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 #220 New Moon of November 13, 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. ********************* By the time this issue of Silicon Soapware is out it'll be within a few days of Thanksgiving, at least in the US (many other countries either don't celebrate Thanksgiving or have it on different dates). There's some possibly-interesting date trivia this year. Barring future changes to the formula, Thanksgiving will be on its earliest possible date: November 22. Then next year (2013) it'll be on its latest possible date, November 28. In subsequent years it will gradually work its way earlier until it hits the limit and then once again jumps back to being at the late end of its range. Other holidays that are observed on a fixed day of some week within some specified month (such as Labor Day on the first Monday in September) follow a similar cycle of gradually getting earlier and earlier over the course of several years and then jumping back to a late date. But those may not get noticed as much as Thanksgiving because Thanksgiving also defines the supposed "official" start of the Christmas shopping season, at least in many people's minds. Merchants like early Thanksgiving because many of them believe, rightly or wrongly, that a longer Christmas shopping season will bring them more revenue. Another thing about this Thanksgiving that may or may not get much media attention is that it's the anniversary of JFK getting shot. Since it's not a round-number anniversary this year (2013 will be 50 years) and it's getting to be long enough ago that most people around nowadays weren't born yet when it happened, it won't be big news unless something related happens to make new news. Sort of related to this and to the recent elections, Obama is the first President who's probably too young to remember the JFK shooting. He was born (or cloned or built or whatever, depending on whether you accept the official birth certificate) in 1961, making him just a few months over two years old when JFK died. Thus I wouldn't expect him to remember much, if anything, of it. On the other hand, the next most recently-born Presidents were born in 1946, making them teenagers at the time. Thus they would probably be able to tell you where they were, what they were doing, and how they felt when they got the news. Likewise, while Obama may remember some events of the late Sixties, he would have had a different view of them from what Bush and Clinton had. And whoever gets elected in 2016 will probably remember even less of that era. In terms of generations, we're starting to see members of the post-Boomer generation taking the top positions of power. Having people in top positions with little or no memory of the Sixties will almost certainly affect future politics, even if I don't know what that effect will be. ********************* In the children's version of the Star Trek universe, does Santa still personally visit every child's home to deliver his gifts, or does he just beam them there from his workshop? ********************* I saw something kind of odd but also appropriate for the season at a fast-food place a few days ago. After I ordered I went to set my stuff down. The best vacant table was halfway across the room, by the windows. The table next to it had several people. As I put my bag on the table to stake out a space one of the people at an adjacent table said hello to me. He was one of a bunch of people, some of them apparently homeless and some of them drunk most of the time, who congregate around a nearby bus stop. I'd bubbled them a number of times (getting mostly-positive reactions), so I wasn't surprised that they recognized me. By the time my food arrived (delayed by some kind of kitchen mix-up?) there were only three of the homeless people sitting at that other table. Two of them had their backs to me. Since I wasn't watching them, they paid no attention to me. I wasn't paying much attention to their conversation, but I couldn't help overhearing them discussing something about who had what "cards" and when they would expire and so on. At first I just sort of assumed they were talking about identification cards or driver's licenses or some such. Then one of them got out a cell phone and started calling someone on it. So the "cards" they'd been talking about had been for their phones. From what I could hear he was calling relatives. He introduced himself as "Uncle [name]" and asked people at the other end questions like how old and how tall they were: The kind of thing you might ask children you're related to but don't see very often. Nobody seemed to be asking him questions about how he was doing. They also talked about the possibility of getting pictures of the children emailed to the phone he was using. There was nothing said about sending them pictures of him. After a while they finished their conversation and left. Then I finished reading my paper and went home. So this homeless man who spends much of his time hanging out with drunks at a bus stop has a family somewhere. I have no idea how close by or distant they may be geographically, but they're too far apart in other ways to consider getting together any time soon. I started to wonder why these relatives, whoever they were, didn't seem to be trying to help him. But then I recalled things I'd read about "enabling" addictions and other maladaptive behavior. I don't know what his situation is, but it may well be such that any attempt by his family to help him would be futile, leading inevitably to their ruin along with his. Others can pray for him, or offer spiritual energy, or whatever other words your personal spiritual path uses for whatever is analogous to praying or offering spiritual energy, but in the end it is up to him to take the first steps up the trail out of the pit. I wish him well on the journey, if and when he decides to embark on it. ********************* Over the years I've heard various proposals to simplify the tax laws. The question of how to handle charitable contributions almost always comes up. I think it could be dealt with by turning the tax deduction into a matching funds program: For whatever amount an eligible charity collects in contributions, have the government contribute as additional percentage. There's little point in going through the math here. But it should be possible to come up with a rate such that if people continue to donate the same after-tax amounts (their previous donation less the amount they'd been saving in taxes by taking the deduction) the various charities would be about as well off as they are now. Something like this would be simpler to administer than the present system, since there are fewer organized charities to keep track of than there are individual taxpayers. Also, there would be little need for the charities to keep track of individual donations, as long as they reported their total take accurately. Cash donations, such as money dropped into those Salvation Army kettles that appear around the holidays, would still get a matching contribution from the government even if the identities of the individual donors are not known. Organizations that make a public show of honoring donors according to the amount given would need to make adjustments, probably by adding the government contributions to those of the donors who triggered them, but that shouldn't be too big a problem. So going to a simplified tax system won't necessarily be bad for charities. There are those who would want to get the State completely out of the business of donating to charities. That could still be done, but at a later time, perhaps by gradually reducing the matching amount over a number of years. There is of course one big unknown: The psychological implications of "saving money" by making a donation that you can take a tax deduction for. People aren't always rational about this kind of thing. So further study may be needed. ********************* The recent elections, especially the campaign rhetoric about the ballot propositions, reminded me of my tongue-in-cheek proposal to require the bylaws of a club I was once active in to be written as poetry: All of our bylaws are written in verse, With rhyming and meter and form. And every amendment, for better or worse, If it be lengthy or if it be terse, Whether a blessing or whether a curse, Will have to adhere to this norm. Now the thought had occurred to me to wonder what if someone were to propose something similar for California ballot initiatives, perhaps with the stated purpose of making them less boring for voters to read. On further thought we might want to also require a super-majority for passage, with the required votes depending on how good it is as poetry, perhaps as judged by a panel of poets and musicians and such. That would give an incentive not to skimp on the poetic elements. Actually setting your proposal to music would be optional, but might be worth the trouble depending on how enjoyable it is to sing. If people started singing your proposition because they liked the way it sounded, you might not have to spend as much money advertising it. But there's a caveat: Many songs include nonsense words and phrases, like the "Fa la la" lines in "Deck the Halls". These will need to be checked very carefully, lest some hidden meaning slip through to be revealed only after the measure passes. For example, in the song "Mairzy Doats" the seeming nonsense words are eventually revealed to be "Mares eat oats". Were that song part of a ballot proposition its passage might end up affecting the laws regarding the feeding of horses. Some would say that the increased entertainment value of the campaigns might be worth a small chance of this kind of problem cropping up occasionally. Other would disagree. We may not really know until we've tried it. And I suspect that won't happen any time soon. ********************* The Blind Wizard The blind wizard walks the streets of The Ancient City, With guide birds singing directions In a language only he and they know. He doesn't look wizard-like: His robes are plain, devoid of magical symbols he will never see, And his magic wand doubles as a cane To feel his way along. Strangers gasp in horror at his face, Its empty sockets like twin caves Within which nameless beasts may be hiding, Waiting to pounce upon the unwary. He will not say who or what took his eyes. But eyes or no eyes, his world is not one of darkness When one of the sockets holds an eye-stone. One is a gray pearl, A gift from the gods of the ocean. As an eye it shows him the wonders of the sea, Shipwrecks and lost treasure and the bones of lost sailors, And the strange creatures that live In the eternal darkness of the deepest depths. A sphere wrought from meteorite iron reveals the depths of space: Worlds around stars whose light will not reach us For thousands and thousands of years. Strange are the ways of those who inhabit those worlds, Beyond even the ability of wizards to describe. Still other eye-stones look into the distant past, Or the tree of possible futures, Or the mazes of might-have-been, While others open into the realms of the spirits, Or give form to the musings of mathematicians, Or warn of evil in the hearts of others. None see the physical here-and-now. That the gods have forbidden. In a way that may be fortunate. Those who have met the wizard's wife Say that her face is even more horrible to look upon than his. He has been spared that affront to his senses, While his favorite eye-stone, The one that lets him see past the physical shell, Delights him with the inner beauty of her soul. -- Thomas G. Digby Written 22:32 04/04/2002 Revised 07:37 04/05/2002 Revised 17:08 04/10/2002 Revised 15:34 06/19/2002 ********************* 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 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. 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