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 #131 New Moon of September 3, 2005 Contents copyright 2005 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. ********************* This seems to be Mass Destruction Season. Last month we had the anniversary of atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In about a week we'll have the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. And just a few days ago we had massive storm damage to one of the country's major cities. That's kind of a depressing theme to build an issue around, so I won't. This issue may have some disaster-related items, but it won't be a theme as such and they'll be interspersed with less unhappy things. This also reminds me of the poem that came out of the aftermath of the tsunami in late 2004. Rather than run it again so soon after its previous appearance, I'll just give a URL for it: http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/poetry/Armor.txt ********************* Without blabbing details of things that happened at a Hiroshima anniversary ritual, I was given reason to wonder if salamanders (the fire elementals, not the reptiles) like nuclear bombs. Is it a case of "the hotter the better" or is the fireball of a nuclear explosion too hot even for them? ********************* Something reminded me of thoughts I had while out on a walk a few days ago. I got to thinking of how sometimes, especially in places that don't have the death penalty, a multiple murderer will be sentenced to several consecutive life terms. That led to thoughts of reincarnation and of how when the Dalai Lama dies, priests go around looking at babies to find the one he's reborn as. So imagine cops knocking on some young mother's door. They ask her if she remembers some notorious serial killer from the previous century. She's heard of him, but isn't familiar with the details. They hand her some literature describing his crimes. "But why bother me with this?" she asks. "I wasn't even born yet." "At his trial he was sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms. So far he's served five of them. The most recent ended when he died in prison four years ago. Now we think he's been reincarnated as your daughter." "So you want to put my daughter in jail?" "Of course we have to do some more testing first, to verify that she is indeed our serial killer. But yes, if she is him we'll want to take her back to prison." "But she hasn't done anything, at least not beyond the usual things small children sometimes do." "Maybe not in this life, but in previous lives she was a man who murdered more than a dozen people in cold blood. And she has ten more life prison terms to serve." And so on, including stuff like how if they start while she's young they'll be better able to teach her the survival skills she'll need in prison. And the mother should perhaps be thankful that the killer hadn't been sentenced to multiple death penalties. ********************* One interesting-looking young man in a fast-food place was wearing his pants very low, with quite a bit of underwear showing. The style and color of the underwear was such that I'm pretty sure it was made to be seen. That got me to thinking of lowering the outer pants even further, and then fastening their waistline to the leg area of the nominal underwear so what looks like the belt on the pants doesn't need to be tightened around the wearer's thighs. Make the whole thing one garment that just looks like two. Has that been done? If it hasn't been done yet, would it sell if someone were to do it? ********************* There's been considerable discussion on the WELL about the situation in New Orleans. I started one thread in the Brainstorm conference about whether it should be rebuilt, and if so, how. It's gotten some comments. Some want to just rebuild the city more or less as it was, but with better levees. But I'm not sure that's really feasible. Should we even be trying to keep the land forever dry? My initial thought for the rebuilt city was something looking superficially like Venice, but with buildings actually floating like houseboats. This gets around the problems Venice is having with land subsidence and rising sea levels. Someone else mentioned a style of construction used in other flood-prone areas, where houses are basically built on stilts, with the area underneath used for carports or storage or whatever. That might be a good way to go regardless of whether we want to try to maintain dry land around the buildings. It might be the only way to build larger buildings for which the houseboat configuration may not be practical. If we do have fixed buildings, perhaps we could connect them at the second-story level with something like the Minneapolis and/or St. Paul Skyway system? This is a system of covered walkways, mostly at mezzanine level, connecting indoor courtyards and corridors and such in the various downtown buildings. Although the main reason for building it was the cold winter weather rather than flooding, the concept should still be applicable. If you do have nominally dry land that may be flooded, build grounded houseboats. When it floods, they float. Have some sort of guide poles or something that will let them rise but not drift away. Use some sort of auto-disconnect couplings for the utilities if flexible hoses or the like aren't practical. Having to plug things back in manually after the flood may be OK as long as pipes and such aren't actually broken. All this is assuming we do want to rebuild some semblance of the former city. Maybe we should just declare it a combination memorial and nature preserve and fence it off, with admittance limited to scientists and the like. That would also give our descendents something to study. There are almost certainly other plausible possibilities. What do you think? ********************* Another thought: Will all this make people feel sad when eating at French restaurants, especially those with a New Orleans theme? Will that theme become less popular for new restaurants? ********************* There was a news report about some scientists working on cloning meat. They would grow just the edible cells, and not waste resources on the rest of the animal. This got me to thinking. First, I thought of those who don't eat meat because of ethical objections to killing animals. Since getting the initial cell sample would probably require something more akin to a biopsy than slaughter, that objection pretty much goes away. But there's another complication. I've been told that there's something in the Bible against eating animals alive. Depending on how one interprets this, it could require the the animal be killed before the cell sample is taken even if it killing it isn't otherwise necessary. That could bring up a logistics problem. Excluding special medical conditions and allergies and such, if you're preparing food for a multitude, you can often get by with a selection of meals for various kinds of diets arranged in order of least restrictive to most restrictive. Those who can eat something partway down the list can usually eat the things prepared for more restrictive diets than theirs. With cloned meat that may no longer be the case. Those who object to killing animals may happily eat of the cloned flesh of a cow that lived out its life in some comfortable pasture. But that meat would be off-limits to those who follow a strict interpretation of the commandment against eating animals alive. They, on the other hand, could partake of conventionally slaughtered meat that would be forbidden to the anti-killing group. Thus the old rules about who can eat what break down. So menu planning for banquets and such may get more complicated, with more need to keep tabs on what foods came from where. And there's more: Some might complain that even if you don't kill your meat animals, they suffer pain when the sample is taken without their consent. And there's only one species that can truly give consent: Humans. So there may be those who will eat only cloned human meat. Marketing that could get interesting, especially when celebrities start getting into the act. For example, those restaurants that name sandwiches for various movie stars and the like could make it more than just a symbolic gesture. A rock band could have all its members contribute to some kind of burger blend or spaghetti sauce or some such. And so on. The possibilities seem endless. ********************* While waiting for an expected visitor who didn't say exactly when he would be showing up I noticed myself trying to find things to do so as not to get hung up in "Wait for Interrupt" mode. That reminded me of an article about how modern life in general is more interrupt-driven than in the old days. So how true is this? And if one doesn't want to live an interrupt-driven life, what (if anything) can one do about it? Also, what are the larger ramifications? Are there some types of tasks that require uninterrupted concentration? I suspect there are. Some like surgery, may be obvious. It's still considered the exception, for example, for a surgeon to take a phone call in the middle of an operation. But what of those tasks requiring mental concentration with little overt physical activity? Will computer programmers, engineers, philosophers, and artists be hindered in their work? Or will future generations grow up with better interrupt handlers due to having been constantly interrupted since childhood? Or, possibly the worst case: What if they think they can handle all the interruptions just fine, but aren't doing as well at it as they think they are? Society may lose much in the way of art and philosophy while never knowing what it's missing. ********************* I was also thinking earlier about how I would often mull a problem over in my mind before putting anything down on paper or any other tangible medium. Some managers at various jobs would get quite concerned before they realized that progress was being made even though it wasn't visible. Or, to put it in other words, I wasn't making any apparent progress but I was making occult progress. And no, I wasn't casting spells, at least not consciously. The root meaning of "occult" is "covered" or "concealed", and it's still used in something like that sense in medicine and maybe other technical fields. ********************* Vapor Virtuoso From early childhood his right-brain half had always loved music. He could sit for hours, Mesmerized by his parents' old Sixties rock records, Playing along on air guitar. Even after he learned to play other guitars Made of wood or plastic or whatever He kept the one made of air. He would play along with some record, But he wouldn't stop when it ended. As his mind wandered and his fingers followed along the strings of his imagination A new song would likely as not be born. His left brain, on the other hand, Loved science, especially chemistry, And knew that music was unlikely to ever pay his bills. Fate's winding road led him onto the faculty at the university: Enjoyable, financially sort of OK, and safe From the big corporations His right brain hated. And he had friends in the music department. One night at a party, As he was answering some question about the atmosphere, Someone asked him if an air guitar could be split up Into a nitrogen guitar, An oxygen guitar, And so on for the rest of the list. And if it could, what would the individual gas guitars sound like? Amid laughter, his left brain brushed the question aside. But his right brain wouldn't let him forget it. He started to experiment. One of the labs he had access to had chambers That could be filled with this gas or that vapor While you reached in with special gloves To work on whatever was inside. In the quiet of the night, With no one around to disturb him, He would play along with his portable music player And when the music stopped, Let his mind wander where the molecules under his fingers Would lead him. Nitrogen didn't seem to do much. He got a song or two about plant food And how to make nitroglycerin: Just enough to tempt him to try others. Oxygen did better: One song about aerobic exercise, Another of a caveman discovering fire, And more about hospital emergency rooms And aviators setting altitude records And even one about astronauts. Then came the gases we can't breathe. Carbon monoxide, full strength? Dark depressing sagas of suicide, And a reminder of how lucky he had been To have found as happy a life as he had. There but for the grace of God ... A recipe for smog Yielded laments for the lost virginity of Earth And pleas for future generations To strive to live more in harmony with nature. Cyanide gave him folk-style ballads Of murderers getting their just reward, Along with a protest song or two Against the death penalty. Another time, amidst thoughts of the Holocaust, The deadly vapors whispered to him Of the faith that lingers after hope is gone, Then roared out an anthem of hate so stirring he hid it away Lest those who agreed with its message be roused to action. A friend into science fiction suggested the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Mars Or the methane and ammonia of the outer planets. With the C-oh-two he expected sagas of the past glories Of ancient civilizations along the banks of the canals But instead heard songs he thinks will be sung By human colonists a hundred years hence. The outer-planet mix hinted of life forms forever adrift Amidst alien cloudscapes, Their hopes and dreams and fears Too strange to really describe, Even in the unearthly scales he could almost but not quite hear. His list continues to grow, As do his circles of friends, Both at the University And on the Internet. If you see him, tell him I said Hello. -- Tom Digby Written 17:47 hr 08/13/2005 Edited 16:18 hr 09/04/2005 Edited 23:43 hr 09/05/2005 ********************* 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 --