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 #150 New Moon of March 18, 2007 Contents copyright 2007 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. ********************* Spring is really coming in strong this year. Combine the recent wave of warmer-than-usual weather (highs approaching 80F) with the time change and it seems almost like summer already. Based on past years I wouldn't be surprised if we had another cool rainy spell or two before summer really gets here, but for the moment winter seems unreal and far away. ********************* This is issue number 150, which kind of ties in with the fact that I'd been thinking about that old song about bottles of beer on the wall. Well, maybe it doesn't really tie in all that well, but I'll claim it does anyway. So there. Anyway, there's talk of an eventual manned mission to Mars. It'll take the astronauts maybe a year to get there, and they'll need something to do to while away the time. Combine that with memories of high-school field trips where we had a whole bus full of kids singing about beer bottles falling off the wall, and the solution seems obvious. Depending on the tempo, one verse of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" takes somewhere between eight and twelve seconds. Say ten seconds for easy computation. There are a little over thirty million seconds in a year. Therefore astronauts heading for Mars should start the song with roughly three million bottles of beer on the wall in order to finish just before they arrive. That's assuming that the astronauts sleep in shifts so there's always one awake, keeping watch over their spaceship and singing about beer bottles on the wall. Of course that figure of three million is just an estimate. NASA will probably want to run tests to determine the optimum tempo for the song and then do an exact calculation of how many verses it will take to get there. Then they'll give the astronauts some kind of metronome to keep everything in sync. They may even want to have a computer-generated voice singing along so the astronauts won't lose count along the way. This would also let them make whatever fine adjustments may be necessary at the mid-course corrections. I see one potential problem: If there is no actual beer on board the spacecraft for the astronauts to drink, their morale may suffer as the song keeps reminding them of an unattainable pleasure. Perhaps the words should be changed to refer to some other beverage? That's something for the NASA psychologists to determine. If they do change the beverage, might they want to sell product-placement rights? The revenue probably won't be much compared to the total cost of the mission, but every little bit helps. ********************* "He had the kind of backache that makes people envy invertebrates." ********************* I recall back during the Vietnam era hearing news people refer to the "Plain of Jars" in Laos. I thought the name a bit odd, but I dismissed it as a coincidence of words in different languages or something. But it turns out to be more literal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_of_Jars There are actually jars there, hundreds and hundreds of them. No, they're not modern glass or plastic jars as we think of them. They're massive urns carved out of stone, many centuries old. Archaeologists are trying to figure out how and why they were put there. There's some evidence that they may have been funeral urns, although that's not the only theory. You learn something new every day. ********************* Back on singing about beer bottles on the wall, a few days ago I got to thinking about how I'd been trying to do a parody about filkers in the hall but couldn't seem to come up with a good penultimate line. Then it occurred to me that I might not need a good line. Instead, I could make a game out of it, with people making up that line as they went along. Then it could be something silly that doesn't have to rhyme or scan. Start with a circle of filkers. Everybody sings the first and second lines, one person contributes the third line, and everybody joins back in on the fourth line, with the number adjusted accordingly. Then the cycle repeats, with the next person in line around the circle doing the variable third line. And so on until the count gets all the way down to zero or people get tired, whichever comes first. Here it is represented as a formula: ALL: [X] filkers are here in the hall, ALL: [X] filkers are here. SOLOIST: If [Y] of those filkers should [drop out] ALL [X-Y] filkers are here in the hall. Then use that value of X-Y as X for the next verse. An example: 99 filkers are here in the hall, 99 filkers are here. If one of those filkers should go to bed early 98 filkers are here in the hall. 98 filkers are here in the hall, 98 filkers are here. If one of those filkers should be abducted by a UFO, 97 filkers are here in the hall. Those verses assumed that Y = 1, but that need not always be the case: 97 filkers are here in the hall, 97 filkers are here. If five of those filkers should go play basketball, 92 filkers are here in the hall. ... and so on. The point of the game is to come up with third lines that at least seem to be funny at the time, and to do the necessary arithmetic in your head in time to sing the new number in the fourth line. The main constraint on the solo line is that it should be physically possible to sing or say the line in not much more time than it would have taken to sing the original version. But that's not a hard and fast rule. If a line does happen to rhyme and/or scan, so much the better. But don't count on it. It's often funnier when it doesn't. You may be thinking that the examples I've given are not especially funny. But to a bunch of sleep-deprived people late at night standards of what's funny may be less strict. You won't really know until you've tried it. And you may not really truly know even then. The number of filkers ousted should bear some logical relationship to their fate: Five playing basketball, nine getting appointed to the Supreme Court, and so on. Possible exception: Any number can get booted out for singing "Banned From Argo". You may also want to require that the final verse be such as to leave exactly zero filkers, but then again you don't have to: 7 filkers are here in the hall, 7 filkers are here. If twelve of those filkers should get jury duty, -5 filkers are here in the hall. Verses about fractional filkers or complex numbers of filkers are left as an exercise for the reader. People doing it in non-fannish environments can of course change the word "filkers" to "singers" or "people". [Tangential thought: Could this be used to teach arithmetic?] ********************* A bit of free association (lightly edited): Let's quit this dilly-dallying and get the zine done. Done? Dum de dum-dum. That's the old Dragnet theme. Is that another of those things younger generations have no knowledge of? Does it matter? Does the Matterhorn matter? It probably does, because if it wasn't there there would be a whole bunch of Swiss mountain climbers just sort of up in the air with nothing to do but fall down. Ouch! Since the papers aren't full of stories about mountain climbers mysteriously falling out of the sky over Switzerland, it appears that the Matterhorn is doing its job. The Matterhorn does matter. ********************* A few weeks ago we had the twenty-third day of that month. And there's another twenty-third day of a month coming up in less than a week. That got me to thinking: Is the twenty-third of every month, or at least of every month that's long enough to have a twenty-third day, Illuminati Day? I haven't heard anything in the media about it. Or does that not mean anything? Maybe that even confirms it, because it proves how good a cover-up job the Illuminati have done. Nobody but the Illuminati could have covered something like that up that well, so they must be in on it. Therefore it must be true. Also, the fact that the current calendar appears to have no months shorter than twenty-three days is further proof that the Illuminati control whoever officially keeps track of the calendar. They've arranged things so they can have Illuminati Day every month, or at least every month the public knows about. Whether there are secret months known only to the Illuminati is another question. If there are any, I would think they would have to either run in parallel with the months the public is aware of, or else they would have to be of zero length to fit in between the publicly known months. Or maybe they're of non-zero length, but too short to be noticed without fancy instruments and such. Those Illuminati can be awfully clever. Another question: What satellite's phases would the secret Illuminati months be derived from? At least some of the calendars we know about have months derived from the phases of the Moon. Would secret Illuminati months be derived from the phases of some other satellite, such as the original Sputnik? Perhaps they're based on the orbit Sputnik would be in now if it were still up there? If so, I'm not expert enough to calculate what that orbit might be. Since that makes the question impossible to answer, that's further proof of Illuminati involvement. Another flash of insight: An Illuminati month need not be twenty-three days long. It could just start late. Just as some computer languages start counting things from zero while others start from one, an Illuminati month could start with the 23rd. The more I think about this the less I think I know. Maybe the ultimate secret is that one cannot know anything at all? Am I worried that the Illuminati will come after me for publishing their big secret? No, because that would blow their cover. So whether or not anything happens to me, whatever does or doesn't happen will be conclusive proof that my conjecture is correct. Q.E.D. ********************* This has little or nothing to do with whatever else is in this issue, but so what? THE SPEECH With a dignified tap of his polished mahogany gavel The chairman calls to order the annual meeting of The Association of Distinguished Professors, And introduces the man who will give The keynote address: Doctor So-and-So, Distinguished Professor And author of a number of books, With a Doctor of Dignity degree From some prestige college. Amid polite applause This distinguished professor approaches the lectern, Reaches into a hidden compartment, And brings out a small plastic bottle. Using the wand that came with the bottle, He blows out over the audience A cloud of bubbles. "Speech" concluded, he returns to his seat. The toastmaster feels impelled to summarize: "The point Doctor So-and-So was making Was that no matter how grown-up we appear on the outside, There is still that child inside us all Who must now and then be let out to play." He drones on for a while about repression, and stress, And life expectancies, and percentages of heart attacks, And stuff like that until finally, "While it is often important for us As distinguished professors To project a certain image to the world, It is also important for us As human beings To now and then allow ourselves to play." "That was indeed my point," replies the professor, "And you have summarized it quite well. However, just for the record, I must remind you That what I actually said was:" And blows another cloud of bubbles. written Oct 01 83 0415hr entered Oct 24 83 0015hr Thomas G. Digby ********************* 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.com or bubbles@well.sf.ca.us). I currently do that one manually. -- END --