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 #215 New Moon of June 19, 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. ********************* Summer Solstice always seems to bring a slight bit of melancholy. The days are starting to get shorter, and in maybe six weeks we'll start seeing "Back to School" sales in the stores. I recall a time many years ago when I was at a Fourth of July party, and suddenly realized that summer vacation was almost half over. School had let out at the beginning of June, and would start up again at the end of August. The actual midpoint of that interval would be the middle of July, but that was less than two weeks away. It's the other side of the coin from all the festive stuff we get at Yule, about how the Sun is starting to return and winter will eventually end. ********************* The hoopla over the recent transit of Venus is dying down. The next one will be in 2117. For those who don't want to wait that long there will be a transit of Mercury in 2016. With a transit of Mercury the little black dot on the sun will be a lot smaller than for Venus, but the experience will be otherwise pretty similar, at least if you're not engaged in gathering scientific data or teaching astronomy or something like that. If you really want to see a transit of Venus and you're willing to travel, there will be one visible from Mars in 2030. There will also be a transit of Earth visible from Mars in 2084, as well as other events which I don't think I need to list here. At the start of the recent transit I did the bit of using binoculars to project an image onto some convenient surface. But after a few minutes of watching the little black dot crawling across the white circle I started to lose interest. A planetary transit is not as spectacular as a near-total solar eclipse. It might be a useful event for some kinds of scientific observations, and it's an excuse for a party, but other than that my impression of it was "If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all." ********************* I was recently reminded of the traditional Letter of Comment (often abbreviated "LoC") that readers of fanzines would send to the publisher. The first fanzines were modeled on professionally published science fiction magazines. This included Letters to the Editor from readers. The technology of the time was such that the editor (or some assistant) had to manually retype any letters he or she wanted to publish. As technology advanced some zines began to photocopy incoming letters for publication instead of retyping them. Later, as electronic mail became common, text could be pasted in electronic form, even if the zine itself was still printed on paper with physical copies being sent to readers. Most of these fanzines came out monthly or bimonthly or quarterly (four issues a year), and many had trouble keeping up with that schedule. A few came out more often, but not many. In parallel with these traditional "genzines" (from "General Fanzine" or some similar phrase) there arose the "apa". These were groups of people, all publishing zines, and all sending copies to one another (see the Wikipedia article on "Amateur press association"). In many of these it became customary for each member's zine to include comments on zines published by other members of the group. This more or less eliminated the middleman on comments, at least in those cases where the writer of the comment intended for it to be read by the entire membership. Some apas ran on a quarterly cycle, although many were more frequent. I don't have statistics, but I suspect on average most apas were distributed on a more frequent schedule than most genzines. The use of the past tense in the above is not intended to imply that such zines are no longer being published. It is just that I'm contrasting the traditional paper zines with more recent electronic publishing. Whether apas or genzines are "better" is a matter of personal preference. My first real experience with fanzines was in the weekly apa "APA-L". Most of the content consisted of ongoing discussions of comments on prior comments on still older comments. And since it ran on a weekly cycle, feedback was almost immediate. Thus when I started Silicon Soapware I set it up as an email list to which readers could post comments. I didn't feel up to trying to maintain the weekly pace of APA-L, but at the same time I saw little reason not to allow immediate feedback on comments and I felt no real need to act as a middleman by copying and pasting text. Were I starting SS now I might well set it up as a blog (with a comment section), but back in 1995 when I first started it I wasn't familiar with the concept of the blog, and didn't have easy access to the server-side software for managing it. Email lists, on the other hand, were a standard commodity. So that's what I went with. The rest is history. ********************* As far as I noticed there was no Nobel Prize for magic this year. Perhaps too many people were trying too hard to win, and their spells all canceled each other out. ********************* I recently got an email asking me to support Warren Chisum (whom I had never heard of before) for Texas Railroad Commissioner. Since I had never heard of that office I emailed the campaign with questions: Although I'm unfamiliar with this "Texas Railroad Commission" you're running for, the name seems to imply it has something to do with railroads. What are your positions on the following railroad-related issues which are important to me? * Electrification of Caltrain. * Extending BART around San Francisco Bay. * High-speed trains between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I notice the word "Texas" in the name. If you get elected, will more people from Texas be riding trains around the Bay Area? This could be a good thing (more revenue) if they can avoid peak traffic periods (congestion, etc.). How will you deal with this? On the other hand, I am concerned that matters in Texas may get a disproportionate share of the Commission's attention. If this is the case I as a resident of California can not in good conscience support your campaign. Please reassure me on this. [signature, etc.] Other people I know have also gotten similar emails. Some seem to consider them spam. My sense of humor seems to want to give them the benefit of the doubt: If a campaign isn't doing spam the staff should be glad to answer any questions they get from voters world-wide, including those asking why their emails may be relevant to people outside their home area. If they are spamming, then they deserve to have to dig through piles of silly replies just in case there's something important in there somewhere. ********************* Maybe just some nonsense? Non scents? If people had no noses, the deodorant industry would be in big trouble. Maybe they could get some kind of economic stimulus from the government, but they might have a problem explaining the concept of what they want to do. "If people had noses they would be able to smell things, and some of those smells might be unpleasant. So we would make stuff to counteract those smells so that people wouldn't smell them even if they had noses, which they don't." The perfume industry would have similar problems, from the opposite side. Would the two industries try to cooperate toward a common goal of getting stimulus funds? And what other industries might try to benefit from this? There may be all kinds of things that people could make a living doing if only humans were different in some way. It's no fault of theirs that humans are the way they are. Should we give stimulus funding to all of them? Those opposed to government handouts might claim that this whole concept is silly. How best can we rebut that argument? Does it make a difference if the concept really is silly? Silly concepts sometimes become best-sellers. ********************* Something reminded me of those cartoons of a person climbing a mountain to ask a question of a guru sitting at the top. I'm guessing gurus on mountain tops aren't really into that Internet thing. If they were they could post all their sayings on the Web and seekers wouldn't need to climb mountains any more. That means the seekers wouldn't get the exercise they need, and would get fat and flabby and keel over from heart attacks and die. That might reflect unfavorably on the gurus' karma. And karma or no, where would the gurus on mountain tops be if there were no seekers climbing the mountains to chat with them? They might, among other things, be hungry for pizza, because most pizza places won't deliver to the tops of mountains in remote areas. Perhaps they'd been getting by on random pizzas some of the seekers would bring along, but with the seekers all dead from lack of exercise because of using the Internet instead of climbing mountains that source has dried up. And even if the seekers don't all die, if they're not climbing mountains they won't be bringing pizza to the gurus on top. I know pizza is not part of the standard mountaintop guru image, but that doesn't mean they don't like a slice now and then when they think the media people aren't looking. They might be able to invent some way to deliver pizza by satellite. Have an automated pizza-making system in orbit, and when you send it an order it makes the pizza and drops it to its destination in some kind of special space pod. You might not even need an oven in the satellite if the heat of atmospheric entry can be used to cook the pizza. Problem is, anything involving satellite technology can get expensive. And even if the gurus can afford it, they'll be reluctant to use it if the delivery pods aren't reusable or recyclable. So we're not likely to see gurus on mountain tops eating pizza delivered by satellite any time soon. And it's probably just as well that most of them don't use the Internet all that much. ********************* Lost? Child What did you say, son? Why did I cut what? Those flowers? Because they were there. We do need to clear this field before fire season. But you say they weren't a fire hazard like the dry grass So we didn't really have to cut them? Maybe not, but it was easier to go cutting straight through than to stop and think about it. If you really want flowers, you can buy flowers somewhere later. Quit worrying about that kind of stuff. Just forget all about it. Gateways for the Little People? You say if you relax in a field of wildflowers And let your eyes unfocus and your mind go blank You may suddenly hear music and song and laughter, And if you follow your ears and your heart They'll lead you through the flowery gate Into the land of the Little People, Whose cares are different and perhaps more to your taste Than the cares of this world? I'd better not catch you telling that to the neighbors. They'll think there's something strange about you. Quit worrying about that kind of stuff. Just forget all about it. We're almost half done. Let's take a break. Here's a tree we can sit under. Son, do you hear somebody singing off behind me somewhere? Are you going to meet them? What are you laughing about? Where did you disappear to? Son? Son? Answer me! Wherever you are, come back here! I am your father! Please come back and tell me If I really did just hear a faint voice Telling me "Quit worrying about that kind of stuff. Just forget all about it." Thomas G. Digby entered 1215 hr 4/29/92 ********************* 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 you can tell which list you are on by looking at the email headers. If the headers include a line like this: Silicon Soapware zine with reader comments you are getting it via the list that allows comments (some email software may hide part of the line, but there should be enough visible to recognize it). To comment, simply email your comment to ss_talk@lists.plergb.com (which you can often do by hitting "Reply All" or "Reply to List") from the address at which you got the zine. The list will not accept comments from non-member addresses. If the Subject line includes the phrase "SS_Talk Digest" you are getting the digest version. 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