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 #187 New Moon of March 15, 2010 Contents copyright 2010 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. ********************* Where the Wild Things Are Behind the building I'm in is a paved parking area. The paving stops a foot or so short of the neighboring buildings. That leaves a narrow strip of dirt running the full width of the property. There's stuff growing there, including seedlings from nearby trees. Several of these are getting fairly large. Between me and this mini-forest is a six-foot board fence. The previous owners of the building put it up just before they sold the place. I think the idea was that what the buyers couldn't see wouldn't hurt them, or at least wouldn't make the property seem less attractive. So now there's this impromptu nature preserve, all walled off from the rest of the world. There's no gate in the fence, and the buildings have no doors or windows facing that direction. The only access is by climbing over the fence, or by taking some boards off. Cats and squirrels and other small creatures come and go freely, although humans are effectively barred. Even if someone were to climb the fence, they would find the space too narrow to move around in. Some of the tree seedlings I mentioned earlier are now taller than the fence. So every so often the landscape people take a few minutes out from blowing leaves around with their leaf blowers to chop everything off about even with the top of the fence, and maybe also squirt some weed killer or something back there to make it look like what's left of the foilage is dying. This sort of hides the problem, at least for a while. But now it's spring, and the property-line flora is coming to life again. New leaves are budding on the long-bare branches. And so the eternal cycle repeats. ********************* Sproing! Winter isn't officially over as I first-draft this, but it sure feels like spring has sprung. After a fairly long spell of wet and gloomy weather the past few days have been sunny and warm, perhaps even warmer than usual for this time of year. It's a reminder of how humans perceive things. Random fluctuations on top of a slow steady trend can look like a sudden large change when things line up just right. I've also noticed something similar with the first cold snap of winter or the first big storm of the rainy season. It may not happen every year, but it happens quite often. And then there's the time change to add to the overall effect, at least for those of us more likely to be up and about at sunset than at sunrise. Part of me knows intellectually that the rainy season isn't really over. We can still have another storm or two, or even a string of them. But it sure feels like summer is a-comin' in. ********************* On the subject of seasons, you may want to look at this: http://www.plergb.com/Analemma/Analemma.shtml ********************* Speaking of long-term trends, I'm reminded that the sun is slowly getting brighter, when viewed on time scales comparable to the age of the earth. Then when it finally uses up its hydrogen fuel and reaches the end of its main-sequence life it will expand into a red giant, becoming larger and even brighter. This will not be good for life as we know it on Earth. It may sound counterintuitive, but given sufficiently advanced technology, one way to prolong the useful life of the sun may be to remove matter from its surface. This removal of mass would reduce the pressure in the interior, slowing down the nuclear reactions that cause the sun to shine. This should make it last longer as well as counteract the increase in brightness. Further research is needed, along with careful study of the environmental ramifications of any such actions. But there is no need to rush into this. We probably have several million years before the matter becomes urgent. ********************* Speaking of things that sound sort of science-fictional, I was recently at another convention. And once again people expressed disappointment with the restaurant in the hotel. The complaints were mostly about slow service, understaffing, and apparent employee incompetence or disorganization. These are more or less the same complaints I've heard about restaurants in other convention hotels. Is there something in the nature of the business that leads to these problems at convention hotel restaurants? ********************* In other news, I was reading an online list of postings by various people of "Things I Did Today". Someone listed "Dentist in the rain". That has a vaguely poetic ring to it. Even though the writer probably just went out in the rain to get to a more or less ordinary dentist's office in a more or less ordinary building, it conjures up visions of a solitary dental chair in the middle of a desolate plain under drizzly gray skies, with nothing else anywhere near (not even a ruined statue of Ozymandias, king of kings). Perhaps the dentist chose that location in hopes that the depressing ambiance would make the patients too lethargic to really mind the pain of whatever the dentist needs to do. But there's a Problem: It's affecting the dentist as well, along with the assistant. There's some doubt they'll be able to make it through the day. Would giving the dentist and assistants rose-colored glasses help? ********************* Some politician has been quoted as saying that legalizing gay marriage will lead to men marrying horses. I think he's wrong. We won't see people marrying horses any time soon. Attempts to do so will fail. Whenever the preacher asks the questions to which the bride and groom are supposed to answer "I do", the horse will answer "Neigh". ********************* Speaking of animals related to horses, if it weren't for zebras, what would children's ABC books end with? Zygotes and Zymurgy might be possibilities, but may be too advanced for children just learning the alphabet. Zinc seems kind of boring, at least at first glance. If you want to guide the kid into the field of mathematics, you might consider Zero, while the more adventurous might prefer Zorro. Before you suggest the Zweeghb, consider that we know essentially nothing about it other than that it eats rosebushes. We don't even know whether or not it would eat Zwieback if you tried to feed it some. All in all, maybe there's a reason the cliche thing to end ABC books with (at least in English) is the Zebra. ********************* Something reminded me of Elsie the Cow, who used to advertise Borden's milk products. Is she still doing that? Do the various advertising characters ever get tired of pushing the same old products day after day? Do they ever wish they could swap around, at least temporarily? Maybe Elsie might like to talk about tires for a change, while the Michelin Man pushes fast food. Ronald McDonald may secretly yearn to talk about insurance, while the GEICO gecko would urge people to buy some brand of ice cream. And so on. Do they dare let these desires be known? Or would they be looked on as something perverted, not to be spoken of by decent people, much as spouse-swapping and sadomasochism were looked on fifty years ago? Perhaps they gather in deserted places late at night, filming one another with amateur-grade video cameras. They view the fruits of their efforts in secret, passing home-burned DVD's around to a few trusted kindred souls, never daring to let the world know what it is that they are doing. And they dread the day that someone spills the beans on the Internet. ********************* Incident Along Fantasy Way Weather Music Nobody really CARED about the weather in Sector 47 Forty miles from nowhere In an obscure corner of the Empire But the Law was the Law So they had a Weather Control Station Anyway. Now the weather was supposed to be managed "For the benefit of the People" But since the only people in the Sector were the station crew They did pretty much as they pleased. For instance, They had friends who were musicians in the city And who would come in once or twice a month to visit And have jam sessions. I was at one once -- It started out fairly normal, Just people making music. But along toward midnight As things were building They joined in with the elements: At first with simple things like moaning wind For a song about the desert Or gentle steady rain For a ballad of aching loneliness. Then, to a pounding rock beat, the climax -- Hard driving rain, even a little hail, Howling feedback and screaming wind, Crashing chords mixed with thunder and lightning (With the thunder right on the beat) Giving way at last To silence And moonlight. Thomas G. Digby written 0315 hr 10/27/74 entered 2220 hr 4/12/92 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU There are two email lists, one that allows reader comments and one that does not. 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