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 #166 New Moon of July 2, 2008 Contents copyright 2008 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. ********************* As I write this the Fourth of July holiday is fast approaching. One of the traditions for this holiday is fireworks. I have childhood memories of playing with sparklers, waving them around to make glowing patterns in the air. I also recall the time Santa brought us a small assortment of fireworks for Christmas. We (probably mostly Dad) set them off a few nights later, possibly around New Year's. I was rather disappointed when the rocket didn't go way up in the air but instead followed a much lower trajectory into the garage. As far as I recall nothing got damaged and nobody got hurt, but the bit with the rocket was still rather disappointing. I don't recall the exact dates, but this must have been sometime in the late 1940's. Attitudes about fireworks have changed a bit since then. Or have they? Despite all the laws against ordinary people setting off their own fireworks, the practice persists. I think some of this can be explained by an analogy. Imagine a bunch of people sitting around a campfire, or in someone's living room, singing songs they know and love. They may not be the best singers in the world, but they're good enough for the occasion. Now imagine that the authorities find some reason to try to ban the practice. They say that people shouldn't mind not being allowed to sing because there are a number of professionally run concerts they can attend instead. But it just wouldn't be the same. Or imagine a ban on playing ball games. No touch football in the park, and no playing around with a basketball in your driveway under the hoop over your garage door. Again, those in charge say people can go to the stadium and see big-league games played by highly trained professionals, so there's no reason to want to play your own games. But again, it just wouldn't be the same. It's like that with fireworks: As spectacular as the big professionally run displays may be, they just aren't the same as a bunch of friends with sparklers and firecrackers and Roman candles. ********************* The annual speechifying about fireworks, along with some stuff in the news about gun control laws, reminds me of a thought I've had off and on over the years. Thomas Jefferson is quoted as having said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." It appears to me that the Tree also now and then demands the blood of random innocent men, women, and children. This includes many gunshot victims, accidental and otherwise. At least some of the people injured setting off backyard fireworks also count. It's a general tradeoff between freedom and security. You can try to remove the risks from life by passing restrictive laws, but are the lives saved worth the loss of liberty? ********************* Another thought on phoning while driving: Imagine you're taking the test for a driver's license, and you have the option of taking the written part about traffic laws and such two ways. You can take it the traditional way on paper, or you can take it orally, over a cell phone, at the same time you're taking the behind-the-wheel part of the test. Which one would you choose? What if people who passed the cell-phone version of the tests got a special mark on their license allowing them to talk on the phone while driving, with it being illegal for anyone else to do so? Would you take the test that way then? I don't really expect this to become law, but it's an interesting way to think about how difficult a task it can be to drive safely while talking on the phone. ********************* I recently saw a friend's child in a stage production of "Peter Pan". The ending reminded me of some thoughts I'd had earlier. When the children return from Never-Never Land, they bring a bunch of other children with them. Mom and Dad agree to adopt them. Happy Ending. But how well would that work in the real world today? Mom and Dad, with kids in tow, troop down to the office of the bureaucrat in charge of adoptions. "Hi. These kids showed up at our place last night, and we'd like to adopt them." Do the kids have any sort of identification or documentation? Nope. No birth certificate, no school records, no nothing. Where did they come from? They claim to have flown in from some place called "Never-Never Land", which is not on any maps. It seems from the kids' descriptions to be some sort of Fairyland or something. So where do they go from here? Is there an official procedure for this sort of thing, or does everybody have to wing it? The novel and stage play came out roughly a hundred years ago. Perhaps it was easy to adopt stray children back then, but in today's computerized cross-indexed DNA-tested world I suspect it would be quite a hassle, if it could be done at all. On further thought, I think the situation would have made a good "X-Files" episode. Do it from the viewpoint of the adults involved. They try to figure it out, and when they fail, they call in Scully and Mulder. Scully and Mulder can't figure it out either, or maybe they can but know that no one will believe them. But they do manage to cook up a plausible cover story that enables then to work out a more or less happy ending. Or something like that. ********************* Possible cartoon idea: An intersection with a traffic light and a sign: OK TO GO ON RED IF NO COPS AROUND. Nowadays one might have to widen the definition of "cop" to include automated cameras and such, but it still sort of applies. ********************* I was doing something that I was feeling kind of tired of doing, and got to wondering what else I might be able to do instead. It seems there are lots of things it might or might not be possible to do, depending on various variables that can vary from time to time, from day to day, or from age to age. For example, were this the Stone Age I probably wouldn't be typing on a computer keyboard. Even if I were to put such a keyboard together out of pebbles or nuts or something, it wouldn't do anything were I to try to type on it. And if writing hadn't been invented yet, there wouldn't be anything to type on the keyboard even if I did have a computer to try to connect the keyboard to. So there I'd be, sitting at my nut-and-pebble keyboard, wondering how I should label the keys when the alphabet hadn't been invented yet, while the screen shows the message "KEYBOARD NOT CONNECTED" and I'm wondering what that means because reading hadn't been invented yet either. And then maybe it will turn out that the whole thing is bogus. Some scammer had just stuck a bunch of sticks and stones and broken bones together and claimed it was a computer. They even put a fake error message on the screen so I wouldn't get suspicious when I tried it and it didn't work. But then I was probably rather foolish to buy such a thing, especially when most of the uses I wanted to use it for hadn't been invented yet either. What use are text editors when text hasn't been invented yet? Likewise, what use is wireless Internet capability when there's no Internet to connect to and no wires to not use to connect to it? I should have gotten suspicious and called the cops, but the cops weren't callable because so much of the required infrastructure wasn't there yet. So I'm pretty much on my own. Maybe I should just make a club out of a tree branch or whatever and bonk those scammers on the head as punishment for selling me a computer that didn't work because it hadn't been invented yet? That's about all the cops would have done, unless they've finally invented jails. I'll have to ask them next time I see one. But there's some consolation: If I do make a club and bonk the scammers on the head, they won't sue me for assault and battery because so much of the infrastructure they'd need for suing people hasn't been invented yet either. ********************* I really ought to say something about the last person or thing that isn't the subject of a Wikipedia article after everything else has been written up. But I'm afraid that if I give that item too much public attention someone will write a Wikipedia article about it. ********************* Whether or not they have the Fourth of July on other planets, something got me to thinking about whether fireworks made for use on Earth would work elsewhere. In general the chemicals in fireworks don't depend on air for oxygen, so they'll at least burn even if the piece doesn't otherwise work properly. So let's see what would work where. First, how about the International Space Station? I suspect the occupants would be very hesitant to set off any fireworks "indoors", no matter how "Safe and Sane" they're labeled as being. There are too many things that can go wrong, and help is too far away. The same probably applies to any indoor environment humans are likely to construct anywhere other than Earth any time soon. But what if they decided to take the chance? First, matches won't work because flames as we know them on Earth require gravity to keep the flow of air and combustion products moving. The same goes for most lighters. But the type of cigarette lighter they have in cars would work, since it's an electrical heating element. And the fuses on most fireworks don't depend on flames and don't require oxygen, so they'll burn more or less normally once they're lit. So now that you have a way to light them, what kinds of fireworks would you light? Two types come to mind: Firecrackers and sparklers. Those should work with or without air and with or without gravity. If you're willing to go "outdoors" you have more options. Roman candles should work. Just keep them pointed away from the station and anything else that might be damaged. Likewise, the type of aerial-burst fireworks they shoot from mortars at professionally-run displays should also work. Some of the patterns may look different to the degree that they depend on air resistance and/or gravity, but if you stick to the simple generic pieces you should be OK. You won't hear the usual bang, but the visual part will still be there. There might be a minor problem with some of the debris hitting the station, but that should be minimal if you're careful. Also, if the mortars you shoot the pieces from are attached to the station the recoil might end up changing the station's orbit a bit if you don't spread things around so the effects cancel. Rockets wouldn't have the recoil problem, but may veer from the desired trajectory if they aren't stabilized properly. You could build some sort of recoilless launcher, but it would have to be a special design. What happens when we leave the Space Station behind and go to the Moon? Again, let's assume we do our fireworks outdoors. Again, sparklers and Roman candles would work in the sense that they would burn. Roman candles would shoot higher than normal because of the lower gravity, but that's not really a problem as long as there's no ceiling to worry about hitting. Firecrackers would also work, except that you wouldn't hear them. Likewise for the big aerial-burst pieces. The simple generic ones should be pretty much OK, although they may look a little different from what we're used to because of the lack of air resistance. The pattern may spread wider than "normal", and may also start to move downward immediately rather than hanging there in the air for a second or two like they do on Earth. Conditions on Mars are sort of intermediate between those on the Moon and on Earth. So I don't think I need to go into detail there. So in summary, at least some fireworks would work in orbit, on the Moon, and on Mars. Not every type will work, and not all of those that do work will work "normally", but I think you could put on a satisfying display if you planned it carefully. ********************* Bubbly Surprise Warm night breeze inspires Impromptu celebration: Bubbles by moonlight. Breezes turn playful, Popping bubbles on my skin: Kisses from the gods. -- Tom Digby Entered 09:12 Sat June 14 2008 Title Added 13:48 Sat July 5 2008 ********************* 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. Or you can use the above URL to navigate to the appropriate subscription form, which will also allow you to cancel your subscription or change your settings. -- END --