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 #212 New Moon of March 22, 2012 Contents copyright 2012 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 sprang rather early this year, with the Equinox coming on the evening of March 19 for the western US (March 20 for almost everybody else). It's the earliest Equinox since 1896. So why did Spring come so early this year? Because that's the way the Gregorian calendar is set up. It's probably a bit long to put here in full detail, but basically there's a four-year cycle superimposed on a hundred-year cycle that in turn is superimposed on a 400-year cycle. This is because the Earth's orbit doesn't match the calendar, or any one of these cycles, exactly. It's pretty close, on average, to matching the combined cycles over the long run, although still not exact. The four-year cycle means the Equinox will be relatively early (as shown on calendars) in leap years (such as 2012 and 2016), and will be relatively late in years just before leap years (such as 2011 and 2015). The longer cycles mean that these four-year extremes will gradually drift a few minutes earlier each leap year until they usually (but not always) get reset to being relatively late when a new century turns. The most recent new century was one of those times the hundred-year cycle didn't reset, because of the 400-year cycle. So what this all adds up to is that the March (Northern Hemisphere Spring) Equinox in 1903 was the latest it had been for something like 400 years (minor changes to Earth's orbit and rotation make it harder to be more exact than that). The four-year cycle has been drifting earlier since then. It will continue to drift earlier until 2096, when it will be the earliest it's been for something like 400 years. This will repeat every 400 years, assuming the calendar doesn't get changed between now and then. There's much more detail, including a graph of these different cycles, in the Wikipedia article "Gregorian calendar". ********************* Toward the end of the Wikipedia article on the Gregorian calendar there's mention of possible future reforms. Problem is, the various motions of the Earth are not perfectly predictable. These uncertainties are too small to notice for everyday practical purposes, but they can add up to a day or more over the course of a few thousand years. However, there may be another alternative: Adjust the motions of the Earth to agree with the calendar. We may not have the technology to do that right now, but by the time the errors become significant, assuming civilization doesn't collapse in the meantime, we should be able to. I'm pretty sure no major technological breakthroughs or scientific discoveries will be needed. The main problem is economic: We don't currently have the resources to mount a project of the magnitude required to do the job. That's probably solvable over the course of the next couple of hundred years, assuming we really want to do it. We'll also want to know more about the consequences of such an act before doing it, lest we cause some unforeseen catastrophe. And then there's the political problem of getting everybody, or at least everybody whose opinion matters, to agree to it. This last may be the hardest part. ********************* Speaking of doing calendar reform by altering planetary motions to fit your calendar, and of factions whose opinions might or might not matter, how might astrologers feel about humans moving planets around? ********************* And another question: Does the presence of long-term variations in the motions of the planets make any serious difference to those who like to think in terms of eternal cycles? Does it matter that back in the days of the dinosaurs the day was several hours shorter and there were more days in a year than there are now? Does it matter that in the time of the Pharaohs Polaris was not the North Star? And does it matter that when we try to calculate the time of day of Equinoxes and Solstices and lunar phases for dates a thousand years from now we may be off by several hours? ********************* Many would say that millisecond or smaller variations in the motions of Earth and the other planets is not something I need to worry about. But what if it is? Or what if someone tells me that some random bit of trivia that I had never thought of before is worth worrying about? How do I go about worrying about it? Is there a standard procedure for worrying about stuff? If so, could I delegate the task, or write a computer program to do it for me? More to the point, even if I can delegate it or write a computer program to do it for me, should I? Or should I do all my own worrying? And is that question something I should worry about? ********************* The vowels a, e, i, o, and u are not created equal. For example, ever notice how uncommon it is in English to have two of the letter "i" in a row (not counting acronyms (such as "ASCII") and Roman numerals)? English has lots and lots of words with "ee" and "oo" in them, but only a few proper names and exotic-sounding words with "aa", a few Latin-derived words with "uu", and hardly anything with "ii". After I return from skiing when I should be vacuuming the bazaar, I'll want to know if this is worth worrying about. ********************* A common thing in fantasy stories is characters going through a number of different worlds with different physical and/or magical laws. Some kinds of magic work in some but not in others, technological stuff tends not to work in the ones where magic is strongest, and so on. If there's some kind of network of scientists, wizards, and so on working in these diverse universes, what might their classification schemes for different realms look like? And what experiments might they do in their various worlds that would turn out differently under different sets of laws in such a way as to help them classify things? For example, consider the Michaelson-Morley experiment, generally regarded in this world as a validation of Special Relativity. How would you tell the difference between our case and an unmoving world that's at the center of its universe, since presumably both would show no effects of motion? Would a Foucault pendulum do it? Or would you first have to verify conservation of momentum? And then consider still other worlds, where attempts to even set up the experiment fail. Maybe they can't get interference fringes at all. If that's the case, why? Does light not propagate as waves there, or is there some other problem? How do we figure out what the differences are? And when communication with a newly discovered universe is established, what are some of the basic questions our scientists would ask the inhabitants. If our scientists go there, what are some of the experiments they might do? ********************* I recently saw a video about recycling TV sets that sort of got to me emotionally. I think it's because it showed people deliberately breaking things, some of which might have been in working condition, and doing it in a way that indicated that they had no emotional interest in the things they were breaking and no curiosity about how they were put together. It makes economic sense that rather than trying, for example, to find the screws holding a circuit board down and then taking the time to unscrew them, you just pry the board out, in pieces if need be. You're going to be melting it down or whatever anyway. Likewise, if you're being paid by the hour and there's no good reason you need to know various subtle things about how certain parts go together, they won't want you sitting there studying them. Just break it apart with your hammer and toss the pieces into the appropriate bins. Don't waste time looking at anything any longer than you have to. But even though I know intellectually that this makes sense, the part of me that spent many happy childhood hours taking stuff apart and putting the pieces together in novel ways sees it as an endless stream of lost opportunities. ********************* One thing I've wondered about from time to time: If we meet other intelligent life, will we be able to watch each other's TV shows? Aside from the obvious language issues and technical stuff about scanning rates or whatever, what if we see things differently in the sense of having different sensory receptors? If they hear sound (which seems likely if they have a gaseous atmosphere) to what degree will the ranges of frequencies we hear overlap? Likewise with sight: What wavelengths are they likely to see? If they see colors, what if they have more or fewer primary colors? What if they're at different wavelengths from ours? What if their visual persistence time is faster or slower than ours, leading to what appear to be flickery or jerky images? How easy is that to work around? Would it be feasible to try to define a set of video standards that will handle both kinds of vision? Or are we not likely to want to watch that much of each other's movies and such anyway? ********************* Will Others Sing Our Songs? The museum is dark and empty, I'm working late tonight, Cataloging relics of A world that died when Man was not yet Man. There's writing on this tablet. What meaning did it have? I doubt we'll ever know although We'll try to piece together what we can. CHORUS: Will others sing our songs when our world is in its grave, Even when our voices do not fit their ears? And what of their tomorrows, when time itself grows cold? Will there be something better than oblivion? They say they found the tablet Lying with the ruins Of instruments of music that were Never made for human hands or breath. And as I touch the carvings I somehow think I know The song that they were singing as they Realized their world was facing death. CHORUS Museums are always haunted, I sort of half believe, By those who lived with all the things We keep as a reminder of the past. And something Unseen tells me They'll never truly die. Across the gulfs of space and time Their songs are being sung again at last. CHORUS -- Tom Digby 18:31 02/23/2002 ********************* 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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