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 #218 New Moon of September 15, 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 is over. It won't "officially" end for another couple of days yet, but it feels like it's been over for some time. There are a number of reasons it feels this way to me, even though in this climate some of the hottest days of the year may lie ahead. First, I think of September as an Autumn month, even though two-thirds of it is over by the time the Equinox rolls around. This may come from childhood associations of September with the end of summer vacation and the start of the new school year. The days have been getting noticeably shorter and shorter for some weeks now. It's getting dark earlier in the evenings and staying dark later in the mornings. Also, the sun isn't as high in the sky at midday as it was a couple of months ago. And last but not least, the stores are starting to put their Halloween stuff up. Summer is definitely over. ********************* Speaking of endings, there's been some speculation lately about the US Postal Service being more or less Doomed, what with various kinds of electronic communications taking the place of paper mail. It may have a few more years of life left, but the handwriting is on the wall. Or so I hear. I don't think I have much to say about that, since others have already been saying plenty. But I can imagine the day the last remaining carrier delivers the last letter before retiring, at which point the rest of the organization is disbanded. Maybe there'll be some sort of public ceremony, with dignitaries and celebrities and such gathered around the last remaining mailbox to watch the last carrier deliver the last letter. There'll be those VIPs, and reporters and camera crews and security people, and maybe also temporary bleachers for the rest of the crowd of whatever more or less ordinary people manage to get in. Maybe this last mailbox will be some more or less ordinary one chosen more or less at random, or maybe it'll be a special one erected for the occasion in front of the White House or some other notable place. And there will be speeches, and bands playing, and maybe a succession of people checking the box to see if the mail has come yet, which it won't have. Then along toward the end of the ceremony the last carrier drives or walks up with the last letter, puts it in the box, and maybe sets the flag to indicate that there's mail. That part is kind of confusing, because the original customary use of that flag, whatever it may have been, seems to have faded from public consciousness over the years. I suppose the carrier should also check the box for outgoing mail, but there shouldn't be any if this is the official last delivery. So he or she puts the last letter in the box, perhaps along with a wad of assorted ads and such, and slowly ambles off into the sunset. And then a couple more people make short speeches, the person the last letter is addressed to takes it out of the box and opens it and reads it, and then the bands play some sad music, and it's over. Eventually the crowds will have all left, and the last mailbox will either be taken down and put in a museum somewhere, or maybe turned into a permanent memorial. And that will be the end of an era. ********************* Late-breaking news: Steve Jobs is not a Cow A few days ago I saw a little item in the local paper where some Thai religious figure was quoted as saying that Steve Jobs was doing OK as a mid-level angel, and had reincarnated as "half [unfamiliar word] and half yak". I didn't know what the unfamiliar word meant, but I recalled that a yak was some kind of Himalayan animal related to cattle and bison and such. So I figured that if this other thing could interbreed with a yak it must be something similar. Therefore Steve Jobs was now something like a cow, somewhere in the Himalayas. But I was still curious as to what that other thing was. So I did a web search on the unfamiliar word ("Witthayathorn"). It turns out to be some kind of spirit being or angel or some such. And the "yak" wasn't an animal. It too was an angelic spirit being. The word comes from a different Asian language from the one the animal name comes from, and the resemblance is probably just coincidence. So now the bit about Steve being a mid-level angel makes sense. And despite the similarity of the two words from different Asian languages, Steve Jobs is not a cow. ********************* King Midas has to be very careful when crossing bridges. If he touches any part of it with his bare hands or feet, the whole thing, or at least some significant part of it, will turn to gold. Since gold is a lot heavier than most commonly used structural materials, and also not as strong, the bridge may collapse. He also has to be aware of this any time he's indoors, although carpets and wall hangings and furniture items that are not part of the building structure may mitigate the worst of the danger. For some reason that kind of detail doesn't get covered very much in most fairy tales. ********************* From fairy tales to science fiction: How might beings on some other world have 3D vision such that they could develop a 3D movie technology that would be incompatible with 3D movies made for humans? Most alien beings pictured in science fiction have two eyes side by side, more or less like humans. Given that (as far as I know) all the science fiction published on this planet is done by human writers or artists or actors or whatever, that kind of bias is to be expected. But what if that human-centric assumption didn't hold? What if the beings we're speculating about didn't arise from something with bilateral symmetry? Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow's space aliens have eyes on stalks waving around above their heads. I suspect this would be unlikely for intelligent visually-oriented land-dwelling creatures because eyes on stalks would be rather vulnerable, but let's ignore that for the moment. Imagine a being with one eye on a stalk above its head. It would not be able to see 3D the way humans do because there is only one viewpoint available at any one time. But if it were to rapidly wave its eyestalk back and forth from left to right it could get at least some 3D information by comparing the views at different points along the way. Could this work for them in a movie, assuming they were to move the camera to simulate eye-waving? That would depend on the degree to which they can synchronize their eye-waving to external stimuli, but in the best case it should work. Now imagine a human trying to watch one of their 3D movies. The camera would be wobbling back and forth maybe two or three or four times per second. Whatever it was focused on (such as an actor's face) might be more or less steady in a more or less fixed place on the screen, while the background would be constantly shifting from side to side. Any objects in front of the center of attention, such as tree branches or window frames, would also be shifting, but in the opposite direction from the background. Some humans might be able to watch that and maybe even get some impression of 3D out of it, while others would just get motion sickness. Or imagine a being with two eyes, but arranged one above the other. Their 3D film technology could resemble ours in terms of using polarized glasses and such, but would be incompatible in terms of humans being able to watch it. But at least a 2D version, using just the view from one eye, should be watchable by humans. That would not be the case with the wobbly eye-stalk. There are other possibilities, some involving more than two eyes, or eyes arranged in other ways or differing from one another in such things as responses to different wavelengths of light, but I think that's enough for now. ********************* One posting on a forum I'm on was a quiz. Given several interruptions happening more or less simultaneously, which would you tend to first? The list included a ringing telephone (presumably with no answering machine or voice mail), someone at the door, and a crying baby. What you would do in what order is supposed to indicate something about your personality. My answers were something along the lines of telling the person at the door to wait, then picking up the phone and asking the caller to wait, assuming neither turns out to be of extreme urgency. Likewise, glance at the baby to make sure it isn't in real danger. Then down to business: Try to find out who the baby belongs to and why it's in my bedroom. If nobody I ask (including the people at the door and/or on the phone) admit to knowing anything about it, turn the kid over to the authorities. Whoever posted the quiz didn't post much about the meanings of the various possible answers, so I don't know what kind of personality my answers would indicate I have. ********************* Another thought on that "What would you do first?" quiz where one of the competing items was a crying baby. I suspect the authors of the quiz were expecting me to assume the baby belonged to me, or was otherwise in my care. But I didn't go with that assumption. In those parts of Cartoonland where babies are delivered by the Stork, mistakes are not unknown. And since the Stork, like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, has the magical power to enter inhabited dwellings unnoticed even if they're locked, a baby could suddenly turn up in in some part of your house when you least expect it. There have been cases where a cop walking a beat in the dead of night is passing an abandoned warehouse when he hears what sounds like a baby crying inside. So he finds a way in through a broken window or unlocked door or some such, and follows the sound. And sure enough, there in a back room somewhere, surrounded by a dusty floor undisturbed by any recent footprints, is a baby. The standard procedure in such cases is to call for backup: Detectives to search the vicinity for clues, along with paramedics to check the baby for medical problems. More often than not they'll find a delivery slip with a street name one or two letters different from the street the abandoned warehouse is on. Or maybe the number will be one digit different. Either way the baby should have gone across town to a residential area. A quick call to HQ will turn up a report from that address about how a baby some couple is expecting hasn't shown up yet. Then everything can be straightened out and all will be well, at least until the next opportunity for something to go wrong and give rise to another story episode. There are of course variations, where the baby has been hidden in the warehouse by kidnappers or abandoned by parents for one reason or another, sometimes with additional plot complications. But those can go into a separate article. ********************* The news had something about this being the season for the grape harvest, which reminded me: Quality vs Quantity "Everybody knows that small wineries make the best wine," Said a little old winemaker up Selenaloma way to himself, "So I will make the best wine possible: Every year I will harvest, crush, ferment, and bottle One Perfect Grape. Chosen from the vine most favored by sun, wind, and rain, And given the greatest concentration of loving attention, It will grow to greatness Just as tinder, under sunlight concentrated by a lens Glows into flame. True, the fruits of my labor will not be for the masses But then great art never is, And surely there are a fortunate few Ready, willing, and able to pay the price And to fully appreciate the result." So saying, he began to make ready. Unfortunately, however, word leaked out And three of his competitors, Not to be outdone in the matter of small wineries, Went one better By producing No wine at all. Tom Digby written 0035 hr 11/24/76 entered 2/16/88 format 1347 hr 12/22/01 ********************* 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. 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