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 #206 New Moon of September 27, 2011 Contents copyright 2011 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. ********************* Summer is officially over as of a few days ago, but summer weather (what there has been of it this year) still lingers on. There was a bit of rain in the forecast for this past Sunday, and it supposedly did actually rain a bit in other parts of the area, but all we got right here was a bit of a cool spell. Now they say another storm system is on the way, with "real" rainy-season rain. So maybe it'll finally happen this time. But then again, I seem to have the impression that this area is known for weather that doesn't stick to whatever "normal" is supposed to be. That is, of course, unless whoever decides such things has decided that "normal" is when it's acting up. Then the only way it can act up is to conform to the statistical norms. Or something like that. I get the feeling I could go round and round on this, like a cyclone or something, assuming I want to keep to weather-related analogies. If I don't, then I suppose we might want to go round and round like something else. Or not, if we so prefer. ********************* Somehow the phrase "Weird Coffee Tales" popped into my mind a while back. My first thought was to do a Web search. The search came up empty. So maybe I should do something with the phrase? Or maybe I could make a game of seeing which phrases of the form "Weird ____ Tales" come up empty and which have been used somewhere. Who knows, it might actually be useful as a source of ideas. "Weird Piano Tales" is another one that came up empty. Somehow I feel better able to come up with something along those lines than with coffee, perhaps because pianos (and musical instruments in general) are more a part of my life than coffee is. But then I already did a bit about flaming zombie pianos of doom a few months back. And I later got a similar result with "Weird Chocolate Tales". I may be onto something here. ********************* Related to this, I notice that some search engines seem to really hate coming up empty. They'll suggest alternative spellings or removal of quote marks or other things to make the search show SOMETHING, even if it isn't exactly what I asked for. That's kind of OK, but what bothers me is when they actually show the results of the altered search without first asking. Then I have to go through extra steps to tell it that what I really wanted was what I typed in, not what it thinks I should have typed in. Sometimes, as when I'm looking to see if an idea has been used yet, I want the search to come up empty if nobody else has done anything with it. In other words, sometimes no news is good news. What I don't want is a game of "Nature abhors a vacuum." ********************* According to a news story, a man is suing Facebook for letting his 12-year-old daughter post suggestive pictures of herself. The suit claims the pictures have come to the attention of various people the father does not consider to be desirable companions for his daughter. Facebook has a minimum age of 13, but it's apparently easy to circumvent. Just lie about your birth date when signing up. During a discussion of this story someone asked if there's really any way to tell who is or is not being truthful about their age online. One of the less practical methods might be astrology. Have an astrologer read the person's postings for a while, until they can get a good idea of various personality traits that would tie into the positions of the outer planets in the person's horoscope. Then once they have the outer-planet positions they can calculate whether they're consistent with the stated birth date. If they're not, appropriate action can then be taken. ********************* Among the things I found myself idly reading on Wikipedia recently was a bunch of articles on sorting algorithms as used by computers. This got me to thinking about how humans sort things, and whether future massively parallel computers might work in a manner similar to the way humans would do it. For example, consider a bunch of humans standing around. They're all wearing name tags. Now imagine that at a given signal they are to all line up in a designated area in alphabetical order based on the names on their name tags. Assuming they're all literate enough to do this, and assuming they all agree to do it, how long will the sorting process take as a function of the number of people to be sorted? I suspect it won't increase as much as the time required for one sorter to sort them all because you have everybody effectively working in parallel. But how much less time will it take? Does it matter whether or not they're all using the same algorithm? Are there pairs of algorithms that are workable but incompatible in that either will work if and only if no one is using the other? How exhaustively has this been studied? As massively parallel computers become more common, this kind of thing may become more important than the traditional single-process algorithms. ********************* As so often happens nowadays, I recently got to reading random stuff in Wikipedia. It started with a reference to Venus de Milo, and got into stuff about Greek sculpture and related items. That led to wondering how they did the actual carving back then. There's a cartoon cliche where a sculptor starts with a block of marble (or whatever) and just starts chipping away everything that doesn't look like whatever the eventual subject is supposed to be. I have doubts about the real-life practicality of that approach for major projects, although I've heard that some artists work that way, at least for small pieces. I've also seen photographs of work in progress, where the block has been marked with outlines of what the final shape will be, and they're sawing off corners and such to make a rough approximation. Then they start chipping and grinding and polishing on that, usually with some sort of power tools. It looks like a big job. So what did they do in the days before power tools? Did they just have a whole bunch of apprentices and such doing lots of slow boring work? How long did it take to make a life-size statue of a human? And does it make sense to try to calculate what the equivalent cost of making something like the Venus de Milo would have been in today's dollars, or is the set of stuff money could buy back then too different from what it can buy now to allow valid comparisons? ********************* We've probably all speculated, or imagined others speculating, on when human languages arose. But have we given much thought to the question of when humans started analyzing languages, either their own or others? How long after one sound started meaning "stick" and others took on meanings like "rock" and "fire" and "cave" did our distant ancestors start coming up with meta-concepts such as "words" and "grammar"? When did they start analyzing their language more or less formally? And did the process require contact between tribes or groups that used language differently, so the contrast would make the concepts noticeable? Think of how fish that spent time in tide pools would be more aware of water than the fish that stayed in the deep ocean. Questions abound. Answers may not. ********************* The Flu Shot The other day I got my annual flu shot And then I started thinking I should write a poem about it. At first I imagined some sort of military analogy, Throwing a scare into the troops to keep them on the alert, Or maybe bringing in fragments of enemy weapons and uniforms To be analyzed by some immune-system equivalent of the CIA. I had an image of cartoon white cells, Vaguely humanoid in shape, Marching past, row on row, With rifles on their shoulders While an unseen band Played whatever that kind of cell Might think of as marching music. Since I didn't know as much of the details as I would have liked, And could have used some fresh ideas, I went to the Internet and started reading. Talk about rain on a parade! What we think we now know about all this Isn't like an army at all. Part of it is more like police Demanding that other cells show their papers And executing any whose documents are not in order. But that's not the part the shots are for. Imagine a horde of assassins, Each born with an image of one foe Their lives are dedicated to slaying. There are millions on millions, Each with a different image in mind, Perhaps painted by some distant relative Of those monkeys who will some day type All the works of Shakespeare. Each waits patiently For its one big chance, For a villain that looks enough like its assigned quarry To justify Action. "I've found something!" And that one assassin becomes many, Sending its children throughout the realm To seek out and do battle with the invader. In this case it's a false alarm, or maybe a drill, Only scraps of uniforms and broken pieces of weapons, Or perhaps dead enemy bodies Or cartoonish buffoonish caricatures of soldiers Not really capable of doing much. Whatever the threat, Is is soon vanquished, Leaving most of the defenders to fade away. But some veterans remain And remember, So if a real invader matching that description Ever shows up again There will be more defenders at the ready sooner, Giving it less time to establish a foothold. -- Thomas G. Digby Written 2011-10-01 15:59:39 Edited 2011-10-02 17:35:49 ********************* 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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