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 #104 New Moon of June 29, 2003 Contents copyright 2003 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. ********************* Solstice was a week or so ago, and various people celebrated it with various rituals, some with mention of it being part of some "eternal cycle". But is it really? In a sense it is, in that it repeats from year to year with little change over any one person's lifetime. But in another sense it isn't. Scientists tell us that in the distant past the whole universe was nonexistent until it suddenly exploded into being, and at some distant time in the future the Sun will grow old and die. And even if you don't take that long a view, many places have seen fairly major climate changes over the last few millennia. So while it's OK for most ordinary people to speak of the eternal cycle of the seasons, it's not really appropriate if you're a cosmologist or paleontologist or maybe even an archaeologist. ********************* My thought on waking the morning after Solstice was "It's all downhill from here." Even if it wasn't noticeable yet, the season of light would be starting to wane, down to the nadir of darkness at the December Solstice. I always feel a bit of melancholy at this time of year. The first instance of it that I recall was at a childhood Fourth of July party, when it occurred to me that summer vacation was almost half over. In a few more weeks it would be August, and then it would be September and school would be starting again. I don't have school nowadays, but I do like the long daylight. And the days of long daylight are slipping away, even as the weather continues to get hotter. By Equinox the feeling will probably have passed its peak and be giving way to anticipation of the various festivities of the dark time of the year. And then after the December Solstice the light will start to return, and the cycle will repeat. ********************* "He that has himself for a dentist has a fool for a patient." ********************* I had kind of a weird experience at the Laundromat a few weeks ago. I was leafing through a religious magazine that was sitting around, and someone who looked like he might be homeless asked me if I was a Jehovah's Witness. I said no, and we got into a bit of a discussion of religion. He went on about how he had been beaten up and stabbed and shot and hit in the face with a baseball bat, and how he suspected whatever God may exist had put us here to suffer. I didn't say anything, but I was amazed by how much violence had been a part of his life. Does it come as a normal part of living on the streets, or did he tend to get into fights for other reasons? It left me feeling thankful for my life as it has been, even with all its flaws. The conversation sort of wound down as he drank the wine he had just bought and his speech got more and more slurred and harder to understand. And eventually he left. ********************* At a recent party we got into a discussion about how right or wrong Einstein was about relativity and the impossibility of exceeding the speed of light. The person who thought Einstein was totally wrong was also going on about how doubt is taboo in that field among scientists. At one point he brought up something I had often heard before: When doubt about some scientific "truth" is taboo then progress in that field is pretty much blocked until the current generation of scientists dies off and is replaced by others with fresher viewpoints. I'd also heard something similar said of other fields, such as the arts. That got me to wondering: If progress in some field of science or art or philosophy really does now and then get blocked until some Old Guard dies off, what happens if medical science eventually gives us some kind of near-immortality, especially if the birth rate also goes down to keep the population from getting too big? If it takes a lot longer for those in control to be replaced, what happens to fresh thought? Do things stagnate? ********************* I have this mental image of a future when scientists develop effective immortality, and everybody still alive as of a certain date is more or less guaranteed, barring accidents, to live forever. Friends of one of the last people to die before the immortality thing becomes generally available are mourning his passing and thinking about how lucky they were to have lived long enough to become immortal. But that last person to die is happily sitting up in Heaven, looking down on Earth and being thankful that he got out just in time. ********************* Back in the early part of the 20th Century scientists didn't know what they think they know now about the history of our solar system. In one prevailing theory the planets formed on the fringes of a cloud of dust and gas and other debris as the cloud collapsed to eventually form the sun. This meant that the outer planets would have formed first, before the inner ones. It was also believed that the sun started out much hotter than it is now and gradually cooled to what it is today. What both of these theories have in common is that if any planets other than Earth were ever habitable, the outer planets would have became habitable before the inner ones. Thus life on Mars would be older than life on Earth, which would in turn be older than life on Venus. Many people also believed in some kind of orderly "ladder of evolution" from primeval slime through trilobites and dinosaurs to humans. This was all reflected in the science fiction of the time. Thus you had tales of ancient civilizations on Mars and dinosaurs on Venus. This was before the current theory of the dinosaur-killing meteor crash took over. And nowadays I don't think anyone much believes in an orderly "ladder" of evolution. It was also before they knew how much of a greenhouse Venus's atmosphere was. In addition, our understanding of how stars form and evolved has changed considerably. So ancient Martians and Venusian dinosaurs are pretty much absent from contemporary science fiction. So what other previously dominant scientific theories that have since fallen out of favor are reflected in the science fiction of the past? ********************* In a discussion about brainstorming on The WELL (http://www.well.com/ (or telnet to well.com and log in as "newuser" if you're comfortable with Unix)) someone said something about posting silly ideas like "making shoes out of bubble gum". That eventually triggered some serious thought: A shoe made out of bubble gum would stick to the floor, so you'd have to coat it with talcum powder or something. But it still wouldn't hold its shape, so you'd probably need some kind of semi-rigid outer covering. That led to thoughts of boots filled with something the consistency of bubble gum so that even if the boot is a bit large it wouldn't wobble around on the foot, and the stuff could act as a lubricant so you wouldn't rub the skin and get blisters. Since this would be messy to put on and take off, it would probably be used mostly in cases where the boots would be worn continuously for long periods of time, such as on space missions or in the military. If it's to be worn for days or weeks at a time, it should probably include anti-fungal and anti-bacterial agents to prevent some of the foot problems soldiers have had in the past. It could also be formulated to absorb and/or reduce perspiration. And it might well end up being more comfortable than socks, once you got used to it. ********************* Some people are saying that movies are setting a bad example for our youth by showing people smoking, and that they should not be doing this. But it may depend on the time and place the movie is set in. More people smoked in the Fifties and Sixties than do now, at least in the US. And smoking was pretty much accepted in most social settings. So a movie set around then would not be true to life if it didn't show people smoking. On the other hand, most people go to the bathroom several times a day but many movies don't show people going to the bathroom at all. So if movies can gloss over people going to the bathroom, why can't they also gloss over people smoking? ********************* I have one of those digital thermometers that shows the Fahrenheit temperature, inside and outside, to a tenth of a degree. During much of this past week it looked a lot like a listing of FM radio stations: 89.1, 93.7, 100.1 ..." Even late at night, when things usually cool down quite a bit around here, it was still in the 70's outside. That reminded me of this issue's poem, even though, strictly speaking, the weather condition known as "Santa Ana winds" (aka "Santana winds") is a Southern California thing. Similar winds do occur elsewhere, but under different names. ********************* Santa Ana Warm winds make the night itself seem restless. The trees toss and turn as they cannot get to sleep: They wish they had the freedom to go running through the night Like the leaves they often lose To a wanderlust That they Can only dream of. Warm winds make the night itself seem restless. A whispered invitation not to try to sleep: To let the wind caress me running naked through the night Like the gentle touch of lovers, Lovers past Or yet-to-be I often dream of. Thomas G. Digby written 0340 hr 5/29/78 typed 0505 hr 9/16/79 entered 1245 hr 4/09/92 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation. There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to almost nothing in between. Any post can spark a new flurry at any time. 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