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 #114 New Moon of April 19, 2004 Contents copyright 2004 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. ********************* Back at the beginning of the month the bigwigs at a regional Bay Area transit agency held a meeting and adopted some resolutions about upgrading service. Then they put out a press release that started out "Caltrain's board of directors voted today to adopt the highest service levels in the railroad's 140-year history." After a description of the details it concludes "The service will be evaluated after the first six months to ensure that it is meeting passenger expectations and Caltrain's operational objectives." So far, so good. But then the page finishes up with the date in bold type: "4/1/04". After the cynical humorist in me had a bit of a laugh, I got to wondering about the more general question of what happens when some real news event happens on April Fool's Day. Are people inclined to dismiss the first reports they hear? Do the media worry about whether the story will be believed? Or has the tradition of publishing April Fool news items waned to the point that it is no longer a problem? ********************* Another April date that has recently passed is Tax Day. That, plus a report in the news a few weeks ago about somebody winning a huge state lottery jackpot, got me to wondering if there is such a thing as having too much money. First, some background: One idle fantasy I've now and then entertained is to invent a reactionless space-drive thruster. The chances of this actually happening are probably slim to none, but still I've now and then daydreamed about how it would make space travel almost trivially easy as well as making cars quiet and non-polluting. In the process of daydreaming various applications for the thing, I came to the conclusion that if such a device were possible it would quite likely be a loophole in Conservation of Energy, leading to a Perpetual Motion Machine that would actually work. Thus if I were to discover a way to build such a thing, it would bring me huge amounts of money, probably well up into the billions and possibly even as much as a trillion. But would I want that? Having that amount of money makes one a public figure more or less automatically, even if one doesn't do anything else but sit there and have money. And being in the public eye with lots of money will draw the attention of people who want to get hold of some of it, often without much regard for the feelings or welfare of the person currently holding it. Since those people can be good at faking friendship or even love, and there's no easy way to tell who's sincere and who isn't, a large fortune can in effect become a barrier between the person and the outside world. I believe this happens to a degree even with relatively small lottery winners, although it may be less of a problem when there isn't the big media splash lottery winners often get. So while it may be appropriate to be thankful for whatever money one does have, it may also be appropriate to be thankful for not having too much. ********************* I notice that people are starting to refer to the Richard Clarke who's head of Homeland Security as "Dick Clarke". That leads me to wonder how many of those people do or don't recall the Dick Clark (no final "e") of American Bandstand fame. I have this mental image of the Homeland Security people sitting around in whatever room they have their top secret meetings in, reviewing the latest top secret counter-terrorism strategy, when a voice from the back of the room calls out "It's a good plan, but can you dance to it?" ********************* Something got me to thinking about the old guessing game "Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral". As you may recall, at the start of a round the person thinking of the thing to be guessed would give a hint by announcing whether it was "Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral". Anything in the animal kingdom (or derived from it, like a leather belt) was "Animal", any plant or anything derived from plants was "Vegetable", and anything that had never been living was "Mineral". Life was simpler then. Biologists hadn't yet put fungi and yeasts and bacteria and such into separate kingdoms, or if they had, that news hadn't filtered into the general consciousness. So, for example, a toadstool or a bacterium would be "vegetable" while an amoeba would be "animal". I don't know how the game would have classified viruses. I suspect they would have been shoehorned into one of the two living kingdoms, but I don't know which one. But nowadays if you look at a "tree of life" in any modern scientific publication you'll see a huge sprawling maze with dozens of branches for things most of us have never heard of, and then off in one corner you'll find twigs labeled "Fungi", "Plants", and "Animals". And nobody seems to play the "Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral" game any more. I suspect that few scientists give much priority to worrying about whether some new discovery or change in nomenclature or new way of classifying things will mess up the traditional games that have been passed down through generations of children. Should they? Probably not. Children are pretty adaptable, and their games are too. ********************* Many Christian prayers include the phrase "Not my will but Thine." Why is it phrased that way? I'm not quarreling with the idea that if there's a conflict, God's will should take precedence over any ordinary person's. But still, why do people need to explicitly ask that their will not be done? Why be so pessimistically either-or about it? Why not pray something like "Help me to resolve any conflicts between us so that both my will and Thine can be done"? ********************* When you go out for an evening that includes dinner and a movie, do you usually prefer to have dinner first and then the movie, or would you rather see the movie first and then have dinner? There are pros and cons both ways, and it may be largely a matter of personal preference. I personally prefer dinner after the movie. This preference may be largely a matter of habit, although I can offer two arguments for it: First, you don't have to worry about whether you will finish your dinner in time to make it to the movie. Slow service or other restaurant glitches won't have you biting your fingernails in suspense as show-time grows inexorably closer and closer. Second, it provides a handy topic for dinner conversation. If you can't find anything else to talk about, you can always discuss the movie you just saw. The downside is that there may be few restaurants open as late as you would like. Also, people with early bedtimes are more likely to opt out of the dinner portion of the evening completely. Does this vary regionally? As I recall, my usual pattern when I was living in Los Angeles was to have dinner after the movie. But here in the Bay Area that option seems to be almost unheard of, at least among the people I've gone to movies with. Or is it a subculture thing? In Los Angeles most of my movie expeditions were with science fiction fans. Here in the Bay Area they tend to be with other subcultures such as Pagans and Polyamorists, or, when I had a "regular" job, co-workers. Your thoughts? ********************* A house over in the next block had a FOR RENT sign: 2bdr/2bth laundry fireplace newly renovated pets fenced yard non-smokers $1650/month What got my attention was the way the words in the first two lines could take alternate meanings from what was probably meant: "Throw another shirt on the fire while our newly renovated cat curls up by the hearth." ********************* Inspired by the antics of some politicians: "Once you've opened your mouth and inserted your foot, do you spit it back out and get on with your life, or do you continue to wiggle it around and chew on it and make gagging noises while pretending that it's good food?" ********************* Quantum physics question: Suppose some hypothetical country punishes criminals by subjecting them to a possible death penalty: The condemned is put into a box like that Schrodinger's cat is put into. If they're still alive when the box is opened, they're considered to have paid their debt to society. Does the probability matter? Maybe it isn't 50-50. Perhaps someone convicted of a minor crime may get a 1% or less chance of death, while the most heinous crimes merit a 99% or better chance of dying. Does this change the fact of reality being different or not different inside and outside the box? I suspect it changes magnitudes of wave functions, but not the essential nature of the setup. So is the person alive while they are in the box? If they are still alive, do they count as an observer? If they die, and there was no video recorder or anything like that in the box with them, does their observer status vanish retroactively to when the box was sealed? And what of the other side of the coin? Suppose that before being arrested the condemned had bought a lottery ticket, and that the drawing will take place while the box is doing its random life-or-death thing. The world (including the prisoner's potential heirs) will know who wins as soon as the numbers are drawn, but the prisoner will not know until the box opens. So during the time between when the lottery numbers are drawn and the box opens does our reality have a probability of existing in two versions for the prisoner just as the prisoner's reality exists (or doesn't exist) in two versions for us? There are lots of questions here. ********************* I was typing something and noticed that I had typoed "example" to "exmaple". That reminded me that my fingers had made that same error a number of times before. That got me to wondering what "exmaple" might be. Could it be a tree that has had some kind of species-change operation? It used to be a maple, but it had always felt it was a pine, so it finally went through the change and now it's living a happier life? ********************* Walls I was born in a country of thrown stones And spent my days retreating into exotic lands Of imagination Or else hiding behind walls Of forced wit and nervous laughter Listening to the pitter-patter of pebbles Against my stronghold. I eventually fled that land And wandered in poverty Until I found a realm Where my fortune in strange coin Would be accepted. Still I built walls -- Until I noticed that here thrown stones were few And bruises healed easier And the view, fresh air, and sunshine Were more than worth sweeping up An occasional broken window. No more walls? But I am by nature a builder, Scheduled for frequent deliveries Of lumber, nails, bricks, and mortar: All the materials for building walls. No more walls? No more walls. But the materials for building walls Can also be used To build bridges. Thomas G. Digby written 0315 hr 3/05/77 typed 0410 hr 5/22/77 entered 2210 hr 4/12/92 ********************* 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. 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. 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