines where the defendant is guilty while others
are from timelines where he's innocent?
Is a prospective juror from a timeline where the defendant confessed and
took a plea bargain likely to be able to do unbiased deliberations in a
timeline where the case is being contested? After all, even if he did it
in some timelines he may not have done it in others.
And should either side be allowed to bring in the victim from a timeline
where she didn't get killed to testify as a character witness for or
against the defendant in this timeline?
Should experts from one timeline be allowed to testify in others if the
subject the witness is expert on is something that's reasonably constant
across different timelines, such as scientific matters?
And are police in one timeline allowed to base a search on evidence that
turns up in another?
Also, if the case has really made enough of a media splash, there may be
requests for a change of venue to a timeline where none of those involved
had ever been born. What's the law on that?
Questions abound. Answers may not.
*********************
This was inspired, at least partly, by recent news events:
Armor
All my life the world has been getting smaller:
Far-off lands that were once the stuff of legend
Are now a mouse click away.
In a way that's wonderful.
But in a way it isn't.
For all that we have shrunk the world's distances
We have not shrunk the world's pain.
A whole wide world of suffering and despair
Comes into our living rooms every day,
Film at eleven.
How can any sane person stand it?
One word: Armor.
I go clanking through my day like some denizen of the Round Table,
My visor showing me the narrowest slices of the darkness without
As I strive to keep some flame of humanity burning within.
But I am still afraid:
Someday, when I gather with my friends in some safe space
And we decide to open ourselves to one another,
We may find that our armor has long been empty.
-- Tom Digby
Written 17:05 Sat January 1 2005
Revised 16:18 Fri January 7 2005
*********************
HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU
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If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're
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-- END --
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #57 of 140: Eleanor Parker (wellelp) Mon 17 Jan 05 01:10
permalink #57 of 140: Eleanor Parker (wellelp) Mon 17 Jan 05 01:10
Belated happy birthday, Tom.
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #58 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Wed 9 Feb 05 16:59
permalink #58 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Wed 9 Feb 05 16:59
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 #124
New Moon of February 8, 2005
Contents copyright 2005 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 winter holiday decorations are gone now, except for an occasional
Santa or two looking increasingly lonely and forlorn, like a commuter who
just missed the last train home.
As I was taking a January evening walk down a dark street that a couple
of weeks earlier had been ablaze with holiday lights, it occurred to me
that this is when we in the Northern Hemisphere experience what the
Season of Darkness is really like. We may claim to welcome the darkness
in December, but we're actually defying it by stringing lights all over
the place. Only when the lights and other decorations go back into
storage do we really get to know the winter darkness.
But now it's February and there are hints that the darkness is on its way
out, even as some of the coldest days of winter are upon us. So even if
our December holiday festivities couldn't hold off the darkness forever,
they served to make it more bearable by reminding us of the eventual
return of the light.
*********************
In another forum someone was reminding us that the common feeling of
light being "good" and "darkness" being bad was not shared by everyone.
This person sees darkness as a kind of comforting womb-like refuge, with
winter being a time for quiet thoughts and introspection leading to
spiritual growth. And who am I to say he's wrong?
There are times when darkness is needed, no matter what your feelings
about it. You need darkness for showing movies or developing film, and
when this country's birth is celebrated by fireworks at the height of the
season of light, it is normally done during what few hours of night there
still are at that time of year.
To get much more personal, most of the inside of our eyes is dark, with
only a little bit of carefully controlled light being allowed to enter
through the pupil. If the retina were totally exposed to outside light,
there would be no way to form images on it. Thus you need darkness to be
able to make sense of the light.
Thus we should remember to honor the darkness as well as the light, even
as the light brings weather more suited to more types of outdoor
activities and calms our fears of nocturnal predators and hidden
anonymous evil.
*********************
I found a note to myself in my shirt pocket: It says "Mother-in-law vs
mother-in-chaos". It was just a thought that happened to come to me, so
I wrote it down and then forgot about it until I found the slip of paper.
Can I do anything with it, or is it just one of those strings of words
that sounds interesting but doesn't really lead anywhere? I kind of
suspect the latter, although I could be wrong.
*********************
In addition to the usual early dusk and gloomy rain of this season, we've
had one or two foggy mornings. That reminded me that Larry Niven once
did a story where fog was caused by alternate timelines sort of merging,
so it was hazy as to what was in which reality. His explanation of why
fog wasn't just water droplets didn't really work for me, but it could be
that most fog is just water droplets but every now and then there's one
that's the alternate-timeline thing he proposed.
Another related thought: If reality is shaped, at least to some degree,
by the thoughts of the beings in it, then water-droplet fog could be one
of the things that might help make timeline-merging fog possible.
And maybe timeline mergers aren't all random. Perhaps there are wizards
who can cross timelines, but their powers to do so are limited. It's
much easier when there's fog in both the timeline they're in and the one
they want to go to, because then reality isn't tied down as strongly at
either end. They also need to avoid having others see them appear or
disappear, but that sort of goes with not seeing much of either world
during the transition.
Of course fog isn't their only way of doing it. A really dark night
would also work, if there are no lights close enough to be visible in any
of the relevant timelines. Caves are also useful: Go into the cave in
Timeline A, do the crossing-over spell, and come out into Timeline B.
I also got to wondering whether the rise of computer databases will make
it harder for magic-users from other timelines to enter this one, or at
least to remain here and do anything non-trivial. It's getting more and
more difficult to slip into most countries by unofficial routes and
remain there for any significant length of time. Is this one more step
toward banishing magic-users (and thus magic) from our world?
Of course a multi-timeline secret society of magic-users that had been
active here since before the advent of computers might have worked out
solutions to the problem as it started to become apparent. They may have
their own computers and other technological stuff, capable of creating
authentic-looking passports and driver's licenses and such, and they may
even be hooked into the various official systems so as to be able to
modify the databases as needed. Who knows what the right combination of
technology and magic can do?
*********************
Did I mention the radio commercial I heard for some car that has a
feature that warns the driver if the car starts to stray out of its lane?
It's only a warning, and it only works in conditions of good visibility
of the lane markers, but it's at least a small step in the direction of a
self-driving car. Or so it seems to me.
So was the recent story I read in one of the science fiction prozines
that had something much closer to self-driving cars by about 2010 too
optimistic? I kind of thought so when I read it, but on second thought
it may not have been.
Some technological advances have a way of sort of hiding in the woodwork,
unnoticed by those not actually working on them, until they're ready to
spring forth, more or less full-blown. Will the self-driving car be one
of them?
I've been told that self-driving cars will never be developed because too
many people like driving manually and those people will somehow prevent
the technology from coming into existence. But I suspect otherwise. If
companies like UPS and FedEx can make profitable use of self-driving
delivery trucks they'll buy them when they come on the market. And don't
forget those with physical handicaps that prevent them from driving.
Even if you consider only those people able to drive, not everybody will
always want to. If, for example, it's late at night and you're sleepy or
maybe you've had a few drinks, why not just lean back and close your eyes
and let the car take care of itself?
Past predictions in this area have tended to be too optimistic, perhaps
because they underestimated the difficulty of the problem. But with the
way computer technology is growing, I wouldn't be surprised at the
technology more or less suddenly jumping out of the woodwork at us.
*********************
At one point I started to mis-type "morning snack" as "morning snake",
which the spelling checker wouldn't have caught. Do people have morning
snakes and afternoon snakes? They don't seem to in any culture I'm
familiar with, but what of the ones I'm not familiar with?
*********************
President Bush is asking Congress to overhaul the Social Security system
in order to be in less danger of running out of money as people live
longer and population growth slows. I don't know how valid the various
arguments and counter-arguments are, but there's one other thing I think
they should look at while they're at it: The Social Security number
itself.
The current nine-digit number only allows a little over three times as
many combinations as the present US population.
While that number may have seemed like a lot back when the system was
first set up in pre-computer days with a population much smaller than we
have today, it really isn't all that much. And that's not allowing for
things like check digits to reduce the possibility of errors or
fraudulent use of random numbers. Although they may be able to get
around this by recycling numbers when people die, I don't think that's a
good idea. So they should consider the possibility of using more digits,
or mixing letters in with the numbers, or maybe both.
They should then also pass a law against displaying the new SS numbers on
ID cards, insurance documents, and the like. While it may still be OK
for state governments and insurance companies and banks and such to use
Social Security numbers (or some other Federally issued ID number) in
their internal record-keeping, each such entity should use its own set of
account numbers on their ID cards and routine correspondence. Thus
someone who (for example) checks your medical insurance at an emergency
room won't get the key to all your other records.
Has there been much talk about changing this part of the Social Security
system? If there has, I haven't heard it.
*********************
Some time back I was out walking and noticed something lying in the
gutter: Remains of a dead cell phone. There were pieces of the case,
although I didn't notice any of the innards. Had someone else already
grabbed them?
And does that kind of debris have a story behind it?
Did a connection get dropped once too often, leading to the phone's
demise in a fit of the owner's rage? Did some user step out into traffic
while not watching where they were going, with tragic results? Or was
the phone just the innocent victim of the user's emotions after being the
bearer of bad news such as a relationship breakup or a financial loss?
It may in theory have been possible to find out, if I had taken the
trouble to note where I saw it so I could to check police logs and such,
but as a practical matter I'll probably never really know.
But I can imagine.
*********************
When I found those pieces of cell phone in the street I was reminded that
when I was living in the Los Angeles area I would now and then find bits
and pieces of boom boxes and/or CD players (I have enough of a technical
background to recognize this kind of thing). I don't recall seeing as
much of that up here in the Bay Area, although I did see the remains of
one previous cell phone in a parking lot once.
Are the demographics of people who lose electronic stuff in the street
different between the Bay Area and Los Angeles, or does it vary by
neighborhood? Was it significant that most of those Southern California
finds were on streets with significant gang activity and prostitution and
such? Would I find busted-up boom boxes along the streets of, for
example, Oakland or downtown San Francisco, even if they aren't common in
most of Silicon Valley?
*********************
Mention of putting Social Security on an investment basis reminds me of a
thought I had had earlier: Having the government buy stock in the
largest corporations, and then using the voting power of those shares to
cause the companies to act in more socially positive and responsible
ways. These giant companies are in a sense almost as powerful as
government agencies, so this would acknowledge that and bring them more
directly into the chain of command.
The main benefits of this would be in areas like the environment and
product safety, along with more socially responsible marketing.
The larger the company, the more of its stock the gov't would buy. The
smallest ones would hardly be touched at all. This should make things
easier for small businesses.
I realize this isn't something our present Administration would want to
get into, but the Democrats and the Greens and others currently not in
power might want to be thinking about it for the future.
*********************
Another train of thought reminds me that there are many people, even in
Hollywood or Silicon Valley, who have never created any significant
poetry or art or music or engineering designs. That to me is an almost
incomprehensibly alien situation. What's it like?
As I was looking through my poetry files I happened upon an old untitled
piece that reflects the other side of the creativity coin, and is also
relevant to the current political situation.
I should probably title it, but I don't want to make a hurried decision
on a title right now.
*********************
Have you ever known the feeling
of an artist who can not find
an audience?
Then imagine the earth
spinning lonely through millions of years
of
Sunsets with no eye to appreciate the beauty,
Summer rains with no young lovers to run through them laughing,
And starry skies with no one gazing up in wonder
Until at last
Man came forth.
But is the Happy Ending final?
Or will a few centuries of madness
bury all the beauty forever
under grimy concrete tombstones?
Or will a burst of even more violent madness
leave the earth barren and empty
to face another eternity
of
Sunsets with no eye to appreciate the beauty,
Summer rains with no young lovers to run through them laughing,
And starry skies with no one gazing up in wonder?
-- Tom Digby
Original undated, probably late 1960's or early 70's
Entered 18:58 11/15/2002
*********************
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
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to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list
posting you receive.)
To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or
bubbles@well.com). I currently do that one manually.
-- END --
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #59 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Thu 10 Mar 05 14:46
permalink #59 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Thu 10 Mar 05 14:46
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 #125
New Moon of March 10, 2005
Contents copyright 2005 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.
*********************
Although the last few days have been bright and sunny, almost a sneak
preview of summer, we just came out of a spell of weather that was gray
and rather wet. Lovely weather for ducks. Or so they say.
Since ducks spend much of their time in or near water, and have natural
waterproofing stuff in their feathers, people seem to sort of assume they
like rainy weather. But has anybody ever actually tested this?
Even if rain doesn't bother ducks as much as it bothers humans (and
presumably many other animals) do they actually like it? They might have
some reason to prefer rain over sunshine if it's more of a disadvantage
to predators and competitors than it is to them. There might also be
other reasons for ducks to prefer rain. But do they, deep down inside,
really prefer rainy days to sunny ones?
Even if you wanted to test this, how would you? Rain and sunshine seldom
occur close enough together to allow a duck to actually choose one or the
other. Can we simulate rain and sunshine realistically enough for a
valid test? Or is it one of those things that can't really be tested?
Off in the realm of fantasy, you could ask those psychics who claim to
know the thoughts of animals if they've picked up any hint of a
preference either way. And you could ask comics artists about the
preferences of any duck-based characters they draw. But I don't think
either approach would carry much weight with scientists.
So we may just have to continue using the cliche line more or less on
faith.
*********************
Something reminded me of the perennial question about where science
fiction writers get their ideas. I could spin some yarn about a little
shop in downtown SF that's also magically in Hollywood and a number of
other cities. Writers in need of ideas just go there and buy them.
The ideas come in various forms. Sometimes the person behind the counter
whispers it into the buyer's ear. Other times it may take the form of a
fortune cookie. Often it's just some object that doesn't seem remarkable
at first, but then after you've gotten it home and it's been sitting
around the house for a few days you suddenly notice it in a new way and,
for no apparent reason, the idea just pops into your head. There seems
to be little rhyme or reason to it beyond the fact of it being rather
unpredictable.
Why is it done this way? Is it for plausible deniability? If someone
who isn't a writer happens by, the shop can look like just some random
second-hand store, hardly worthy of a second glance.
Of course there's a chance that while you're there you'll run into some
other writer you don't otherwise see very often, and you may chat for a
while. But unlike some bars and saloons and such you may have read about
with similar semi-magical properties, it's not primarily a gathering
place. And since many writers don't like to admit that they get their
ideas there, conversation is not always encouraged.
Also, writers have to agree to keep the shop's exact location(s) secret
from non-writers. Featuring it in stories is also kind of discouraged.
I'm allowed to blab about it here only because I'm well enough known for
strange off-the-wall ideas that they don't expect anybody to take
anything I say about it seriously.
*********************
One of my little notes says "Edgar Alien Poe".
Was he the one who wrote that poem about a time traveler materializing in
his room and making dire predictions about him never again finding love
or happiness? And didn't he do a bunch of other horror-tinged science
fiction as well?
I also seem to recall a story of his about someone on the staff of a
newspaper doing a global replace of "o" with "x" on a paragraph of text.
Does anybody else know that one?
*********************
I was just at a convention of science-fiction (and fantasy, etc.)
musicians and got to see lots of performances by people with varying
degrees of skill and talent. The subject of tuning kept coming up, with
even the best of them having to pause now and then to tune their guitars.
As I watched all this tuning a thought came to mind:
As sort of the opposite of the starship that travels by repeatedly
teleporting itself some short distance, you set up a conveyor belt with
teleporters at both ends so that anything on the belt is carried into one
teleporter and reappears at the other, whereupon the belt carries it back
to the first teleporter, and so on, in an endless cycle. So whatever is
on the belt has a constant non-zero velocity relative to the immediate
vicinity, but doesn't actually go anywhere.
What use is this?
If you have a musician who isn't tuned to match the local standard, you
can put them on the belt and adjust the speed so that the notes they
produce are Doppler-shifted so as to be on pitch.
For example, if you have two electronic keyboards, one tuned to A = 440
Hz and the other to 442 (as some manufacturers are doing nowadays) you
could put the higher-pitched one on the belt, moving away from the others
at about five feet (1.5 meters) per second, to bring them into agreement.
That's assuming, of course, that the audience is all on the same side of
the setup. It wouldn't work for theater-in-the-round.
Also, in olden days instruments were often tuned to a lower pitch than
today. The belt-and-teleporter system (with the direction of motion
reversed) should also work there as well, although speeds may need to be
higher.
You could also use it for transposing things into different keys,
although in that case the required speeds may be high enough to cause
objectionable wind effects, as well as raising safety concerns should
someone or something fall off the belt or encounter some other problem.
Anybody want to start a Silicon Valley start-up to market this, assuming
someone invents a teleporter we can use?
*********************
I was also noticing that most of the musicians, even those playing
traditional kinds of instruments, used electronic amplification. This
got me to wondering how they managed in days of yore.
The comic writer in me pictures them sitting up there on the stage saying
things like "1, 2, 3, testing" at a mike stand with no microphone on it,
and then grumping about how the sound system isn't working because it
hasn't been invented yet. But I doubt that's what they actually did.
Somehow they made do without electronics. But how?
I suspect part of it was that they didn't attempt to play relatively low-
volume instruments like dulcimers and autoharps solo in large rooms
before a hundred or more people. Those kinds of instruments would be OK
in someone's living room with maybe a dozen or so friends gathered round,
but for large concert halls they would have used a band or orchestra.
There may have also been less background noise. Even when nobody in the
audience was talking or otherwise making noise, I noticed that I could
sometimes hear the air-conditioning system, as well as the sounds of
people milling around and chatting outside. Were concert venues quieter
back then?
And did people just not expect music to be as loud as it is today?
It's probably a combination of all these factors. But does anybody
really know for sure?
*********************
The bit about musicians and electronics leads to Rip Van Winkle thoughts
of how a musician from a few hundred years ago might react to being
dumped into today's world. A few such stories have been done, but there
might well be room for more.
*********************
There's talk of again sending astronauts to the moon, this time with the
idea of eventually setting up some kind of permanent base.
There's also speculation that there may be life or remnants of life, or
some sort-of-alive combinations of chemicals, or something like that, in
certain naturally-sheltered spots on Mars. If there is, someone is
sooner or later going to want to bring back samples for study.
That leads to the idea that the lunar base should include a laboratory so
that any material brought back from Mars or Titan or any other world
thought to harbor life or proto-life could be analyzed on the Moon rather
than Earth. That would reduce the chances of anything dangerous getting
loose here.
Why not an orbiting lab? Anything that escaped from such a facility
would be drifting around in space, and could in theory find its way to
Earth, either directly or via other ships and such in the vicinity. And
if the lab is in low Earth orbit there's a chance the whole thing could
someday de-orbit. The lunar gravity well would make a facility on the
ground there more secure in that regard.
Should there be people working in the lab? Probably not, because we
don't want to have to worry about lab workers getting contaminated. But
we may want any humans operating lab equipment remotely to be within a
few thousand miles, either on the moon or in lunar orbit, to reduce
light-speed lag.
Science fiction writers may of course postulate a lab staffed by what
amounts to monks, people who have dedicated their lives to the work and
who plan to never return to Earth. This may make even more sense for the
crew of the eventual Mars base, where the possibility of contamination is
harder to rule out. It's no more far-fetched than the multi-generation
starships that have long been a science-fictional staple.
Moon or Mars, this monastic scenario doesn't seem likely in real life, at
least given the current US culture. But what if the first Mars
expeditions aren't from the US?
*********************
But now what? Do I have anything else to write about? What if I don't?
Just write anyway?
Beeblefrotz. That's something I could be writing about if only I knew
what it was. But I don't, so I may not be able to. Or can I write about
it anyway? I suspect nobody else knows what beeblefrotz is either, so if
I go ahead and write about it as if I had some idea of what it might be,
nobody would have any real grounds to question my knowledge of the
subject.
Beeblefrotz is foremost in the minds of those who deal in the various
forms of klaftnosism, even though it's only peripherally related to that
field. They fear that someone somewhere may be on the verge of a
breakthrough in this area, and that the established order may thereby be
turned upside down.
Others feel that a more likely outcome is to turn the established order
of things approximately 137.389 degrees clockwise, which may be almost as
bad as turning it upside down but perhaps not quite, depending on what
axis the established order is turned 137.389 degrees clockwise around.
A few dispute that, offering arguments that are too technical to relate
here to support a conjecture that if something like beeblefrotz does
overturn the established order or any subset thereof, it will be by some
integral number of radians. Still others claim that the whole concept of
overturning the established order is just a figure of speech, and any
attempt to calculate or divine specific angles is pointless. The debate
continues to rage in the relevant technical journals.
So what if the established order in the field of klaftnosism does get
overturned? Haven't workers in the field long been in the habit of
wearing seat belts whenever they read or write anything relevant? Things
may fall off their desks, and they may have an awkward time getting out
of their chairs, but there should be little real trauma except to a few
people's egos.
Some are concerned that the overturn may be more far-reaching than that,
so that entire desks may end up tumbling about the room, perhaps even
smashing through windows and falling into the endless sky, there to
imperil whatever aircraft may be unlucky enough to encounter them.
There's a movement afoot to tether klaftnosists's desks to mitigate that
hazard. But what if it happens when a bunch of them are arguing
technical fine points over lunch in some restaurant whose staff has never
heard of klaftnosism? All of a sudden one table, along with its
associated chairs and their occupants and food and dishes and such, goes
crashing around into the walls and ceiling, much to the surprise and
consternation of other diners. What then?
Will the knowledge that they were witness to a historic advance in human
knowledge be sufficient consolation for whatever trauma they may
experience in the process?
*********************
It's getting to be a time of year when, depending on what part of the
country you're in, you may be noticing more birds singing. That reminds
me of this:
Beauty Best Veiled
As I'm out walking in the early morning grayness
I hear birds singing.
That tempts me toward poetic thoughts,
But then I think of what the scientists would say:
If we could understand bird language
Much of it would be humdrum stuff about finding food
Or stressful news about predators.
And much of the rest would be like drunks boasting in a bar:
"Hey, pretty woman, I want you!" and
"I can lick any guy in the place!"
Perhaps it's good that some things remain hidden
In the early morning grayness when I'm out walking.
-- Tom Digby
Written 09:35 09/28/2004
Edited 22:46 10/26/2004
*********************
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.
-- END --
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #60 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Sat 9 Apr 05 12:37
permalink #60 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Sat 9 Apr 05 12:37
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 #126
New Moon of April 8, 2005
Contents copyright 2005 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 a time of year when the sun is setting later and later each day.
That's the case for several months each year, but right now the recent
start of Daylight Saving Time adds emphasis to the seasonal change.
Then as I was out walking my wandering steps took me down Sunset Avenue,
reminding me of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. That in turn raised the
question of why I haven't noticed streets named for other times of day
like sunrise or twilight or morning or noontime.
A quick check of one map listing shows several streets with "Sunrise" in
their names. I also seem to recall a "Morningside Court" or something
like that somewhere, as well as some with "Eventide" in their names.
But what of times of day (or night) other than dawn and dusk? Is there
some reason people don't seem to name as many streets after them? Or am
I just not noticing them?
*********************
Something got me to thinking of the annual Senior Ditch Day tradition at
Caltech where the seniors go away for a day, leaving the underclassmen to
try to break into their rooms.
It's sort of a game, with the seniors securing their doors in all sorts
of creative ways that the underclassmen have to try to figure out. There
are some unwritten rules about what's acceptable (ingenuity) and what
isn't (brute force). The prize for getting in is usually something like
a case of beer.
I recall some specific examples I'd been told about, such as the door
with a bunch of wires sticking out from under it. Many of the wires had
various kinds of voltages and signals and such on them. So what were
people supposed to do? It turned out that a particular wire or two had
to be pulled to open a mechanical latch.
There were some that weren't physical at all, but just a riddle that had
to be solved. And yes, people respected that.
The unwritten rules were generally honored, even if they weren't enforced
by any official agency. Tradition can carry a lot of weight sometimes.
*********************
Then I got to wondering: What if Hogwarts or Miskatonic or some other
such school were to have a similar Senior Ditch Day tradition? What
would that be like?
And what would it be like at a Toon college?
Would there be anvils balanced precariously atop door frames, waiting to
fall on whoever was foolish enough to walk through the half-open door?
Would jimmying a window release a nest of hornets? Would people saw big
round holes in walls, floors, and ceilings, only to trigger some kind of
detonator hooked up to a bundle of dynamite sticks? Would the end of the
day see entire dormitories in ruins, their occupants all bandaged up like
mummies as they try to figure out what hit them?
And then would things be pretty much back to normal within a day or two?
*********************
Speaking of weather the last few days:
Rain (1)
Rain is God putting the world through His car wash
to emerge fresh
and clean
and shining.
But remember:
One of these days,
Unless we mend our sinful ways ...
HOT WAX!!
Thomas G. Digby
written 0305 hr 2/12/77
typed 0205 hr 2/17/77
entered 1215 hr 4/09/92
*********************
As I was typing something about the weather, I noticed that my fingers
kept wanting to type "clods" instead of "clouds".
That would be something. What would such a world be like? Would there
be dirt falling from the sky, either all the time or just in showers?
And when people got all dirty from the falling topsoil, would they
console each other by saying it's good for the farmers?
But would it actually be good for the farmers?
If the dirt came down in clods it might injure the crops, like hail
sometimes does in this world. And even if it came sifting down gently,
too much of it falling too quickly could bury emerging shoots and low-
growing types of plants.
But maybe the life on that world would have evolved to handle those
situations. The resulting species might look weird to our eyes, but to
those living there they would be normal. To them our world, where (with
rare exceptions) the only thing that falls from the sky is some form of
water, would be the weird one.
Or maybe the dirt doesn't fall from the sky after all. Maybe the clods
just float around up there like clouds do in our world. They might block
sunlight from getting to what we think of as the ground, at least
sometimes, and when (if) it rains water-type rain the area below would
get dirty water, but that's about It.
Would farmers in that world go up to the aerial clods and plant crops on
them? I have no idea what might or might not grow in that situation, but
something might well have evolved to take advantage of it. So once the
farmers got some kind of technology like balloons or airplanes or maybe
just tall towers that gave them access to the clod layer, they might well
exploit it agriculturally.
Of course there may be areas that some would like to preserve in their
pristine state, like some of our parks and wilderness areas here. But I
probably don't need to get into details of that now.
*********************
It just occurred to me as I was editing the previous item that I'd
basically just invented meteorite dust and the asteroid belt. But
there's still quite a difference in degree between the world I was
describing and the one we live in.
*********************
In the previous issue (125) I did a thing about "Edgar Alien Poe" with
science-fiction variants on a couple of Poe titles. It probably wasn't
really that good a gag, and normally I wouldn't be bringing it up again.
But it got some unanticipated reactions: Some readers didn't notice that
the middle name in the gag was "Alien" rather than "Allan", and took it
straight. That got me to thinking.
I was reminded of how our brains more or less automatically filter out
background noise from whatever information we're taking in. For the most
part that's a useful ability, or else it wouldn't have evolved. But
there are times when it gets in the way. Anyone who's done proofreading
knows how difficult it can be to turn those filters off so as to be able
to notice errors.
And writers like me, whose output is sometime noise-like in the sense of
being very unlikely compared to whatever the audience was expecting at
that instant, could benefit from being able to somehow turn off the
readers' noise filters for those low-probability signals that would
otherwise be mistaken for typos or mis-heard words or the like.
*********************
I was thinking about a book of something like Rorschach ink blots. Every
person who reads it sees it as being about something different, so no two
librarians can agree on how to file it. But then what do libraries do
with it when they somehow find themselves in possession of a copy? If
all else fails, maybe trial by combat?
Maybe the Library of Congress, or some other such ultimate authority, has
a secret dungeon where gladiators who are also trained librarians fight
it out over books they can't agree on how to classify.
There are only a few such books, so they don't need all that many
gladiators, and they prefer to recruit people who are expert librarians
from within their existing work force. Thus the fact that the Library of
Congress now and then uses gladiators doesn't get noticed by the outside
public, even by most sports fans.
Besides, most librarians don't like to talk about such things with
outsiders. They think it weakens their reputation as scholars.
But if you know the right people in the field, and you like watching
blood sports, you may be able to get a pass to see the library gladiators
in action. But if it's too bloody for you, don't say I didn't warn you.
*********************
I dreamed a young woman's body was found hanging from a telephone pole,
an apparent suicide. Nobody knew who she might have been.
Then I found a scrap of paper that I sort of knew was her suicide note.
It was a series of drawings, some with captions and other wording on
them, sort of like a page from a comic book.
She had come here from another world, part of an exploring expedition.
While here she had given birth to a child, and when the others returned
home she stayed behind to raise it here.
But then the child had died, its soul lost among millions of others on
this world. Having nothing more to live for, she decided to end it all.
As I finished reading the tragic tale the images faded from the paper,
leaving me with no evidence beyond my unsupported word.
*********************
Another thought on the space program:
There's talk of again sending astronauts to the moon, this time with the
idea of eventually setting up some kind of base.
There's also speculation that there may be some remnants of life, or some
sort-of-alive combinations of chemicals, or something like that, in
certain naturally sheltered spots on Mars. If there is, someone is
sooner or later going to want to bring back samples for study.
So maybe the lunar base should include a laboratory for analyzing such
things, so that anything brought back from Mars (or Titan or any other
world thought to harbor life or proto-life) can go to the Moon rather
than Earth or Earth orbit. That would reduce the chances of anything
dangerous getting loose down here.
Should the lab be manned? Probably not, because we don't want to have to
worry about lab workers getting contaminated. But we may want any humans
operating it remotely to be nearby, either on the moon or in lunar orbit,
to reduce light-speed lag.
Science fiction writers may of course postulate a lab staffed by what
amounts to monks, people who have dedicated their lives to the work and
who plan to never return to Earth. This may make even more sense for the
eventual Mars base, where the possibility of contamination is harder to
rule out.
But moon or Mars, this scenario doesn't seem likely in real life, at
least given the current US culture. But what if the first Mars
expeditions aren't from the US?
Has this idea been talked about much?
*********************
A monthly poetry reading I go to happened to fall on April Fool's, during
a spell of unsettled weather. That led me to read this one:
Everybody Talks About It But ...
Tuesday before last they were predicting a Thursday--
My club meeting night.
But when I awoke in the morning
It was dull, gray, depressing, dreary,
Blue Monday.
I was almost mad enough to complain
But normally wouldn't bother,
Except I needed something to write about
And I knew somebody who worked there
So I went.
The forecaster tried to explain it with a map:
"We were expecting this area of Wednesday/Thursday here
To stabilize and spread
But a long lazy Sunday afternoon
That had been quietly hanging there for three days
Finally broke up and flowed west
So we got
Monday."
I asked if it was true the days used to be more settled.
They say that years ago they went
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Regular as clockwork.
You could almost set your watch by 'em.
He'd heard that too,
But that was before they kept records
So he really didn't know.
I told him my father's story
About how when he was little
They once had a month straight
Of Monday.
He'd heard of that:
"It was really bad--
A month of Monday morning blahs
And a water shortage from all that Monday washday laundry
And with no Fridays, nobody was getting their paychecks.
They finally had to declare an emergency and martial law
and everything
And when the churches tried to organize prayers for relief--
No Sundays.
Churches like having lots of Sundays."
Interesting conversation,
But finally time to go.
"Any Thursdays coming up?
That's my club meeting
And we haven't had one for quite a while."
"Sorry, but no.
No Thursdays in sight."
But sure enough,
You guessed it.
For the next three days,
Thursday,
Thursday,
Thursday.
Thomas G. Digby
written 0035 hr 2/26/77
entered 0005 hr 2/09/92
*********************
HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU
If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is
ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net
you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address
will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation.
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to
almost nothing in between. Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.
If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're
getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon
Soapware with no banter. The zine content is the same for both.
To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to
http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi
and select the ss_talk list. Enter your email address in the space
provided and hit Signup. When you receive an email confirmation request
go to the URL it will give you. (If you're already on the list and want
to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list
posting you receive.)
To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or
bubbles@well.com). I currently do that one manually.
-- END --
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #61 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Sun 8 May 05 14:35
permalink #61 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Sun 8 May 05 14:35
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 #127
New Moon of May 8, 2005
Contents copyright 2005 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of
"fair use". In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I
get a cut of the profits.
Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.
Details of how to sign up are at the end.
*********************
I'm moving the production of Silicon Soapware to a newer computer, thus
allowing me to retire the old one, which I haven't used for anything else
for a while. I think it'll be better that way in the long run, although
any such move has its short-term problems.
Those of you who are not techno-geeks can skip the next few paragraphs,
down to the row of asterisks.
On the old machine I edited Silicon Soapware with WordStar under MS-DOS.
The machine also has Windows 3.1, which I haven't used for years. The
new one (which I've actually had for several months) is running Debian
Linux with the KDE desktop.
There's a third machine, intermediate in age, running Windows 98. I did
lots of other stuff on it, but never got around to migrating Silicon
Soapware to it.
I'm still in the process of deciding which editor to use for Silicon
Soapware on the Linux machine. For this issue it looks like I'll be
using a combination of KEdit and pico. I'm doing the main editing of
content in KEdit, and will then use pico to format the file for
uploading.
I like GUI-based editors in general, but most of them do their paragraph
formatting at display time and don't save soft returns in the output
file. Their "print to file" or "Export to ASCII" functions often don't
do what I want either. Hence the need to do the final formatting in a
command-line editor.
I also miss WordStar's ability to spell-check a single word, and to start
the spelling checker at the cursor position rather than always checking
the entire file. This is especially useful when I have lots of stuff I
want it to ignore, such as email addresses and URL's, and just want to
check a couple of newly typed paragraphs.
I assume there are other Linux users out there. What are your favorite
editors, and why? And which ones would you recommend for eventual plain
ASCII output?
*********************
There's a quote that made the rounds of the Internet a few years back:
"When I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I
can't help but cry. I mean, I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with
all those flies and death and stuff."
Although the person it is usually attributed to appears not to have
really said it (see http://www.snopes.com/quotes/carey.htm), I believe
its message still bears thinking about.
The people at Snopes (see URL above) seem to think the popularity of the
quote comes from the way it makes the pop singer it's usually attributed
to seem shallow and airheaded. But I have a different theory.
We in this society tend to romanticize the past and non-technological
societies in general. We tend to ignore the fact that by our current
standards they are full of "flies and death and stuff".
On May Day, which many of us observed just a few days ago, we celebrated
some of the ways our distant ancestors may have welcomed the coming of
summer with fun and frolic. Most of us gave little thought to the
downsides of our ancestors' lives, such as sexually transmitted diseases
and the things that can go horribly wrong with childbirth in the absence
of modern medical science.
For another example, my high school mascot was Pirates. If we thought
much about the details at all, we thought in terms of buried treasure and
the freedom to sail the seven seas without anyone back home telling us
what to do. We didn't dwell on how the pirate figures with which we
decorated our school buildings and yearbooks and such got their eye
patches and peg legs and hooks in place of hands. And we knew next to
nothing about living conditions aboard sailing ships in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.
Likewise, you may be familiar with The Society for Creative Anachronism
(http://www.sca.org/). Although they spend quite a bit of time and
effort re-creating the costumes and art and pomp and pageantry of the
Middle Ages, they equip their campsites with modern portable sanitary
facilities, their First Aid tent is well stocked with modern emergency
medical supplies and equipment, and they know who among them has a
working cell phone or Citizen's Band rig. Thus they too avoid most of
the "flies and death and stuff" that were an all-too-real part of life
back then.
So I'd say a major reason that quote was so popular was that it hinted at
an attitude many of us hold to various degrees, even if we don't give it
that much conscious thought. And given that, the quote remains valid no
matter who did or didn't "really" say it.
*********************
As April wound down I got to thinking about how it was one of those
months that the old rhyme says has 30 days. Then as the rhyme started
going through my head again and again I got to wondering if there might
be months that had other numbers of days besides 28, 29, 30, or 31.
There don't seem to be any, at least in our usual calendar, unless
there's some conspiracy to keep them secret or something.
Then I got to wondering about whether there might be months that have no
days at all.
You could put one of those between two "normal" months and nobody would
notice the difference, at least as long as months with no days don't get
counted in the numbering of months, or they get fractional numbers rather
than integers, or something like that.
Maybe this could be a sequel to "On Beyond Zebra"? One problem: The
author of that book isn't currently available.
*********************
When somebody at a party I was at used the phrase "weird spices", it got
me to thinking about the old science fiction and horror comic books of
the Fifties, with titles like "Weird Science" and "Tales from the Crypt".
So would a book named "Weird Spices" have science fiction and/or horror
stories about food, with a recipe accompanying each story?
And what would the food-based equivalent of "Tales from the Crypt" be
named? "Tales from the Cook" doesn't have quite the right horror-story
feeling. Neither does "Tales from the Cupboard". Is there a word with
the right sound and connotations?
*********************
Something that could be a song line or some such just sort of popped into
my head. It's not one I recall hearing before.
So assuming the line hasn't been used, what can I do with it? There may
be lots of things, although they don't seem to be coming to mind at the
moment. Maybe I'm not supposed to do anything with it?
Could the line have been on its way into the head of another poet or
philosopher and just snagged me by mistake? If that's the case, is
another instance of it even now on its way to its correct destination?
If so, then maybe I need not do anything.
But what if I have the only copy? I don't know the muses' equivalent of
dropping it into a mailbox marked "Mis-delivered to ...", assuming there
even is one.
Or do I not need to bother? Maybe the gods or muses or whatever have a
good enough delivery tracking system that they can see these problems as
they happen, and take corrective action? It is to be hoped.
*********************
Have you noticed that when somebody says to knock wood because of that
old superstition about talking about future luck, it's getting harder and
harder to find wood to knock? I have several wooden bookshelves, but the
rest of the furniture here is pretty much all metal and plastic. There
are some wooden door frames and baseboards and such, but you have to look
for them.
And what of the work environment? If you're in a meeting room at some
high-tech corporation and somebody makes a glowing prediction about the
future of the company to which somebody else responds with mention of
knocking wood, will there be wood to knock? If there is none, will the
company be doomed?
And could a lack of easily knockable wood in corporate meeting rooms have
been a factor in the Silicon Valley business bust? If lower-tech
companies in other parts of the country suffered less, could it have been
because the less-trendy meeting rooms had more real wood available to
knock?
Has anybody tried to take a survey on this?
*********************
Speaking of high-tech companies, they just decided a few days ago to put
the new Center for Stem Cell Research in San Francisco. Even though the
Center is not itself a laboratory but is just an outfit that gives out
grants, those pushing for it hope that actual researchers will want to
set up shop nearby, thus boosting the economy of the region.
But all is not rosy. Some have expressed concern that this could bring
increased traffic and higher real estate prices reminiscent of the peak
of the dot-com boom. Might this drive some artists and such out of SF?
How might we balance these concerns?
*********************
You've heard the old saying, "Curiosity killed the cat." That may be why
cats have nine lives. Since they are so curious, they get killed more
often than other species, so the gods gave them the extra lives to make
up for it.
*********************
As some of the younger folks may not know, the US once minted dimes with
a picture of the god Mercury on them. They were known as "Mercury
dimes".
Now imagine some clueless numismatist who has read too much science
fiction but not enough about the gods of our ancient civilizations. What
happens when he hears someone mention what sounds to him like "mercury
dimes"? He might get to thinking about how such coinage may be OK on
colder planets, but would not be too practical for use by Earth humans.
For one thing, banks would need refrigerated vaults. That could get
expensive, and if the refrigeration ever failed it would give new meaning
to the term "liquid assets".
And then you'd have people walking around with their pockets full of dry
ice, and what with the gloves or forceps or whatever they'd need to keep
their fingers from getting frostbitten, counting change would be much
harder than it is now.
And so on.
Even if you ignore the possible toxic effects of people carrying that
much mercury around, I don't think mercury dimes would be worthwhile.
*********************
"That's what's wrong with these Cheetos: They're carrots."
That was inspired by a bowl of those little baby carrot pieces right next
to a bag of Cheetos Puffed. They're of similar size and shape, and
pretty much the same shade of bright orange. So I grabbed a handful of
the carrots, expecting them to be Cheetos. But why did they feel cold
and damp instead of dry and temperature-neutral? It took me a few
seconds to figure out what the problem was. Luckily I like carrots
almost as well as I like Cheetos.
*********************
Cloudy Concepts
Two friends lie on a hillside
Gazing at the clouds
making pictures in the sky.
This one's a dog, that one a car,
Yet another one a saxophone.
But there's one that doesn't seem to be anything.
In reality it's a trans-temporal replorvinator,
But since replorvination won't be invented
for at least another three hundred years
Today's cloud-gazers haven't a clue.
That cloud has labored in vain.
How many other clouds
have made shapes of things that will be
but aren't yet,
Or might have been
if only things had been different?
Only the gods of clouds know,
And they aren't talking.
-- Tom Digby
Written 8:40 a.m. April 21, 2005
*********************
HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU
If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is
ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net
you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address
will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation.
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to
almost nothing in between. Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.
If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're
getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon
Soapware with no banter. The zine content is the same for both.
To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to
http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi
and select the ss_talk list. Enter your email address in the space
provided and hit Signup. When you receive an email confirmation request
go to the URL it will give you. (If you're already on the list and want
to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list
posting you receive.)
To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or
bubbles@well.com). I currently do that one manually.
-- END --
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #62 of 140: Cleave the general ear (ronks) Sun 8 May 05 16:51
permalink #62 of 140: Cleave the general ear (ronks) Sun 8 May 05 16:51
Good stuff!
WRT GUI word processors, I have found it's possible to create a template (in
MS Word, but surely doable on other software like Open Office on Linux) with
a fixed font and margins to display the lines with 76-character line wrap to
look as they will appear on the Well. Other templates could be created for
other destination systems.
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #63 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Sun 8 May 05 21:57
permalink #63 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Sun 8 May 05 21:57
But will the resulting file be word-wrapped with a newline at the end of
every line, or will it be saved with every paragraph as one long line?
Many editors (I think Windows Notepad is one) do what I think of as "fake
word wrap": They wrap the lines at display time, but don't save those
auto-generated newlines in the file. They save only the newlines you put
in manually by hitting Enter. The resulting file looks OK if you open it
up again in the same editor, but if you ftp it to the WELL (assuming you
have the kind of account that allows that) and look at it in one of the
WELL's command-line editors you'll see the problem.
In Windows try opening the file in Notepad with word-wrap turned off. If
the newlines are in the file it will still look well-formatted.
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #64 of 140: Cleave the general ear (ronks) Mon 9 May 05 09:03
permalink #64 of 140: Cleave the general ear (ronks) Mon 9 May 05 09:03
Ah, I see what you mean. I upload responses via telnet which adds the line
wrap at 76 characters, rather than via FTP. An early version of WordPerfect
for Windows (5.1, I think) inserted the returns but I haven't seen that
since.
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #65 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Mon 6 Jun 05 23:29
permalink #65 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Mon 6 Jun 05 23:29
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 #128
New Moon of June 6, 2005
Contents copyright 2005 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 June, the month when summer comes to this hemisphere. The sun is
shining, birds are singing, and all that good stuff, even if summer won't
officially be here for another couple of weeks.
Of course there are always differences of opinion. Some people have
medical problems having to do with sunshine or birds or other aspects of
summer, while others just happen to prefer other seasons. I myself am
not too enamored of the latter part of summer when the really hot weather
comes to California just as the days start to noticeably shorten to
remind us of the inevitable passage of time toward another season of cold
wet somber darkness.
But in general spring and the beginning of summer feel to me like times
for rejoicing.
*********************
As I was musing at the keyboard earlier there happened to be a few
moments with no birds singing, and no clouds visible in the sky. Neither
were there any clouds singing, or at least there were none close enough
for me to hear them. In fact, as far as I know clouds never sing, at
least not on this world, unless you want to count howling winds and
thunder and such.
Might clouds sing on other worlds? It seems doubtful, at least on worlds
with physical laws similar to ours, where clouds are made up of tiny
droplets of liquid or particles of solid matter suspended in whatever
passes for air.
But then one sees cartoons and such where clouds act more like solid
objects or living beings floating around up there. Sometimes such
cartoon clouds have faces and are depicted as talking, even if they don't
sing.
Might there be worlds where things are like that, even if those worlds
aren't in our realm of reality? And might clouds in some of those worlds
sing?
We don't know enough about the nature of whatever reality lies beyond our
universe to know.
*********************
I'm also reminded of something else:
In cartoons and such, Christian Heaven is often depicted with the
"ground" that people walk on being the tops of clouds. That leads to a
number of thoughts.
First, the cloud tops often look a bit lumpy, probably drawn that way so
the reader will know that it's the top side of clouds rather than dirt or
something. Do all those tiny hills and valleys make it harder to walk
on?
And what does it feel like? I tend to imagine it would feel like walking
around on a bed, with the mattress and springs and such, except for it
not being level like a bed is. But I could be wrong.
There's also a philosophical point: If Heaven is made of clouds (with or
without gold paving on top), whoever is living in whatever part of the
world Heaven is above will look up and see the undersides of those
clouds. So does that mean the people in Heaven can't enjoy it without
giving somebody else a cloudy day?
But then aviators and such don't generally report seeing Heaven when
they're above the clouds. So maybe the whole realm is in some other
plane of reality where there's nobody underneath the clouds to be
bothered by them?
*********************
During all these cloudy musings I got to thinking about some sort of
Weather Command Room where the gods gather around a big table and slide
little cotton clouds and such around on a map of the world, sort of like
generals moving toy soldiers around as part of planning a battle.
Then it gets to be lunch time, but they're too engrossed in some new
seasonal frontal system or something to want to leave their work to go
eat. So they have food brought in.
But the servant bringing the food is clumsy. He trips or something, and
a tray of food gets scattered all over the table. And the magic of the
system is such that anything on the table becomes part of the weather.
So that's why we now and then hear reports of fish and such falling out
of the sky.
*********************
A day or two before a recent science fiction convention someone I was
planning to share a room with left a message on my answering machine.
The message included the cell phone number of the third person who would
be in the room. As I was writing it down I looked, more or less by
habit, at the letters on the numbers to see if the number spelled
anything interesting. It didn't.
But even though it didn't spell much of anything, it got me to thinking.
Since most cell phones have internal directories there's less need for
humans to remember actual phone numbers when they want to call somebody.
So are letter-based mnemonics for phone numbers dying out?
*********************
Sometimes when I'm looking for inspiration I just start typing, and hope
that it turns out to be about something interesting, even though I have
no idea of what that might be.
Although that approach works some of the time, it doesn't always bear
fruit. Sometimes it just ends up as a paragraph of ramblings that don't
really go anywhere.
But then fruit trees don't usually go anywhere either, even when they're
bearing fruit. If you want fruit, you have to go to the tree. There
seems to be no such thing as itinerant fruit trees, at least on this
world. Might other worlds have them?
You might mention Johnny Appleseed, but then he was a man, not a tree.
And he himself didn't bear much, if any, fruit. He planted trees so that
people might have fruit later. So he doesn't really count.
It could be argued that if you want your food to come to you, you eat
meat or birds or fish. That's the kind of food that wanders around, at
least on this planet. But what if you don't want to be carnivorous?
I suspect that itinerant fruit trees are unlikely to evolve naturally.
They could perhaps gain some advantage by wandering around leaving their
seeds all over the place, but if there are fruit-eating animals around
they can do the job of seed dispersal just as well.
If they aren't going to appear naturally, could someone create them
artificially? On this planet the functions of bearing fruit and
wandering around have ended up in two different kingdoms of life, and
combining them may require a major feat of biological engineering.
That's not to say it wouldn't be possible, but few might consider it
worth the trouble. It would be far simpler to just plant regular trees
in wheeled containers and haul those around as desired.
So much for mixing metaphors about ideas going places and bearing fruit.
*********************
Why don't more seaports have a special Handicapped dock area for pirate
ships whose crew members have hooks and peg legs and eye patches and
such?
*********************
A few days ago I heard a radio commercial where the guy was saying
something like "Why buy a make-believe car" when you can get the brand he
was advertising for some fairly low price. I'm not sure of the point,
but I think he was trying to say that other cars in that price range are
just something for people to settle for if they think they can't get his
brand. Or something like that.
But I got to wondering about taking the phrase "make-believe car" more
literally, perhaps in the context of magic. A powerful enough magic-user
might be able to do up a transportation spell whereby he could actually
go somewhere by pretending to drive. Sit down in a chair or whatever at
Point A, close your eyes, pantomime steering with your hands while making
engine noises for a few minutes, and when you open your eyes you're at
Point B. In some ways that kind of make-believe car might be more useful
than a real one, and it could be much better for the environment.
So if you're enough of a magic-user to be able to use a make-believe car,
why would you want to spend thousands and thousands of dollars for a real
one?
*********************
I just noticed a jar of bubble stuff with "Non Toxic" in big letters on
the label.
That got me to wondering: Isn't labeling innocent stuff like soap bubbles
as "Non Toxic" kind of redundant? Who would want to manufacture deadly
venomous bubbles, guaranteed to spread death and desolation for miles
around? I suppose you might be able to get the military interested, but
even that's a long shot. It doesn't fit into their current models of
warfare.
Death-dealing bubbles might have potential as a terrorist weapon, but
they're not the kind of thing potential terrorists would expect to find
on the open market. So again, labeling regular bubble stuff as "Non
Toxic" seems kind of redundant.
I suppose someone might make somewhat toxic bubbles, not as deadly as
what the military and/or terrorists might want, but still not good for
children to be playing with, just out of carelessness or because the
ingredients are less costly than the safe stuff. But that's why we have
the various consumer product safety people doing tests and making lists
of approved ingredients and such. So if a bottle of bubble stuff isn't
labeled with big warnings about "MILITARY OR TERRORIST USE ONLY" it's
probably safe enough for ordinary people to play with.
And even if terrorists were to make their own version of deadly bubbles
in hopes unsuspecting users would buy them and thereby spread death and
desolation for miles around, they probably wouldn't be above lying on the
label about how toxic they were or weren't. So again, "Non Toxic" on the
label doesn't really say much.
Or is it supposed to be a patriotic statement, like "Support our Troops"?
The maker of that brand of bubble stuff is letting the world know that
terrorists will have little use for it. Thus it's OK for ordinary people
to buy and use it, because it won't get them labeled as terrorists.
Notice that "Non Toxic" isn't as potentially controversial as "Support
our Troops", which tends to be taken to actually mean "Support Whatever
War We're In". Even people who want to bring our troops home are
unlikely to be in favor of toxic bubbles.
So it's nice to know that the makers of bubble stuff are doing their part
to keep our nation secure.
*********************
"I laughed so hard I sprayed coffee all over my keyboard. That was very
odd, since I was drinking Coke at the time."
*********************
There's a creative writing exercise in which you're supposed to just
write, even if it isn't about anything in particular. Don't spend time
sitting there wondering what to write about. Just write.
But how can one write if it isn't about anything? Maybe one could use
only words that have no meaning? You might still want some of the
standard language-support words like articles and prepositions and
pronouns and the like, but for the nouns and verbs and adjectives and
such use only meaningless words. Then you would have well-formed English
(or whatever other language you prefer) sentences that aren't about
anything.
Or would you want to go all the way and eliminate the support words as
well? Then the writing that isn't about anything wouldn't be in any
particular language either.
Or would it? Might someone still be able to use statistical methods to
infer that whatever you wrote is more likely to be in Language X than
Language Y? You might get around that by never using the same word
twice, but then you run into problems with limited numbers of letter
combinations, at least with short words.
Could one get around the letter-combination problem by using ideographs?
Possibly so, at least if you make up the ideographs yourself so nobody
else knows what, if anything, they mean, but I'm writing this on a
computer where the default way of writing stuff is ASCII text. So I'd
need different software to do ideographs. Would a paint program suffice?
If I'm making the ideographs up as I go along and don't plan to use any
of them more than once it might.
But be the software as it may, it's beginning to sound like the easy way
out is to just let one's writing always be about something, or at least
be in a specific language.
*********************
Speaking of not writing about anything, or not having anything to write
about, or ...
Incident Along Fantasy Way
Idea Crisis
Things are quiet tonight --
Too quiet.
There is a severe inspiration shortage.
Downtown is silent and dark,
With rolls of sidewalk stacked in the parking lots.
Store windows are empty
And none of the signs say anything.
I try making noise
But the echoes are only echoes.
Two people are conversing on a street corner:
"Hey, what's happenin', man?"
"Nothin'. What's happenin' with you?"
"Nothin'. What's happenin' with you?"
"Nothin'."
Back and forth endlessly.
Most of the newsracks on the next corner are empty.
A couple have blank papers
And one headlines "NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS"
Over a full-page picture
Of a Smile Face.
My favorite DJ is on the radio
Announcing that his station will be playing elevator music
Until further notice.
Finally I conjure up a press card
And inquire at a police station.
The desk sergeant looks up from his crossword puzzle
And says that the last several days have passed
"Without incident."
So it looks like I have nothing to write about
This time.
Thomas G. Digby
written 2315 hr 8/16/74
entered 1645 hr 2/27/92
*********************
HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU
If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is
ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net
you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address
will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation.
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to
almost nothing in between. Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.
If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're
getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon
Soapware with no banter. The zine content is the same for both.
To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to
http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi
and select the ss_talk list. Enter your email address in the space
provided and hit Signup. When you receive an email confirmation request
go to the URL it will give you. (If you're already on the list and want
to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list
posting you receive.)
To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or
bubbles@well.com). I currently do that one manually.
-- END --
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:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #66 of 140: Cynthia Dyer-Bennet (cdb) Tue 7 Jun 05 16:14
permalink #66 of 140: Cynthia Dyer-Bennet (cdb) Tue 7 Jun 05 16:14
mmmmmm... I love the idea of singing clouds, Tom. That's delightful!
pre.vue.71
:
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permalink #67 of 140: Cleave the general ear (ronks) Tue 7 Jun 05 17:46
permalink #67 of 140: Cleave the general ear (ronks) Tue 7 Jun 05 17:46
Good stuff! And I am glad to know that the author is non-toxic.
pre.vue.71
:
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permalink #68 of 140: Pat Adams (scarlet) Tue 7 Jun 05 20:43
permalink #68 of 140: Pat Adams (scarlet) Tue 7 Jun 05 20:43
I always think that rainbows should be singing
pre.vue.71
:
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permalink #69 of 140: Eleanor Parker (wellelp) Tue 7 Jun 05 23:02
permalink #69 of 140: Eleanor Parker (wellelp) Tue 7 Jun 05 23:02
Itinerant fruit trees made me think of The Wizard of Oz. And thinking
of Wizard of Oz always makes me smile.
Thank you, Tom.
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #70 of 140: Eleanor Parker (wellelp) Fri 10 Jun 05 08:35
permalink #70 of 140: Eleanor Parker (wellelp) Fri 10 Jun 05 08:35
I was pondering a matter, and it seemed rather bubbles-esque, so I
thought I'd post it here. I hope you don't mind, Tom. :-)
What exactly is blithering? Why is it that only idiots seem to do it?
I've never heard of a blithering genius, or a blithering anyone else,
for that matter. Which led me to:
Some people are oft said to blither
While making their way, yon and hither
The idiot cried
"I just can't decide--
Is it better to blither or dither?"
pre.vue.71
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permalink #71 of 140: Cynthia Dyer-Bennet (cdb) Fri 10 Jun 05 15:34
permalink #71 of 140: Cynthia Dyer-Bennet (cdb) Fri 10 Jun 05 15:34
Boy, you sure do ask the tough questions, wellelp!
pre.vue.71
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permalink #72 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Thu 7 Jul 05 23:16
permalink #72 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Thu 7 Jul 05 23:16
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 #129
New Moon of July 6, 2005
Contents copyright 2005 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.
*********************
We're just winding down from the Fourth as I write this, and once again
the media have been full of messages about how dangerous it is to shoot
off your own fireworks and how people should go watch professional
fireworks displays instead. And once again many people still shot off
their own fireworks, even in places where it's illegal. I think I have
an idea why. Let me explain it with an analogy.
Consider a bunch of friends sitting around in your living room singing.
A couple of people have guitars, several more add their voices, and some
just listen. To some it brings back childhood memories of nights around
campfires, or singing to pass away the miles on long car or bus rides, or
parking with a sweetheart on Lover's Lane while the car radio played the
latest romantic hits. They're all enjoying it, each in their own way.
Then comes a knock at the door. It's someone from the Neighborhood
Association, warning them about a No Singing rule. If you want music,
here's a list of free symphony concerts you can go to.
Go listen passively to a symphony concert instead of joining with those
you love to raise your voices in song? Let whoever is in charge decide
in advance which piece to play when, instead of everybody being free to
suggest whatever the previous song happened to remind them of? It just
isn't the same. So they draw the blinds and get heavier curtains in
hopes of muffling the sound so they won't be noticed, and continue
singing.
So it is with backyard fireworks as opposed to the big public displays.
Sure, the big displays can be fun to watch, but it's not the same.
Aren't private fireworks dangerous? Yes, but most people who do them end
up not getting hurt. Aren't they illegal? Yes, at least in many places,
but most people end up not getting busted. So people continue to do
them, especially on a holiday commemorating a bunch of people defying
their established authorities.
And it just might be best to leave it at that, even at the cost of some
blown-off fingers and such. To do otherwise may demand a higher cost in
lost freedoms.
*********************
Another sort-of-silly thought:
First, if you're not familiar with the Puppeteer species from Larry
Niven's science fiction writings, go see
http://www.larryniven.org/puppeteer/
The relevant part: They are very averse to taking risks.
So now imagine one of these beings living in some city on Earth (or some
similar human-dominated planet) and somehow getting on the committee to
do that city's annual fireworks display. Being the creature he is, his
idea of safety is to do it on an airless moon or asteroid by remote
control, with the audience watching on TV.
His arguments make some sense: With no air, the fireworks can't set
anything on fire (but they'll still work because the chemicals carry
their own oxidizer). Also, an airless sky is always dark, even in the
daytime, so there are fewer time constraints. As for the lack of sound,
they can use video cameras hooked to computers to synthesize what the
fireworks would have sounded like had there been air.
But even though the logic makes sense, those pesky humans still won't buy
it.
*********************
Some semi-impromptu poetic musings, still in the rebellious spirit of the
Fourth:
Biddley boddley buddley boo.
Give the spell-checker something to do.
Let it whine and growl and complain,
Though its whining be all in vain.
Fliddley fladdley floodley floss.
Let me show it who is boss.
Font of knowledge though it be,
The final say still rests with me.
*********************
Apparently the In Thing among some men is smooth hairless skin. So now
there are people offering male body waxing, as well as the more permanent
electrolysis.
Waxing is very painful, as many women already know. Think of how it
hurts when you remove a bandage, except that this is over a larger area
and actually pulls the hair out by the roots. It can also be expensive,
depending on the skill and reputation of the person doing it. But there
are apparently plenty of men willing to suffer, physically and
financially, for that smooth-skin look. Just don't count me as one of
them.
Even if the treatment was free and didn't hurt at all, I probably
wouldn't take it. I like my body hair.
And now I'm wondering if body hair on men in the 2000's is going to be
what long hair on men was in the 1960's. Will it become a political
symbol? Will some of the more conservative employers, or at least those
that allow short sleeves and open collars at work, start including body
hair removal in their dress and grooming codes?
If they do start doing that, how much of it will the average man put up
with?
And if that leads to a backlash of men keeping their body hair, might it
extend to women's arm and leg and armpit hair as well? Even today I see
some unshaven armpits on women in various groups I hang out with.
So is keeping or eliminating body hair becoming less a gender-specific
thing and more a matter of individual choice?
*********************
A few weeks ago I spent the night at a friend's place. One thing I
noticed was that she had lots of pillows on her bed. In fact there were
so many that it was hard to tell if she was really there amongst them.
That led to thoughts of a fairy-tale princess under a rather odd
enchantment: By night she's OK as long as she stays near a bed with lots
of pillows on it, but by day she turns into more pillows. To the casual
observer she's just gone, and it looks like there are more pillows in the
pile than there were before. Then at dusk the pillow pile shrinks a
little and she reappears on the bed.
She can sort of adapt to that, living a more or less nocturnal life. She
can of course entertain lovers in the royal bed, and she can hold court
in the bedchamber. She may even be able to wander around more or less
like anyone else, as long as she's back in a pillow-laden bed by dawn.
But during the day she's rather vulnerable. If the pillows from the pile
she turned into get scattered, she may not be able to resume human form.
For example, suppose some servant, ignorant of her plight, decides the
bedchamber can use fresh linens, and sells the old pillows at a yard
sale. No one person buys the whole pile, so she's essentially scattered
to several homes across the land.
So then she's missing for several nights, until those who know about the
spell figure out what happened. So then knights and such have to go all
across the kingdom, finding anyone who recently bought a pillow at a yard
sale and buying back those pillows. Sometimes it takes a fair amount of
gold, and sometimes it requires other forms of persuasion, all the while
keeping the real truth secret.
Since it's a fairy tale they do eventually get them all, plus lots more
that they aren't sure of either way. So they bring them back to the
palace and pile them in and around the royal bed. Maybe the first try
doesn't work because there's one pillow still out there somewhere, but
after many trials and tribulations they do get them all and she
reappears. Then after they sort out which of the remaining non-magical
pillows she wants on the bed and which they can get rid of, everybody
lives happily ever after.
Or something like that.
*********************
Hickory Dickory Dock
The mouse ran up the clock.
Some digits flickered
But the mouse didn't notice.
Hickory Dickory Dock.
*********************
Someone at a party quoted Sturgeon's Law, and I mentioned that I recalled
it originally being worded differently from the way it's usually quoted.
So our host looked it up in an online dictionary site he likes. That
site says the original wording is "Ninety percent of everything is crud"
but that it's almost always quoted with "crud" changed to "crap". That
matches what I recall of it.
Later I looked at other online definitions of Sturgeon's Law, and most of
them agreed about the shift in wording.
I've heard of other instances where a saying gets changed by the folk
process. Often the changes are more or less random things like names of
people or places or species of animals. How common is it for the change
to make the language of the popular version dirtier than the original?
*********************
I got the news about the explosions in London as I was putting this issue
of Silicon Soapware together. Naturally I started thinking of what, if
anything to say about it. Should I not say anything at all, given that
much of what I might say will have already been said in various other
publications' editorials and such? Maybe I should just choose an
appropriate poem to end with. But which one?
Given my initial reaction (or lack thereof), perhaps I should run "Armor"
http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/poetry/Armor.txt
but that previously appeared here only a few months ago, after the
tsunami that inspired it.
I might address the larger questions by running "Recycler of Dreams"
http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/poetry/RecyclerOfDreams.txt
but that has been run a number of times, most recently about a year ago.
"Lessons in Pain"
http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/poetry/LessonsInPain.txt
might be another possibility, but it's about redemption and forgiveness
and it doesn't feel like the time is quite right for that yet. It can
come later, after the raw edges of people's emotions have started to
heal.
I finally decided on "Moon???". It too has appeared in Silicon Soapware
before, but not for a couple of years. And it does seem sort of
appropriate to the larger questions of "Why?".
Moon???
Have you ever been to a part of the world
Where people don't believe in the Moon
And saying that you've seen it brings howls of cruel laughter?
Where the silvery light shining in the night
Is a thing that defies explanation
And the tides are caused by the breathing of the oysters?
Have you ever been to a part of the world
Where people don't believe in the Sun
And everyone is acting just like it wasn't shining?
Where to walk down the road in the midday heat
You are careful to carry a lantern,
Or you have to move as if stumbling in the darkness?
Have you ever been to a part of the world
Where people don't believe in the Moon
And people that've seen it are locked up in the nut house?
Where the young lovers go out beside the sea
And they watch the reflections of nothing,
And they never talk about what they think they see there?
Have you ever been to a part of the world
Where people don't believe in the rain
But keep on getting wet without any earthly reason?
Where you go with your friends for a picnic lunch
While you fear what you'd better not mention,
And it's just delusions you have to come in out of?
Have you ever been to a part of the world
Where people don't believe
In love???
Thomas G. Digby
written ???? 1968?
typed/revised 0130 hr 11/23/75
entered 2340 hr 3/16/92
*********************
HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU
If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is
ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net
you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address
will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation.
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to
almost nothing in between. Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.
If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're
getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon
Soapware with no banter. The zine content is the same for both.
To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to
http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi
and select the ss_talk list. Enter your email address in the space
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To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or
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-- END --
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #73 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Sat 6 Aug 05 03:08
permalink #73 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Sat 6 Aug 05 03:08
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 #130
New Moon of August 4, 2005
Contents copyright 2005 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 August, a month that to me has long had vague connotations of
melancholy despite it still definitely being summertime.
I think it comes from my childhood. when the coming of August meant that
school would be starting in a few more weeks. Even though it was still
summer, we knew that that season's days were numbered, especially when
the stores started their big "Back to School" sales.
I should say that school wasn't all bad. Much of what was taught was
interesting. But I didn't like having to get up early every morning in a
chilly house where we didn't normally run the heater while we slept, so
as to be out the door and on my way at the specified time. Also,
homework wasn't always the most enjoyable way to spend an evening. So
like most kids I looked forward to days of no school, even though I liked
some aspects of school.
August is also when we see the days definitely starting to get shorter.
They've actually been getting shorter since the Solstice in late June,
but now the difference from day to day and week to week is increasing as
we approach the Equinox.
This is also, at least in this area, the hottest time of year. In a way
that may be for the best, because the eventual relief from the heat as
autumn arrives is a sort of consolation for the loss of summer.
*********************
Once again I see squirrels outside my window, running along overhead
wires. Is the propensity to do that genetic? What would squirrels from,
say, 200 years ago, before the telegraph, do if brought into our modern
world? Would they run along the lines like today's squirrels, perhaps
thinking them some new kind of vine, or would they avoid them because
some genetic tendency to run along wires wasn't there? And would more of
them get run over because they don't have a hard-wired tendency to watch
for cars?
City squirrels and country squirrels. Would they show inherited
differences in behavior with respect to humans and cars and overhead
wires and such? Has anybody done research in this area?
*********************
A few days ago as I was sitting here trying to think of something to
write about, the clouds parted and the sun shone forth. The radio spoke
of blue skies to be expected later in the day. Part of me welcomed that
prospect.
But another part of me, dulled with early morning blahs, wondered what
good sunshine and blue skies were in the larger scheme of things when I
had nothing to write about. Sure, some plants may find the increased
light useful for photosynthesis, and I can use the oxygen. But then
somehow I got to thinking about how plants don't really think about my
creativity or lack thereof when they ask themselves why they should care
about me and whether or not I should like sunshine.
If plants were to ask such questions, I don't think I would have a good
answer. I kind of suspect they would find me more useful as compost than
as a writer or poet or whatever. But then do I really want to base my
self-image on what plants might find me useful for? Although that might
be something to take into account, the opinions of other humans carry far
more weight, or at least I think they do.
Of course somebody might well end up getting rich writing a self-help
book based on working to improve what plants think about you, but I'm
pretty sure I'm not that person.
*********************
Actually it's not all that unusual for me to think that I have nothing to
write about. So should I write about Nothing? Vacuum? The Void? Is
there such a thing?
Scientists have told us that there may be little pockets of Nothing all
around us, in between parts of our atoms. They have long said that an
atom is mostly empty space. Or does the seething quantum foam they've
theorized about in more recent years eliminate that possibility, even on
the tiniest scales where the energy required for the shorter wavelengths
goes to infinity?
On the other end of the scale, what about the vast emptiness between
galaxies? That's not really empty. Even if you discount the quantum
foam, there's light from various distant galaxies passing through on its
way to wherever it may end up, perhaps in other distant galaxies millions
of years hence. And every here and there one may find a hydrogen atom.
But there may be possibilities in that direction, if you go far enough.
We don't know what, if anything, lies beyond the boundaries of our
universe. Perhaps all we will ever know or be is a speck in some larger
universal Void.
So if you are looking for some kind of Nothing to write about, as
distinct from not writing about anything, both ends of the size and
distance scales seem more promising than the middle.
*********************
Somebody on a tech list about the inner workings of computers asked what
you get when you read an empty location, one that doesn't have any memory
or other hardware at that address. The answer is that you generally
don't know, although if you know something about the hardware you can
make fairly good guesses based on technical things like bus capacitance,
whether addresses are fully decoded, address-data multiplexing, and so
on.
I found part of me wondering if it might be digital samples of the sound
of one hand clapping. But alas, it is almost certainly not that.
*********************
I recently saw that new movie version of "Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory". I liked it, even though it differed from the earlier movie in
a number of ways.
There are some things I can probably note without giving away any
significant plot points.
Much of the action takes place in a candy factory, in a sort of fantasy
world. And I'm an engineer. What this meant was that the engineering
part of me would now and then think about how things like people dancing
on narrow catwalks with no railings, or rowing boats on lakes of melted
chocolate, would not pass muster with the likes of OSHA in the real
world. And the people who enforce zoning and immigration and labor laws
might have something to say about employees brought in from overseas
living on the premises and being paid in cacao beans.
But that didn't stop the rest of me from enjoying the movie.
It did give me an idea for a sort of short comedy bit: An OSHA inspector
takes his family to see this or some similar movie, and he can't help
reciting all the violations he sees. Mom and the kids keep trying to
tell him to just shut up and watch the movie, but to little avail.
It might end with him annoying the rest of the audience enough to get
thrown out. And as this happens, he's complaining about how they're
throwing him out. Maybe they kick him too hard when they send him flying
out the door, or the street they throw him out into is dirty, or
something like that. But then the bouncer says the theater is immune to
such rules because this is, after all, a cartoon.
*********************
At a dinner get-together a few nights ago, one person was wearing some
kind of hands-free cell-phone earpiece. He was talking in terms of
wearing something like that all day, and maybe even when he slept. I
commented that I wouldn't want to live such an interrupt-driven life,
whereupon he replied that he had an interrupt-driven brain. I wonder how
many people share his feelings about that, how many share mine, and how
many are along a spectrum in between?
*********************
In more mundane news, the world is still trundling along, more or less in
one piece. Nothing major seems to have blown up over the last few hours,
or at least nothing major enough to make the KCBS news page on the Web.
Of course that's just the stuff they tell us about. There could be all
sorts of momentous happenings involving empires and kingdoms whose very
existence has long been a closely guarded secret. How do we know, for
example, that the vast expanses of blue shown on the standard maps as
oceans are not really a cover-up for countries, even whole continents,
they don't want us to know about? Just because airlines claim not to fly
to those places (and the people behind the counter look at you funny when
you even ask) doesn't mean they aren't there.
Of course once you get to thinking about all the things that supposedly
don't exist but actually might, you can get into all kinds of mental
quagmires. Do I really want to go there? I might or might not,
depending on what the place is like.
But what if I do? How might I best equip myself for such an expedition?
Physical gear such as rafts and wading boots for swamps and quagmires
probably won't really be all that applicable, at least in the initial
stages. What would probably be more useful would be anger-management
training so as to be able to handle all the denials and frustration and
people looking at you funny for asking about all that weird stuff. Also
get some good legal advice on how crazy you can appear to be and still
not be in danger of being locked up. And just in case the advice is a
little off, or the people in charge of locking crazy people up don't
always follow the law, have some good lawyers on tap, along with friends
checking up on you periodically in case you just sort of disappear or
something. You can't be too paranoid. Well, maybe you can, but you have
to balance that possibility against the dangers of not being paranoid
enough.
*********************
What if some doctor or scientist or some such discovers some new disease
or theory or something that would normally be named after them because
they discovered it, but there's already another theory or disease or
whatever named after somebody else with the same name? How do they
resolve the conflict?
*********************
Speaking of it getting close to "Back to School" season:
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
ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net
you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address
will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation.
There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to
almost nothing in between. Any post can spark a new flurry at any time.
If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're
getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon
Soapware with no banter. The zine content is the same for both.
To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to
http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi
and select the ss_talk list. Enter your email address in the space
provided and hit Signup. When you receive an email confirmation request
go to the URL it will give you. (If you're already on the list and want
to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list
posting you receive.)
To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or
bubbles@well.com). I currently do that one manually.
-- END --
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #74 of 140: Cleave the general ear (ronks) Sat 6 Aug 05 10:28
permalink #74 of 140: Cleave the general ear (ronks) Sat 6 Aug 05 10:28
Very good! The one about
> An OSHA inspector takes his family to see this or some similar movie
reminds me of the efficiency expert who attended a concert and noted room
for improvement, since members of the percussion section sat idle for most
of the performance and then played really loud for a short period, when they
could have been playing softly the entire time.
pre.vue.71
:
Silicon Soapware and other Digby thoughts, plus comments
permalink #75 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Tue 6 Sep 05 00:28
permalink #75 of 140: Tom Digby (bubbles) Tue 6 Sep 05 00:28
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 #131
New Moon of September 3, 2005
Contents copyright 2005 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of
"fair use". In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I
get a cut of the profits.
Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.
Details of how to sign up are at the end.
*********************
This seems to be Mass Destruction Season. Last month we had the
anniversary of atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In
about a week we'll have the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. And
just a few days ago we had massive storm damage to one of the country's
major cities.
That's kind of a depressing theme to build an issue around, so I won't.
This issue may have some disaster-related items, but it won't be a theme
as such and they'll be interspersed with less unhappy things.
This also reminds me of the poem that came out of the aftermath of the
tsunami in late 2004. Rather than run it again so soon after its
previous appearance, I'll just give a URL for it:
http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/poetry/Armor.txt
*********************
Without blabbing details of things that happened at a Hiroshima
anniversary ritual, I was given reason to wonder if salamanders (the fire
elementals, not the reptiles) like nuclear bombs. Is it a case of "the
hotter the better" or is the fireball of a nuclear explosion too hot even
for them?
*********************
Something reminded me of thoughts I had while out on a walk a few days
ago.
I got to thinking of how sometimes, especially in places that don't have
the death penalty, a multiple murderer will be sentenced to several
consecutive life terms. That led to thoughts of reincarnation and of how
when the Dalai Lama dies, priests go around looking at babies to find the
one he's reborn as.
So imagine cops knocking on some young mother's door. They ask her if
she remembers some notorious serial killer from the previous century.
She's heard of him, but isn't familiar with the details. They hand her
some literature describing his crimes.
"But why bother me with this?" she asks. "I wasn't even born yet."
"At his trial he was sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms. So far
he's served five of them. The most recent ended when he died in prison
four years ago. Now we think he's been reincarnated as your daughter."
"So you want to put my daughter in jail?"
"Of course we have to do some more testing first, to verify that she is
indeed our serial killer. But yes, if she is him we'll want to take her
back to prison."
"But she hasn't done anything, at least not beyond the usual things small
children sometimes do."
"Maybe not in this life, but in previous lives she was a man who murdered
more than a dozen people in cold blood. And she has ten more life prison
terms to serve."
And so on, including stuff like how if they start while she's young
they'll be better able to teach her the survival skills she'll need in
prison.
And the mother should perhaps be thankful that the killer hadn't been
sentenced to multiple death penalties.
*********************
One interesting-looking young man in a fast-food place was wearing his
pants very low, with quite a bit of underwear showing. The style and
color of the underwear was such that I'm pretty sure it was made to be
seen. That got me to thinking of lowering the outer pants even further,
and then fastening their waistline to the leg area of the nominal
underwear so what looks like the belt on the pants doesn't need to be
tightened around the wearer's thighs. Make the whole thing one garment
that just looks like two. Has that been done? If it hasn't been done
yet, would it sell if someone were to do it?
*********************
There's been considerable discussion on the WELL about the situation in
New Orleans. I started one thread in the Brainstorm conference about
whether it should be rebuilt, and if so, how. It's gotten some comments.
Some want to just rebuild the city more or less as it was, but with
better levees. But I'm not sure that's really feasible. Should we even
be trying to keep the land forever dry?
My initial thought for the rebuilt city was something looking
superficially like Venice, but with buildings actually floating like
houseboats. This gets around the problems Venice is having with land
subsidence and rising sea levels.
Someone else mentioned a style of construction used in other flood-prone
areas, where houses are basically built on stilts, with the area
underneath used for carports or storage or whatever. That might be a
good way to go regardless of whether we want to try to maintain dry land
around the buildings. It might be the only way to build larger buildings
for which the houseboat configuration may not be practical.
If we do have fixed buildings, perhaps we could connect them at the
second-story level with something like the Minneapolis and/or St. Paul
Skyway system? This is a system of covered walkways, mostly at mezzanine
level, connecting indoor courtyards and corridors and such in the various
downtown buildings. Although the main reason for building it was the
cold winter weather rather than flooding, the concept should still be
applicable.
If you do have nominally dry land that may be flooded, build grounded
houseboats. When it floods, they float. Have some sort of guide poles
or something that will let them rise but not drift away. Use some sort
of auto-disconnect couplings for the utilities if flexible hoses or the
like aren't practical. Having to plug things back in manually after the
flood may be OK as long as pipes and such aren't actually broken.
All this is assuming we do want to rebuild some semblance of the former
city. Maybe we should just declare it a combination memorial and nature
preserve and fence it off, with admittance limited to scientists and the
like. That would also give our descendents something to study.
There are almost certainly other plausible possibilities. What do you
think?
*********************
Another thought: Will all this make people feel sad when eating at French
restaurants, especially those with a New Orleans theme? Will that theme
become less popular for new restaurants?
*********************
There was a news report about some scientists working on cloning meat.
They would grow just the edible cells, and not waste resources on the
rest of the animal. This got me to thinking.
First, I thought of those who don't eat meat because of ethical
objections to killing animals. Since getting the initial cell sample
would probably require something more akin to a biopsy than slaughter,
that objection pretty much goes away.
But there's another complication. I've been told that there's something
in the Bible against eating animals alive. Depending on how one
interprets this, it could require the the animal be killed before the
cell sample is taken even if it killing it isn't otherwise necessary.
That could bring up a logistics problem.
Excluding special medical conditions and allergies and such, if you're
preparing food for a multitude, you can often get by with a selection of
meals for various kinds of diets arranged in order of least restrictive
to most restrictive. Those who can eat something partway down the list
can usually eat the things prepared for more restrictive diets than
theirs. With cloned meat that may no longer be the case.
Those who object to killing animals may happily eat of the cloned flesh
of a cow that lived out its life in some comfortable pasture. But that
meat would be off-limits to those who follow a strict interpretation of
the commandment against eating animals alive. They, on the other hand,
could partake of conventionally slaughtered meat that would be forbidden
to the anti-killing group. Thus the old rules about who can eat what
break down.
So menu planning for banquets and such may get more complicated, with
more need to keep tabs on what foods came from where.
And there's more:
Some might complain that even if you don't kill your meat animals, they
suffer pain when the sample is taken without their consent. And there's
only one species that can truly give consent: Humans. So there may be
those who will eat only cloned human meat.
Marketing that could get interesting, especially when celebrities start
getting into the act.
For example, those restaurants that name sandwiches for various movie
stars and the like could make it more than just a symbolic gesture. A
rock band could have all its members contribute to some kind of burger
blend or spaghetti sauce or some such. And so on.
The possibilities seem endless.
*********************
While waiting for an expected visitor who didn't say exactly when he
would be showing up I noticed myself trying to find things to do so as
not to get hung up in "Wait for Interrupt" mode. That reminded me of an
article about how modern life in general is more interrupt-driven than in
the old days.
So how true is this? And if one doesn't want to live an interrupt-driven
life, what (if anything) can one do about it?
Also, what are the larger ramifications? Are there some types of tasks
that require uninterrupted concentration? I suspect there are. Some
like surgery, may be obvious. It's still considered the exception, for
example, for a surgeon to take a phone call in the middle of an
operation.
But what of those tasks requiring mental concentration with little overt
physical activity? Will computer programmers, engineers, philosophers,
and artists be hindered in their work? Or will future generations grow
up with better interrupt handlers due to having been constantly
interrupted since childhood?
Or, possibly the worst case: What if they think they can handle all the
interruptions just fine, but aren't doing as well at it as they think
they are? Society may lose much in the way of art and philosophy while
never knowing what it's missing.
*********************
I was also thinking earlier about how I would often mull a problem over
in my mind before putting anything down on paper or any other tangible
medium. Some managers at various jobs would get quite concerned before
they realized that progress was being made even though it wasn't visible.
Or, to put it in other words, I wasn't making any apparent progress but I
was making occult progress. And no, I wasn't casting spells, at least
not consciously. The root meaning of "occult" is "covered" or
"concealed", and it's still used in something like that sense in medicine
and maybe other technical fields.
*********************
Vapor Virtuoso
From early childhood his right-brain half had always loved music.
He could sit for hours,
Mesmerized by his parents' old Sixties rock records,
Playing along on air guitar.
Even after he learned to play other guitars
Made of wood or plastic or whatever
He kept the one made of air.
He would play along with some record,
But he wouldn't stop when it ended.
As his mind wandered and his fingers followed
along the strings of his imagination
A new song would likely as not be born.
His left brain, on the other hand,
Loved science, especially chemistry,
And knew that music was unlikely to ever pay his bills.
Fate's winding road led him onto the faculty at the university:
Enjoyable, financially sort of OK, and safe
From the big corporations
His right brain hated.
And he had friends in the music department.
One night at a party,
As he was answering some question about the atmosphere,
Someone asked him if an air guitar could be split up
Into a nitrogen guitar,
An oxygen guitar,
And so on for the rest of the list.
And if it could, what would the individual gas guitars sound like?
Amid laughter, his left brain brushed the question aside.
But his right brain wouldn't let him forget it.
He started to experiment.
One of the labs he had access to had chambers
That could be filled with this gas or that vapor
While you reached in with special gloves
To work on whatever was inside.
In the quiet of the night,
With no one around to disturb him,
He would play along with his portable music player
And when the music stopped,
Let his mind wander where the molecules under his fingers
Would lead him.
Nitrogen didn't seem to do much.
He got a song or two about plant food
And how to make nitroglycerin:
Just enough to tempt him to try others.
Oxygen did better:
One song about aerobic exercise,
Another of a caveman discovering fire,
And more about hospital emergency rooms
And aviators setting altitude records
And even one about astronauts.
Then came the gases we can't breathe.
Carbon monoxide, full strength?
Dark depressing sagas of suicide,
And a reminder of how lucky he had been
To have found as happy a life as he had.
There but for the grace of God ...
A recipe for smog
Yielded laments for the lost virginity of Earth
And pleas for future generations
To strive to live more in harmony with nature.
Cyanide gave him folk-style ballads
Of murderers getting their just reward,
Along with a protest song or two
Against the death penalty.
Another time, amidst thoughts of the Holocaust,
The deadly vapors whispered to him
Of the faith that lingers after hope is gone,
Then roared out an anthem of hate so stirring he hid it away
Lest those who agreed with its message be roused to action.
A friend into science fiction suggested
the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Mars
Or the methane and ammonia of the outer planets.
With the C-oh-two he expected sagas of the past glories
Of ancient civilizations along the banks of the canals
But instead heard songs he thinks will be sung
By human colonists a hundred years hence.
The outer-planet mix hinted of life forms forever adrift
Amidst alien cloudscapes,
Their hopes and dreams and fears
Too strange to really describe,
Even in the unearthly scales he could almost but not quite hear.
His list continues to grow,
As do his circles of friends,
Both at the University
And on the Internet.
If you see him, tell him I said Hello.
-- Tom Digby
Written 17:47 hr 08/13/2005
Edited 16:18 hr 09/04/2005
Edited 23:43 hr 09/05/2005
*********************
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
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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
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To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or
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-- END --