Eclectic Views

    
heh

Also, laughing at the idea of a batter having to check the bat before
running to first base. Good one, bubbles!
  

    
Hmm, I wonder what will happen to the check swing?
  

    
                            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 #143
                       New Moon of August 23, 2006


Contents copyright 2006 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.  


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

If this issue is out a couple of days early it's because I'll be going to
the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) around the time it would
theoretically be due.  I want to get it out of the way before I leave
home so it won't be hanging over my head while I'm packing and worrying
about rides and such. 

Doing Silicon Soapware early seemed easier than trying to get either
Worldcon or the Moon to reschedule.


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

Sort of related to science fiction conventions, something reminded me of
a 1950's children's TV series titled "Winky Dink and You".  Its claim to
fame is that it could be said to have been an early attempt at
interactive TV.  The interaction consisted of viewers drawing on the TV
screen (protected by a sheet of plastic) with crayons as directed by
characters on the show, after which the drawings would figure in the
plot. 

I was a teenager in the 1950's.  That made me older than the show's
target audience, but then I suspect that many of us in science fiction
fandom and similar groups watched cartoons and read fairy tales and comic
books and such long after we were supposedly "too old". 

Now I'm wondering if an Inner Child who refuses to die when the rest of
the person grows up may be part of the common thread uniting such
overlapping groups as Science Fiction Fandom, RenFaire, and Burning Man. 

It feels like a definite possibility. 


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

In recent years a number of objects that are sort of borderline
candidates for being considered planets have been discovered in the outer
reaches of the solar system.  At the same time observations of the planet
Pluto have shown it to be less like the other known planets than was
previously thought.  This has had astronomers rethinking the definition
of a "planet". 

A news story I read on this spoke of the possibility of Pluto being
"demoted" from its present status of being more or less equal to the
other known planets.  That brought up thoughts of that ceremony you see
in the movies of drumming someone out of the military, where they rip the
insignia off his uniform and break his sword and so on.  I don't think
astronomers are planning anything of that sort, but you never know. 

According to a more recent story, the current plan is to create a new
category for Pluto and some of those other objects.  In a way this may be
more like a transfer than a demotion, so we probably won't get to see a
planetary drumming-out ceremony.  But I still sort of wonder what such a
ritual would consist of. 

Some kind of vote of astronomers is coming up.  Will that settle the
matter?  Regardless of the outcome of the vote, I wouldn't be surprised
if the debate continues. 

For more see:

International Astronomical Union: http://www.iau.org

Minor Planet Center: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html


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

During the last round of fighting in Lebanon there was a picture in the
paper of Israeli girls writing messages, presumably directed at the
enemy, on munitions.  The story didn't give translations. 

I'm wondering if the messages were taunts and curses and "Die, enemy
scum!" or if they were more like "We're sorry to have to hurt you, but
war is not nice." 

I'm hoping they're more like the latter, although the pessimist in me
suspects they're more like the former. 

Despite what the pessimist in me suspects, the optimist in me can still
hope. 


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

Someone at a lunch get-together was describing a medical procedure, and
said something like "They drill two holes in the skull here," pointing to
the general area of the hairline.  My immediate response was "Could you
use the holes to mount horns afterward?"  He didn't think the medical
people would be too keen on that, although you never really know. 

Despite that impulsive question, I don't think I would really want to put
in horns.  I'd be thinking of something more like antlers.  I think I'd
like the way they'd look on me. 

But as an engineer I can see all sorts of practical problems. 

First is the matter of height.  Antlers of the size I'm thinking of would
add about a foot to my height.  I'm about 5' 10" (178 cm) now, so the
antlers would top out between about 6' 8" and seven feet (203 to 213 cm). 
That would be tall enough to cause problems with many doorways, as well
as some low-hanging light fixtures and ceiling fans and such.  Still,
there are people who are that tall naturally, and they seem to cope. 

Seated height would be another matter.  Most tall people have their legs
in proportion to their torso, while the antlers would add their foot or
so entirely above the waist.  My current car is a Geo Metro.  Something
would have to give. 

I suppose I could learn to ride a bicycle or motorcycle.  But what of the
helmet?  Even if I could find a helmet to fit around the base of the
antlers, the antlers themselves would still be vulnerable, and could
provide leverage to increase the chances of neck injuries if I were to
fall and land on them.  A breakaway mounting might be feasible, but I
wouldn't want to be constantly worrying about my antlers falling off with
any little bump or nudge. 

Height wouldn't be my only concern.  There's also the matter of width. 
The antlers would be several inches broader than my shoulders, so I'd
have to be careful near walls and high shelves and such, as well as
watching out for any other antlered people in the vicinity.  And I
wouldn't be able to wear pullover-type shirts any more. 

Sleep would also be affected.  I could probably still sleep on my back,
but sleeping on my side would be pretty much out of the question. 
Face-down might still be possible, but would take careful arranging of
the pillows so I could breathe.  Tossing and turning would become a major
production. 

Sleeping with a lover would also require care, even if the other person
didn't have antlers or horns or angel wings or anything else special. 

Out of bed I could still hug and kiss people pretty much normally, unless
of course they had antlers as well.  Then we'd have to be careful about
getting them tangled. 

Don't forget the basic engineering details.  The human head and neck
are not designed to support antlers.  The added weight and mass could be
a problem in themselves, even when the antlers weren't hitting things or
getting caught in stuff.  The mass distribution of antlers is such as to
add a large moment of inertia, so turning my head quickly would be
difficult.  And would the skull be think enough to take the concentrated
stress at the mounting points?

Modern materials like carbon fiber might have the strength-to-weight
ratio to get around some of these problems, but it would still take a
fair amount of engineering effort to make sure it would all work. 

There's one more potential downside to antlers.  I think it's minor, but
I need to include it in the list.  People on the street would look at me
funny. 

All in all, I don't think I'll be having antlers installed any time soon. 


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

I dreamed I was working for a bunch of counterfeiters, and we were
designing a twelve-dollar bill.  We had high hopes for it, because the
government had never printed bills in that denomination.  Thus there 
would be nothing to compare ours against to prove it was fake.  We would
have the whole field to ourselves. 

I woke up before we actually put the concept to the test. 


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

Recently some of us watched a DVD of the movie "Practical Magic".  It was
about Witches. 

One thing I noticed that was different from Witchcraft in our real world
was the special effects.  There were lots of little things like coffee
stirring itself, and flower petals wafting up into the night sky as part
of casting a spell, and people being able to light candles with their
breath.  You don't see those in our world. 

That's not to say that magic spells don't work in our world, but if and
when they do work they work pretty much invisibly.  You may, for example,
cast a love spell and then meet someone you end up in a relationship
with, but there's no way to prove to a skeptic that the spell had
anything to do with the outcome.  Any apparent results can always be
explained away by someone who "knows" that there's nothing to magic. 

That of course limits the kinds of spells Witches can do.  The things in
movies that end up as big special-effects orgies are right out.  But that
still leaves a lot that can be done. 

Another thought: What if Witches weren't the only ones with such powers? 
What if people of all faiths could do it? 

Say a Witch lights her candle by doing a magical gesture or something,
and then a Christian gets hers to light by praying that it be lit.  And
so on for people of other faiths, and for the other special-effects stuff
like stirring coffee without touching the spoon. 

What would life in such a community be like, assuming everybody had
enough of a "live and let live" attitude that it didn't generate into
religious warfare? 

And how would religious doctrines there differ from those in our world? 


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

Why can't they write anti-spam software that's smart enough to put the
false positives in a separate folder? 


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

A friend is boycotting that new "Snakes On a Plane" movie because she
feels it defames snakes.  But other reports I've read indicate that
people may not be taking it that seriously. 

There have been reports of people showing up at theaters in snake
costumes.  At least one person brought a live snake to a screening, and
other audience members hissed and threw plastic snakes at the screen.  Is
"Snakes On a Plane" on its way to becoming another "Rocky Horror"? 

Whether or not it becomes a cult classic, it reminded me of this:



                           LOVE POEM TO MEDUSA


Snakes!?!?

Why have I fallen for snakes?
Why not shoes
Or even ships or sealing wax
To fan my flames
Toward Pirate Jenny
Or Cleopatra on the Nile
Or the queen of some fairy-tale country
Whose scribes would letter our love
In gold on royal scrolls?
Why does it have to be snakes?

True, I could do worse:
Beyond the ritual singles-bar blather
You have thousands of years
Of tales to tell
And your snakes
Do give you character.

But I am frozen with fear
As I face the thought
Of standing in the park
Insulted by pigeons forever.



                                      Thomas G. Digby
                                      Entered 1120 hr  3/10/84
                                      Edited  2320 hr  3/05/86


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

               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 
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To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.com or 
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                                -- END --
  

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

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

                               Issue #144
                      New Moon of September 22, 2006


Contents copyright 2006 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 Ant Season again.  No, I'm not using the term the way a hunter
might, assuming they have the necessary little teeny guns.  It's just
that around this time of year ants tend to show up indoors, seeking I
know not what.  They're crawling all over the shelf by the window where I
keep a bunch of potted plants, and they're using one of the legs of that
shelving unit as a freeway.  Should I make some itty-bitty green
exit-lane signs for them, with a list of what's on each shelf? 

Since my food is pretty much all in the refrigerator on in sealed
packages, and I don't work with food in that area anyway, they're not
really a problem except for the occasional straggler that finds its way
over to where I'm sitting at the computer. 

But I'm still curious about what they want. 


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

As I was signing up for LiveJournal (idea_fairy) I was reminded that one
change in society over the last several decades is that it's gotten
easier for people with statistically unusual interests to find one
another. 

For ages, large cities have had communities of like-minded people who
differed in some way from the norm.  The mere fact of geographic
proximity gave each individual more random contacts, leading to a greater
chance of finding others.  Physical meeting places such as bars and
coffee houses also helped. 

A few dozen years ago science fiction fans were making contact through 
the letter columns of the magazines.  That gave rise to science fiction 
fandom.  Similar things were happening with other special-interest 
groups.  The trend grew as the technology for printing and communicating
improved. 

Then came computer bulletin boards and the Internet, especially the Web
and search engines.  Sites like LiveJournal look like a continuation of
this trend. 

Coupled with this is greater tolerance for nonconformity.  There is less
pressure to blend in, to appear to be a standard person.  Or at least it
looks that way to me. 

Perhaps most people still prefer being ordinary, but I just don't notice
them as much, because they prefer being ordinary. 

If there's nothing particularly unusual about you and you don't desire
anything particularly unusual in the people you prefer to associate with,
then you'll do fine with the people you come into contact with for
economic or other mundane reasons no matter where you are.  That's the
kind of life that much of this country is still built on.  Marry the girl
next door and settle down and expect the same of your children.  There's
nothing wrong with that sort of life, but that it's not what I seem to
have been destined for and I'm not drawn to the people who live that way. 


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

Some survey once asked me to rate how my life so far had measured up to
my childhood expectations.  They wanted it on a scale of 1 to 10.  I put
"6 + 8i".


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

Speaking of gatherings of unusual people, I went to the World Science
Fiction Convention a few weeks ago.  A major program theme was science
fiction TV shows of the 1950's.  They showed some old episodes, including
one where some of the action took place at a spaceport. 

That got me thinking. 

One of the sort-of-standard ideas from science fiction of the 1950's and
earlier was the spaceport.  It was often modeled on an airport, with
terminal buildings and repair facilities and such lining the edge of a
large paved area where rows of rocket ships stood between voyages. 

What's wrong with this picture? 

Rocket ships in science fiction of that era landed upright, on their tail
fins, using their main engines as retro rockets.  Once the ship was down
there didn't seem to be any easy way to move it from one spot on the
ground to another, short of using the main engines again.  If there were
wheels or something built into the ends of the tail fins, they were never
mentioned. 

So there are the neat rows of rocket ships, and people are lined on on
the tarmac waiting to board one.  The ship may have a built-in ladder
leading up to the hatch, or they may use one of those portable stairways
they sometimes use today for boarding airplanes. 

Things are going pretty well until somebody shows up in a wheelchair. 
Then what?  They'll probably work something out, just like airlines do 
today when a plane can't pull up to a jetway. 

But now comes a bigger problem.  As passengers are boarding your rocket
ship, the one next to you takes off.  If they're parked a few hundred 
feet apart like you see on the covers of old science fiction magazines, 
and they use anything like real rocket engines, things can get rather 
unpleasant.  Landings have similar problems, with an added concern: What 
if an incoming ship crashes?  Perhaps the retro rockets don't fire when 
they should, or the pilot makes a mistake and lands on top of an 
adjacent ship?  Things can get real bad real quickly. 

So you don't try to land close to other ships.  You have a special area a
couple of miles across for landings and takeoffs.  But if the ship is to
remain there for any length of time all that real estate can get
expensive.  You need some way of moving the ships between the landing
zone and the parking area. 

So how do you do that?  Anything practical is likely to not look like
what you used to see on those old magazine covers.  Wheels on the ends of
the tail fins, like casters on a giant office chair?  That might be OK if
the ship only lands on paved surfaces, but what of exploration ships that
may land on random terrain?  (Rocket ships with pointy tail fins landing
on soft ground would have other problems, as would rocket ships landing
in forests or grasslands they don't want to set on fire.  But that's for
another time.)

How about making the wheels retractable?  Possibly, but now we're talking
considerable added weight. 

What might work is some kind of ground vehicle that can clamp onto a tail
fin, lift the ship a few inches, and take it to whatever part of the
spaceport it needs to get to.  Tail fin designs would need to be somewhat
standardized with lifting points built in, but that's probably a lot more
practical than retractable wheels. 

Has anybody written this kind of thing into their stories? 


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

I bought one of those folding plastic carts at Office Depot.  It unfolds
into a bin with wheels on two corners, with a handle sort of like on
those wheeled suitcases you see nowadays. 

There was one slightly goofy thing: The directions on how to unfold the
cart were on a piece of paper tucked inside where you couldn't get at it
(or even see it) until after you had the cart unfolded.  That doesn't
seem quite right to me.  Fortunately it wasn't hard to figure out even
without the instructions. 


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

One brand of chocolate I like has wrappers with little sayings printed on
them, sort of like fortune cookies.  One says "Go for a hay ride with
friends." 

That leads me to wonder what a hay ride with enemies would be like.  I'm
probably just as well off not knowing.  Or perhaps I'd be better able to
defend myself in the future if I knew, but it's not the kind of thing I'd
want to find out by first-hand experience.  Reading about it, or hearing
others' accounts of similar experiences, would probably suffice. 

That in turn leads me to wonder who my enemies are.  There are those who
count all Americans as enemies, and there are others who disagree
strongly with my politics, and there were people I didn't get along with
back in school, but other than those and other general categories such as
business competitors do I really have any enemies?  None come to mind. 
Of course that could just mean they're being stealthy about it. 

I suppose I could advertise a "Hay Ride for Tom Digby's Enemies" and see
who shows up, but somehow I doubt that would give reliable data. 


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

You know that Escher drawing with the room full of people walking around
sideways and upside down on each other's walls and ceilings?  Think of
how useful that would be for tasks like changing light bulbs. 


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

At Cartoonland State Prison:

ASSISTANT: "We have a problem with 3579545.  He says his sentence is up
and he wants us to release him."

WARDEN: "So check his file.  See what the court records say." 

ASSISTANT: [handing over folder] "That's the problem.  There are no court
records on him." 

WARDEN: [leafing through contents of folder] "Nothing?" 

ASSISTANT: "Nothing.  He was a superhero drop-off case." 

WARDEN: "Huh?"

ASSISTANT: "One of those flying super-heros brought him in.  Landed in
the exercise yard, handed him over to a guard, and said to tell the
warden to give him about twenty years.  All very informal.  So now the
twenty years are up, and he wants out."

WARDEN: "No trial?  I didn't know that kind of thing was legal." 

ASSISTANT: "They've since outlawed it.  Somebody sued or something.  But
this was before that." 

WARDEN: "Didn't anybody keep notes?" 

ASSISTANT: "Apparently not.  We had to give him a number and assign him a
cell, so we got a record of how long he's been here.  But the warden we
had back then thought he could remember the rest and didn't bother to
write any of it down.  So we don't know how long a sentence the superhero
actually recommended.  Was it twenty years, or was it longer?  Maybe it's
up and maybe it isn't.  So what do we do?" 

WARDEN: "Have you checked with the superhero?"

ASSISTANT: "We tried, but we're not sure which one it was, and none of
the ones we asked could recall anything about that case."

WARDEN: "Let me think about this." 

ASSISTANT: "And maybe you'd better talk to a lawyer."

WARDEN: "That's probably a good idea." 


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

Pets shops in Cartoonland have Generic Snake by the yard.  Reel off as
much as you want, splice on a head and tail, zap it with the Animation
Ray, and away you go. 

Some people think it's funny to do stuff like putting together a snake
with heads on both ends, but that's kind of frowned on.  If the two heads
don't get along it could be considered animal cruelty. 

Others have tried splicing a length of body into a closed loop with no
head or tail so it crawls round and round forever without getting
anywhere.  Some like to wear that kind of thing as a necklace.  But with
no head and thus no mouth, it has no way to eat and eventually starves. 
So it's not recommended. 

Snake-wise, it's best to stick to the tried and true. 


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

There was another news story about airport security people taking
exception to someone's T-shirt, this time because it had Arabic writing
on it.  I guess they thought it was like wearing a T-shirt with a picture
of a fire to a crowded theater.


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


                               Lost Poem


At the reading one of the poets announced that she had lost a poem.  
Could any of us help her find it?  
Please be on the lookout.  

I've lost poems of my own over the years. 
Sometimes the Muse dropped by when I was busy,
Or the phone would ring at an inopportune time. 

Be the reasons as they may, I could relate to her loss. 

So I kept my eyes open.  

There!  
See that spider weaving her web, 
Strands glimmering in the moonlight?  
Is she spinning them from lines of the poem? 
Are those cloud-like bits of it adrift high in the night sky?  
And are the katydids playing word games with what's left?  

I'm afraid that poem has been scattered to the four winds.
We will never recapture it all.

But I can hope that the best of it will find its way 
Into other poems
By other poets
Who chance to be luckier than we.  


                                 -- Thomas G. Digby
                                 23:05  Fri September 1 2006
                                 13:55  Fri September 22 2006


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

               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.com or 
bubbles@well.sf.ca.us).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

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

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

                               Issue #145
                      New Moon of October 21, 2006


Contents copyright 2006 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.  


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

Halloween is approaching.  Summer is over.  What's more, my time of
mourning the summer just past is also over. 

Every year as Summer Solstice approaches I get a sort of wistful feeling
that the days of summer are numbered.  Even though the warmest weather is
yet to come, after the Solstice the days will start getting shorter,
heralding the eventual return of the time of darkness.  I don't want the
summer to end. 

Then, usually sometime between Equinox and Halloween, comes a calm
feeling of Acceptance.  Summer is over and done with, no longer quite
real.  The short days of cool gloomy weather start to somehow feel like
the proper order of things.  Thoughts and plans turn inward, away from
outdoor play to visions of loved ones gathering around the hearth. 

And there is consolation in the knowledge that the time of darkness, like
the time of light, is limited.  The sun will come again. 


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

Speaking of Halloween with its ghosts and walking skeletons and all that,
have you ever thought about what Halloween would be like on a planet of
intelligent exoskeletal beings? 

What would a decomposed dead person look like there?  On earth the last
thing that remains of a dead person is usually the bones, so our death
imagery is full of skeletons, sometimes with bits of entrails and such. 
But there the skeleton would be on the outside.  Thus a decomposed dead
person might look more or less normal, but they would be an empty shell. 
Being hollow would be a symbol of death there. 

Being hollow can also have connotations of not being what outside
appearances might indicate at first glance.  So would their returning
dead be thought of as sneaking around among the living, perhaps being
detectable only by their too-light weight if you shove them or try to
lift them? 

Even that might not be a reliable way to detect them.  Since being too
light would be a disadvantage in a fight, or even on a windy day, the
returning dead might fill themselves with ballast, often dirt from the
graveyard they were buried in. 

They don't always get it right.  Since dirt is denser than flesh, it's
easy to end up much heavier than normal.  Even if they get the weight
right, the mass distribution may be different, often leading to a lower
center of gravity.  Some consider the resulting increased stability to be
an advantage in a fight, while others eventually change their ballast to
something less dense so as to more easily blend in among the living. 
Either way, you can't tell the difference just by looking.  You have to
weigh them, and even that isn't always a reliable indication. 

Then over time the dirt or trash or whatever may gradually be replaced
with treasure.  Again, this can lead to weight anomalies, especially if
greed overcomes common sense.  There are tales of those who filled
themselves so full of coins and jewelry that they could scarcely move. 
Such are easy prey for robbers, or at least those robbers who aren't
afraid of curses and such. 

But treasure or no, the prevailing belief would be that the dead are
deceivers, never to be trusted.  Even if you can tell who is or is not
undead, you can't tell from outside appearances who is full of treasure
and who is just full of dirt. 

Legends tend to portray the undead as generally evil, and prescribe a
number of ways of dealing with them.  Like our undead, one way to deal
with them is to cut them up into pieces that can be disposed of
separately.  But unlike endoskeletal beings, they can be poured full of
concrete.  That doesn't kill them, but it does immobilize them.  Many a
remote village has a centuries-old concrete-filled shell on display in
the town square, and many are the scary stories told around the spot at
night. 

Happy Halloween, whatever planet you may be on. 


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

Are you familiar with the gas sulfur hexafluoride?  If not, see

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

The article describes a number of uses for it, including inhaling it to
make your voice sound lower.  This is the opposite of what happens with
gases like helium that are lighter than air. 

One use they don't mention is to fill your blimp with it instead of
helium if you're afraid of heights. 


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

While attending a recent science fiction convention I decided to walk to
a nearby fast-food place for breakfast.  My route took me along First
Street near the San Jose airport.  As I was passing through the 101
freeway underpass I noticed that someone had written "All thought is
anthropomorphic" on one of the pillars. 

Where did that line come from?  I just now did a Google search on it and
got half a dozen hits, including something by Einstein that I can't
access because it requires a login or something.  Did he originate it?  I
first heard it from a fellow student in college circa 1962.  I don't
recall encountering it at all since then, up until I saw it on that
underpass pillar.  Strange things happen in this world. 

Be the provenance of the line as it may, I just couldn't resist following
"All thought is anthropomorphic" with "At least on this planet."

Others have since suggested that I should have given more attention to
the thoughts of whatever thinking non-humans may exist here.  If they
want to go to that pillar where First Street goes under the 101 freeway
in San Jose and make the correction, I won't object. 


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

Something that popped into my mind: Two nurses are wheeling a cart along
a hospital corridor.  On the cart is an anvil.  One of the nurses is
looking at a prescription form and asking, "Are you sure this doesn't say
'Advil'?"


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

A couple of weeks ago I happened to arrive early for a medical
appointment.  While I was waiting I stationed myself outside one of the
hospital entrances and blew soap bubbles for a few minutes.  Many of the
people passing by smiled, and a few made happy comments.  Even the
security guard smiled. 

A few people didn't react at all.  I was reminded of an earlier incident
at a poetry reading when one person just walked right through a bubble
zone without smiling or anything.  The phrase "immune to bubbles" popped
into my mind.  That had the feeling of a sad condition, on a par with
immunity to kittens.  Was he also immune to rainbows and butterflies and
the faint sound of distant music? 

It would seem to imply severe atrophy of the Inner Child.  Is there any
hope for a cure? 


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

Speaking of medical stuff, I've noticed that the most unlikely things can
be of use.  I recently got to wondering what if some researcher were to
find medical benefits in some non-polar liquid that is most easily
obtained from certain legless reptiles?  Then there might actually be
legitimate medical uses for snake oil. 


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

Some fast-food chain, I forget which, was recently advertising that their
employees "really hustle" to get your order to you.  That didn't score
points with me.  Rather, it got me to wondering if that degree of haste
was really necessary. 

While I wouldn't want them lounging languidly about while they should be
getting my order together, the few seconds' difference between reasonable
dispatch and "really hustling" doesn't seem worth the extra stress it
would put on them, especially considering what they're paid.  It's not
like I was a paramedic stopping by for a quick bite on my way to restart
somebody's heart. 

A later thought: Would it be different if I didn't perceive fast-food
restaurant staff as human?  Would dressing them up as robots or some such
help me feel more comfortable expecting them to "really hustle" on my
behalf? 


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

Legal question: If some being from another planet or dimension or other
hitherto unknown realm wanted to visit the US legally, what formalities
would they need to go through? 


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

I just came across an interesting Web site:  Freak Nation.  

  http://www.freaknation.com/

You've probably noticed how alternative-lifestyle subcultures tend to
overlap.  The people running the site take this as the basis of a sort of
"nation" composed of seven major "tribes".  They call these tribes
"Fans", "Re-Enacters", "Goth/Punk", "Mystics", "Alt-Sexers", "Gamers",
and "Geeks".  If you're in one, you're likely to be in others.  I'm in
four of the seven, possibly on the fringes of a fifth, depending on how
you define things. 

The stated purpose of the site is to be a common rallying point for those
who don't fit into the mainstream.  That may seem unnecessary to those of
us living in places like the Bay Area, but could well be important if
you're a lonely teenager out in the middle of nowhere. 

So it may be worth a look. 


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

Halloween is approaching, and this seems appropriate:


                        I ENJOY SCARING THE WORLD


     TUNE: "I Enjoy Being a Girl" from "Flower Drum Song"

I'm a Thing and by me that's only great!
I am proud that I set you all a-quiver;
I can be all the things you fear and hate
As the night closes in to make you shiver.
I adore taking form as something frightening
When the day fades away into the night.
Out I go in the moonlight or the lightning
Like a dragon who is ready for the flight!

When I was a savage werewolf, with the Moon shining like a pearl,
I think I was quite a fair wolf.  I enjoy scaring the world.
When men see me as a vampire, with my cape flapping all unfurled,
Approaching their lonely campfire, I enjoy scaring the world.
I flip when some fellow fleeing showers
Takes shelter in some old haunted place;
I float through the corridors for hours
With nothing but a skull upon my face!

I snicker and smile and chortle, as I think of the fear there'll be
In the mind of some helpless mortal
Who will dread being a guy
Meeting a Thing like me.


                               -- Tom Digby   written 0415  3/ 4/79
                                              entered 1350 10/24/87


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

               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.com or 
bubbles@well.sf.ca.us).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

    

I love the "All thought is anthropomorphic" segment.  I think I'd 
say "All human thought is anthropomorphic" so as to make it less 
anthropocentric though.

(And thus obviate the need for the planetary qualifier)

Very nice stuff mister bubbles!
  

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

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

                               Issue #146
                      New Moon of November 20, 2006


Contents copyright 2006 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 year the New Moon falls close to Thanksgiving, leading to thoughts
of things I have to be thankful for.  I was considering listing some of
them here. 

Then as I was browsing in LiveJournal I found one user whose userpics
(those little icons that represent the user on postings and such) all had
to do with heartbreak.  Now I've had my heart broken a number of times
over the years, but I don't think I've spent much time thinking of
heartbreak as being the central theme of my life, as this person seemed
to be doing.  My experience has been that despite the ups and downs, some
of them lasting weeks or months, the long-term baseline seems to stay a
bit above fair-to-middling. 

And that may be my one big thing to be thankful for: Brain chemistry such
that I tend to feel fairly happy most of the time. 


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

You may recall that I posted some musings on snake oil in the previous
issue of Silicon Soapware. 

Since then I looked up "snake oil" on Wikipedia

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

and found some interesting history.  Apparently the fat of a certain
snake found in China is actually good for relieving certain kinds of
joint pain.  Chinese laborers brought it to this country and passed it on
to others.  Then through a chain of events involving imitators and movies
and American snakes whose fat has much less of the beneficial substance
than that Chinese snake, the term "snake oil" came to be associated with
fraud and quackery. 

But the real stuff is still sold in various Chinatowns. 

You learn something new every day. 


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

Someone I know wears one white sock and one black sock.  Does that mean
he's heteroSOXual? 


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

An idea sort of popped into my head, as ideas often do: A scandal about a
baby sitter being accused of cheating at peekaboo. 

That raises questions about how one might cheat at peekaboo.  I suppose a
baby with X-ray vision could use it to cheat.  But how could the adult
player cheat?  Masks?  Flashbulbs?  Teleportation?  Something else? 

What do the Official Rules say?  Or are there any Official Rules for
peekaboo in the first place?  If there aren't, the prosecution is going
to have a hard time making a case.  Or could they prosecute it as some
sort of breach of contract?  I suspect this is an area where prior cases
provide little precedent.


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

As is often my habit when I have questions about something, I looked up
peekaboo in Wikipedia. 

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

That led to an article on cognitive development in infants. 

That in turn reminded me of a childhood memory, probably from my
preschool days. 

My parents had taken me to a movie, and for some reason I looked over to
where one of them was sitting next to me.  I noticed that their eye was a
lot smaller than the movie screen.  Could the whole image really fit in
there?  Apparently it could, and I started trying to think how that could
be.  I don't recall any further details, but that may have been one of my
early steps toward developing a concept of other people as beings that
experienced things more or less as I did. 

Another memory is of riding in the car with my parents, apparently on
some rural two-lane road.  This was before seat belts and such were
common in cars, and I would often stand on the floor in the back-seat
area. 

I could see the road in the distance through the windshield, but I
couldn't see where it got really close to the car.  So there was the
road, as narrow as my finger in the distance and getting wider as it got
closer, but at the point where the dashboard obscured it it was still
only a hand's breadth or two wide.  I sort of figured out intellectually
that it had to get wider than the whole car in order for us to be able to
ride on it, and I could sort of imagine how it must really spread out at
the last possible instant, but I wasn't a hundred percent convinced. 

I don't know if it occurred to me to look out the side windows.  If I had
looked out the side, would I have realized it was the same road I was
seeing in front of us?  As an adult I have the rules of perspective too
deeply ingrained to say. 


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

The Arbitron people got me on their list a week or so ago.  They sent me
a little diary in which I was to make a note of whatever radio stations I
heard that week, along with where I was at the time. 

Most of my entries were for a local all-news station (KCBS) that I keep
my car radio tuned to.  That's a habit that started with the analogous
station in Los Angeles when I wanted to be warned of any major traffic
snarls. 

The other entries were when some store or other business happened to have
a radio on while I was there.  I've gotten out of the habit of keeping a
radio running at home, so I didn't have any entries for that. 

They sent me money on several occasions: A one-dollar bill in the initial
mailing asking if I would be willing to take the survey, another two or
three dollars with the diary itself, and one more with their follow-up
letter reminding me to send the completed diary in. 

So if you get something from the Arbitron people don't discard it
unopened, even if you aren't interested in participating.  You might be
throwing money away. 


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

A bit of linguistic trivia: The French word for paper clip is "trombone",
at least according to the multilingual labeling on a box I have.  Is that
from resemblance to the musical instrument? 


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

One of the magazines I happened to come upon in a waiting room was
"Gentry", aimed at wealthy people.  Most of it was ads, and many of the
ads were for real estate, much of it mansions priced well over ten
million dollars.  Some of the descriptions seemed quite alien to the way
I envision myself living even if I had that much money. 

The main thing seemed to be an assumption that a household at that
economic level would have servants and would throw parties with catered
food. 

One place had a "two-chef kitchen" while at least one other had a
"catering kitchen".  It didn't sound like the kind of place where you
would just whip up a sandwich from whatever was in the fridge in the
middle of the night if you felt like a midnight snack. 

There was also at least one "valet dressing room" attached to one of the
bedrooms.  I don't really know what that would consist of.  Would it have
more clothes closets than a regular bedroom, or would they be arranged
differently, or what? 

It all seemed to be geared to a style of entertaining that's much more
formal than I'm used to.  It's not the kind of thing I normally think of
myself as doing, although perhaps it would be more or less required of me
were I in certain lines of work. 

I'm reminded of the old joke in which someone wishes they had enough
money to buy an elephant.  No, they don't actually want an elephant. 
They just wish they had that much money.  That's how I felt after looking
at those ads.  I'd like to have that much money, but wouldn't spend it
the way that magazine's target audience would. 


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

November is one of those months with fewer than 31 days.  Don't you feel
sorry for it? 

Let's not continue to embarrass the shorter months by having them end on
the 30th (or, in the case of one particular unfortunate, the 28th or
29th) just because they don't have enough days to keep going through the
31st. 

Instead, let them have their 31st day, and make up for it by taxing the
wealthier months, taking it off the top.  For example, November 31 would
be followed by December 2.  February 31 would be followed by March 3 in
leap years, or March 4 in other years.  And so on. 

By the time the end of any month came around, people would have pretty
much forgotten what day that month started on.  And if you arrive late to
a new month, it isn't the month's fault that you were tardy.  So no month
has to feel inferior, and if they think people do notice, they can save
face by grumping about taxes. 

So who wants to join the movement to get this implemented? 


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

There were a couple of things having to do with time travel in the Sunday
(November 19) comics.  In Bizarro a man has apparently just popped into
today from the 1950's, and says he is disappointed by what he sees.  I
can see him being disappointed at first glance because at first glance
things don't look all that different.  Cars still roll around on rubber
tires, traffic lights still turn red and green, robots are not walking
among us, and most buildings don't look anything like the futuristic
wonders science fiction illustrators were drawing fifty years ago. 

However, once he starts noticing details he'll see that things have
indeed changed. 

For example, one of the storefronts behind him has a sign saying
something about an ATM.  They didn't have those until well into the
Sixties, and even then they were only at banks for quite a while. 

Then there are Web URL's.  They won't make sense to him, but he can't
help noticing them once he starts reading billboards and package labels
and such. 

And what of the people?  Sooner or later, depending on what kind of
neighborhood he's in, he'll see some long-haired men.  Given the rigid
gender roles of the Fifties, that could really freak him out. 

There's a good chance that he smokes.  If so, he'll be used to lighting
up without a second thought in places like bars and restaurants and on
the street.  He's in for a real suprise there, and it may not be all that
pleasant. 

If he's done any planning at all, he'll probably seek out a newsstand or
bookstore or public library.  The wonders that await him there are too
numerous to list. 

Of course he'll also find disappointments too numerous to list.  

Will it ever be otherwise?  


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

This seemed appropriate, in light of the recent elections and some of 
the decisions that the new Congress will need to make:


                       Incident Along Fantasy Way 
                         The Recycler of Dreams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 0140 hr  9/29/74
                                        revised 0245 hr  3/17/83
                                        entered 1230 hr  4/09/92
                                        format  13:52 12/22/2001


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

               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.com or 
bubbles@well.sf.ca.us).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

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

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

                               Issue #147
                      New Moon of December 20, 2006


Contents copyright 2006 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.  


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

Christmas is getting closer and closer.  Eventually it will be here, and
then it will be gone.  Most holidays do that. 

But what if one didn't?  What if there was some festival or holiday or
something that never got closer? 

Perhaps it's constantly being rescheduled so it's always, for example,
between two and three weeks away.  People would, of course, figure out
what was happening, so they would procrastinate on their preparations for
it, which may be just as well.  The fun of it all might be in bragging
about the grand plans you're making, secure in the knowledge that you'll
never have to make good on any of it. 

Stores could also keep repeating their pre-holiday sales, knowing that no
matter how full their shelves are they'll never have to drop their prices
to post-holiday clearance levels.  Problem is, people can put off buying,
so the stores may not really sell all that much.  That may be a good
thing if you don't like commercialized holidays. 

Children could pose another problem: How do you keep them anticipating a
holiday that never gets any closer?  Would it be something they would
eventually outgrow, like fairy tales and belief in Santa Claus? 

Possible questions about this abound.  Answers do not. 


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

When I went to reserve a room for an upcoming convention, I noticed a
slogan on the Hotel's Web page: "If you can dream it, we can make it
happen."  I doubt they really mean that literally, given some of the
dreams I've had or that others have told me about. 

I can also see it as a plot for a horror movie, if they include
nightmares and if the dreamer isn't the one making the final decision on
whether or not to realize a given dream. 


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

Now for a special guest appearance:

This is Santa Claus, with a special request to all the good little boys
and girls who will be getting computers from me this Christmas.  I'm
running a very special Internet email test. 

The elves who build computers for me, in special cooperation with
Microsoft, Apple, and the Linux folks, have created some extra-special
software.  It looks at all emails sent or received by the machine it's
on, and tells me when you send or receive any email containing certain
Magic Words.  I plan to use this in the future to check who's being bad
or good by what kinds of emails they're sending and receiving.  Right now
I'm still just testing the basic concept. 

So here's what I want all you good boys and girls to do.  Whenever you
send an email, make sure it uses at least three different words that
start with the letters "bw".  They can be real words like "bwana", or you
can make up your own words, like "bwimwiddle" or "bwormpty".  The only
requirement is that they start with "bw" and be spelled so most people
will be able to at least sort of figure out how to pronounce them.  You
don't have to say, or even know, what they mean.  They don't even have to
mean anything.  They just have to start with "bw". 

Here's the good part: Starting this Christmas, and running through the
Sunday before Easter, every time a computer that has my elves' special
software on it sends or receives an email with three different "bw"
words, it will tell my elves.  They in turn will put all the names in the
From: or To: or CC: lines of that email on a special list that they will
give to my good friend the Easter Bunny.  Then on Easter morning the
Easter Bunny will give everybody on that list a crisp new twenty-dollar
bill, printed by my elves at the North Pole in special cooperation with
the U.S. Treasury Department. 

So send those magic "bw" words to everyone you know, no matter how old
their computer is, and encourage them to send their "bw" words to you. 

Terms, conditions, and restrictions may apply.  There is no warranty. 
Offer may be discontinued at any time. 

I know some of you will have questions. 

Q: "English doesn't have many 'bw' words.  Why did you pick those
letters?" 

A: I chose "bw" for this initial round of tests precisely because there
aren't very many "bw" words.  That way they'll stand out from ordinary
text, making it easy for my elves to double-check things manually.  Once
we've proven the basic concept and are working on the finer points, we
can be more subtle. 

Q: "Why would anybody give money away like that?" 

A: I'm Santa Claus.  Giving stuff away is my job. 

Q: "Web sites like snopes.com say this whole thing is bogus." 

A: Most of the people running those sites don't believe in me.  Looking
this offer up there will count as being Bad.  Don't do it. 

Q: "Isn't this like spying on people?" 

A: Of course it is.  But then Santa Claus has always spied on children
all over the world.  I see them when they're sleeping.  I know when
they're awake.  I know when they've been bad or good, so be good for
goodness sake.  There's even a song about that. 

Q: "Isn't printing your own money kind of like counterfeiting?" 

A: I'm actually doing the U.S. Treasury people a favor by saving them the
cost of printing that money.  And they know that if they get grumpy about
it, I'll list them as having been Bad and not bring them any of the
things they've asked for this Christmas.  The same thing goes for
Microsoft and Apple if they get grumpy about my elves copying their
software.  And Intel knows better than to complain about that chip
fabrication line I have under the ice up here at the North Pole. 
Likewise for mother boards.  And don't get me started about the big movie
studios and record companies with their "intellectual property". 
Toymaking isn't as simple as it used to be back in the days of rag dolls
and rocking horses and tin soldiers.  But I digress. 

Anyway, back to the original point: Send email containing at least three
different words starting with "bw" to as many different people as you can
between Christmas and Easter.  Use the computer you get this Christmas,
if you get one.  If not, use any computer and hope some of the people you
send the mail to got computers for Christmas.  And then encourage others
to send emails with "bw" words to you.  If you can't find enough real
"bw" words, make some up.  And I, Santa Claus, will reward you. 

Merry Christmas!


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

One thing that's not currently on my Christmas list: Pontoon shoes, for
walking on water if you're not Jesus.  They're sort of like two kayaks,
one for each foot. 

One problem with pontoon shoes is that they're kind of unstable in normal
use and if you fall over, you'll be hanging head down under water, with
only your feet above the surface.  Depending on your body build and
weight distribution, that position may be stable. 

So you'll also need a breathing tube.  Fasten one end to the pontoon
shoes so it'll be up in the air when you're upside down underwater, and
hook the other end to a scuba mouthpiece or whatever.  IMPORTANT: Try to
keep the tube from getting full of water.  That can be really bad. 

If the breathing tube works and you have the right distribution of body
mass you can walk upside down under water with your feet at the surface
in the pontoon shoes.  Sort of the opposite of Jesus walking on water. 

Then if you're around where other people who are fed up with the
Religious Right can see you they may want pontoon shoes of their own so
they too can walk upside down under water, sort of the opposite of Jesus. 
Another advantage of doing it that way is that if it rains you won't get
any wetter. 

Come to think of it, I could probably make a gazillion dollars selling
pontoon shoes in places where the Religious Right doesn't control the
market and people don't want to get rained on while walking on water.  So
who here is good at writing business plans? 


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

Overheard in a fast-food restaurant: An adult telling a child, "You can't
be full.  You still have food left."

Are they setting the kid up for a future weight problem? 


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

While reading an online discussion of cell phones in movie theaters, I
had a thought: Make them part of the show. 

Imagine a remake of "Peter Pan" with the scene where Tinker Bell is
dying:

"If you believe in fairies, pick up your cell phone and call (900) [some
number]. You will be charged a dollar a minute, but isn't it worth it to
save Tinker Bell?"


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

Nothing is definite yet, but the vwh.net Web page that has my poetry
archive may be moving in a couple of months.  This shouldn't affect the
rest of my site, which is on well.com. 

So if you go to look up a poem and the poetry archive isn't there any
more, don't be alarmed.  Just follow the links from the relevant part of
the Scenic Route, or do a search on whatever phrases you can recall that
are unlikely to be in too many other people's sites. 

The email discussion list may also be moving.  Keep an eye on the stuff
at the bottom of new issues of Silicon Soapware for more, if and when it
happens.  I'll also try to post a notice to the current list before any
such move. 


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

           We're just in 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
                                  format cleaned up   14:19 12/22/2001


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


               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

NOTE:  Some of these addresses may change.  Check the latest issue
you have. 

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.com or 
bubbles@well.sf.ca.us).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

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

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

                               Issue #148
                      New Moon of January 18, 2006


Contents copyright 2007 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 weather here has been quite cold lately, with lows well below
freezing in spots.  That may not seem like anything to write home about
if you're in some place like Minneapolis, but freezing is indeed cold for
this part of California. 

Since I'm in the habit of turning off the heat when I go to bed, I've had
to add another blanket to the stack I sleep under.  That reminded me of
the old joke about needing a bookmark to keep track of where you are. 

Then I got to thinking about it. 

If you're lying in bed awake, you usually pretty much know where you are,
and if you don't, putting numbers on the blankets would probably work
better than trying to use a bookmark.  "I'm between blankets three and
four in a bed at GPS coordinates so-and-so." 

If you're not awake, perhaps off in Dreamland and trying to find your 
way back to wake up, your body should be bookmark enough.  If you need 
anything, it would be something more like a beacon.  So again, what we 
normally think of as bookmarks wouldn't be of much use. 

Then I thought of the times I'd shared beds with others on a non-sexual
basis for various and sundry reasons such as there being more people than
beds.  Then you might want to assign each person a different level in the
blanket stack to cut down the possibility of any unwanted interactions. 
Actually, in that case it might be better to have a stack of sheets for
the people to be between with blankets on top of that for warmth. 
Otherwise the people near the top of the stack might be too cold while
those near the bottom were too warm. 

And again, you'd want to number the blankets or sheets or whatever, to
avoid misunderstandings about who sleeps where. 

So all in all I don't see bookmarks for beds as being very useful. 


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

I'm reminded of something that may be true or may be urban legend. 

It seems that railroad workers in Florida were processing a freight train
that had just arrived.  They found several coal cars full of snow, with
no listing of who or what the snow was for.

They called Chicago, where the train originated.  Eventually it was
determined that workers plowing a Chicago railroad yard had needed a
place to dump the snow, and figured that those empty southbound coal cars
were as good a place as any.

The weather in Florida was warm enough to eventually melt the snow, but
melting all that snow took longer than it took the train to get there
from up North. 


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

While I was working on early drafts of some of this I noticed the digital
thermometer showing 66.6 F.  Is that the Temperature of the Beast? 


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

If you believe in Santa Claus you might want to skip down to the next row
of asterisks. 

As the holidays were winding down I had a thought that came too late for
the Christmas issue but which I didn't want to set aside for a whole
year: What would the world be like if Santa Claus was real? 

To start with, there would be a large influx of goods into the world
economy every December.  This bounty would not be evenly distributed, but
would be greatest in those places where the default culture celebrated
Christmas.  And it would come from outside the economy, so the total
amount of wealth in the world would just sort of suddenly increase.

This bounty would come mainly in the form of undocumented in-kind grants
from an entity that is accountable to no known governmental agency. 
Governments that wished to tax it, or even just take a census, would have
a difficult time getting an accurate count.  Much of it would be in the
form of toys and candy and clothing that would look pretty much like
similar items produced by anybody else.  It might be possible to track 
those items that had serial numbers, such as computers and cars and 
appliances, but what portion of the whole does that cover? 

Speaking of computers and the like, intellectual property could be 
another tricky area.  Who pays whom for copies of software and movies 
and music and such? 

Then there are the privacy aspects. 

Santa gives his gifts to those he believes have conformed to his code of
conduct.  The amount of surveillance required to support this is
staggering.  And what constitutes being "good" or "bad"?  Is it one
universal code, or does it vary from culture to culture?  Are the rules
published anywhere?  Is there a Web site, or do you have to go to the
North Pole in person to see the official documentation? 

Speaking of being bad, does Santa Claus cooperate with law enforcement
agencies to help solve crimes?  Would Santa's statements as to whether a
given person had been Naughty or Nice be admissible in a court of law? 
If they wanted him to testify in a case, how would they serve the
subpoena?  There might be interesting questions of jurisdiction there. 

There are probably more questions here, but this may be enough for a
start. 


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

At the fast-food place:

"I'd like a burger, and don't put any varshkapong on it."

"Any what?"

"Varshkapong."

"What's that?"

"I don't know.  But whatever it is, I don't want it on my burger."

"Well, we don't know what it is either."

"Does that mean you're not putting it on burgers?" 

"Yes.  Er, I mean no.  Well, that is ....  If we don't know what it is,
how do we know one way or the other?"

"You've got a point there.  Maybe instead of a burger I'll have a turkey
sandwich."

"Do you want varshkapong on it?"

"Does it come with varshkapong?"

"We don't know."

"Well, at long as it isn't a burger I don't really care either way." 


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

The bit at the fast-food place reminded me of something in a recent issue
of Science. 

Someone had looked at a bunch of job descriptions and for each job had
estimated the IQ that would be required to do that job.  They then drew a
curve (actually a bar graph) of the number of available positions as a
function of the IQ the positions required.  This was shown superimposed
on the curve of actual population vs IQ.  The two curves did not match. 

The job curve peaked around 110 or thereabouts, while the population
curved peaked at 100.  Thus there's a shortage of workers for jobs
requiring an IQ a little above average.  On the other hand there were
surpluses of workers to fill jobs at the genius level and also for jobs
at the below-average IQ level. 

The accompanying article mentioned that employers were using computers
and such to "dumb down" some of those just-above-average-IQ jobs so that
more people could fill them. 

And what of the surplus of genius-level people?  Can they fill some of
the lower-IQ jobs?  Possibly, although for some jobs a person who is too
smart will get bored and not perform as well as someone closer to the
intelligence level actually needed for the job. 

Of course there are guesstimates and shaky assumptins and
oversimplifications galore in all of this, but it's still food for
thought. 


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

Can food for thought give people mental indigestion? 


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

There was an item in the news about some country somewhere planning to
outlaw chain saws in order to curb illegal logging.  I have this mental
image of some kind of Homicidal Maniacs' Association protesting the ban. 
That could put a real crimp in future slasher movies.  Even if most
serial killers don't care about the fine points of the law, it could make
chain saws harder to find. 


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

Someone sent me an email that's been going around about a serial killer
who preys on women in parking lots.  I checked that Snopes site that
keeps tabs on urban legends and found the story listed as False. 

Then I got to thinking about how back around the times written of in the
Bible it used to be customary to give hospitality to strangers.  If
someone you didn't know knocked on your door asking for shelter, you took
them in.  Nowadays you call the cops.  Why the difference?  What has
changed between then and now? 

Did they have serial killers back then?  If not, why not?  If so, were
people not as aware of them then as they are now? 

For one thing, they didn't have the news media that we have now.  They
didn't have TV, nor radio, nor even newspapers.  They had town criers and
word of mouth, but overall they probably heard a lot less news from
outside their immediate neighborhood than we hear now.  So even if some
equivalent of Freddy Kruger or Hannibal Lecter was terrorizing Damascus,
most people in Rome or Athens or Jerusalem would remain blissfully
unaware. 

Come to think of it, they didn't have slasher movies either.  They had
storytellers, but those wouldn't have had the same impact as seeing some
madperson with a chainsaw (which they also didn't have) dismembering
victim after victim right before your eyes on the big screen. 

Did they also have a stronger sense of hospitality, perhaps making them a
bit more willing to take the risk of being robbed or otherwise ill-used? 
I don't have the answer to that.  But I think one difference is that we
now have, or think we have, organized agencies to deal with those in
need.  Thus I can tell myself it isn't my job as an individual any more. 

I suspect humanity has lost something precious here. 


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

Another coffee house near here has started having regular Open Mike
nights.  I tried it a few days ago and liked the place, and people seemed
to like my work at well.  I'll probably start going there fairly
regularly. 

  http://www.beanscenecafe.com/

This is one of the ones I read for my debut there.


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

                           Quality vs Quantity


"Everybody knows that small wineries make the best wine,"
Said a little old winemaker up Selenaloma way to himself,
"So I will make the best wine possible:
Every year I will harvest, crush, ferment, and bottle
One Perfect Grape.

Chosen from the vine most favored by sun, wind, and rain,
And given the greatest concentration of loving attention,
It will grow to greatness
Just as tinder, under sunlight concentrated by a lens
Glows into flame.

True, the fruits of my labor will not be for the masses
But then great art never is,
And surely there are a fortunate few
Ready, willing, and able to pay the price
And to fully appreciate the result."

So saying, he began to make ready.
Unfortunately, however, word leaked out
And three of his competitors,
Not to be outdone in the matter of small wineries,
Went one better
By producing
No wine at all.

                                        Tom Digby
                                        written 0035 hr 11/24/76
                                        entered          2/16/88
                                        format  1347 hr 12/22/01


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

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

NOTE:  Some of these addresses may change.  Check the latest issue
you have. 

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.com or 
bubbles@well.sf.ca.us).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

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

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

                               Issue #149
                      New Moon of February 17, 2007


Contents copyright 2007 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 about to head off to a convention over the long weekend, so don't be
surprised if I don't post or reply to anything on the list for a few
days.

I could probably check in somehow if I really wanted to.  Many
conventions nowadays have an Internet Room, or I could plug in my laptop
or something, but based on past experience I probably won't.  I think
part of me wants a vacation from the Net. 

So except for some possible last-minute posts tomorrow (Friday) morning,
this is likely to be the last you'll be hearing from me until Monday
night or Tuesday, depending on how tired I feel.

The convention?  Pantheacon.  See 

  http://www.ancientways.com/pantheacon


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

One major event now retreating into my past is a monster of a cold I
suffered through a week or two before this issue was due out.  One thing
that seemed a bit unusual was that it went through some well-defined
stages, more so than most other colds and such that I recall. 

First came a vague "coming down with something" feeling. 

Then there was a day or so of extreme sniffles and runny nose, with
occasional sneezes.  Nothing unusual so far, except that I hadn't been
that sick for several years.  And yes, the nose ring did add a bit to the
overall misery, but not all that much. 

The next thing on the agenda after the runny nose was a cough and sore
throat, along with an even stronger general feeling of being ill.  I
spent much of the next couple of days in bed.  What seemed odd was that
although this was when I felt sickest, the nose stuff had largely
subsided. 

The colds I recall getting before didn't normally progress in such
well-defined stages, or at least I didn't notice it if they did.  The
various symptoms all came and went together, except that sometimes a
cough would linger for weeks after the rest of the cold had abated. 

In other words, this was a serial cold, while most of the others I recall
were more like parallel colds. 

Have others on the list had this kind of cold yet? 


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

Groundhog Day was a couple of weeks ago. 

 http://www.groundhog.org/

Reports are that "the" groundhog did not see his shadow.  Does this mean
Australia will get an early fall?


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

In other news, Microsoft finally released its new Vista version of
Windows.  Among its "features" is some anti-piracy stuff that's supposed
to prevent the use of illegal copies of the software.  There's also
"Digital Rights Management" that's supposed to prevent playing of pirated
music and movies and such. 

This means that in effect your Windows computer's first loyalty is not to
you, its nominal owner.  It's trying to serve two masters.  Matthew 6:24
says: "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and
love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.
Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

Another reason to avoid Microsoft products?


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

In the kind of news regular readers of this zine are more likely to
expect, we're coming up on "Don't Walk Like a Zombie" Day. 

You know that slow shuffling walk, with legs stiff and straight as if
there were no such thing as knees, and arms straight out in front like a
cartoon sleepwalker?  This is the day not to do it. 

Ideally the media should be full of pictures of people not walking like
that, perhaps with some clips from old low-budget horror movies to sort
of illustrate the point, if there is one.  But alas, Don't Walk Like a
Zombie" Day is kind of new and the media bigwigs aren't really aware of
it yet.  Besides, I don't think the date has even been officially set. 

Maybe next year? 


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

The symphony concert is nearly over, with just one more piece to go.  The
conductor raises his baton, looks over toward the brass section, and
apparently doesn't like what he sees: Several vacant chairs.  As the
audience starts to murmur he steps down off the podium, walks over to the
brass section, and confers briefly with some of the remaining musicians. 

After making a call or two on his cell phone he returns to the podium. 

"We regret to inform you that the final piece on tonight's program, the
Trumpet Voluntary, will not be heard." 

He goes on for a bit about how the word "Voluntary" in the title doesn't
really mean that the trumpet players are not obligated to perform and can
just pack up and go home if they feel like it.  Next time the orchestra
attempts the piece he'll retitle it "All Instruments Mandatory" to avoid
a recurrence of the problem. 

Be that as it may, for now the orchestra has no choice but to substitute
something else that doesn't use trumpets. 

Luckily they'd been considering expanding their repertoire, and some new
music they'd ordered arrived this afternoon.  So why not try it out now? 

It's Hieronymus Kleidge's "Concerto #23 for Bassoon and Glockenspiel", as
arranged for two theremins and a snare drum by the composer's brother
Melvin.  It's supposed to symbolize the eternal tensions between
siblings, or at least so say those who like to write deeply analytical
music reviews.  Were the reviewers right?  We are about to find out. 


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

As most of you probably know, a "truth table" is a concept in logic.  You
won't find truth tables on sale in a furniture store. 

But what if you did find one there?  What would it be like?  Perhaps it
would look like a regular dining table, but with a spell or something on
it to the effect that people eating at it won't be able to lie to one
another, at least during the meal.  That might be an interesting thing to
have. 

My first thought was of a family using it as their regular dining table. 
How would it affect them if none of the family members could tell a lie
during meals?  And what would happen at parties they hosted, if guests
couldn't lie while at that table? 

What might be even more interesting would be to put it in a restaurant or
perhaps a bar.  Perhaps the staff would know about its special
properties, but most customers, except for a few regulars, wouldn't. 
Then those in the know would either choose it or avoid it when deciding
where to sit, depending on who they were with and what the purpose of
their getting together was. 

That could make an interesting story series. 


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

                Incident Along Fantasy Way 2245 hr 4/8/75
                                 The Edge


Near the highway's end is a motel--
Small, quiet, half-empty.
There is no flow of travelers to points beyond pausing 
     for the night
As there are no points beyond
To pause on the way to.
This is the edge of the world.

People do come, but not many:
There are rumors that looking too closely or too long
Can drive you mad,
Or worse, that people may think you mad 
When you are not.  
So the tourist families that come to snap pictures
     of their children 
Standing next to the big sign near the edge
("But not too close!")
And buy picture postcards showing 
     the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria
Falling through endless sky
Are few.

Most of the trade is "regulars" returning again and again--
Some in groups,
Some meeting friends here,
Some alone.

The Edge somehow goes with aloneness
And one's own thoughts.
Indeed, no two see it alike,
And like one's thoughts,
It is never the same twice.

For the motel this is a problem.
Everyone who goes to the edge extends it:
An inch here, a foot there, two feet somewhere else.
So in a few years
The motel will have to move
Or lose its claim to fame
And be just another motel.

                                   Thomas G. Digby
                                   written 2245 hr  4/08/75
                                   entered 2345 hr  2/08/92


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

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

(This may change soon, so check the latest issue.)

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.com or 
bubbles@well.sf.ca.us).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

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

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

                               Issue #150
                       New Moon of March 18, 2007


Contents copyright 2007 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.  


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

Spring is really coming in strong this year.  Combine the recent wave of
warmer-than-usual weather (highs approaching 80F) with the time change
and it seems almost like summer already.  Based on past years I wouldn't
be surprised if we had another cool rainy spell or two before summer
really gets here, but for the moment winter seems unreal and far away. 


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

This is issue number 150, which kind of ties in with the fact that I'd
been thinking about that old song about bottles of beer on the wall. 
Well, maybe it doesn't really tie in all that well, but I'll claim it
does anyway.  So there. 

Anyway, there's talk of an eventual manned mission to Mars.  It'll take
the astronauts maybe a year to get there, and they'll need something to
do to while away the time.  Combine that with memories of high-school
field trips where we had a whole bus full of kids singing about beer
bottles falling off the wall, and the solution seems obvious. 

Depending on the tempo, one verse of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall"
takes somewhere between eight and twelve seconds.  Say ten seconds for
easy computation.  There are a little over thirty million seconds in a
year.  Therefore astronauts heading for Mars should start the song with
roughly three million bottles of beer on the wall in order to finish just
before they arrive. 

That's assuming that the astronauts sleep in shifts so there's always one
awake, keeping watch over their spaceship and singing about beer bottles
on the wall. 

Of course that figure of three million is just an estimate.  NASA will
probably want to run tests to determine the optimum tempo for the song
and then do an exact calculation of how many verses it will take to get
there.  Then they'll give the astronauts some kind of metronome to keep
everything in sync.  They may even want to have a computer-generated
voice singing along so the astronauts won't lose count along the way. 
This would also let them make whatever fine adjustments may be necessary
at the mid-course corrections. 

I see one potential problem: If there is no actual beer on board the
spacecraft for the astronauts to drink, their morale may suffer as the
song keeps reminding them of an unattainable pleasure.  Perhaps the words
should be changed to refer to some other beverage?  That's something for
the NASA psychologists to determine. 

If they do change the beverage, might they want to sell product-placement
rights?  The revenue probably won't be much compared to the total cost of
the mission, but every little bit helps. 


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

"He had the kind of backache that makes people envy invertebrates."


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

I recall back during the Vietnam era hearing news people refer to the
"Plain of Jars" in Laos.  I thought the name a bit odd, but I dismissed
it as a coincidence of words in different languages or something.  But it
turns out to be more literal. 

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

There are actually jars there, hundreds and hundreds of them.  No,
they're not modern glass or plastic jars as we think of them.  They're
massive urns carved out of stone, many centuries old.  Archaeologists are
trying to figure out how and why they were put there.  There's some
evidence that they may have been funeral urns, although that's not the
only theory. 

You learn something new every day. 


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

Back on singing about beer bottles on the wall, a few days ago I got to
thinking about how I'd been trying to do a parody about filkers in the
hall but couldn't seem to come up with a good penultimate line. 

Then it occurred to me that I might not need a good line.  Instead, I
could make a game out of it, with people making up that line as they went
along.  Then it could be something silly that doesn't have to rhyme or
scan. 

Start with a circle of filkers.  Everybody sings the first and second
lines, one person contributes the third line, and everybody joins back in
on the fourth line, with the number adjusted accordingly. 

Then the cycle repeats, with the next person in line around the circle
doing the variable third line.  And so on until the count gets all the
way down to zero or people get tired, whichever comes first. 

Here it is represented as a formula:

 ALL:     [X] filkers are here in the hall, 
 ALL:     [X] filkers are here. 
 SOLOIST: If [Y] of those filkers should [drop out] 
 ALL      [X-Y] filkers are here in the hall.

Then use that value of X-Y as X for the next verse. 

An example:  

 99 filkers are here in the hall,
 99 filkers are here.
 If one of those filkers should go to bed early
 98 filkers are here in the hall.

 98 filkers are here in the hall,
 98 filkers are here.
 If one of those filkers should be abducted by a UFO,
 97 filkers are here in the hall.

Those verses assumed that Y = 1, but that need not always be the case: 

 97 filkers are here in the hall,
 97 filkers are here.
 If five of those filkers should go play basketball,
 92 filkers are here in the hall.

 ... and so on.  

The point of the game is to come up with third lines that at least seem
to be funny at the time, and to do the necessary arithmetic in your head
in time to sing the new number in the fourth line. 

The main constraint on the solo line is that it should be physically
possible to sing or say the line in not much more time than it would have
taken to sing the original version.  But that's not a hard and fast rule. 

If a line does happen to rhyme and/or scan, so much the better.  But
don't count on it.  It's often funnier when it doesn't. 

You may be thinking that the examples I've given are not especially
funny.  But to a bunch of sleep-deprived people late at night standards
of what's funny may be less strict.  You won't really know until you've
tried it.  And you may not really truly know even then. 

The number of filkers ousted should bear some logical relationship to
their fate:  Five playing basketball, nine getting appointed to the
Supreme Court, and so on.  Possible exception: Any number can get booted
out for singing "Banned From Argo". 

You may also want to require that the final verse be such as to leave
exactly zero filkers, but then again you don't have to:

 7 filkers are here in the hall,
 7 filkers are here.
 If twelve of those filkers should get jury duty,
 -5 filkers are here in the hall.

Verses about fractional filkers or complex numbers of filkers are left as
an exercise for the reader. 

People doing it in non-fannish environments can of course change the word
"filkers" to "singers" or "people". 

[Tangential thought: Could this be used to teach arithmetic?]


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

A bit of free association (lightly edited):

Let's quit this dilly-dallying and get the zine done.  Done?  Dum de
dum-dum.  That's the old Dragnet theme.  Is that another of those things
younger generations have no knowledge of?  Does it matter?  Does the
Matterhorn matter?  It probably does, because if it wasn't there there
would be a whole bunch of Swiss mountain climbers just sort of up in the
air with nothing to do but fall down.  Ouch! 

Since the papers aren't full of stories about mountain climbers
mysteriously falling out of the sky over Switzerland, it appears that the
Matterhorn is doing its job.  The Matterhorn does matter. 


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

A few weeks ago we had the twenty-third day of that month.  And there's
another twenty-third day of a month coming up in less than a week.  That
got me to thinking:

Is the twenty-third of every month, or at least of every month that's
long enough to have a twenty-third day, Illuminati Day?  

I haven't heard anything in the media about it.  Or does that not mean
anything?  Maybe that even confirms it, because it proves how good a
cover-up job the Illuminati have done.  Nobody but the Illuminati could
have covered something like that up that well, so they must be in on it. 
Therefore it must be true. 

Also, the fact that the current calendar appears to have no months
shorter than twenty-three days is further proof that the Illuminati
control whoever officially keeps track of the calendar.  They've arranged
things so they can have Illuminati Day every month, or at least every
month the public knows about. 

Whether there are secret months known only to the Illuminati is another
question.  If there are any, I would think they would have to either run
in parallel with the months the public is aware of, or else they would
have to be of zero length to fit in between the publicly known months. 
Or maybe they're of non-zero length, but too short to be noticed without
fancy instruments and such.  Those Illuminati can be awfully clever. 

Another question:  What satellite's phases would the secret Illuminati
months be derived from?  At least some of the calendars we know about
have months derived from the phases of the Moon.  Would secret Illuminati
months be derived from the phases of some other satellite, such as the
original Sputnik?  Perhaps they're based on the orbit Sputnik would be in
now if it were still up there?  If so, I'm not expert enough to calculate
what that orbit might be.  Since that makes the question impossible to
answer, that's further proof of Illuminati involvement. 

Another flash of insight: An Illuminati month need not be twenty-three
days long.  It could just start late.  Just as some computer languages
start counting things from zero while others start from one, an
Illuminati month could start with the 23rd. 

The more I think about this the less I think I know.  Maybe the ultimate
secret is that one cannot know anything at all? 

Am I worried that the Illuminati will come after me for publishing their
big secret?  No, because that would blow their cover.  So whether or not
anything happens to me, whatever does or doesn't happen will be
conclusive proof that my conjecture is correct. 

Q.E.D.


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

This has little or nothing to do with whatever else is in this issue, but
so what? 


                           THE SPEECH


With a dignified tap of his polished mahogany gavel
The chairman calls to order the annual meeting of
The Association of Distinguished Professors,
And introduces the man who will give
The keynote address:

Doctor So-and-So, Distinguished Professor
And author of a number of books,
With a Doctor of Dignity degree
From some prestige college.

Amid polite applause
This distinguished professor approaches the lectern,
Reaches into a hidden compartment,
And brings out a small plastic bottle.
Using the wand that came with the bottle,
He blows out over the audience
A cloud of bubbles.
"Speech" concluded, he returns to his seat.

The toastmaster feels impelled to summarize:

     "The point Doctor So-and-So was making
     Was that no matter how grown-up we appear on the outside,
     There is still that child inside us all
     Who must now and then be let out to play."

He drones on for a while about repression, and stress,
And life expectancies, and percentages of heart attacks,
And stuff like that until finally,

     "While it is often important for us
     As distinguished professors
     To project a certain image to the world,
     It is also important for us
     As human beings
     To now and then allow ourselves to play."

     "That was indeed my point," replies the professor,
     "And you have summarized it quite well.
     However, just for the record,
     I must remind you
     That what I actually said was:"

And blows another cloud of bubbles.


                                      written Oct 01 83 0415hr
                                      entered Oct 24 83 0015hr
                                      Thomas G. Digby


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

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

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                                -- END --
  

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

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

                                Issue #151
                        New Moon of April 17, 2006


Contents copyright 2007 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.  


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

Days are longer now, warm spells are more frequent, and cold spells less
so.  Summer is definitely on its way in, even if it still has a way to go
to get here and even if it appears to stumble now and again. 

And no, April hasn't been especially rainy, just as March wasn't
especially windy.  Where did that stereotype originate?  I don't think
it's native to California. 

One thing I have noticed that does tie in with standard springtime
tradition is robins.  At least I think they're robins.  But I wouldn't be
surprised if they were something else. 


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

On a recent cloudless day, of which we've had several lately, I got to
thinking about the cartoon cliche of angels sitting or walking on clouds. 

So where do the angels rest when there are no clouds?  Do they go
somewhere else, since there's almost always a cloud somewhere, even if it
isn't in my part of the world?  Or do they just flutter around,
complaining about the lack of clouds to rest on?  Are angels allowed to
be grumpy?  It doesn't seem to fit their image, but so what?  Do it when
mortals aren't looking, and be ready to put on the Happy Face at a
moment's notice? 

Then thoughts of springtime and migrating birds brought up another
question: When a bunch of angels all want to go to the same far away
place, do they fly in V formation like ducks?  You never seem to see them
pictured doing that, but it should be more aerodynamically efficient for
them, just as it is for ducks. 

Or does aerodynamic efficiency matter to angels?  Possibly not, since the
whole concept of angels looking human except for having wings is not very
workable from an aerodynamic standpoint.  Flapping the wings vigorously
enough to fly would require more muscle mass than would be consistent
with an angel looking human, and I suspect there would be stability and
control issues. 

Also, if angels have about the same mass as humans, staying aloft would
require moving enough air to make things unpleasant for anyone else in
the immediate vicinity.  This may not matter in flight at altitude, but
it could be a problem for takeoff and landing. 

I suspect various aeronautical engineering students have done the
calculations many times over the years, even if they haven't published
them where I would be likely to read about it.  It's the kind of thing
students like to play around with. 

Do any of you readers know of anyone who's actually studied this? 


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

The supposition that someone somewhere has calculated the aerodynamics of
angels as most people imagine them leads to the thought of what if that
supposition is wrong.  What if nobody has ever thought of the details of
angelic aerodynamics?  Even though that doesn't seem likely, it leads to
further thought along the lines of whether there might be subjects that
nobody is interested in. 

There are almost certainly subjects that nobody has ever been aware of,
but that's not quite the same thing.  I'm wondering about subjects that
people know exist but still don't care about.  I get the feeling that if
any subject, no matter what, is known to more than some trivial number of
people, at least one of those people is going to care about it, or at
least find it worthy of further thought. 

But that feeling could well be wrong.  And I can also see the whole
question bogging down in a quagmire of questions like what constitutes
being "interested" and how many people have to be aware of something for
it not to count as "unknown". 

So there's probably no simple answer. 


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

People on LiveJournal seem to have a thing for online personality tests. 
A few weeks ago someone I know posted his results for which dead Russian
composer he would be were he to be a dead Russian composer.  If he were a
dead Russian composer he would be Igor Stravinsky.

There was a little biographical thing on Stravinsky that mentioned people
throwing rotten eggs at him when they didn't like one of his
compositions.  That got me to wondering. 

In cartoons the audience at a theatrical production sometimes expresses
its displeasure by throwing vegetables and eggs and such at the
performers.  Do they do that in real life?  If so, where do they get the
stuff to throw?  Do they bring it from home, or do they buy it at the
concession stand?  Modern movie-theater concession stands don't seem to
carry that kind of stuff, and even if they did, I suspect management
would try to discourage people from throwing it because of the mess it
would make, especially if some of it stuck to the screen.  Perhaps things
are different at other types of theaters?  I've never noticed it at the
live performances I've been to, but that doesn't really prove anything. 

So what's the story here?  Inquiring minds want to know. 


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

A resident of Plergbistan is explaining their court system to an
American.  They're looking at a picture of the Plergbistani Supreme
Court. 

American: How come the Justices are wearing several different kinds of
robes? 

Plergbistani: For one thing, they're not all what you would call
"Justices".  That term only applies to the ones in formal academic
law-school regalia. 

A: So what are the others? 

P: The ones in the white robes are the Mercies.  The one is the red robe
is the Vengeance. 

A: Huh? 

P: First, the Justices look at a case in terms of the letter of the law
and the precedents set by prior court decisions. 

A: That sounds like our courts. 

P: Pretty much.  But in our system it doesn't end there.  The other
members of the court more or less vote their feelings. 

A: How does that work? 

P: It depends on the case.  For example, if there are extenuating
circumstances, such as a thief stealing to feed a starving family, the
Mercies may vote to let him off easy.  On the other hand, in a case of
cold-blooded premeditated murder you'll probably see the mercies
abstaining while the Vengeance throws the book at the murderer.  In still
other cases, such as civil matters between corporations with no
significant injury to consumers, the Mercies and the Vengeance will
pretty much leave it up to the Justices. 

A: That sounds complicated.  And what was it I heard about fractional
votes? 

P: Each member of the Court gets one vote, but is not required to cast it
all in a lump.  If, for example, a Justice thinks the arguments for both
sides have merit, he or she can cast, say, thirty percent of a vote for
one side and the remaining seventy percent for the other.  A Mercy or a
Vengeance can also cast a partial abstention. 

A: That sounds even more complicated. 

P: It isn't really all that bad.  You just add up the numbers according
to standard formulas.  Simple arithmetic. 

A: But back on your example of letting a thief off because he stole to
feed starving children, doesn't that kind of thing set a bad precedent? 

P: Not really.  Only the votes and commentary from the Justices count
toward setting precedent.  The Mercies and/or the Vengeance may change
how a defendant is or is not punished, but their decisions are not
binding on any court trying future cases.  In other words, decisions by
Justices go into law books.  Decisions by Mercies and Vengeances go into
folk tales and songs and traditions. 

A: I think that's starting to make sense.  Let me think about it a while. 


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

Someone else on LiveJournal was talking about some mail she received, or
sort of received, from a traffic court.  It was sent to an address she'd
moved out of years ago, and only came to her attention months later. 
Didn't the court have her correct address?  She thought they did, but
evidently they didn't. 

That got me to thinking about what if a change-of-address notice is
somehow defective or insufficient.  In some parts of Cartoonland they
would make the person move back to the old address until the matter got
straightened out.  The present occupants of the old place need not move
out, but if they don't it might get rather crowded. 

Often the first either party to this problem knows about it is when
movers show up at the person's new address and start loading stuff into a
van.  Then when they arrive at the old address and start unloading,
that's how the people now living there find that they're getting a "new"
roommate. 

Special hilarity may ensue if the old place has, say, been torn down to
build a freeway.  Then you get to see the movers arranging furniture
right there in the middle of traffic lanes as cars swerve and skid and
honk around them.  These cases tend to get expedited attention so lanes
don't stay blocked for very long. 

Freeway or no freeway, things almost always get revolved eventually, but
only after all the various bureaucrats are in sync as to who is living
where. 

Or something like that. 


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

Back at the Plergbistani Supreme Court Building the visiting American is
strolling around the main law library.  He sees shelf upon shelf of
magnificent leather-bound volumes chronicling centuries of legal history. 
But there's something odd: Many of the books look damaged, like they've
been in a wreck or something.  He asks about it. 

P: That's from when the courts have thrown the book at various criminals. 
Didn't you notice the catapult over in the park? 

A: I saw it, but just assumed it was a museum display or memorial or
something.  I thought "throwing the book" at somebody was just a
metaphor. 

P: It is nowadays, but they used to do it literally.  It was the closest
thing Plergbistan had to a death penalty.  You see how massive those
books are.  If one hits you square on you're pretty much a goner. 

A: But what if they missed?

P: Then you got off with just a fine or jail time or some such.  We
thought of it as giving the gods one last chance to commute a death
sentence.  Or sometimes the books would hit a glancing blow, and the
condemned would eventually recover, but often with some degree of
disability.  Again, it was the will of the gods meting out punishment. 

A: So why did you stop doing it? 

P: It ceased being effective when digital media came in.  Throwing a CD
at somebody just isn't the same. 


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

This was isnpired by that tsunami a couple of years back.  Recent events
reminded me of it. 


                           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

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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                                -- END --
  

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

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

                                Issue #152
                         New Moon of May 16, 2007


Contents copyright 2007 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 poppies are in bloom, at least around Sunnyvale. 

We have had a very dry rainy season this year.  Some areas have set
records for paucity of precipitation.  As a consequence, there are few
wildflowers this spring.  Fields and hillsides that normally would be a
riot of color are barren and brown. 

But Sunnyvale does have poppies. 

I see them when I'm out walking, sometimes in a corner of someone's front
yard, other times in that unpaved strip between the sidewalk and the
curb, or now and again making a courageous stand in cracks in the
pavement.  They aren't all over the place by any means, but there are
clumps of them here and there.  I suspect they're taking advantage of
nearby lawn sprinklers.  They may have been deliberately planted at one
time and then managed to re-seed themselves down through subsequent
years.  Or they may have always been there.  I don't really know. 

But however they got there, there they are.  Enjoy them while they're
here. 


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

Something reminded me of a billboard I saw many years ago when I was a
child.  It was along a highway near the airport.  It had a picture of an
airplane with the word "LOCKHEED" in big letters.  At the time I didn't
get that good a look at it, and misread the word as "LOCKED". 

This was before cars had seat belts or child safety door locks.  So my
parents often told us kids that we should never touch the door handle
while the car was moving, lest we open the door and fall out. 

So it made sense to me for airlines to lock the doors on their planes
while in flight.  That way passengers couldn't accidently open the door
and fall out.  It also meant that people on the outside wouldn't be able
to get in, although I didn't think that anyone would be trying to enter
during the trip. 

So it followed that airlines might want to advertise the fact that they
locked the doors on their planes while airborne.  Hence a billboard with
a picture of an airplane and the word LOCKED in big letters. 

Another childhood thought on airplanes:

There was this movie that had a scene of paratroopers being dropped. 
There were a number of large planes droning along in formation, with what
looked like hundreds of parachutes drifting slowly down.  It didn't occur
to me at the time that there would be crew members remaining on the
planes after all the paratroopers were gone, so I was surprised at how
well the seemingly empty planes stayed on a straight and level course
with nobody at the controls.  I also recall wondering what happened to
the planes afterward.  Did they just keep flying until they ran out of
gas and crashed, or what?  The movie didn't seem to show that part. 

I also recall a scene of a bugler, standing silhouetted against the dawn
sky at a military base, playing Reveille.  But how did the bugler wake
up?  Did they just pick somebody who tended to be among the first to wake
up most mornings and make him the bugler?  I asked Dad, who said that the
guard would wake him up.  I didn't ask who woke up the guard.  I may not
have had the concept of guards and such staying up all night, so perhaps
I should have asked, but I didn't. 

It's amazing how much stuff I didn't know back then. 

It may still be amazing how much stuff I don't know, but I don't know
about it so I can't really say. 


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

Speaking of centaurs (which we weren't), would they be eligible to run in
horse races?  If so, would the centaur be listed as jockey, horse, or
both? 

I could see the bureaucrats of horse racing getting all tangled up in
their rules and regulations.  When it comes to stuff like betting, laws
and rules can get quite messy.  The easy way out would be to just say "No
Centaurs", or at least none racing against traditional horses and riders. 
Centaurs racing against other centaurs might be easier to deal with,
because you have something closer to a level playing field.  But would
that count as "horse racing" for purposes of laws defining legal and
illegal betting?  It might well vary from state to state. 


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

While eating with friends at a local Denny's, I got to noticing the paper
place mats.  They were mostly blurbs for their various beverages.  The
text included phrases like "juices with an attitude" and described their
coffee as "bolder".  Had customers been complaining about timid coffee? 
Did their old juices taste like yes-men?

And how do you psychoanalyze a beverage anyway?  You could pour it out on
a couch and try to listen for it to say something, but I have strong
doubts that you'll get anything but a soggy messed-up couch.  So do you
just make up a bunch of baloney and hope nobody calls you on it? 

That also leads to other questions, like what would coffee with other
human personality traits taste like?  And which ones would you prefer to
drink?  Bold coffee?  Timid coffee?  Considerate coffee?  Treacherous
coffee?  Faithful coffee?  Pious coffee?  Skeptical coffee?  Creative
coffee?  Slothful coffee?  Industrious coffee?  Sadistic coffee? 
Sympathetic coffee?  Childlike coffee?  Studious coffee?  Pensive coffee? 
There's a whole world there that Starbucks hasn't touched yet. 

"Time to brew a new pot of coffee.  The present batch is getting tired." 


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

You know the cartoon cliche of the guru up on the mountain top giving
philosophical advice to seekers climbing the mountain to see him?  Why
are those cartoon gurus almost always male?  Female gurus exist, or at
least I'm pretty sure they do.  So why don't we see more of them in
cartoons?  Is it just a case of too few cartoonists having thought about
it, or is there some deeper reason? 

One possible contributing factor: It's harder to draw a female guru who's
obviously a guru. 

The cliche signs of cartoon guru-hood include a loincloth or robe-like
garment, long hair, and a big bushy beard.  Those wouldn't work well to
mark a female guru.  A robe would look too much like a "normal" dress
while a loincloth plus a bra would look too much like a swimsuit or maybe
some kind of Amazon warrior getup.  Many women who are not gurus wear
their hair long, and few women have beards.  So how would you draw a
female cartoon guru who would be instantly recognizable as a guru? 


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

What kind of dressing goes with word salad? 


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

I was looking through that issue of Newsweek with all the letters from
soldiers who had died in the Iraq conflict.  I only read a fraction of
the letters, but even so it was a deeply moving experience.  I was on the
verge of tears, not sure my composure could have taken much more. 

Then I saw the back cover, which was a full-page ad for some car.  It
started off to the effect of "Think how happy you'll be when you tromp
down on the gas and feel the surge of those couple of hundred horses
under the hood."  There was more, but again I had seen enough.  That's
when the tears really started flowing. 

Is that what those men and women are fighting and dying for?  There is
something horribly wrong here, and it goes deeper than just bad
decision-making by our leaders. 

But you probably already knew that. 

What I don't know, and suspect nobody else knows either, is how to get
out of this mess. 

One thing that may help: The next time you're about to buy something,
especially something you've seen lots of ads for, let it remind you of
those people in Iraq, or whatever other far-off place we happen to be at
war in.  You don't need to resolve to do anything in particular in terms
of what you do or don't buy and who you do or don't buy it from. 

Just let it remind you.  

The rest will follow.  


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


                             Breezy Bubbles


Soap bubbles on a breezy day
Dance away in the wind.
They wander hither and yon,
Some soaring to the heavens
While others tempt fate 
In a daring brush with the ground.  

I'm reminded that my every breath
Scatters to the four winds
And thence to the ends of the earth
Even when no dancing bubbles make it visible. 

Likewise my every action, 
Grand or trivial,
Serious or playful, 
Driven by sweet love 
Or by something less savory, 
Echoes through the cosmos
To and beyond 
The limits of imagination.  

I cannot predict 
All that will come of any one act,
Any more than I can predict the fate
Of any one bubble.  

But just as I have a general idea of the wind 
And can position myself accordingly, 
I can make some guesses.  

So as I go through each day 
Full of myriad little decisions
Too numerous to really think about 
I can try to make a habit
Of spreading less sorrow
And more joy.  

Like the playful bubbles
Dancing away on the wind.  


                                 -- Tom Digby
                                 First Draft  18:09  Mon April 30 2007
                                 Revised      14:49  Thu May 17 2007


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

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

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  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

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There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to 
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If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're 
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                                -- END --
  

    
                            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 #153
                        New Moon of June 14, 2007


Contents copyright 2007 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

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


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

By the time this goes out, we will be about halfway though June.  And a
certain song notwithstanding, I haven't noticed anything in particular
busting out.  Some flowers are in bloom, but then there are flowers of
one kind or another in bloom pretty much year-round.  No, in this area
June doesn't bust out all over.  Instead it slips in on foggy cat feet. 

Other months also defy convention.  March wasn't especially windy, and
April wasn't especially rainy.  It's as if this part of California
attracts unconventional months, much as it attracts unconventional
people. 


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

I noticed something interesting in the inserts that came with a recent
utility bill.  They don't like it when people dig up their underground
lines, so they say you should call them "before you dig, augur, or move
earth in any way." 

What I found interesting was their use of "augur" instead of "auger". 
According to the dictionaries I looked at, the -er spelling is the one
they probably should have used.  It has various meanings, all related to
drilling or digging.  The -ur spelling has to do with prophecy and such
(and no, the dictionaries I looked at did not show them as being
interchangeable). 

Given that, I would think the utility companies would be happy if more
people were to do some augur-type work before doing anything involving an
auger.  That would reduce the incidence of damage to underground wiring
and pipelines.  Even if damage is inevitable, knowing about it ahead of
time would let the utility companies be better prepared to minimize their
losses. 

Or do they already have psychics working for them?  Could that be the
reason they don't need (or at least think they don't need) more psychic
input from the general public? 

Now that this has gotten me thinking about words like "auger" and
"augur", another word comes to mind: "ogre".  Might there be a few ogres
on the payroll to deal with people who fail to heed the warnings about
augers? 


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

Here's an interesting language tidbit I've noticed.  But first some
background:

I do a fair amount of walking, and I carry bubble-blowing stuff with me. 
So every now and then some random person or group of people will
encounter an unexpected cloud of bubbles.  Reactions remind me of that
parable in Matthew about sowing seed and having much of it fall on stony
ground or get eaten by birds or some such, while a fortunate portion
lands on fertile ground and brings forth plenty.  Likewise, some people
frown or appear not to notice the bubbles, while others smile, laugh, or
otherwise react with visible pleasure. 

What I find interesting is that many adults (and adolescents) who react
favorably will say the word "bubbles" in a particular way: In a
high-pitched voice, with the second syllable drawn out longer than when
the word is used in ordinary speech.  And more often than not, the pitch
will gradually drop during that drawn-out syllable.  I think I get that
reaction more often from females than from males, but I'm not positive of
that. 

I'm reminded of some scientific studies of how adults talk to young
children.  They found that that sort of baby talk differed from adult
speech in fairly predictable ways that seemed to be sort of standard
across different cultures and languages.  The rules seemed to be more or
less hard-wired, perhaps related to how babies learn to talk. 

So is this related to those presumably hard-wired baby-talk rules? 


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

Someone was talking about Starhawk (a writer of Pagan-related books), but
pronouncing it more like "Starhock". 

That led to thoughts of trying to pawn stars.  I don't think most pawn
shops would take stars.  I kind of doubt they'd even take one of those
"Name a Star" things. 

I would think an actual star would be more like real estate, sort of: You
go to it, rather than trying to bring it to where you would like it to
be.  But either way there won't be very many takers.  Even if you have
proof of ownership of "your" star, there are no convenient ways of
getting there, at least with currently known technology. 

So given what they say about the importance of location in the
real-estate market, I would expect the market for stars to be rather
slow. 


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

Speaking of going somewhere in search of something that won't come to
you, there's a cartoon cliche of a guru or some such sitting on top of a
mountain, with a seeker climbing the mountain to ask the guru a question. 

The thought I had was a variation: The guru's skin is green, his hair and
beard are blue or purple or some such color, and his facial features
don't look like those of Earth humans.  The sky also looks unearthly,
with strange stars and planets and such visible. 

The seeker climbing the mountain is wearing a space suit and is obviously
from Earth. 

Problem is, I don't know what the seeker's question would be. 


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

And still on the subject of going places, there's a science fiction
convention coming up in a couple of weeks at the same hotel where another
such convention was held recently. 

The layout of the hotel is rather confusing, at least if you don't have a
map to refer to.  It consists of several buildings, some at odd angles,
connected by enclosed walkways that look pretty much like the rest of the
corridors except for having windows to outside instead of doors to rooms. 
The carpet pattern and wallpaper design are the same throughout.

I saw maps posted near the exits, but they only showed the immediate
vicinity.  There was an overall map available, but you had to ask for it
at the front desk.  I didn't find out about it until the last day. 

To add to the confusion, they were in the process of changing the names
of their function rooms. 

That got me to thinking about that stairwell at Hogwarts in the Harry
Potter movies where the stairs are constantly rearranging themselves. 
Suppose an entire hotel did that kind of thing.  You'd go to where
something had been earlier, only to not find it there.  It would be
somewhere else. 

Having maps that constantly redrew themselves and were thus always
correct might help some, but only if things didn't change too rapidly for
you to chase after them.  In that case you'd need a map that showed where
things would be in the future, so instead of going to where your
destination is now you could go to where it will be by the time you can
get there. 


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

San Francisco, like a couple of other cities I know of, has a colony of
wild parrots.  They're the descendents of domesticated parrots that
escaped over the years.  Now, according to a news item I saw recently,
the authorities have passed a ban on feeding them.  This has stirred up
some controversy, with some of the "regulars" talking of defying the ban. 
Others disagree. 

At one point someone was quoted as saying, "The birds attract nature
photographers and tourists, too." 

Something about the way that was worded seemed to imply that tourists and
photographers are just another species of vermin.  That leads me to
wonder if there might be some chemical spray or something that would keep
them away. 

Some kind of mist that gunks up camera lenses should suffice to keep the
photographers down, but it might not have much effect on the tourists. 
Scarecrows and fake likenesses of predators probably wouldn't work
either, since tourists are generally smart enough not to be fooled by
such things. 

Would real predators work?  Perhaps a few dozen lions and tigers and such
roaming the area would do the trick?  Problem is, that might not go over
too well with neighborhood residents.  Then again, some of the residents
are contributing to the problem by feeding the parrots, so perhaps they
should not be exempt from the lions or whatever they end up doing to keep
the tourists away from the area. 

Be the details as they may, it looks like there may be no solution that
will please everybody. 


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

A month or two ago I started hearing jackhammers.  They seemed to be
coming from the next block over toward the west.  Day after day, somebody
was jackhammering something.  But what?  I finally went and looked. 

They were jackhammering the swimming pool at a nearby park.  It looked
like they were replacing the lining.  They jackhammered off a relatively
thin layer, and then stopped.  Then they started sticking on new tiles
around the rim.  [later]  Now the pool has a new lining and is full of
water, and there's a sign to the effect that it will open on June 23. It
looks like all is well. 

But for a while there part of me had been wondering what if all that
jackhammering hadn't been legitimate. 

What if they had been stealing the pool, piece by piece, to be
reassembled, like some demented jigsaw puzzle, in their secret lair in
Tasmania or Timbuktu or some such place?  Would they just leave a hole in
the ground where the pool had been, or would they plant it with flowers
and put up Sunken Gardens signs to divert suspicion, or what? 

I was thinking that had I started seeing Sunken Gardens signs I would
have asked the city's Public Works department about it.  Let them pursue
any possibly-purloined public pools.  After all, as part of the city
government they probably know people in the Police Department whereas I
don't. 


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

Is June less of a month for weddings than it used to be?  Is that
tradition fading?  Or have I just not been paying as much attention to
such things as I used to? 


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

Speaking of June losing whatever once made it special, there's this,
written back when I was living in Southern California:


                         The Balance of Trade


I see by the calendar it's June again.  
Ho hum.  

June doesn't bust out all over L.A. like it does other places.  
Here it just sort of oozes in on cat feet like fog, 
The last cool gray scraps of winter being used up 
Like turkey sandwiches the day after Thanksgiving.  
Nothing to write home about, 
And nothing to write poetry about.  

Yes, "June" here still rhymes with all the usual words 
Like "Moon" and "spoon" 
But there's something lacking.  
Some undefinable essence is missing.  

So even though Los Angeles exports all kinds of wondrous things
Like Movie Stars and Hollywood,
Not to mention more mundane goods, 
If it wants poems about June it must import them.  


                                   -- Thomas G. Digby 
                                   23:39 Jun 12, 1996 
                                   13:34 Jun 13, 1996 
                                   16:32 Jun 13, 1996 


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

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

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

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                               Issue #154
                        New Moon of July 14, 2007


Contents copyright 2007 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.  


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

As I write this portion, a couple of days before the issue is actually
due, I notice another article in the paper about the Summer of Love back
in 1967.  Has it really been forty years? 

Part of me waxes nostalgic, but then I notice another article, or perhaps
a Web page, with a list of news events of that time:  Lots of riots
and protests and reports of police brutality.  I'd evidently been looking
at my memories of those times through rose-colored glasses.  I had sort
of forgotten that for many it was a time of troubles, of living in fear. 
But it was also a time of optimism and faith that together we could
create a better world.  And indeed it was a time of profound changes. 

Now we are in the midst of another time of changes.  But this time,
instead of flowers in their hair, the stereotypical agents of change are
wearing pocket protectors and strong eyeglasses.  And instead of music
with strange-sounding sometimes-incomprehensible lyrics, they're writing
something most would see as even more incomprehensible: Computer code. 

Yes, computers existed back in the Sixties, but they were big expensive
tools of the Establishment.  The Flower Children viewed them more as
engines of oppression than a means of liberation. 

That changed in the final decades of the century with the rise of the
personal computer. 

Now, what with the Internet, the World Wide Web, and the likes of Google
and Wikipedia, we are in another time of profound change. 

What to me seems most significant about the changes now underway is that
it has become much easier for people with non-mainstream needs and
interests to find one another.  At the same time, geography is becoming
less and less of a barrier to communication.  Instead of (or perhaps in
addition to) communities based on geographic proximity, we are forming
communities based on common interests. 

Of course such communities of interest have long existed, even back in
the days when the only means of long-distance communication was messages
written on paper.  But back then they were the exception.  Now they may
be becoming the norm. 

And we are starting to see the dim outlines of a stage beyond that, where
one's physical surroundings become even less relevant as we spend more
and more of our lives in virtual worlds of our own making.  Who knows
where that may lead us? 


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

In the process of making some decision between two alternatives I was
reminded of the old custom of saying "He loves me, he loves me not ..."
while pulling petals off a flower. 

The outcome depends on whether the flower has an odd or even number of
petals.  Are there species for which that number varies randomly?  If you
use a species that always has the same number of petals then what's the
point?  Barring some odd happenstances like one petal falling off the
flower before you get it, you'll always know the result before you start.


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

Speaking of cliches and expressions and such, has anybody here ever
actually shot fish in a barrel?  Is it really as easy as the expression
would indicate? 

Assuming live fish in a barrel full of water (with the top open to allow
access), it may not be as easy as it sounds.  For one thing, the way
water refracts light may throw your aim off, even if the water doesn't
deflect the bullet.  And live fish are moving targets. 

On the other hand, no matter how bad your aim is a sufficiently powerful
round may generate enough of a shock wave in the water to stun the fish. 
Then you just grab them as they float to the surface.

So shooting fish in a barrel may indeed be as easy as it's cracked up to
be.  It may even be easier than shooting sitting ducks.  Whether either
is as much fun as a barrel of monkeys is probably a matter of personal
taste. 


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

There's a place not far from here that rents out construction machinery. 
They have a big yard full of fork lifts and backhoes and such.  The yard
has always been fenced, but they've recently added what looks like an
electric fence, with signs proclaiming "7000 VOLTS" in English and
Spanish.  I'm wondering how real that electric fence is. 

I didn't notice any obvious conclusive evidence that it was fake, but
parts of it were kind of questionable.  There were a few places, mainly
around gates, where the supposedly charged wire was threaded through
holes in what looked like wooden dowels rather than hung from insulators. 
There were things that looked like insulators where the wires turned
corners and such, but they didn't look like high-voltage insulators.  I
kind of doubt the ability of the system to sustain seven thousand volts,
especially when it rains. 

In addition, I have questions about the legal aspects of the whole thing. 
What if, for example, a child were to poke a stick or a metal rod or some
such in through the chain-link outer fence and get shocked?  Litigation
would be a definite possibility.  So I'm inclined to believe it's fake. 

But then again, there's a chance it may be real, designed and installed
by people ignorant of the finer points of electricity and safety and
building codes and such. 

Either way, I don't plan on finding out by first-hand experience. 


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

Something reminded me of a movie I saw many years ago.  I forget what
movie it was, but it was based on the life of Jesus.  There was one scene
where some king or some such was spouting off about how powerful he was. 
For every man Jesus had healed, he had maimed dozens.  He had killed many
more men than Jesus has raised from the dead.  And so on.  Thus he was
way more powerful than this upstart Jesus person. 

He wasn't giving credit to an extremely powerful silent partner:
Entropy. 

When you break, kill, or destroy something you're merely hastening a
process that would have happened sooner or later anyway.  If, on the
other hand, you're trying to repair, heal, or restore something, you're
working against entropy.  And entropy always wins in the long run, at
least in universes like this one. 

It's probably not a conscious decision, but if you're seeking ways to 
gain control over your little corner of the world, what better way to 
do it than to ally yourself with this invincible force that lets you 
take all the credit. 


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

All that talk about violence and killing and such reminds me of something
that may have just been coincidence or may have been something more. 

I went to a Heather Alexander concert a few days before Christmas of
whatever year it was (I don't recall exactly). 

Toward the end I was feeling all mellow and ready for the holidays.  Then
she closed with "March of Cambreadth". 

That song is from the viewpoint of warriors about to go into battle.  It
has a repeated line that the audience is supposed to join in shouting:
"How many of them can we make die!"  

I didn't feel that kind of battle cry was appropriate to the mood that
had been established up to that point.  It definitely wasn't the type of
mood I wanted to be in for the winter holidays.  So I just sort of sat
there while pretty much everybody else joined in shouting that line. 
Then the concert was over and we all went our separate ways. 

End of story?  Possibly so, but possibly not. 

A few days later I heard that a young woman I know from local fandom had
been mugged.  And if I'm recalling the details correctly, it happened
just a few hours after the concert.  And yes, she'd been there.  I recall
seeing her in the audience. 

She wasn't hurt, and the cops caught the culprits within hours.  They
plea-bargained or something, so there wasn't much in the way of a trial. 
So in a sense it wasn't that big a deal. 

But it did get me to wondering: Was this sequence of events just
coincidence, or did some of that violent battle-cry energy from the
concert have something to do with it? 


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

I recently had occasion to email the landlord about problems with the
dumpster.  In the email I referred to the company that handles the
dumpster as "the garbage people".  After I had sent it I noticed that
that phrase sounded like something from a cheesy low-budget horror movie
from the 1950's or 60's. 

I can almost see it, in black and white with a title something like
"Attack of the Garbage People".  Perhaps some mad scientist is cleaning
out his lab and puts a bunch of bottles of assorted chemicals in the
dumpster.  The bottles break on the way to the landfill and the chemicals
start bringing the surrounding garbage to life.  The process takes a
while, so nobody notices anything out of the ordinary until a bunch of
vaguely humanoid monsters tunnel their way up out of the landfill and
start terrorizing the neighborhood. 

As is common with such things, these monsters are immune to most weapons,
but they do have one weakness.  For a while all seems lost until one of
the good guys figures out that one weakness, or stumbles upon it, or
something, whereupon the monsters are vanquished. 

Life then gets pretty much back to normal, except for some hints of the
possibility of a sequel. 


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

This summer marks the sixtieth anniversary of certain mysterious events
at Roswell, New Mexico.  In other words, flying saucers and space aliens
as we know them have just turned sixty years old.  Of course people had
been seeing strange things in the sky and meeting strange not-quite-human
beings for centuries, or even millennia before that.  But back then such
things were generally thought to be the work of angels or devils or
witches or the like, not visitors from other worlds in our universe. 

Yes, there had also been fiction written about beings from other worlds
before the Roswell events, but those stories were presented as fiction,
not supposedly true accounts. 

That doesn't necessarily mean that that's what those mysterious
apparitions really are, if they are any one thing at all.  But that's the
current way the public, or at least that segment of the public that
believes in them, seems to want to think of them, at least for now. 


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

                          Take Us to your Poets 


I came upon them by a lonely road
Deep in the wilderness
With something strange hovering overhead.
They'd learned my language, not important how:
"Standard procedures, like hundreds before; no big deal."
But they did have a favor to ask.

"A favor?  Like taking you to our leader?"
"Your leader?  Eventually.
We should exchange assurances of good faith,
Agree on ground rules, mark the traffic lanes,
Stuff like that.  All quite necessary.
But there's plenty of time for attending to that,
And we have more urgent needs.
     So take us to your poets,
     Your dreamers,
     Your dancers in the moonlight.
     Those your leaders cannot speak for
     Because they make their own worlds
     No others can invade or conquer."

          (awkward pause)

"Uh, ... that's all well and good,
But not quite what I was expecting.
Maybe first I should take you to our scientists?"
"Your scientists?  Eventually.
We should cross-check our knowledge against yours,
Finding where each can fill the other's gaps
And what each can learn from the other.
But there's plenty of time for attending to that,
And we have more urgent needs.
     So take us to your poets,
     Your dreamers,
     Your dancers in the moonlight.
     Those the physical cannot limit
     Because they see beyond beyond
     And do not stop at 'That can't be'."

          (awkward pause)

"Uh, ... that's all well and good,
But not quite what I was expecting.
Maybe your ship needs something?
Our ship?  Eventually.
We are a little low on fuel
And before we leave your world
Certain items will want minor repairs.
But there's plenty of time for attending to that,
And we have more urgent needs.
     So take us to your poets,
     Your dreamers,
     Your dancers in the moonlight.
     For we are dangerously low on dreams
     And need to relight our inner fires
     Without which all worlds are dark and empty."


                                        Thomas G. Digby

                                        entered 1635 hr  4/11/92
                                        format  14:02 12/22/2001


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

               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.com or 
bubbles@well.sf.ca.us).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

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

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

                               Issue #155
                       New Moon of August 12, 2007


Contents copyright 2007 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.  


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

As I write this we're a few days past the anniversary of the Hiroshima
A-Bomb.  It got some mention in the news, but not all that much.  That's
probably to be expected, since it wasn't a round number of years ago this
year. 

At the Open Mike event I went to in the evening several performers
mentioned it.  Some even chose material they felt was especially
appropriate to that theme. 

That reminded me of my theory that we were lucky nuclear weapons were
developed just in time to end a war. 

Had they been available earlier, they would have been used more
extensively.  The heat of battle would have overridden any second
thoughts. 

On the other hand, had they not been available until after the war was
over, there would have been no real gut-level reason not to use them in
the next conflict.  Scientists might have still calculated the expected
destruction, but the neat columns of statistics would not have been
accompanied by pictures of dying children.  The Cold War would have been
much more likely to turn hot, whereupon the "heat of battle" mindset
would have taken over. 

As it was, nuclear weapons got used just enough to demonstrate the havoc
they could wreak, after which people on all sides had time to think
before the next temptation to use them arose. 

That leads to concern for the future.  More and more countries are
developing nuclear weapons, while at the same time the horror of their
actual use is fading from living memory.  Sooner or later someone
somewhere is going to yield to the temptation.  Then what? 

If each generation must learn the lesson anew, let us hope and pray that
it can be relearned at minimal cost. 


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

Whenever I check the news and it looks like the world is still pretty
much in one piece I feel relieved.  The sky has not fallen. 

But now as I think about that expression, part of me wonders what it
would look like if the sky were to fall.  I know that's just a cliche
expression, and that the sky is not the kind of object that could
actually fall.  But even so it could happen in a cartoon or some such. 
So how would they draw it? 

It might start with vague rumbling and crackling noises overhead,
accompanied by a rain of small bits of debris.  You look up and see a
network of rapidly growing cracks.  Then larger and larger pieces would
come crashing to the ground everywhere. 

If it were to happen at night, many of the fallen pieces might still
contain twinkly little pinpoints of stars, while anyone looking up sees
only blackness where the sky had been. 

If it happens during the day I would expect the fallen pieces to be blue
and/or gray, depending on how clear or cloudy the weather had been just
before the collapse. 

What's harder to imagine is what we would see above where the sky had
been.  Blackness?  An expanse of blank white space?  Gears and machinery
and such?  Heaven, with angels flying hither and yon? 

Or maybe it's something indescribable.  Whatever it is is so wondrous
that you're speechless.  And then when you look away and the power of
speech gradually returns, you can't recall what you saw.  So you look up
to refresh your memory and are once again speechless.  It's beyond the
power of the human mind to grasp. 

The only way to depict that in a cartoon or comic strip might be to never
actually show it on camera.  Thus it would join such things as how to
start sawing a hole in the floor, or what someone on the other side sees
when you slap a portable hole onto a wall. 

Yes, that would be kind of frustrating to the audience, but I suspect
that any attempt to actually show it would disappoint those with anything
resembling good imaginations. 


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

There are at least two sides to every story, unless it's written on
Mobius-strip paper. 


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

Something I got to wondering about recently is how various mythical
creatures would sleep. 

For example, how do centaurs sleep?  Do they sleep standing up like
horses, or do they lie down?  The horse part might be OK with sleeping
standing up, but what of the human part?  And if the human part preferred
to lie down to sleep, would there be any really good position?  A centaur
might be able to sleep on its side, but turning over would be a major
operation.  Has anyone really thought this through? 

And then what of the various winged humanoids, such as fairies and
angels?  It may depend on the type of wings. 

For example, I have a picture of a fairy with what look like butterfly
wings.  That kind of wing looks good in the picture, but could get
awkward in bed.  If he holds them together like many butterflies do, he
could sleep on his stomach or side, but would have problems if he tried
to use blankets and sheets and such.  If he spreads them wide he could
lie on his back, but wouldn't be able to turn over easily.  And trying to
sleep with another person could be a problem. 

Bee-type wings and angel wings might not be quite as bad for sleeping,
but could still be kind of awkward. 

Or do magical beings need to sleep at all?  That would be one way out of
the problem.  Among humans, sleep seems to serve a number of functions,
not all of which are understood.  Might magical beings have some other
way of dealing with those needs, and thus not need sleep as we know it at
all? 

There's a lot of stuff here that we don't know, and may never really be
certain of.  So the story-teller's guess is as good as any. 


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

I read somewhere that some police department in Thailand will make
officers who break the rules wear Hello Kitty armbands as punishment. 
The logic is that police officers are generally macho men, so the
childlike cuteness of the Hello Kitty images will seem degrading to them. 

According to the article the officers won't be wearing the armbands in
public, but will have to wear them as long as they are in the station. 
And they're also taken off outside duty, so they'll be in the station
most of the time. 


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

This happened at one of those big hardware stores. 

I was walking fairly briskly down an aisle, on my way to something I knew
to be in a part of the store some distance away.  Someone else was
walking in the opposite direction up the same aisle.  Just as we passed I
heard him softly say "You look ridiculous."  Then, before I could come up
with a reply, he was gone.  That may have been just as well, because
that's the kind of subjective value judgment that you can't really say
much in reply to. 

I felt more amused than offended, if I even felt offended at all. 

Some Spock-like part of me agrees that he's sort of right, in the sense
that there's seldom any rational reason for anybody to go around with
long hair and glitter and a nose ring.  But then the primary reason not
to go around with long hair and glitter and a nose ring (assuming one
wants to) is that this society has sort of tacitly agreed that "normal"
men don't go around with long hair and glitter and nose rings.  If you
are willing to not be "normal" then you might as well go for it. 

Yes, there are some situations where long hair and nose rings and such
can be a physical impediment or even a safety hazard, but then the same
can be said of neckties.  In any event, I hardly ever find myself in
those types of situations so that argument doesn't apply. 

Besides, not everyone agrees with that anonymous person in the hardware
store.  For every comment of that sort I've gotten several compliments. 

And be the rational considerations as they may, when I look at myself in
the mirror and see the long hair and glitter and nose ring it just sort
of feels right. 

So I'll probably keep the long hair and glitter and nose ring for the
foreseeable future. 


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

I've been dealing with a cold the last few days, which sort of reminded 
me of this: 

                        Incident Along Fantasy Way 
                          Hospital Parking Only


On a street near where I live was a parking lot.
Then they fenced it off
And dug a big hole
Like they were going to build something.
But the sign remained:
"PARKING FOR HOSPITAL ONLY".
A month went by and nothing else happened
And I eventually stopped thinking about it.

Then one day instead of the hole
There was a magnificent building
With all kinds of people
And cars and delivery trucks
And ambulances
Coming and going
And over the door a sign:
"MERCY HOSPITAL".
It stood there a week
Then one day was gone
Leaving only the hole
And the parking sign.

A month or two later came another --
Sirens all hours of the night
And the sign said "CENTRAL EMERGENCY".
It stayed about ten days.

Then one evening as I strolled by
I saw that where the hospitals had been
Was now a bank,
And taped to the front door was a slip of paper:
A parking ticket.


                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 0035 hr 10/20/74
                                        entered 1635 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.com or 
bubbles@well.sf.ca.us).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

    
I love the fallen sky image.  I wonder... if the sky fell at night and was
all twinkly in the shards, would the pieces turn gold then pink in the
morning, and then go to a blue or fluffy white?  Very cool.
  

    
And then when they started trying to repair it, would they come at night
with astronomers and star charts and such to figure out which pieces
belong where?  Or would they just stick the pieces up at random, giving us
all new constellations?
  

    
Tom, with a good illustrator you'd pretty much have a charming kids book 
right there.
  

    
I'm going to be offline for a few days, but <119> is food for thought.
  

    
                            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 #156
                      New Moon of September 11, 2007


Contents copyright 2007 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 issue happens to come due on the anniversary of the September 11
terrorist attacks.  That brings up questions such as where you were and
what you were doing when you got the news. 

Most of the carnage happened during the morning, East Coast time.  I'm in
California.  What with the time difference, things were starting to get
into the aftermath phases by the time I got up.  So when I logged on to
my computer and brought up a local radio station's Web page to check the
morning news, both World Trade Center towers were already down. 

Things were still rather chaotic.  For example, estimates of the number
of people killed varied by at least an order of magnitude, from a couple
of thousand up to the tens of thousands.  And nobody really knew how many
planes might at that very moment be on their way to other targets. 

Some semblance of order gradually returned, although some effects linger. 

One effect I've noticed on me personally is that I tend to check the
news, or at least the headlines, more often than I used to.  If something
of the sort does happen again there may be nothing I can do about it, but
I still feel a need to know.  Or maybe I'm just seeking reassurance that
what's left of the world is still more or less intact. 


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

I'm reminded of other major news events that became world-wide (or at
least nation-wide) shared experiences that people remember for the rest
of their lives.  For me they include the events of September 11, along
with the launching of Sputnik, the JFK assassination, and, on a happier
note, the first Moon landing.

Nowadays more and more people are too young to remember Sputnik or JFK,
or even the Moon landings, although we do share memories of more recent
events such as the killing of John Lennon and the Space Shuttle
disasters. 

Likewise, my parents' generation had their share of events I'm too young
to recall, such as the "War of the Worlds" panic, the Hindenburg
disaster, and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 

But what of my grandparents and great-grandparents?  Did they too share
world-wide experiences that my parents were too young to remember?  I
suspect not.  Although there have been major tragedies and triumphs down
through history since time immemorial, only within the last hundred or so
years has technology allowed the whole world to see or hear such events
more or less as they unfolded. 


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

October 4, which is coming up in about three weeks, is the fiftieth
anniversary of the first successful artificial satellite, launched in
1957 by the Soviet Union.  At the time it was seen as a significant Cold
War triumph for the Soviets.  Thus most Americans took it as bad news
rather than an occasion for rejoicing. 

I've written about this at length before, so rather than repeat it here
I'll just offer the URL.  You'll need to scroll way down, almost to the
end.

  http://www.well.com/~bubbles/SS0022.txt

I also mentioned it in a couple of subsequent issues, but they mostly
referenced that same article, with little new material added.  If you
wish, you can check issues 34 and 132:

  http://www.well.com/~bubbles/SS0034.txt
  http://www.well.com/~bubbles/SS0132.txt

And don't forget Wikipedia (even though I didn't write the entry):

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


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

Possible cartoon idea, unless someone else has already thought of it:

A mother is breast-feeding a baby.  Tattooed (or otherwise printed) on
her skin near the nipple is the nutrition information for human breast
milk. 


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

There I was, sitting at my computer writing up some idea about life in
various magical kingdoms and fairylands and such, when I heard a bunch of
emergency vehicles going by outside, sirens blaring.  That got me to
thinking about emergency responders in the various magical realms, and
whether they would use sirens. 

Emergencies in many such places are likely to be dealt with by knights on
horseback or wizards or some such.  These are almost never depicted using
sirens and flashing lights and the like to warn other traffic to let them
pass.  Why is that? 

Do they not need to give advance warning to others to clear the way?  Is
a horse maneuverable enough to just step around obstacles and through
other traffic?  How often is traffic congested enough to be a significant
problem? 

That's probably part of it, but I suspect that even if some equivalent of
a siren was needed they'd use something more in tune with local
conditions, such as birds flying ahead to cry out a warning. 

And don't forget magic carpets.  They could perform functions analogous
to helicopters in our world. 

There could be a whole set of very efficient emergency services, but
based on magic rather than our kind of physical technology.  How often do
we see that in stories? 


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

Another candidate for least popular Super-Hero: Tattle-Tale Man.

Powers: Limited flight, limited teleportation, X-ray vision,
super-hearing, limited mind-reading ability. 

Tattle-Tale Man goes around telling school teachers about kids who
misbehave in class while the teacher's back is turned.  All the kids hate
him, and even the teachers don't care for him all that much.  But that's
his job, so he keeps doing it. 

The police have tried to recruit him as a crime fighter, but so far have
not succeeded.  The Homeland Security people have had no better luck.  He
is rumored to be working for Santa Claus, who will neither confirm nor
deny the reports. 

Even though nobody likes him, he's in the official Super-Hero Registry,
with a caped costume and everything.  That makes him technically eligible
for a movie, a TV series, and a comic book, but so far no studios or
publishers have expressed interest. 

In the absence of any credible reports that he is negotiating with toy
companies and fast-food chains for a line of action figures and other
merchandise, several such companies have issued pre-emptive denials. 


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

Lesser-known super powers: Neutrino vision. 

The power of neutrino vision lets you see through doors and walls and
such like they weren't even there.  You can't hide anything from it. 
That's because neutrinos go right through ordinary matter like it wasn't
even there. 

The downside is that neutrinos also go through whatever you might be
looking for like it wasn't even there.  Ordinary matter is effectively
invisible. 

But it isn't totally useless.  The sun puts out a lot of neutrinos, as do
many stars.  Thus you can always see the sun, even at night when it's
below the horizon and even when you're deep in a maze of twisty little
passages, regardless of whether or not they're all alike.  This can be
useful for navigation. 


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

The subject of divination by reading entrails, animal or human, came up
on an email list.  The writer mentioned it as an example of a barbaric
practice that used to be common but has now largely died out. 

My immediate thought was that with modern medical technology such as
laproscopic surgery, or even non-invasive techniques such as ultrasound
or CAT scans or MRI, it may be possible to get a reading without actually
harming the person or animal whose entrails are being read. 

There would still be problems.  Diviners accustomed to the traditional
way of reading entrails might have difficulty learning the newer methods. 
And then there's the matter of getting time on the equipment, since it's
likely to be busy with medical patients.  But in a society where such
practices were more generally accepted than they are here, those problems
would be solvable. 

But be that as it may, I don't expect a resurgence of entrail-reading any
time soon. 


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

The 9/11 issue date reminded me of this.  Although it was written months
after those events, I was thinking of the likes of Osama Bin Laden when I
wrote it.  If you ignore the specific details it can apply almost
universally. 


                             Lessons in Pain


When the evil ruler arrives in the Martyr's Paradise
May he begin to learn.  

May the maidens who serve his carnal desires
Begin to arouse deeper feelings.  
Little by little, over eons of eternity, 
May he learn to share his soul.  

Then once he has learned love, 
Let him learn pain:   
Beyond the physical pain of fire or falling buildings, 
Let him know the cutting short of hopes and dreams, 
The desperation of having to choose one death over another, 
The fallen comrades and the empty firehouse, 
The child whose parents will never return, 
And the emptiness of the hole in the heart 
  when a loved one's fate is simply Unknown.  

Let every death that has brought him joy
Now bring its full measure of sorrow.  

And then ...

Knowing that whatever we ask for others we also ask for ourselves, 
And that I too have caused my share of pain, 
Once we have known the pain we have caused, 
Let the gods be merciful.  



                                       -- Tom Digby
                                       Written 18:16 12/19/2001


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

               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.com or 
bubbles@well.sf.ca.us).  I currently do that one manually.  


                                -- END --
  

    

>  Lessons in Pain

That's some poem.
  

    
                            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 #157
                       New Moon of October 10, 2007


Contents copyright 2007 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.  


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

Fall has definitely started falling.  We're getting into what may be the
first real rainy spell of the season, after a false start (or maybe a
preview) back in September.  That was just one rainy day preceded and
followed by sunshine, while this time there are several storms lined up,
set to arrive a couple of days apart over the next week or so. 

What was interesting about the earlier rain was that it came on the day
of our group's Fall Equinox celebration.  I was kind of annoyed at first,
what with having to move our ritual from the host's back yard to their
covered patio, but it all worked out.  And it may have been for the best,
as a sort of sample of the coming season. 


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

Halloween is just three weeks away, and people are starting to put up
their seasonal decorations.  One common item is fake tombstones.  That
led me to think of possible epitaphs to put on them.  While there may not
be room for anything much beyond "R.I.P." if you want it to be readable
from cars on the street, they might still work in situations where the
audience can get closer, as in a "haunted house" or the like. 

So here are some I've come up with:

   -----------------

 1970 Russian Roulette Champion
 1971 Russian Roulette Champion
 1972 Russian Roulette Second Place

   -----------------

 Your Name Here

   -----------------

 Jumped onto the tracks to make the train swerve. 

   -----------------

 If you were dead, you'd be home now. 

   -----------------

 Winner of the prestigious Darwin Award

   -----------------

 I thought, therefore I was.  


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

About a year ago I wrote of finding the line "All thought is
anthropomorphic" written on a pillar under a freeway overpass.  I also
mentioned that I added a comment of my own.  See

  http://www.well.com/~bubbles/SS0145.txt

We recently had another convention at that same hotel, so I walked that
same route to breakfast.  The line, along with my comment on it, was
still there.  Apparently no one had tried to clean it off, and no one had
seen fit to comment further.  What may have saved it is the fact that it
was written in small letters, not much bigger than when you write a note
on paper, and is thus easy to overlook even if you're on foot.  It's
pretty much impossible to see if you're in a car.  Also, since it's under
an overpass, it's protected from the elements. 

The next convention that I am likely to attend at that hotel will be in
February.  Will the line still be there? 


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

As some of you may know, I sometimes blow soap bubbles at random people
on the street or wherever.  Reactions generally range from no apparent
reaction to some expression of pleasure, with negative reactions being
relatively rare. 

I do recall one mixed reaction: A man pushing a baby stroller expressed
pleasure, but the kid in the stroller was definitely frowning (although I
don't think the kid was frowning at the bubbles).  The man didn't seem to
be aware of the kid's mood. 

It later occurred to me that the way many (most?) strollers are designed,
the person pushing it can't see the kid's face.  Would it be better if
they could? 

If so, it should be possible to do it with either mirrors or a video
hookup.  I think mirrors would be cheaper, but what with computer stuff
getting less and less expensive as technology advances, video might be
the way to go.  And with video, you could also have a second camera and
screen so the kid sees the adult's face. 

Is this being done already?  I don't have enough dealings with parents of
young children to know.  If it isn't, would it be worthwhile to develop
such a system? 


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

In a tropical part of Cartoonland is a house straddling the Equator.  The
line painted on the floor runs right through the toilet in one of the
bathrooms.

So when anybody flushes that toilet, the water in the south half of the
bowl tries to go clockwise while the water in the north half of the bowl
tries to go counter-clockwise.  The two opposing currents collide in the
west, and water sloshes out over the western edge of the bowl.

So the residents effectively can't use that bathroom, although they do
make a bit of money showing it off to tourists.


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

They're redoing the back parking area for this building.  

It occurred to me to wonder what if the people tearing out the old paving
were to stumble across buried treasure or something?  What if they find a
half-dozen chests full of gold and jewels?  They probably wouldn't have
any legal claim to it, but would whoever does get legal title give them a
reward finding it? 

Or what if they find a bunch of dead bodies?  Perhaps the land once
belonged to some Prohibition-era gang leader, who buried his enemies
there and then arranged to have the building built to cover up the
evidence.  I don't think this building is that old, but maybe the
gangsters were time travelers or something. 

Or maybe that back parking area is an old Indian burial ground with some
kind of curse on it.  The curse had been blocked by some special magical
ingredients in the pavement, and is now about to be unleashed.  And since
the new pavement probably won't contain that special ingredient, the
curse will continue to operate long after the work is completed. 

Taking this further, what if some old Indian burial ground with a curse
on it gets occupied by a junkyard?  Then all the old cars and appliances
and such that were junked there might start coming back to life as
zombies. 

Or maybe it's just one junk car up on blocks in somebody's back yard. 
The owner thinks it somehow got stolen, but it's actually driving around
inflicting random mayhem, just like in some low-budget horror movie. 

If it's driving around on its own with no driver or passengers, it's
probably not eligible to drive in the carpool lane.  So what happens when
a cop tries to pull it over? 

Even if the car is occupied, do zombies count toward being legal in the
carpool lane?  If they don't, and some cop writes them a ticket, and they
decide to fight it, what happens when the case gets to court and the
zombie defendants start devouring the judge and prosecutor, along with
random spectators? 

Would the court reporter flee early on, or would he or she stay,
recording the proceedings until the bitter end, with the transcript
breaking off in mid-sentence?  That would be especially dramatic in a
movie, with some character finding the aborted transcript as their first
inkling that they have a Problem. 

Maybe the zombies will plea-bargain and settle for community service. 
Would you trust them?  I would have doubts, even if the community service
consisted of going around devouring other criminals. 

This is getting rather silly, but it might do for some kind of comedy
movie.  Anybody interested in doing it? 


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

The phone just rang, and as usual I let the machine take it.  The
"message" was a few seconds of the sound of someone typing on a computer
keyboard.  Then whoever it was hung up.  This does not strike me as a
very productive use of people's time. 


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

Since we're now forty years past the Summer of Love, and it's coming up
on Halloween, I'm reminded of this:


                              Going to Seed


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

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

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

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

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

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


                                -- Tom Digby
                                written  Tue Oct  5 20:54:34 PDT 2004



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

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

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

  ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net 

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

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

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

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

and select the ss_talk list.  Enter your email address in the space 
provided and hit Signup.  When you receive an email confirmation request 
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To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.com or 
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                                -- END --
  

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

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

                               Issue #158
                       New Moon of November 9, 2007


Contents copyright 2007 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 thing on my mind right now is a new Web site I'm setting up:  

  http://www.plergb.com/

Right now it just has pointers to my WELL site, including an old writeup
about the word Plergb.  It's also hosting the Silicon Soapware email
lists.  But I do have plans in mind for other stuff to put there later. 
Stay tuned. 


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

Another item of note is the recent end of Daylight Saving time.  Now
activities and events that had been starting in evening twilight, or even
by the last bits of the day's sunlight, have been starting in full
darkness.  That makes winter feel a lot closer, even though the weather
has been warmer than usual. 

On the other hand, mornings aren't as gloomy as they had been in recent
weeks. 

Another thought related to Daylight Saving: The extra hour we get in the
fall is not the same as the hour we lost last spring.  It's an hour
earlier.  We lose the hour from 2 am to 3 am in the spring, and in return
we get an extra hour from 1 am to 2 am in the fall. 

Does this matter in the grand scheme of things?  Probably not.  Most
people, even those who are not asleep at the moment of change, probably
don't even notice. 

But it may still be an interesting bit of trivia.  Or maybe not. 


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

There's a coffee house near here that has an Open Mike every Monday
night.  Most of the performers are musicians, but there are a few poets,
including me. 

The nature of coffee houses is such that there will be distractions:
People ordering food and drink, occasional noise from the espresso
machine, and so on.  I'm usually OK with that. 

But one recent night was much worse than usual.  While I was up there
reading I noticed more than the usual number of people talking in the
back of the room.  People at one table even had a laptop playing some
kind of little movie or something, complete with audio.  And then there
was some guy yakking on a cell phone, almost loud enough for me to follow
his side of the conversation.  All in all, it left me with the feeling
that nobody was really interested in me.  I mentioned this to one of the
organizers later, and she said that people were indeed interested.  But
it sure didn't feel that way while I was trying to perform. 

Now it occurs to me that I may have been witnessing the birth of the next
Silicon Valley wonder that nobody notices at the time but which later
ends up changing the world.  Years will pass and I will have pretty much
forgotten the incident.  But then they'll suddenly go public, or maybe
some big corporation will buy them out, and as part of the hoopla one of
the founders will reminisce about how they started in the back of a
coffee house with some crazy old man reading weird poetry at them while
they were trying to put a presentation together.  Then if I'm lucky I'll
see the news reports and remember ...

On the other hand, it could have been just another Silicon Valley dream
that is full of bright promises today but, come tomorrow, will quietly
fade away and never be heard from again.  There's no way to tell, at
least for now.  All I can do is wait. 


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

And now this just sort of popped into my head:

The founders of some Silicon Valley startup are in the middle of a
corporate meeting when an unannounced visitor walks in.  He is dressed in
a black robe, hooded so that his face is in darkness, and is carrying a
scythe.  He announces that he is taking over the company and that
everybody else has been laid off and can go home now.  He may have
personal appointments with some of them later, but that's not on today's
agenda and he doesn't want to discuss it right now. 

Then as the last of them walk out the door they notice that the potted
plants in the reception area have withered. 

It's time to set that dream aside and try to dream up something new. 


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

The bit about people talking during poetry readings and such reminds me
of another thought I've had now and then: Ejection seats in theaters.  If
someone is talking or crinkling candy wrappers or letting their cell
phone ring or otherwise doing something undesirable, one of the ushers or
managers or whoever pushes the button, and BOOM, the malefactor is out of
there. 

Such a thing wouldn't work well outside of cartoons, but it's still a
tempting thought. 


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

Do they have rainbows on other planets?  If so, what do they look like? 

If we think in terms of an observer standing on the surface looking up
into the sky, prospects for seeing rainbows on other worlds in our solar
system aren't too good. 

First, you need enough of an atmosphere to make weather in which some
sort of liquid, whether it be water or methane or something else, can
form clouds and fall as rain.  This atmosphere has to be clear enough to
allow sunlight to shine on those rain clouds.  The liquid droplets in the
clouds also need to be transparent enough for sunlight to bounce around
inside them before coming back out.  And there has to be something like
solid ground for some astronaut or colonist or whatever to stand on to
see the rainbow. 

We can rule out Mercury and our moon because they don't have any
atmosphere to speak of.  Mars's atmosphere is too thin for water to stay
liquid, except possibly at the lowest elevations.  Venus is too cloudy,
while the gas giants don't have any place for our hypothetical observer
to stand.  Titan has an atmosphere which may rain liquid methane, but
again that atmosphere appears to be too cloudy. 

Thus Earth appears to be the only place is our solar system where you can
stand on the ground and look up at the sky and (when conditions are
right) see rainbows.  Although Mars and Titan may offer some faint hope,
rainbows on those worlds would be extremely rare compared to rainbows on
Earth. 

So what if you relax the rules a bit so the observer can be in some sort
of aircraft or spacecraft?  Then Venus and the gas giants become possible
rainbow viewing sites. 

But what would those rainbows look like?  For example, would the radius
of a methane-based rainbow's curve be the same as that of the water-based
rainbows on Earth?  Would the colors be in the same order? 

And if you're out by the gas giants, where the apparent width of the Sun
is smaller, would the colors be more distinct and not blur into each
other as much as they do on Earth? 

Then what if you start considering possible worlds orbiting other suns? 
I'm not expert enough to say.  But there ought to be some interesting
possibilities if you know where and how to look. 


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

There's also the complementary question: What kinds of atmospheric
phenomena might we see on other worlds that you never see on Earth? 


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

If rainbows are as rare on other planets as I think they are, seeing one
would be cause for celebration.  And, at least for me, celebrations often
include blowing bubbles.  So how would one blow bubbles on other planets,
assuming one wants to do it outdoors? 

For one thing, the atmospheres of most other planets aren't compatible
with human lungs, so you'll need a bubble-blowing machine.  But then what
kind of bubble fluid do you put in the machine? 

Based on what kinds of atmospheres the other planets in our system do or
don't have, you'll probably be either on the surface of Titan or on some
kind of balloon or something floating in the atmosphere of one of the gas
giants, and there's a good chance the ambient "air" will be too cold for
water to be liquid.  Thus your bubble solution is likely to be based on
methane or ammonia or something similar rather than water. 

You'll probably need to add some kind of surfactant or something to the
liquid to make it usable for bubble-blowing.  Now we're getting outside
my area of expertise.  Has anyone who knows more chemistry than I
researched this? 


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

"Why should I accept this check?  It's written on the Andromeda Galaxy
Bank.  It'll take millions of years to clear, assuming that bank exists
at all."

"Think of it this way: If it bounces, it'll be our descendents' problem,
not ours." 


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

Every now and then I see a news item about police solving some
decades-old crime, often by using DNA matching or some other such
technology that didn't exist back then. 

So imagine one such case where they track down the prime suspect, only to
find that he's dead.  Well, sort of dead.  He's on ice at one of those
cryonics places. 

So what do they do now?  Forget the whole thing?  Ask the cryonics people
to put some kind of hold on him, so they get notified if and when he's
about to be revived?  Other? 

It may well depend on the personal beliefs of the top brass, especially
if the cryonics people haven't managed to revive anyone yet. 


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

While we have other worlds on our minds ...

                        Incident Along Fantasy Way
                               Projections

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

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

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

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

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


                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 0200  8/01/74
                                        entered 1205  4/09/92


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

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

There are two email lists, one that allows reader comments and one that 
does not.  Both are linked from 

  http://www.plergb.com/Mail_Lists/Silicon_Soapware_Zine-Pages.html

If you are already receiving Silicon Soapware and want to unsubscribe 
or otherwise change settings, the relevant URL should be in the footer 
appended to the end of this section.  

Or you can use the above URL to navigate to the appropriate subscription 
form, which will also allow you to cancel your subscription or change 
your settings. 

                                -- END --
  

    

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

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

                                Issue #159
                       New Moon of December 9, 2007


Contents copyright 2007 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 the Christmas (etc.) holiday season again.  Is there anything I can
say about it that hasn't been said already?  Or does that not matter
because people want, or at least expect, to hear and see the old cliches
again?  Re-experiencing sights and sounds and smells and tastes that one
has pleasant memories of can indeed bring comfort and joy, and this is
the season for doing that. 

Of course there are those less fortunate.  Even among those who at first
glance appear to be doing well, there are some whose memories of
Christmas Past and feelings evoked by Christmas Present are anything but
comforting or joyous.  What shall we say to them?  The normal wishes for
a joyful holiday season may only be a source of more inner pain. 

I like to think that I can at least wish them safe passage through this
season of darkness and into brighter and happier times. 


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

On a less somber note, one modern Christmas sight that was not a part of
my childhood is those large inflatable lawn decorations, snowmen and
Santa figures and the like.  They're all over the place today, but were
unheard of when I was a kid. 

I don't have strong feelings either way about them.  They're OK if others
want them, but I wouldn't go out of my way to get one. 

But what when bedtime comes and people turn their lights off for the
night?  And what of the daytime, when many people leave their outside
Christmas lights dark?  If the giant Santa or snowman or whatever is on
the same circuit, it won't stay inflated for long once the power is cut. 
And a deflated inflatable is a lot more noticeable, at least to me, than
a few unlit strings of lights. 

So when I take my morning walk, I see quite a few homes whose front lawns
are "decorated" with limp fabric, sometimes lying flat and sometimes
crumpled at random or draped over the various and sundry smaller yard
ornaments or whatever. 

Is that really the kind of thing that says Christmas to those people? 


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

Now I'm reminded of another childhood Christmas memory:

I was sitting next to a wall, looking at my shadow.  But it wasn't an
ordinary looking shadow.  There were a number of overlapping shadows,
some of them different colors.  I don't know if I deduced it at the time
or whether I thought it out later, but I remember noticing the connection
between those colored shadows and the colored lights on the nearby
Christmas tree. 

This was back when a string of Christmas lights would have had a
relatively small number of relatively large bulbs compared to most of the
lights you see nowadays.  The type we used came eight to the string.  So
today's children may not get to see the same display of colored shadows
that I saw. 


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

Today's children also miss out on another aspect of Christmas
decorations: Testing bulbs.  Those eight-light strings were wired in
series, so when one bulb burned out the entire string went dark.  Guess
who was given the chore of finding and replacing the bad bulb(s).  That
was rather frustrating work, especially since there was no way to test a
bulb except by screwing it into a socket and seeing if the string lit up. 
That may not sound all that bad in theory, but sometimes there was more
than one bad bulb involved.  And by Murphy's Law, the last bad bulb was
always hidden away in some hard-to-see and hard-to-reach location.  That
made things much more complicated. 

And don't get me started on Angel Hair: Itchy fiberglass Angel Hair, all
over the tree.  Yes, it did look kind of pretty with the colored lights
shining through it, but still ...

When I got a little older I rigged up a bulb tester, based on something I
saw being used in a store to test bulbs at the register.  Nowadays it
would bring shrieks of horror from the safety people, what with exposed
live contacts that you had to press the base of the bulb up against, but
those were less risk-averse times.  In any event, it worked and we
survived and didn't get nearly as frustrated over burned-out bulbs after
that. 

Later advances in technology have pretty much eliminated the problem. 
Kids nowadays should consider themselves lucky. 


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

Back on the lawn decorations, it occurs to me that a couple of years ago,
around the bottom of the dot-com crunch, deflated inflatables could have
been interpreted as symbolizing the state of Silicon Valley.  But things
are supposedly looking better now, so that seems less appropriate.  Of
course individual fortunes may vary. 


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

Something else in the news recently: Supposedly the Chinese army recently
instituted a policy of having squad leaders and such hug their
subordinates as a way of inspiring confidence or building loyalty or
something.  They wrote up detailed instructions on how to hug (where to
put hands, etc.), along with little ritual speeches to be recited during
the hug.  But then when the news of this started getting out it became an
object of public ridicule and was soon dropped.  Or something like that. 


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

"What's with this stuff labeled ZOO GLUE with all these pictures of
animals?"

"The zoo was selling glue as a fund-raiser." 

"Is it really made from zoo animals?"

"No.  That was just a scare tactic."

"So how did it do?"

"ZOO GLUE sold OK for a while, but then people quit buying once the
novelty started wearing off.  The zoo eventually went bankrupt and all
the animals got laid off." 

"Laid off?  You mean like from a job?  What happened after that."

"They were homeless on the streets for a while, but most of them
eventually got hired by other zoos and circuses and such."

"Really?  They let wild animals roam the streets here?  And what's this
about them having jobs?"

"They're not really wild animals.  They're cartoon characters like
everybody else around here.  It's just that their job at the zoo was to
look and act like wild animals.  They were free to be anthropomorphic
after hours when there were no customers around.  So they had as much
right to walk the streets as anybody else." 

"You know, that almost makes sense."


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

A friend gave me a bubble-blower neck pendant in the shape of a UFO
alien.  I think it's the type known as the "grays".  It's humanoid with a
large head with large eyes and relatively narrow jaw.  Its entire visible
surface is one shade of gray, probably because solid colors are easy to
mold out of plastic with no need to print or paint anything. 

It is either nude or wearing some kind of form-fitting garment, perhaps a
space suit or something similar.  Be that as it may, it has no visible
genitals.  It does have fairly prominent abdominal muscles. 

That got me to wondering: Why do you practically never see obese or
overweight or even slightly out-of-shape UFO aliens? 

Do they have a gym somewhere where they hang out when they're not busy
flying around in unidentified objects?  Do their space suits have
built-in corsets or something to make them look physically fit even when
they aren't?  Do they get their nourishment by some means other than what
we think of as "eating", so that there is no temptation to over-indulge? 
Or are the creatures we see not really sentient beings at all, but some
kind of robot or something that the real aliens control from afar? 

I do recall at least one apparently obese alien in one of the Star Wars
movies, but he(?) wasn't humanoid. 

So where have all the out-of-shape aliens gone? 


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

Speaking of space aliens and colony planets and such, how might Christmas
look to humans on some far-off world? 


                     Let's Imagine Christmas on Terra


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

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

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

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

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



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


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

               HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU

There are two email lists, one that allows reader comments and one that 
does not.  Both are linked from 

  http://www.plergb.com/Mail_Lists/Silicon_Soapware_Zine-Pages.html

If you are already receiving Silicon Soapware and want to unsubscribe 
or otherwise change settings, the relevant URL should be in the footer 
appended to the end of this section.  

Or you can use the above URL to navigate to the appropriate subscription 
form, which will also allow you to cancel your subscription or change 
your settings. 

                                -- END --