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 #209 New Moon of December 24, 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. ********************* This New Moon falls on Christmas Eve. By the time you see this, Santa will have come and gone and people will be counting down to New Year's. When I was a kid I always thought of that time between the holidays as kind of a downer, what with the main event of the season being over. You might think we would have looked forward to New Year's, but when we were too young to stay up until midnight, that day didn't have the same meaning it had for grown-ups. My sister and I also had our birthdays around this time, but our family seldom made a big deal of that. So when Christmas was over, that was pretty much It for the season. We wouldn't have to go back to school for another several days, but that time would come soon enough. And it felt like it would be a long time before the next big thing to look forward to would begin to show up. I recall one year when as part of the pre-holiday festivities the teacher and/or some of the more artistically talented kids drew a Nativity scene on the blackboard (this was before the courts said we couldn't do this kind of thing in school). I don't recall the details, but I do remember that there were Wise Men on camels approaching the stable where the manger was. It was all done up in colored chalk. Watching it being drawn (and maybe helping with some details) gave me a sense that something wonderful was about to happen. This may have had more to do with Santa Claus and presents and a couple of weeks of not having to get up early to go to school than to any actual religious stuff about a Saviour or whatever, but it still felt great. Then came the first day of school after the holidays. When we came into the room the picture was still there. It hadn't changed, but now when I looked at it I didn't feel that same joy. It was just chalk on a blackboard. In retrospect the analogy I might make is chewing gum that you've chewed on long enough for all the flavor to have gone out of it. You still have this blob in your mouth that you can chew on, but it doesn't give the same pleasure it did before. So although I felt sort of sad as I watched the teacher erase the picture from the blackboard, I knew it was time for it to go. Eventually the grayness of the season lifted, as other joyful things such as Easter and eventual summer vacation rolled around. But even so, every year had this dreary gray time that we had to just sort of endure. ********************* I've heard it said that if the universe is infinite there must be other worlds just like this one. But now I'm wondering if there would also be other worlds that are similar but different. For example, take some random urban legend, or perhaps some conspiracy theory that sounds ridiculous to you. Would there be a world somewhere that may superficially resemble ours but in which that legend or theory is true? And given a page of gibberish hammered out by an ape at a typewriter (or a computer simulation using a pseudo-random number generator), would there be a world where the language is such that people would see that page of what to us is gibberish as an excerpt from some great work of literature? ********************* This coming April will mark the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Some promoter is offering tours to visit the wreckage. For $60,000 you get to spend eight to ten hours crammed into a tiny submersible with two other people: Something like two or three hours going down, a couple of hours at the site, and then another couple of hours returning. It's not for everybody. When someone posted the story on the WELL my comment was that maybe some reality show should foot the bill to send a spirit medium down to see if any of the victims has anything to say. That might be an interesting thing to watch even if nothing special happens. Maybe they could do something along the lines of when they opened that old vault that supposedly belonged to Al Capone? Build up a lot of anticipation and suspense, even if nothing actually turns up? ********************* I recently saw a video in which the Consumer Reports people crash-tested a 1950's car, judging it by modern standards. It failed. I'm pretty sure they expected it to fail. The "test" was mainly a demonstration of how much difference design changes and safety equipment such as seat belts (which the car they "tested" didn't have) have made over the last fifty years. To illustrate the progress that has been made, they did the test by crashing the old car into a new one of similar size and mass. The dummy in the newer car fared much better. Someone on the forum I found this in said it kind of hurt emotionally to see that vintage car destroyed. I had similar feelings, although probably milder. The thought also occurred to me that classic cars are in effect a non-renewable resource, in that they don't make them any more. Safety regulations aside, the cost of resurrecting the tooling would be prohibitive given the probably-small demand. But that may be changing. They have computer printers now that can make three-dimensional objects out of plastic. There are also computer-controlled machine tools for fabricating metal parts. I don't know if they have anything that can press sheet metal into arbitrary shapes, but that too may come along over the next few years. So it may eventually become feasible to custom-build "old" cars. And if the current laws require things like seat belts and air bags and crumple zones and smog controls, there may eventually be design software capable of fitting all that in while keeping most of the look and feel of the original. Even if you've never driven a stick shift, you need not worry. Various degrees of automated assistance, possibly up to and including full self-driving capabilities, will be available, probably customizable for each driver. There's lots of work to be done to get to there from here, but I'm guessing we'll be seeing something of this sort within twenty years, assuming cars still exist at all. ********************* A couple of prominent people on one online forum have gotten into one of those disputes that now and then come up. The principals have put forth conflicting versions of the facts, or what they claim to remember as having been the facts. People watching from the sidelines are speculating about who's lying, whose email account may have been broken into, who may be having alcoholic blackouts, and so on. Be the facts as they may, this whole thing got me to thinking about our society's attitudes toward mental illness. There seems to be a feeling that if someone's actions can be attributed to some specific mental health problem, then the person is pretty much blameless. But how valid is this? With something physical, like a broken leg, it's relatively easy to separate the problem from the person. But it's a lot harder in the case of misbehavior with no obviously visible physical cause. A person's thoughts and behavior are viewed as being more of an essential part of them than their arms and legs. In days of old we could attribute such behavior to demonic possession, and possibly even make some attempt at identifying the demon involved. Thus any observed misbehavior could be judged separately from the essential person, just as a broken leg could be. But with the decline of belief in possession by demons, we've lost that ability to distinguish. Sometimes a physical exam will turn up something organic like a brain tumor that the behavior can be blamed on, and which can be cured in the sense that after the tumor is removed the person's behavior returns to normal. Then we can blame the tumor, as distinct from the person, sort of like how we used to be able to blame demons. But it's not always that obvious. The cause may be something subtle that current medical science is not capable of evaluating beyond giving the condition a name and trying various medications until something is found that seems to help. And sometimes medical science can't even do that much. Also, it's more common for people nowadays to not believe (or at least to publicly admit to not believing) in a "soul" or "spirit" that's distinct from the body. If that distinction is removed, then doesn't mental illness in general become the fault of the victim? So when is it the victim's fault, and when is it not the victim's fault? ********************* A new year is almost upon us. That, along with various predictions that the world will or will not be coming to an end, leads me to thoughts on the passage of time. And that suggests this: TIME GUM If you've always wanted to roam the corridors of time, To meet Shakespeare, Attend the original Olympics, Or bumble around with dinosaurs, And you're the kind of person who prefers hiking to driving, Then I recommend Time Gum. Some flavors let you chew your way straight into the past That you've always read about in history books While others take you crookedly into other pasts Of dragons And wizards And fairy-tale princesses And still other flavors give you the future. I could say more about futures, But some people feel it's like telling the ending To a movie you haven't seen yet, Or opening your Christmas presents early And having nothing to do on Christmas morning But sit around wishing you'd waited, So I won't. In some ways Time Gum is very mysterious. Like, nobody knows when or if It was, or will be, or would have been invented. But most futures are full of warehouses full of it So nobody really worries about it. Some people wonder if it's safe. The main danger is cheap imitations That aren't really Time Gum at all But just regular gum with drugs in it To make you think you're on a time trip When you really aren't. It seems, however, That dealers in such bogus wares Often suddenly find That their grandparents had no children, And their parents didn't either, And neither will they, probably, So it's never really been a problem. Still, it's safer to buy from someone you trust. Just ask your friends to recommend someone. Chances are they can, Since Time Gum is not as rare As you might think. F'rinstance, If you've ever endured banquet speeches That seemed to drone on and on forever, Or been enjoying a concert When it ended all too soon, Chances are that some of the lumps Stuck to the underside of your seat Are, or were, or will be, or might have been, Time Gum. -- Thomas G. Digby written 2340 hr Oct 26 83 entered 0415 hr Nov 22 83 format 14:05 12/22/2001 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU There are two email lists, one that allows reader comments and one that does not. Both are linked from http://www.plergb.com/Mail_Lists/Silicon_Soapware_Zine-Pages.html If you are already receiving Silicon Soapware and want to unsubscribe or otherwise change settings, the relevant URL should be in the footer appended to the end of this section in the copy you received. 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