SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.sf.ca.us http://www.well.com/user/bubbles/ Issue #56 New Moon of August 11, 1999 Contents copyright 1999 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. If you don't want to read about the mechanics of this, skip down to the row of asterisks (****). If you're getting it via email and the headers show the originating site as "lists.best.com" you're getting the list version, and anything you send to DigbyZine@lists.best.com will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation (although so far traffic has been light). If there's no mention of "lists.best.com" in the headers, you're getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon Soapware with no banter. The content is the same for both. To get on or off the conversation-list version send email to DigbyZine-request@lists.best.com with the word "subscribe" (to get on the list) or "unsubscribe" (to get off) in the body, but nothing else (except maybe your signature if that's automatic). Then when you get a confirmation message edit the REJECT in the subject line to ACCEPT and send it back. To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or bubbles@well.com). I do that one manually. ********************* The recent eclipse got me to thinking, even though I didn't see it. As most of you know, the apparent similarity in size between our sun and moon is a coincidence that is rather unusual. Other planets are likely to have moons that look much smaller or much larger than their suns. That means our particular type of solar eclipse is not likely to be seen in very many other places in the universe. That leads me to wonder if beings from other planets might come to Earth to see eclipses. Planets whose moons look too small won't have total eclipses at all. They may have annular eclipses, or they may just have transits, where the moons are small dark spots silhouetted against the sun. People from such planets might well journey elsewhere to see total eclipses. But would they come to Earth? They might go to planets whose moons look bigger than their suns. Such planets would have total solar eclipses. The path of totality would be much wider than here, which means there would be more room for eclipse-watchers to congregate, and totality would last longer. There would probably be some such planets where the orbital lineup is such that eclipses occur more often than here, making trips easier to schedule. And if such planets were already part of the Galactic Federation or whatever, interstellar eclipse-watchers could gather openly with no need for stealth. With all those advantages, why come to Earth? Because Earth's eclipses are more dramatic. The close match of apparent sizes gives a better view of the solar corona. And if the aliens are capable of mingling with Earth humans without being detected, they might enjoy being part of an excited multitude at such a spectacle. So the next time you're part of the crowd at a solar eclipse, look around you. There might be aliens among us. ********************* At a recent party somebody brought out a magazine containing a child's drawing of a dinosaur playing a harp. One thing led to another and we got to discussing things like how such a harp might be built, what it might be strung with, and what the pitches of the notes might be. The person then observed that such a conversation would not have been possible where he worked. Apparently certain people enjoy such flights of fancy while most others don't. I was reminded of another party where I got to talking with someone else. He was also an engineer, but said he couldn't get into things like Star Wars because "it isn't real". There's apparently some part of him that isn't comfortable thinking about things that can't happen in the real world. Thus he doesn't like science fiction but enjoys historical drama. I asked if that affected his work as an engineer, and he said it didn't because he worked for contractors putting systems together from off-the-shelf components. He said he could tell that I was a "dreamer", and readily admitted that some branches of engineering need dreamers. But the areas he worked in didn't. His work was interesting in an adventurous sort of way, building things like fish-processing plants in places like Sumatra where you often had to work around the lack of local infrastructure, but it was not dreamer-type work. Or at least he didn't think it was. I wonder if this difference in attitudes is cultural, or if there's some innate difference in brain wiring or something. Might there be situations where there is survival value in limiting what one allows oneself to think about? ********************* Once upon a time there was a builder named Eichler who built large numbers of houses in and around the Bay Area (and a few in other places). If you mention an "Eichler house" around here most people who've been here a while will know what you're talking about: Typically an open floor plan and large expanses of glass that bring the outdoors inside, usually built around a courtyard. Some people like Eichler houses while others don't. Now imagine that somebody who recently moved to Cartoonland from California is house-hunting, and he sees what looks like a listing for an Eichler house. So he buys it and moves in. But then things start getting strange, and stranger, and even stranger yet. Finally he digs up the paperwork and looks at the original listing. The word that caught his attention wasn't "Eichler". It was "Escher". ********************* Sometimes I get to thinking while I'm in the shower. The shower stall here is plastic, a kind of fake marble with abstract swirls and such in the pattern. If you're the kind of person who can see patterns in clouds, then some of the swirls in the shower stall walls could be thought of as looking like faces. I could photograph them, superimpose drawings to point out the face-like aspects, and claim that they are trapped souls that need to be set free. Then I could bring in priests and exorcists and such to do the rites, and when the other roommates start to object to all the priests and exorcists and such coming and going and doing rituals in the bathroom at all hours of the day and night, I could go to the tabloids. There are souls in torment here, and the public has a right to know! Of course if I did that the other roommates would probably make me move out about the time crowds started gathering out front and people I hadn't invited started improvising their own rituals out in the middle of the street and movie producers got into bidding wars over film rights. So maybe I'd better just hold off for a while, and hope the trapped souls in the shower won't mind the extra wait too much. ********************* One thing I am good at is following logic from premises I don't agree with. That's relevant to this: I recently looked up the Web site for the Christian Identity church, a racist group that was in the news recently because one of its members was involved in a hate crime. They, along with another hate sect I'd looked at earlier, believe in predestination. They differ in other portions of their doctrine, but both believe that there is an Elect that cannot resist salvation, and then there are the rest of us, unable to hear the Word and thus doomed. Jesus came only for the Elect, not for everybody, and God knew all along, even before Creation, who would be saved and who would not. One sect actually says that God hates the people who are destined to be damned. This leads me to wonder why God would create people he knew ahead of time he would hate, and who would eventually be objects of his wrath: "Let me make some people I can get mad at and smite and throw into a burning pit for all eternity." It sounds like an exercise in some combination of futility and masochism, and maybe also sadism if the part about the burning pit is real. Now it may be that such people are needed as background or something, like extras in a movie, but if so, why not give them some reasonably pleasant fate after he's done with them? Why all the fire and brimstone and torment? It probably makes sense to believers, but it doesn't make sense to me. Whatever the logic, after I had read that site I had the feeling I should wash my browser off with soap. And I'm reminded of a prior observation that the Bible is perhaps the world's biggest Rorshach test. ********************* I'm thinking about Star Wars again, and the relationship between the mind and the Force. In that universe there are many intelligent species, presumably evolved from different roots. Even if all life has a common origin, seeded from cosmic dust or some such, evolution on different planets has taken different courses since then. And different species are likely to be of different ages, some perhaps thousands or millions of years older than others. So do all these intelligent species have the same relationship to the Force? We did have one character who was apparently immune to Jedi mind manipulation. Was that because of differences in how different kinds of brains tie into the Force? Are the minds of some species entirely a product of their brains (as atheists say ours are) while others are more a piece of the Force (like a "soul" or "spirit") that just finds it convenient to work through a physical body? Or is there some cosmic law (perhaps "enforced" by the Force) that a mind is a mind is a mind, once the species evolves past some transitional form that doesn't last very long? Or is this an area that perhaps shouldn't be explored too deeply, lest it give a semblance of validity to racism? ********************* In many parking lots there are signs with a wheelchair icon and the words "PARKING ONLY", often followed by stuff like the section number of the relevant law. That has led me to wonder what wheelchair users might do in those spaces were their activities not limited to parking. Perhaps they would summon up Lovecraftian deities, or maybe dabble in alchemy, or foment rebellion, or write non-y2k-compliant COBOL code. Or maybe they would do things totally unknown to civilized humankind, beyond even my imagination. It's probably good that those signs are there, so that all they can do in those places is park. And that reminds me ... ********************* 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 -- END --