SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.sf.ca.us = tgdigby@netcom.com http://www.well.com/user/bubbles/ Issue #38 New Moon of January 27, 1998 Contents copyright 1997 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. For more background info, details of how the mailing list works, etc., ask for a copy of issue #Zero. If you email me a reply or comment, please make clear whether or not it's for publication. ********************* My almanac says New Moon is January 27. The calendar on the wall shows it on January 28. Who's right? Both of them. According to the almanac, New Moon is 10:01 pm Pacific time on January 27. If the calendar publisher is on the East Coast it would be after midnight in their time zone, putting New Moon on January 28 for them. ********************* Ostrich Survives Sidewalk Calamity Good thing he was a cartoon ostrich. Had he been a live-action ostrich he would not have lived through the experience. But then he probably would never have gotten into that kind of trouble in the first place. Some assistant zookeeper left a cage door open one day, and our ostrich decided to take a walk. As it happened, he walked right into where they were putting in a new sidewalk. When he stepped into the fresh concrete the construction crew started yelling at him, so he did what any cartoon ostrich would do when threatened: He stuck his head in the sand, or what he thought was sand. Actually it was fresh concrete. Now they say ostriches stick their heads in the sand when threatened because they believe that if they can't see you, then you can't see them. As you can tell from this, ostriches aren't supposed to be very bright. But be that as it may, the construction crew also happened to be cartoon characters, so it worked. They searched and searched in vain for whoever had messed up their nice neat sidewalk. And as they searched, the cartoon concrete hardened. The ostrich was stuck fast, head and feet buried in the concrete. Seeing no culprit, the workers patched things up as best they could and went home. A day or two later the sidewalk was opened to traffic. Since that neighborhood was almost entirely cartoon characters, nobody saw the ostrich stuck there. People would bump into him and wonder a little, but since bumping into invisible obstacles in the middle of the street was all in a day's work for cartoon characters, nobody made a fuss about it. Even when the zoo put up LOST OSTRICH posters all over the place nobody made the logical connection. Then along came a blind man with a guide dog. Even though the cartoon dog couldn't see the ostrich and blundered into him like everybody else, his keen canine sense of smell told him that the obstacle was an ostrich. So he alerted his master that here was something out of the ordinary. The master felt around, and being under no obligation to not perceive what couldn't be seen by others, recognized that he was feeling the lost ostrich. He then alerted the authorities. Getting him out took time. Since cartoon characters couldn't see the ostrich because his head was in what passed for sand, they had to bring in live-action workers to jackhammer him out of the concrete. But they eventually managed, and brought him back to his cage at the zoo. There he is to this day, physically none the worse for the ordeal. But his keepers say that mentally he's never been quite the same since. ********************* Someone at a party mentioned the Prince of Darkness, and the thought that sprang into my mind was of the Enchanted Frog of Darkness. Whatever you do, don't kiss it. ********************* In other news, I got a multiply-forwarded email, supposedly from Bill Gates at Microsoft. It claims to be a test of new email tracking software and requests that people forward it to everybody they know so as to give Microsoft something to test. As an incentive, it says that once it reaches 1000 people everybody it was forwarded to will get $1000 and a copy of Windows 98. I suspect a hoax. I don't see how such a program would work with the Internet's wide variety of hardware and software and even wider variety of opinions about personal privacy. You might be able to do something like this within a corporate intranet where the whole system is under one central authority, or among users of a service like AOL (again, one central authority), but that's about it. So I'm pretty sure this is bogus. But bogus or not, I expect it to take on a life of its own and circulate for years to come, a new Urban Legend. ********************* Last week I had occasion to visit a college campus, and had some free time there between appointments. There was a little courtyard with people coming and going, so I spent a few minutes blowing bubbles. I got lots more smiles and generally positive reactions than I usually do on the street, and fewer people whose expressions seemed to be saying "There are too many variables in the world, and this is one of them." And that reminded me of what follows: ********************* 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 -- END --