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 #105 New Moon of July 28, 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. ********************* By law, the State of California is supposed to have its yearly budget approved before each new fiscal year begins on July 1. However, it is not unusual for this deadline to be missed, and this is one of those years. Although they may have a budget by the time you read this, as of this writing they're almost a month late. I believe the record for lateness of the budget is about two months. Although they're likely to come to terms within another few days, the science fiction speculator in me wonders what would happen if they're never able to agree. What would it be like after something like twenty or fifty or a hundred years of not being able to pass a budget? If the present members of the state government are all long dead but there's been no money budgeted for poll workers and ballots and such to elect their successors, who makes the rules? With no money to pay judges' salaries, who settles disagreements? If localities can still pass local budgets, would California become a bunch of semi-independent city-states, answering only to the Feds? Would one of the states or countries bordering California (Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Mexico) try to move in and take over? Or are the Feds likely to step in before things get that far? Or is that degree of decline unlikely to happen because the last couple of surviving legislators are too likely to be from the same party and thus will finally agree on a budget, assuming some successor to the governor is still alive to sign it? Has any science fiction writer written anything along these lines? Even if it can't happen in the real world, it might be good material for some kind of comedy. ********************* Another thought on the no-budget scenario: What if it's a world where magic works, and the budget impasse is due to some kind of spell cast by an evil wizard? Then the hero has to find and vanquish the wizard in order to restore order before the kingdom falls apart completely. This might be especially good in a world where magic works but only magic-users are aware of it. Could this happen in the California of Harry Potter's world? Since the main Harry Potter action is in Britain, it's possible that something like this could be starting to happen in California but that the news hasn't made a big splash in Britain yet. That may be why we haven't seen it mentioned in any of the Harry Potter books so far. Perhaps it will show up in the future? ********************* According to the thermometer and the radio, it looks like it's going to be one of those summer days when the song "Sunny Side of the Street" does not sound all that attractive. ********************* I saw something rather unusual a couple of weeks ago. I was on my way to a movie, and was turning left from Mary St. onto Central Expressway, which is one of those quasi-freeways where traffic moves at near-freeway speeds between the occasional traffic lights. Just as I was completing the turn the pickup in front of me slowed to a stop. Then I saw the reason: A mother duck was leading her ducklings across the road. Once they reached the curb traffic proceeded. I found that interesting for two reasons: First, that I was at the right place at the right time to see it at all, and second that the vehicle in front of me stopped for the ducks instead of just running over them. Come to think of it, cars in other lanes must have also stopped, or the ducks wouldn't have gotten that far. Were they already stopped for the traffic light? Was the mother duck just lucky in that the light happened to be with her on her crossing, or was she smart enough to wait for the light before starting across? It may also be worth noting that nobody exhibited any sign of road rage as far as I could tell. Was that because there were cute baby ducks involved? Or is it that politeness is really the norm, with road rage being the occasional headline-grabbing exception? ********************* Q: Shouldn't that ad for "double pain windows" read "double pane windows"? A: No, "double pain" is correct. The glass is impregnated with a chemical that blocks endorphins, so if you cut yourself on a broken piece it will hurt at least twice as much as with other broken glass. It's an anti-burglar and anti-vandalism thing. Q: So is that why the picture only shows one layer of glass? A: Yes. ********************* There's an idea I've had off and on over the years for reforming welfare while also aiding students and artists and writers and the like: Paying people to attend what amounts to Study Hall. You have an area like the reading room of a large public library, with plenty of books and magazines to read, along with comfortable chairs and tables. You may also have a semi-separate area with computers on which people can type up and print documents without disturbing others. For parents there could be designated areas in which children are welcome, leaving other areas child-free and quiet. And you have a time clock at the door. When someone enters, they clock in. They are allowed to stay as long as they like (until closing time) as long as they don't damage anything or cause a disturbance. They can read, write, type on the computers and save their stuff to CD or floppy, knit, sew, draw, paint, or do any of a number of other things as long as they do it quietly and don't make a mess. Then when they leave they clock out and get paid minimum wage for the time they were inside. There would be few, if any, questions asked about other income. I suspect few wealthy people would want to spend their time there, so it's sort of self-policing in that regard. If that turns out not to be the case then people's ID info can be collected at the door and the money they earn while inside taxed along with their other income. Since the IRS already has the bureaucracy set up for this, there's no sense duplicating it. How would this help students? They could come in and get paid to do their homework. Likewise, artists and writers could get paid for time they spend creating their pictures and stories and such. It would also help improve working conditions for the working poor, since employers would be competing against the study hall for employees. This might even eliminate the need for explicit minimum-wage laws. You wouldn't need to build a whole bunch of new buildings to implement this. Just use the existing public libraries, at least in the pilot- program stages. People could still go to the library to read or to check books in and out, with the only difference being that they would earn some small amount of money while doing it. There would still be those who could not attend paid study halls because of physical disability or other reasons, but other parts of the existing welfare system could take care of them, much as is done now. Since this is a new way of doing things, it's bound to have problems. But let's try to approach them in the engineer's spirit of "How can we work around this problem to achieve the goal?" rather than the naysayer's spirit of "This can't be done because of Problem X." ********************* Another thing in the news lately is the system for emailing comments to the White House. Their whitehouse.gov Web site has a complicated set of forms where you enter personal ID info, check boxes for whether you are agreeing or disagreeing with existing policy, select from a menu of pre- defined categories and sub-categories, and finally get to type your comments into a dialog box. Some commentators have suggested that it may be deliberately designed to discourage emails. On further thought, I suspect it's designed to make the process of writing to the President less like letter-writing and more like voting. Few letter writers have anything truly original to say, and the staff doesn't really need to read "I agree with X" or "I don't like Y" over and over again. All they really need to do is count up how many people are For or Against whatever the issue is. Maybe they spot-check to see how many people are trying to say things the staff hadn't anticipated, but they don't need to read every single email that comes in. So what does this mean to someone with an original idea? It means that you should not try to send it directly to someone like the President. Instead, try to get your idea into the public consciousness in other ways. Tell your friends about it, and suggest that they tell their friends. Write letters to the editor of your local paper. Mention it to whatever local politicians you are in touch with. If you're a writer, work it into your stories. If you have a personal Web site, put something about it there. And so on. If the idea has merit, the people in power will hear about it sooner or later without your having to contact them directly. Then when the White House staff has heard enough about it to consider it worth asking about on their Web site, you and your friends can log on and "vote" for it. ********************* ... and now for something completely different: Meter Madness One morning recently on the way to work I encountered a crew cutting little holes in the sidewalk and planting parking meters. That brought back memories from high school days of a summer job on the parking meter farm tending cuttings while they took root and grew to the proper size for the streets. Cuttings? Yes, you could grow them from seed but they might not breed true. They pick up pollen from wild strains or even now and then mutate to offer sixty-two thousand years for a quarter or else maybe fourteen point three nanoseconds for some coin not yet invented. With cuttings you know what you're getting and besides, most varieties are seedless to allow no chance for a half-forgotten meter on some deserted side street to go to seed, scattering to the wind to sprout in the most awkward places. Few things can match the fury of some quiet suburban homeowner finding his lawn infested with parking meters, not to mention the possibilities of interbreeding with fire hydrants, street lights, and newspaper vending machines. So now they use the seedless types and give them anti-growth hormones so they won't get too tall and the roots won't invade the sewers. Like, how would you like to get up in the night for a call of nature only to find, emerging straight and proud from the toilet bowl: "TIME EXPIRED"? I hear it used to happen and that's how they got the idea for the pay toilet. But that's another story, along with the rumors that they're working on new breeds for the indoor potted-plant market to replace African violets and cacti and catnip and even hanging plants (by crossing them with Salvador Dali's watches). That sounds kind of interesting, as long as no one comes around to give out tickets. Thomas G. Digby written 0440 hr 1/29/79 typed 0345 hr 3/25/79 entered 2325 hr 3/16/92 ********************* 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. 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