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 #125 New Moon of March 10, 2005 Contents copyright 2005 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. ********************* Although the last few days have been bright and sunny, almost a sneak preview of summer, we just came out of a spell of weather that was gray and rather wet. Lovely weather for ducks. Or so they say. Since ducks spend much of their time in or near water, and have natural waterproofing stuff in their feathers, people seem to sort of assume they like rainy weather. But has anybody ever actually tested this? Even if rain doesn't bother ducks as much as it bothers humans (and presumably many other animals) do they actually like it? They might have some reason to prefer rain over sunshine if it's more of a disadvantage to predators and competitors than it is to them. There might also be other reasons for ducks to prefer rain. But do they, deep down inside, really prefer rainy days to sunny ones? Even if you wanted to test this, how would you? Rain and sunshine seldom occur close enough together to allow a duck to actually choose one or the other. Can we simulate rain and sunshine realistically enough for a valid test? Or is it one of those things that can't really be tested? Off in the realm of fantasy, you could ask those psychics who claim to know the thoughts of animals if they've picked up any hint of a preference either way. And you could ask comics artists about the preferences of any duck-based characters they draw. But I don't think either approach would carry much weight with scientists. So we may just have to continue using the cliche line more or less on faith. ********************* Something reminded me of the perennial question about where science fiction writers get their ideas. I could spin some yarn about a little shop in downtown SF that's also magically in Hollywood and a number of other cities. Writers in need of ideas just go there and buy them. The ideas come in various forms. Sometimes the person behind the counter whispers it into the buyer's ear. Other times it may take the form of a fortune cookie. Often it's just some object that doesn't seem remarkable at first, but then after you've gotten it home and it's been sitting around the house for a few days you suddenly notice it in a new way and, for no apparent reason, the idea just pops into your head. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to it beyond the fact of it being rather unpredictable. Why is it done this way? Is it for plausible deniability? If someone who isn't a writer happens by, the shop can look like just some random second-hand store, hardly worthy of a second glance. Of course there's a chance that while you're there you'll run into some other writer you don't otherwise see very often, and you may chat for a while. But unlike some bars and saloons and such you may have read about with similar semi-magical properties, it's not primarily a gathering place. And since many writers don't like to admit that they get their ideas there, conversation is not always encouraged. Also, writers have to agree to keep the shop's exact location(s) secret from non-writers. Featuring it in stories is also kind of discouraged. I'm allowed to blab about it here only because I'm well enough known for strange off-the-wall ideas that they don't expect anybody to take anything I say about it seriously. ********************* One of my little notes says "Edgar Alien Poe". Was he the one who wrote that poem about a time traveler materializing in his room and making dire predictions about him never again finding love or happiness? And didn't he do a bunch of other horror-tinged science fiction as well? I also seem to recall a story of his about someone on the staff of a newspaper doing a global replace of "o" with "x" on a paragraph of text. Does anybody else know that one? ********************* I was just at a convention of science-fiction (and fantasy, etc.) musicians and got to see lots of performances by people with varying degrees of skill and talent. The subject of tuning kept coming up, with even the best of them having to pause now and then to tune their guitars. As I watched all this tuning a thought came to mind: As sort of the opposite of the starship that travels by repeatedly teleporting itself some short distance, you set up a conveyor belt with teleporters at both ends so that anything on the belt is carried into one teleporter and reappears at the other, whereupon the belt carries it back to the first teleporter, and so on, in an endless cycle. So whatever is on the belt has a constant non-zero velocity relative to the immediate vicinity, but doesn't actually go anywhere. What use is this? If you have a musician who isn't tuned to match the local standard, you can put them on the belt and adjust the speed so that the notes they produce are Doppler-shifted so as to be on pitch. For example, if you have two electronic keyboards, one tuned to A = 440 Hz and the other to 442 (as some manufacturers are doing nowadays) you could put the higher-pitched one on the belt, moving away from the others at about five feet (1.5 meters) per second, to bring them into agreement. That's assuming, of course, that the audience is all on the same side of the setup. It wouldn't work for theater-in-the-round. Also, in olden days instruments were often tuned to a lower pitch than today. The belt-and-teleporter system (with the direction of motion reversed) should also work there as well, although speeds may need to be higher. You could also use it for transposing things into different keys, although in that case the required speeds may be high enough to cause objectionable wind effects, as well as raising safety concerns should someone or something fall off the belt or encounter some other problem. Anybody want to start a Silicon Valley start-up to market this, assuming someone invents a teleporter we can use? ********************* I was also noticing that most of the musicians, even those playing traditional kinds of instruments, used electronic amplification. This got me to wondering how they managed in days of yore. The comic writer in me pictures them sitting up there on the stage saying things like "1, 2, 3, testing" at a mike stand with no microphone on it, and then grumping about how the sound system isn't working because it hasn't been invented yet. But I doubt that's what they actually did. Somehow they made do without electronics. But how? I suspect part of it was that they didn't attempt to play relatively low- volume instruments like dulcimers and autoharps solo in large rooms before a hundred or more people. Those kinds of instruments would be OK in someone's living room with maybe a dozen or so friends gathered round, but for large concert halls they would have used a band or orchestra. There may have also been less background noise. Even when nobody in the audience was talking or otherwise making noise, I noticed that I could sometimes hear the air-conditioning system, as well as the sounds of people milling around and chatting outside. Were concert venues quieter back then? And did people just not expect music to be as loud as it is today? It's probably a combination of all these factors. But does anybody really know for sure? ********************* The bit about musicians and electronics leads to Rip Van Winkle thoughts of how a musician from a few hundred years ago might react to being dumped into today's world. A few such stories have been done, but there might well be room for more. ********************* There's talk of again sending astronauts to the moon, this time with the idea of eventually setting up some kind of permanent base. There's also speculation that there may be life or remnants of life, or some sort-of-alive combinations of chemicals, or something like that, in certain naturally-sheltered spots on Mars. If there is, someone is sooner or later going to want to bring back samples for study. That leads to the idea that the lunar base should include a laboratory so that any material brought back from Mars or Titan or any other world thought to harbor life or proto-life could be analyzed on the Moon rather than Earth. That would reduce the chances of anything dangerous getting loose here. Why not an orbiting lab? Anything that escaped from such a facility would be drifting around in space, and could in theory find its way to Earth, either directly or via other ships and such in the vicinity. And if the lab is in low Earth orbit there's a chance the whole thing could someday de-orbit. The lunar gravity well would make a facility on the ground there more secure in that regard. Should there be people working in the lab? Probably not, because we don't want to have to worry about lab workers getting contaminated. But we may want any humans operating lab equipment remotely to be within a few thousand miles, either on the moon or in lunar orbit, to reduce light-speed lag. Science fiction writers may of course postulate a lab staffed by what amounts to monks, people who have dedicated their lives to the work and who plan to never return to Earth. This may make even more sense for the crew of the eventual Mars base, where the possibility of contamination is harder to rule out. It's no more far-fetched than the multi-generation starships that have long been a science-fictional staple. Moon or Mars, this monastic scenario doesn't seem likely in real life, at least given the current US culture. But what if the first Mars expeditions aren't from the US? ********************* But now what? Do I have anything else to write about? What if I don't? Just write anyway? Beeblefrotz. That's something I could be writing about if only I knew what it was. But I don't, so I may not be able to. Or can I write about it anyway? I suspect nobody else knows what beeblefrotz is either, so if I go ahead and write about it as if I had some idea of what it might be, nobody would have any real grounds to question my knowledge of the subject. Beeblefrotz is foremost in the minds of those who deal in the various forms of klaftnosism, even though it's only peripherally related to that field. They fear that someone somewhere may be on the verge of a breakthrough in this area, and that the established order may thereby be turned upside down. Others feel that a more likely outcome is to turn the established order of things approximately 137.389 degrees clockwise, which may be almost as bad as turning it upside down but perhaps not quite, depending on what axis the established order is turned 137.389 degrees clockwise around. A few dispute that, offering arguments that are too technical to relate here to support a conjecture that if something like beeblefrotz does overturn the established order or any subset thereof, it will be by some integral number of radians. Still others claim that the whole concept of overturning the established order is just a figure of speech, and any attempt to calculate or divine specific angles is pointless. The debate continues to rage in the relevant technical journals. So what if the established order in the field of klaftnosism does get overturned? Haven't workers in the field long been in the habit of wearing seat belts whenever they read or write anything relevant? Things may fall off their desks, and they may have an awkward time getting out of their chairs, but there should be little real trauma except to a few people's egos. Some are concerned that the overturn may be more far-reaching than that, so that entire desks may end up tumbling about the room, perhaps even smashing through windows and falling into the endless sky, there to imperil whatever aircraft may be unlucky enough to encounter them. There's a movement afoot to tether klaftnosists's desks to mitigate that hazard. But what if it happens when a bunch of them are arguing technical fine points over lunch in some restaurant whose staff has never heard of klaftnosism? All of a sudden one table, along with its associated chairs and their occupants and food and dishes and such, goes crashing around into the walls and ceiling, much to the surprise and consternation of other diners. What then? Will the knowledge that they were witness to a historic advance in human knowledge be sufficient consolation for whatever trauma they may experience in the process? ********************* It's getting to be a time of year when, depending on what part of the country you're in, you may be noticing more birds singing. That reminds me of this: Beauty Best Veiled As I'm out walking in the early morning grayness I hear birds singing. That tempts me toward poetic thoughts, But then I think of what the scientists would say: If we could understand bird language Much of it would be humdrum stuff about finding food Or stressful news about predators. And much of the rest would be like drunks boasting in a bar: "Hey, pretty woman, I want you!" and "I can lick any guy in the place!" Perhaps it's good that some things remain hidden In the early morning grayness when I'm out walking. -- Tom Digby Written 09:35 09/28/2004 Edited 22:46 10/26/2004 ********************* 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. If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon Soapware with no banter. The zine content is the same for both. 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