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/~bubbles/ Issue #83 New Moon of October 16, 2001 Contents copyright 2001 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. ********************* ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE For those of you getting this by email: Things may change within the next month or two. The ISP I have the list on is planning to migrate all accounts to different machines with different software and different addresses. They don't seem to have a definite schedule yet. In any event, I've saved the current subscriber list, and am sort of anticipating the change, so hopefully the disruption will be minimal. And from what they say, all should be well once it's over with. So don't be too worried if the list goes down for a while. ********************* Terrorists or no terrorists, life goes on: Often when I drive somewhere on some errand I'll take a walk around that neighborhood. A few days ago on one of those walks I saw something that seemed out of the ordinary, although similar things probably happen all the time when I'm not looking. As I was nearing a tree I noticed a squirrel partway up it. Nothing unusual there. But then I noticed a large bird, probably a hawk, sitting on a branch above the squirrel. The bird was watching the squirrel, possibly considering it for lunch, while the squirrel seemed to be wary of the bird, probably for good reason. The squirrel gradually worked its way up past the bird, keeping to parts of the tree where the branches wouldn't give the bird room to maneuver. Once the squirrel was way up in the top of the tree the bird lost interest and flew away. I doubt that either of them were the least bit concerned about September 11, or Afghanistan, or President Bush, or hijackers, or any of the stuff that TV news has been full of lately. ********************* In the Terrorist Lab: TERRORIST: "What's with these anthrax spores you cooked up for me? They don't make people sick at all. All that happens is that they get the urge to travel by train." BUMBLING ASSISTANT: "Anthrax? I thought you said 'Amtrak'." ********************* People all over the country are flying the Flag. That's all well and good, but what with some of the things that may be done to civil liberties in the name of "security", I think we should also be displaying the Constitution. That's the foundation of the things the Flag is just a symbol of. You might want to display it as a photo-reproduction of the first page, with the "We the People" headline. Even if the rest is illegible, most Americans should recognize it as being the Constitution. A JPEG image (130k) is available at http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/constitution/con1.jpg If you don't like the idea of displaying 200-year-old handwriting that can't be read easily, then display the Preamble (the paragraph that starts out "We the People ...") in some readable typeface. That pretty much sums up what the Constitution is all about. The text is available at http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/constitution/constitution.html I wouldn't display just the Bill of Rights by itself. That could be open to arguments about freedom vs responsibility, especially in times of peril. But if you display the whole Constitution (or something like the first page or the Preamble that symbolizes the whole Constitution) then any argument that being concerned about the Constitution is "un-American" won't be very persuasive. The Constitution is perhaps the most American thing there is. Someone brought up a section in the Flag Code against putting words or signs on the flag or the pole. That's not really a problem. Just put the Constitution near the Flag without actually attaching it. Also, there have been mass ceremonies of people saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Maybe they should also say something like the following, from the Presidential Oath of Office as specified in the Constitution: "I pledge that I will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Ribbons? If you believe in colored ribbons for causes such as this, I would suggest light tan, the color of the 200-year-old paper of the original Constitution (see Image URL above). If you think this is a good idea, spread the word in the appropriate forums. ********************* Someone at a lunch get-together was predicting that hotels around the Winter Olympics will want to inspect guests' luggage to make sure nobody is bringing a bomb up to their room. Maybe open everything, or maybe just have the bellhops check the weight and have some of those trained dogs sniff for explosives. Would guests stand for that? And then we got into a lighter mood and the question came up of what if one too-heavy suitcase turns out to contain anvils? "OK, but no hammering after 10 pm. And I see you have coal in that other suitcase, but you're in a non-smoking room. Remember, setting up a forge in a non-smoking room is a no-no." But what about the balcony? "It might be OK to put a small forge on the balcony, but be careful with that anvil. Don't put it on the railing where it might fall off and hit somebody on the head." ********************* There are a couple of news photos of the WTC that show what appears to be a devil face in the smoke. There's been discussion of this in some online forums I'm on. As part of the conversation I posted a list of possibilities, something like this: 1 Doctored photo 1a By photographer 1b By news agency 1c By others 2 Random chance 3 Actual supernatural phenomena 3a Satan appearing in the smoke 3b God (or other good guys) posting a devil face as a warning 3c Other supernatural entities doing it for other reasons 3d Mass telekinesis by spectators, or something similar 3e Other paranormal explanation 4 Other (including space aliens, etc.) I then posted my thoughts on how some of these could be tested, or how they couldn't be tested. You might get an idea of the probability of random chance by running computer simulations of the fire with some parameters varied at random and then looking at the resulting images to see how many do or don't seem to have faces in them. Also, you might be able to get some idea one way or the other about the possibility of tampering if you can persuade the photographers to let you search their offices and computers. The hard part is testing for paranormal influences. Many people just rule out the paranormal more or less on faith, limiting their investigations to doctoring or random chance. If they can't prove doctoring, then that is itself evidence that it's random chance. Others make no such assumption. This leads to an impasse that can't be settled rationally, since it's due not to flaws in logic but to conflicting initial assumptions. If you do allow the paranormal, you may not be able to distinguish it from random chance. Various practitioners of various kinds of divination may claim to have tests for this kind of thing, but a nonbeliever who takes "no paranormal" on faith would also take it as given that such tests would not give valid results. Another impasse. One practical way to settle the matter is by coercion. Make it socially unacceptable to admit to believing in any paranormal explanation. I think a lot of that is actually going on right now. For example, if you work mostly with left-brain people like engineers and programmers and the supposed devil face gets discussed at your place of work, will anybody there admit to believing it may really be some kind of supernatural thing? This kind of proof by taboo may not really get to the truth, but it can make the world look neater by letting people tell themselves that Horatio's philosophy is complete after all. ********************* The radio was talking about how airport security people are still poorly trained and poorly paid. That gave me a mental image of somebody standing out on a street somewhere with a sign "WILL DO AIRPORT SECURITY FOR FOOD". ********************* I recently heard somebody express a willingness to give up more of their privacy in exchange for security, using the old argument about "nothing to hide". Problem is, too many people who aren't dangerous do have stuff to hide. In addition to various victimless crime laws such as drugs and sodomy, there are all sorts of unwritten rules and social conventions that people don't want their neighbors and co-workers finding out they don't adhere to. If we want to allow the authorities more authority to snoop, we need to make it so it doesn't matter what they find out about us short of actual terroristic plots or "real crime" like burglary or fraud or non-consensual sex. And we need to take away the privacy of the cops as well as the citizens. Cops are human, and occasionally do bad stuff like framing people they don't like. If citizens are not to be allowed to protect themselves by hiding their everyday affairs, then they need to be able to protect themselves by being able to catch any bad cops. Surveillance is a two- edged sword, and we need to make sure both edges are kept sharp. Some might ask about legitimate governmental secrets: Undercover police operations, classified military stuff, and the like. I think the answer is to document it all, and declassify it as soon as it can be done safely. Most such secrets eventually expire and cease to be important. If we don't trust the authorities during that limited interval (which can sometimes be many years) we might be able to work something out with some kind of watchdog agencies that are cleared to handle secret stuff. Maybe the watchdogs can be drawn from opposing political parties, which should give them an incentive to blow the whistle if they found anything significant. As for false alarms, I'm reminded of some games that allow challenges (such as challenging a word in Scrabble). If the challenge is upheld, the challenger gains. If it's overruled, the challenger pays a penalty. Could something like that be set up? ********************* One eventual result of this latest round of terrorism might be some form of International Law that actually has teeth. Governments would remain sovereign as long as they refrained from engaging in some small set of activities such as allowing terrorists to use their territory as a base of operations. There might be a "death penalty" for governments that break this rule: The regime in question gets deposed and various people, inside and outside the country in question, form a new government with more acceptable policies. This seems to be what's being done to Afghanistan. Perhaps in the future it will be codified? ********************* The Recycler of Dreams I had often seen him, In expected places and in unlikely ones -- A kindly old man Who by his looks ought to be running the toy shop in some quaint European village, Always with a large sack Filled with things picked up from the ground And an ornate German pipe Whose smoke he would now and then Blow into someone's face, Always without being noticed. Driven by curiosity, I made inquiries And we were eventually introduced. He is the one known, In those mythologies in which he is known at all, As the Recycler of Dreams. Through the ages he has wandered Through the halls of kings' palaces, Along the quiet lanes where lovers linger, Into bars and taverns and the "In Places", Or like a phantom through the walls of prisons Or corporate boardrooms Or research laboratories, And even along glittering Broadway -- All the places where dreams Have been dreamed And broken. There he wanders, Not always in the form I saw, Collecting pieces of broken dreams To make into new dreams To distribute around the world. Humanity needs its dreams, And cannot grow or prosper without them. But reality is hard on dreams And on dreamers. "Take 'Flight'," he says for an example, "I must have picked that one up a thousand times From the bottom of this or that windswept hill And blown it, like smoke, Into the head of another dreamer Until it finally bore fruit. And others, like 'Perpetual Motion' Or 'World Peace' Or 'Immortality' I may be recycling forever, Along with 'True Love' And 'Winning the Sweepstakes' And 'Being a Movie Star'. That one has gotten many of you Through some dark and stormy nights." "Yes, I see the need for the grand dreams And the smaller dreams And even the silly dreams. But what of the darker dreams? The visions of world conquest, The elusive Perfect Crime, The glory of the Master Race? Do you handle these also?" "I'm afraid I must," he sighed, "Regardless of how horrible the possibilities I cannot label a dream as 'evil' And put it away on a shelf. The gods by whose authority I operate Say that that judgment may only be made, Not by themselves, as you might expect, But by you mortals." Thomas G. Digby written 0140 hr 9/29/74 revised 0245 hr 3/17/83 entered 1230 hr 4/09/92 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU Some of this may change in the next couple of months (see ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE above), but this is still It for now: 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. There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, dying down to almost nothing in between. But any post can spark a new flurry. 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