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 #98 New Moon of January 2, 2003 Contents copyright 2003 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 Earth passes another milestone in its orbit I'm thinking that eventually we'll have the technology to move planets around. Should we then adjust Earth's orbit to make the calendar less clunky? And if so, what should we set it to? We might want to boost the orbit ever so slightly to make the year exactly 365 1/4 days long, which would be only a few minutes longer than it is now. Then we could go back to a Julian-like system of leap years every four years, with none of this complicated stuff about skipping years ending in 00 except for years divisible by 400. The next time the 100-year rule will come into play will be the year 2100. Will the technology be ready by then? Another possibility would be to shorten the year to exactly 365 days, which would eliminate leap years entirely. But that would mean no more February 29, ever, and some may not like that idea. Going even further, we could shorten the year to 364 days. Since 364 is divisible by seven, a given calendar date would always fall on the same day of the week. That would make holidays and such easier to manage, although some might find the lack of variety boring. Another problem with a 364-day year is that we would need to take a day out of some month somewhere. Should we shorten February even more, to 27 days? Or would it be better to cut one of the current 31-day months back to 30? Or would we want to completely redesign the calendar, perhaps to have 13 months of 28 days each, making each month start on the same day of the week? Some might favor more drastic orbital changes, such as a "metric year" of 400 days. But that would require much more of a change to either the orbit or the rotation period, and would be more likely to mess up the biosphere. Species that time their life cycles to various indicators of the seasons, such as day length vs night length, could get confused. And if it's done by changing the length of the year, leaving our present 24- hour day essentially unchanged, it might require moving Earth enough farther away from the sun to affect climate. So we want to be very conservative in considering such changes. Let's hope that by the time we have the ability to change planetary orbits we'll also have the computing power to make really good models of the effects of any proposed changes. Another thing we currently lack is a way of working out our differences when it comes to decisions of this magnitude. So maybe it's a good thing we don't currently have that technology, because whatever we might do with it, someone is likely to be unhappy. ********************* Somebody in this apartment complex threw what appears to be a perfectly good clock in the trash. Do I want it? It seems to be running OK. As I got to thinking about it the thought popped into my head of someone throwing away a clock because it was full of bad time. Maybe while they had it they suffered financial losses and medical problems and maybe even somebody dying or something. If the clock is really full of bad time, where is the cause and where is the effect? Did the clock absorb bad time from the people around it, or did it come from the factory like that? Maybe it was manufactured during a labor dispute or while the company was doing layoffs or something, and picked up the bad time the workers were having? Part of me says the thought of a clock being full of bad time is just superstition, but then other parts of me ask what if it's true? Then people who believe will get rid of any clocks they think contain bad time, while those who don't believe won't. So the unbelievers will on average keep more clocks full of bad time and will suffer the consequences, which will be a natural selection thing in favor of believers. So if you throw away a clock because it contains bad time, do you have an obligation to put a warning label on it? ********************* I went to see an art exhibit at a local park a few weeks ago. One part of it was stuffed animals that the artist had done a sort of Frankenstein bit with, cutting them apart and reassembling mixed bits and pieces into weird combinations. I found that mildly interesting. Another artist's section, sculptures made of recycled paper and such, didn't seem to do anything for me at all. The third artist had an installation of a section of white picket fence with a bunch of small windmill-type things mounted on it, all on an AstroTurf rug, with an electric fan to blow the windmills. As I stood there watching the windmills turning and hearing the fan blowing and the windmill bearings squeaking in the otherwise silent room, I got weird feelings about the passage of time. The windmills could have been out in some desert or some other deserted place, eternally turning in the wind, long after there was no longer any such thing as humanity. Would time still pass if there was no one around to sense it? According to the posted writeups the artist had intended to evoke thoughts of the dreariness of mundane suburbia, not thoughts on time and eternity in general. But art doesn't always do what the artist wants. If it did, would it still be art? ********************* After I saw the latest Lord of the Rings movie I got to wondering about the world it was set in, and about fantasy worlds in general. If I recall correctly, that world was in the year three thousand something of the Third Age, after having been through two previous Ages of similar length. So they may actually have a longer recorded history than our world. But they're not very advanced technologically. They have iron and gunpowder (or at least some sort of explosive), but they don't appear to have firearms or other machinery such as steam engines. And I'm wondering why. There are several possibilities. Perhaps our type of technological civilization is a fluke, and they're the normal ones. Maybe technology happens only when you get a certain rare combination of economic and social factors, and most worlds never get that combination. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that they have magic and we don't, or at least not magic that works that overtly. Perhaps people who would otherwise become scientists end up becoming magic-users instead, and the mindsets are different enough that magic-users don't learn all that much about non-magical physical laws or math or logic. Or maybe the physical laws of that world are wildly different from ours, even if things look superficially similar. We don't really know, for example, whether matter in that world is made up of atoms, or whether lightning is really electricity, or what the chemical elements are. So we have no way of knowing whether our technology would work or not. So it may be that in many fantasy worlds technological things wouldn't work unless you put the proper spells on them, and the spells are such that you don't really need the technology in the first place. If it's as easy to animate a broomstick as to animate a robot, why bother to build the robot when you already have broomsticks? I don't know if Tolkien addressed this question, but even if he did, the question remains with other fantasy worlds. Why haven't more sword and sorcery worlds progressed through alchemy and astrology to chemistry and astronomy and something like our physical technology? ********************* Something to think about: In a world where travel between alternate universes is possible, you buy a lottery ticket. If it doesn't win, you take it to an alternate world where it did win and cash it in there. What happens next may depend on the general technological level of that civilization. If they have at least our level of computer technology they might have a database of winners along with secret code numbers and such printed on their lottery tickets so they can tell it isn't one of theirs even if it appears to have the winning numbers and isn't obviously counterfeit in the sense of having been illicitly created. But then what if your search capability is good enough to find an alternate where your numbers came up and the secret validation codes also match yours? If their database shows the winning numbers as not having been sold then they could still refuse your ticket, but what if you picked a world where someone did indeed buy a winning ticket but then lost it? Could you then claim the prize? Another thought: Find a timeline where you bought the winning ticket, and then go ask yourself for a share of the prize. Would you grant the favor, or would you refuse? Would it depend on how many of you showed up with that request? Or would there be a further split, with some of you agreeing and some refusing? Of course this raises a whole bunch of other questions, such as whether a civilization where alternate-world travel was commonplace would still have games of chance at all. ********************* The idea of a civilization where it's common for people to travel between alternate timelines brings up a whole bunch of other questions. For example, consider crosstime identity fraud, where you take the place of some version of "you" that's doing better than this "you" is doing. How does anybody else know which version of "you" you are? Physical ID cards and such probably won't work, although secret passwords might. And what would happen to intellectual property? If you write a song, and someone else in another timeline writes a similar song, who owns the rights in some third timeline where nobody has written anything similar to either of your songs? And so on. I suspect a whole lot of things would change, and that some of the changes would be in things we here would have very little chance of anticipating. It's another example of the quote about the universe being stranger than we can imagine. ********************* As I've mentioned before, I never know where my next idea will be coming from or what it might be, although I am pretty confident that I will be getting more ideas sooner or later. But eventually there will come a time when I will have had the last idea I'll ever have in this life. Hopefully that won't be any time soon, although you never know. But I tend to believe that even after this life is over there will be some sort of Hereafter in which I will continue to have ideas. I like to think that that place will be mostly happy, and full of new sources of inspiration along with loving friends who will enjoy sharing songs, stories, insights, and ideas. ********************* The Almanac The almanac for the coming year is here. I thumb through the astronomical section: It's stuff I'll want to look up later about Solstices and equinoxes, maybe an eclipse or two, But not really reading material. Other articles and even some of the ads are more interesting. But then I come to the calendar pages, One for each month of the new year. January looms as a long block of back-to-work post-Christmas gray. The groundhogs and valentines and long-dead presidents of February offer scant consolation. But then we come to March and April, with their bright promises of springtime. May brings childhood memories of counting the days until school lets out for the summer. Even now, with my school days long past, May always seems a time of transition, a reminder of the passage of the years. As winter howls outside my window June and July seem unreal, Just as winter will seem unreal when June and July are here. The sight of August brings a hint of melancholy, A reminder that the days of summer are numbered And the sun must once again journey southward. Then comes September, with falling leaves Swirling down into October and November. Halloween and Thanksgiving lead my thoughts to festive December, When winter once again howls outside my window As I leaf through yet another new almanac for yet another new year. -- Tom Digby Original 15:29 12/20/2002 Edited 21:05 12/27/2002 Edited 19:05 01/02/2003 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation. There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to almost nothing in between. Any post can spark a new flurry at any time. If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon Soapware with no banter. The zine content is the same for both. To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi and select the ss_talk list. Enter your email address in the space provided and hit Signup. When you receive an email confirmation request go to the URL it will give you. (If you're already on the list and want to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list posting you receive.) To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or bubbles@well.com). I currently do that one manually. -- END --