SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.sf.ca.us http://www.well.com/user/bubbles/ Issue #48 New Moon of December 18, 1998 Contents copyright 1998 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. If you don't want to read about the mechanics of this, skip down to the row of asterisks (****). 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I do that one manually. ********************* It's the gift-giving holiday season, and toys are on the minds of many. And I'm reminded that there seems to be a fascination with miniatures in general that extends beyond simple play. Even adults are drawn to well- constructed miniatures: Model trains, doll houses, and so on. And there's also the tendency of adults to ooh and aah over the tiny fingers and toes of babies. I've now and then wondered if there might be a hard-wired human tendency to find finely detailed miniature things attractive. Perhaps it evolved so parents and others in the community would find children fascinating, and thereby aid in child care? And if we ever meet an alien species that changes form significantly between childhood and adulthood (like the caterpillar turning into a butterfly) would they turn out to lack our fascination with small copies of everyday objects? And would this show up in the types of toys their children would play with? ********************* Something, perhaps the holiday season, got me to thinking about "faith". I've heard "faith" defined as "holding onto a belief in the face of contradictory evidence". But I think it's less simple and less easily dismissed than that. I think I tend to define it in terms of one's initial starting assumptions that everything else is built on and judged in light of, and which almost by definition are not arrived at rationally. If something later appears to contradict your initial assumptions, you re-evaluate things until they fit. And any of several possible outcomes can be called an example of "faith". For example, I was brought up believing in God and an afterlife, Heaven and Hell. I also assumed the physical universe was real. Since the laws of nature as I was later taught them seemed to provide no plausible place for spirit beings, we have a seeming contradiction. One way out is to change the starting assumption by denying God. This would be an example of faith in physical reality. The other path is to keep the original assumptions about God and Heaven and thereby conclude that this reality is not all there is. This latter is an example of faith in God. Neither conclusion is falsifiable in the scientific sense, at least with present knowledge, so there are some that choose one and some the other. I've mostly taken the path of faith in spirituality, although the details have changed quite a bit since Sunday School and its literal view of Heaven and Hell as places. ********************* As I first-draft this paragraph a housemate is in the shower, or at least he's in the bathroom and I hear the shower running. That probably means he's in the shower. But it could mean that there are space aliens or something invading us up through the drains, and he's secretly in league with them, with the water running to keep them comfortable and to mask the sounds of their conversation. That's one thing it could mean. But it's more likely he's just taking a shower all by himself to get clean. The world is often a duller place than I tend to imagine. ********************* I now and then wonder what fragments and remnants of ideas we have today will be part of the culture thousands of years hence. At a Bardic get- together a few weeks back someone did a song based on some Babylonian text from perhaps five thousand years ago. I doubt the Babylonians would have recognized it. And if someone were to tell them of the source, they might well be astounded at what we'd turned it into. Likewise, we might be equally taken aback by how what survives of our culture will be treated five thousand years from now. And I'm reminded of another question: Are we entering a Shadow Age, from which nothing will survive? Some fear such a thing, what with modern storage media becoming obsolete and/or degrading in what archaeologists would regard as an eyeblink. Old books and scrolls and clay tablets and vinyl LP's would survive, but floppies and cheap acid-process paper and such would not. This effect might abate in time as technology reaches fundamental limits and the spotlight of new development moves somewhere else. Then the pace of obsolescence might slow and emphasis shift to quality and durability. Then there would again be long-term survival of information. But there would be a gap, a Shadow Age, in the meantime. So we may have some 30th Century scholar looking back on our Shadow Age, which was not a Dark Age. Indeed it was a grand flourishing of civilization, as far as can be determined. It is just that Time has drawn a veil over it. ********************* Why are lawyers constantly dealing with legal briefs? Because boxers went out with trial by combat? ********************* Another year is nearing its end. So it goes, ever onward. Seedtime and harvest, and all that. It does change, but on a scale slow enough that most people through the ages have seen it as eternal. But even people who see the daily and yearly cycles as eternal have creation myths, tales of a time when things were not as they are now. It's just that creation seems to have been essentially completed long ago, so the world as it is now is unchanging. And even if that unchanging world is not destined to endure forever, the end is usually envisioned as a relatively sudden cataclysm disrupting a hitherto unchanging world. Even though human societies change more rapidly than the world they live in, they too have tended to view themselves as unchanging. The world of their grandchildren would be expected to be pretty much the same as the world of their grandparents. So we who live in a time of change and see change as the only constant may be a rather special case. ********************* It isn't baseball season. It's the end of football season, and it's also basketball season. But for hunters, shooting at a football or basketball is not the same as shooting at a baseball. Depending on the gun and what it's loaded with and the distance to the target, if the projectile lodges in a baseball but doesn't tear it up too much the impact will cause the ball to roll away from the shooter. So you can sort of chase it, shooting as you go, as Elmer Fudd did in a certain cartoon. But a football or basketball, being inflated rather than solid, will just puncture and deflate. Not as much fun, unless you like collecting trophies. And somehow a punctured deflated basketball mounted as a trophy sort of lacks that certain something. So hunting is best during baseball season. ********************* At the stereotype Silicon Valley start-up, everyone works long hours. Stereotype bankers keep short hours. So what happens when your Silicon Valley start-up happens to be a bank? ********************* The housemates have put up a big Christmas tree, and that reminded me of the little "table model" ones my parents started using after several years of the big ones. It was a real tree, but only two or three feet tall, pre-mounted in a little container of liquid that was supposed to help keep it fresh. I kind of resisted the change at first, but then it came to seem "normal". And it had its advantages. For one thing there was more room for presents, both on the table around the tree and on the floor under the table. Whatever size tree we had, we would make a point of putting it by a window so the lights could be seen from outside. We would also put up some outside lights on the shrubbery, but having the inside tree shining through a window was always part of the overall effect. Other people I've known since then don't care if their tree is visible from outside. So I guess it isn't a universal part of Christmas. But be that as it may, it is coming up on Christmas. So take a look under the row of asterisks. ********************* Comes now the time for the traditional reprinting of THE CHRISTMAS CAT Once upon a time in a village In a little mountain valley in Borschtenstein Lived a wicked millionaire Whose hobby was foreclosing mortgages And sending people out into the snow. He also took great pride in having The best Christmas decorations in the village. Also in this same village In the little valley in Borschtenstein Lived a poor family Whose mortgage, which came due on Christmas, Was designed to be impossible to pay off. The Christmas weather forecast was for snow And the millionaire's eviction lawyers were waiting. Now this wicked millionaire In the valley village etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, Also had the monopoly on Christmas trees To be sure of having the prettiest Christmas decorations In the whole village. Thus the poor family had nothing at all To put their presents under. Now by chance it so happened In that village in etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, The wicked millionaire had evicted his cat Because its ears and tail were the wrong color And it hadn't paid its mortgage. And the poor family had taken it in And given it a home. So just before Christmas When the Good Fairies asked the animals of the village About people in need and deserving of help The poor family got the highest recommendation. "We will help them!" said the elves and fairies, "They won't have to worry about that mortgage And they'll have the prettiest Christmas decorations in town!" The mortgage was really not much problem: If the millionaire couldn't throw people out into the snow He wouldn't bother throwing them out at all. So the elves spoke to the North Wind and they agreed: No more snow to throw people out into. Some people in the village would have liked snow to play in But agreed the sacrifice was for a good cause. Christmas trees were more of a problem: They had already given them out to other needy families And there were none left at all. They rummaged around in forgotten corners But not a Christmas tree could they find. Then someone had an idea: "Let's decorate their cat!" While one of the elves who spoke Feline Worked out the details with the cat The fairies flew around gathering decorations: Borrowed bits of light from small stars nobody ever notices, Streamers of leftover comet tails, And other assorted trinkets From odd corners of the universe. So the poor family gathered around their Christmas cat And sang songs and opened presents And had the happiest Christmas imaginable While all agreed they had the prettiest decorations The village had ever seen And the millionaire's eviction lawyers Waited in vain for snow. So that is why, to this day, In that valley village in Borschtenstein, It never snows Unless the eviction lawyers are out of town And every year the millionaire tries to decorate a Christmas cat But gets nothing for his pains But bleeding scratches. EPILOGUE: While overnight miracles are rare outside of story books, Even those who learn slowly do learn. So keep checking the weather reports for Borschtenstein. If some Christmas it snows there You will know the millionaire has given up being wicked And has found a truer meaning Of Christmas. first draft written 0115 hr 12/25/74 this version edited 2320 hr 12/14/86 signature & greeting reformatted for Silicon Soapware 0850 hr 11/22/95 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ May you have the happiest holiday season imaginable! Thomas G. Digby --END--