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 #146 New Moon of November 20, 2006 Contents copyright 2006 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. ********************* This year the New Moon falls close to Thanksgiving, leading to thoughts of things I have to be thankful for. I was considering listing some of them here. Then as I was browsing in LiveJournal I found one user whose userpics (those little icons that represent the user on postings and such) all had to do with heartbreak. Now I've had my heart broken a number of times over the years, but I don't think I've spent much time thinking of heartbreak as being the central theme of my life, as this person seemed to be doing. My experience has been that despite the ups and downs, some of them lasting weeks or months, the long-term baseline seems to stay a bit above fair-to-middling. And that may be my one big thing to be thankful for: Brain chemistry such that I tend to feel fairly happy most of the time. ********************* You may recall that I posted some musings on snake oil in the previous issue of Silicon Soapware. Since then I looked up "snake oil" on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil and found some interesting history. Apparently the fat of a certain snake found in China is actually good for relieving certain kinds of joint pain. Chinese laborers brought it to this country and passed it on to others. Then through a chain of events involving imitators and movies and American snakes whose fat has much less of the beneficial substance than that Chinese snake, the term "snake oil" came to be associated with fraud and quackery. But the real stuff is still sold in various Chinatowns. You learn something new every day. ********************* Someone I know wears one white sock and one black sock. Does that mean he's heteroSOXual? ********************* An idea sort of popped into my head, as ideas often do: A scandal about a baby sitter being accused of cheating at peekaboo. That raises questions about how one might cheat at peekaboo. I suppose a baby with X-ray vision could use it to cheat. But how could the adult player cheat? Masks? Flashbulbs? Teleportation? Something else? What do the Official Rules say? Or are there any Official Rules for peekaboo in the first place? If there aren't, the prosecution is going to have a hard time making a case. Or could they prosecute it as some sort of breach of contract? I suspect this is an area where prior cases provide little precedent. ********************* As is often my habit when I have questions about something, I looked up peekaboo in Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peekaboo That led to an article on cognitive development in infants. That in turn reminded me of a childhood memory, probably from my preschool days. My parents had taken me to a movie, and for some reason I looked over to where one of them was sitting next to me. I noticed that their eye was a lot smaller than the movie screen. Could the whole image really fit in there? Apparently it could, and I started trying to think how that could be. I don't recall any further details, but that may have been one of my early steps toward developing a concept of other people as beings that experienced things more or less as I did. Another memory is of riding in the car with my parents, apparently on some rural two-lane road. This was before seat belts and such were common in cars, and I would often stand on the floor in the back-seat area. I could see the road in the distance through the windshield, but I couldn't see where it got really close to the car. So there was the road, as narrow as my finger in the distance and getting wider as it got closer, but at the point where the dashboard obscured it it was still only a hand's breadth or two wide. I sort of figured out intellectually that it had to get wider than the whole car in order for us to be able to ride on it, and I could sort of imagine how it must really spread out at the last possible instant, but I wasn't a hundred percent convinced. I don't know if it occurred to me to look out the side windows. If I had looked out the side, would I have realized it was the same road I was seeing in front of us? As an adult I have the rules of perspective too deeply ingrained to say. ********************* The Arbitron people got me on their list a week or so ago. They sent me a little diary in which I was to make a note of whatever radio stations I heard that week, along with where I was at the time. Most of my entries were for a local all-news station (KCBS) that I keep my car radio tuned to. That's a habit that started with the analogous station in Los Angeles when I wanted to be warned of any major traffic snarls. The other entries were when some store or other business happened to have a radio on while I was there. I've gotten out of the habit of keeping a radio running at home, so I didn't have any entries for that. They sent me money on several occasions: A one-dollar bill in the initial mailing asking if I would be willing to take the survey, another two or three dollars with the diary itself, and one more with their follow-up letter reminding me to send the completed diary in. So if you get something from the Arbitron people don't discard it unopened, even if you aren't interested in participating. You might be throwing money away. ********************* A bit of linguistic trivia: The French word for paper clip is "trombone", at least according to the multilingual labeling on a box I have. Is that from resemblance to the musical instrument? ********************* One of the magazines I happened to come upon in a waiting room was "Gentry", aimed at wealthy people. Most of it was ads, and many of the ads were for real estate, much of it mansions priced well over ten million dollars. Some of the descriptions seemed quite alien to the way I envision myself living even if I had that much money. The main thing seemed to be an assumption that a household at that economic level would have servants and would throw parties with catered food. One place had a "two-chef kitchen" while at least one other had a "catering kitchen". It didn't sound like the kind of place where you would just whip up a sandwich from whatever was in the fridge in the middle of the night if you felt like a midnight snack. There was also at least one "valet dressing room" attached to one of the bedrooms. I don't really know what that would consist of. Would it have more clothes closets than a regular bedroom, or would they be arranged differently, or what? It all seemed to be geared to a style of entertaining that's much more formal than I'm used to. It's not the kind of thing I normally think of myself as doing, although perhaps it would be more or less required of me were I in certain lines of work. I'm reminded of the old joke in which someone wishes they had enough money to buy an elephant. No, they don't actually want an elephant. They just wish they had that much money. That's how I felt after looking at those ads. I'd like to have that much money, but wouldn't spend it the way that magazine's target audience would. ********************* November is one of those months with fewer than 31 days. Don't you feel sorry for it? Let's not continue to embarrass the shorter months by having them end on the 30th (or, in the case of one particular unfortunate, the 28th or 29th) just because they don't have enough days to keep going through the 31st. Instead, let them have their 31st day, and make up for it by taxing the wealthier months, taking it off the top. For example, November 31 would be followed by December 2. February 31 would be followed by March 3 in leap years, or March 4 in other years. And so on. By the time the end of any month came around, people would have pretty much forgotten what day that month started on. And if you arrive late to a new month, it isn't the month's fault that you were tardy. So no month has to feel inferior, and if they think people do notice, they can save face by grumping about taxes. So who wants to join the movement to get this implemented? ********************* There were a couple of things having to do with time travel in the Sunday (November 19) comics. In Bizarro a man has apparently just popped into today from the 1950's, and says he is disappointed by what he sees. I can see him being disappointed at first glance because at first glance things don't look all that different. Cars still roll around on rubber tires, traffic lights still turn red and green, robots are not walking among us, and most buildings don't look anything like the futuristic wonders science fiction illustrators were drawing fifty years ago. However, once he starts noticing details he'll see that things have indeed changed. For example, one of the storefronts behind him has a sign saying something about an ATM. They didn't have those until well into the Sixties, and even then they were only at banks for quite a while. Then there are Web URL's. They won't make sense to him, but he can't help noticing them once he starts reading billboards and package labels and such. And what of the people? Sooner or later, depending on what kind of neighborhood he's in, he'll see some long-haired men. Given the rigid gender roles of the Fifties, that could really freak him out. There's a good chance that he smokes. If so, he'll be used to lighting up without a second thought in places like bars and restaurants and on the street. He's in for a real suprise there, and it may not be all that pleasant. If he's done any planning at all, he'll probably seek out a newsstand or bookstore or public library. The wonders that await him there are too numerous to list. Of course he'll also find disappointments too numerous to list. Will it ever be otherwise? ********************* This seemed appropriate, in light of the recent elections and some of the decisions that the new Congress will need to make: Incident Along Fantasy Way The Recycler of Dreams I had often seen him, In expected places and in unlikely ones -- A kindly old man Who by his looks ought to be running the toy shop in some quaint European village, Always with a large sack Filled with things picked up from the ground And an ornate German pipe Whose smoke he would now and then Blow into someone's face, Always without being noticed. Driven by curiosity, I made inquiries And we were eventually introduced. He is the one known, In those mythologies in which he is known at all, As the Recycler of Dreams. Through the ages he has wandered Through the halls of kings' palaces, Along the quiet lanes where lovers linger, Into bars and taverns and the "In Places", Or like a phantom through the walls of prisons Or corporate boardrooms Or research laboratories, And even along glittering Broadway -- All the places where dreams Have been dreamed And broken. There he wanders, Not always in the form I saw, Collecting pieces of broken dreams To make into new dreams To distribute around the world. Humanity needs its dreams, And cannot grow or prosper without them. But reality is hard on dreams And on dreamers. "Take 'Flight'," he says for an example, "I must have picked that one up a thousand times From the bottom of this or that windswept hill And blown it, like smoke, Into the head of another dreamer Until it finally bore fruit. And others, like 'Perpetual Motion' Or 'World Peace' Or 'Immortality' I may be recycling forever, Along with 'True Love' And 'Winning the Sweepstakes' And 'Being a Movie Star'. That one has gotten many of you Through some dark and stormy nights." "Yes, I see the need for the grand dreams And the smaller dreams And even the silly dreams. But what of the darker dreams? The visions of world conquest, The elusive Perfect Crime, The glory of the Master Race? Do you handle these also?" "I'm afraid I must," he sighed, "Regardless of how horrible the possibilities I cannot label a dream as 'evil' And put it away on a shelf. The gods by whose authority I operate Say that that judgment may only be made, Not by themselves, as you might expect, But by you mortals." Thomas G. Digby written 0140 hr 9/29/74 revised 0245 hr 3/17/83 entered 1230 hr 4/09/92 format 13:52 12/22/2001 ********************* 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. To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi and select the ss_talk list. Enter your email address in the space provided and hit Signup. 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