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/~bubbles/ Issue #86 New Moon of January 13, 2002 Contents copyright 2001 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. ********************* I've noticed that I've been making the mistake of putting "2001" for "2002" much more often than I made the analogous mistake last year or the year before last. I'm wondering if anybody has done studies on people writing the old year on checks, etc., during the first months of a new year. Does it happen less often going into landmark years like 2000? I might expect very few instances of writing "1999" for "2000", also relatively few of "2000" for "2001", especially among people who take the position that centuries start in 01 years. Then I would expect there to be more in subsequent years that have little special about them, because there's less reason to think about what year it is. What, if anything, is known about this? ********************* It's the new year, which leads me to thoughts of time. It also reminded me of something I'd now and then thought of: Suppose you could take a movie of a party, or the crowd at a restaurant or bar, or a street scene, etc., today, and then go back and show it to people in (say) 1950 without telling them it was from the future. What kinds of things would they find odd, and what would they think of them? Assume you transfer the images to film so they don't notice anything odd about that technology. They would notice that clothing and hair styles were different. One person I mentioned this to at a New Year party said they would notice a greater variety of styles, especially on men. In a restaurant scene they should notice that the cash register and juke box looked weird. And if the bar had a big-screen TV, they would notice that as well. In any outdoor street scene they would notice the cars. One thing that's different from 1950 is that there's no smoking in most California restaurants and bars, and at many private parties people no longer smoke indoors. Would they notice the lack of people smoking? If the movie included a shot of someone smoking outside, that would probably alert them to look for smoking inside. But might they miss it otherwise? The restaurant would not be racially segregated, although that may not get much attention outside the South. Someone else said that if they saw a laptop computer or a cell phone they might not even be able to conceive of what it was. Even if they saw the laptop screen they might not realize that what the person was doing with the keyboard or mouse had any connection to what was happening on the screen. Likewise, they might imagine building some kind of walkie-talkie as small as a cell phone, but they probably wouldn't guess that it was more than just a walkie-talkie communicating with one other person somewhere. What else would they notice or not notice? ********************* Then there's the thought of someone who had a good year and doesn't want to let it go, so he starts insisting that the day after December 31 is December 32, followed by December 33, and so on. But eventually the number gets ridiculously high, and the weather is more like March or April than December, so he gives it up. ********************* In other news, something led me to thoughts of a TV network with an all- failure lineup: "Catatonia Ward", "Greatest Police Stakeouts", etc. Maybe there's also a science-fiction series about interstellar explorers who are constantly finding uninhabited planets with nothing interesting on them. A team of ghost hunters spends lots of time hanging around old houses and such, but never sees anything out of the ordinary. Sports reporters take you LIVE into the locker room after the big games to watch the janitors clean up after the players have gone home. And so on, on and on. One consolation: Since nobody in their right mind would want to advertise on such a network, there would probably be fewer commercials. ********************* I was typing something that used the word "eerie", which got me to thinking of how few English words start with a double-letter vowel. There's "aardvark" and "eerie" and "ooze", and a look in the dictionary shows lots of scientific terms and such starting with "oo", but I don't see anything in the way of "ii" and "uu" words. No "ww" or "yy" words either. I haven't looked in an unabridged dictionary, but even if there are some there, the fact that I have to go to such lengths to find them would indicate that they aren't in common use in America. Should we do anything to fill this gap? ********************* Discussion of what people might want to do to a certain alleged terrorist leader were they to catch him reminded me of thoughts I had long ago about some despised personage in some fantasy land being cremated and his ashes mixed into the clay for porcelain bathroom fixtures, mostly toilet bowls and urinals. Where they were installed was kept secret, to prevent cults of followers from stealing them and making them into shrines. But it is known that almost all of them went into restrooms in public buildings. ********************* I've recently been reminded of the phrase "Crime of the Century". I first heard it applied to the JFK shooting back in 1963. I believe it had earlier been applied to the Lindbergh kidnapping, although that was before my time. I've since heard it in connection with more recent events. So now that the 20th Century is over, what was its Crime of the Century? Lindbergh? JFK? OJ? Watergate? Something we don't know about yet, maybe some government conspiracy or something? If we have separate categories for the US and the rest of the world, what would be the leading candidates elsewhere? Or is this something that can't be pinned down? Maybe each new major event feels like the biggest ever at the time, but in retrospect there may be no clear way to rank them. So maybe the question has no answer. ********************* I recently saw a preview of a movie about crop circles. And as I think about it, I'm wondering: Have crop circles shown up in places that aren't farms, in stuff that isn't crops? For example, have they shown up in wild grasslands or prairie? In the reeds of some swamp? In snow in Antarctica? If they are being made by some extra-human agency, would such beings care about who owns the land and whether or not it's a farm? It's not that non-farm circles wouldn't get noticed. Just put them where there's a fair amount of air traffic, and they'll be seen. If they're in some place like Antarctica they're less likely to be dismissed as pranks. But maybe there's another angle: If Someone is trying to communicate with humans, they may have some rule that they can talk to those who are ready to believe but must leave the possibility of hoaxes or other such explanations open so unbelievers can explain it all away. In other words, don't clobber the unbelievers. So doing one in (for example) Antarctica where it would be seen from supply planes but was still tens of miles from the closest human footprints would be a no-no because it would be too hard for unbelievers to explain away. Others may say that the reason we don't see crop circles in the snows of Antarctica is that the whole crop-circle thing is a hoax. But again, that's consistent with ET's (or whatever) working under a rule requiring that unbelievers be able to explain it all away. So we're left with only faith either way: Faith that there are Beings out there doing this, or faith that it's all hoaxes by humans. ********************* Someone on another email list asked what the word "grok" means. Several people (including me) replied with various definitions, all vaguely similar but subtly different. As you may know, it comes from "Stranger in a Strange Land". In the book one of the characters is a human who had been raised by Martians and then returned to Earth, and "grok" was a Martian word. As I recall it meant to fully understand something. Thing is, the book came out in 1961, more than forty years ago. People have been using the word, often in various alternative philosophical and spiritual contexts, ever since. And not all of those people have read the book. So it's possible that the meaning of the word, at least for some of the people using it, may have drifted from the original meaning in the book. Some of the definitions given on the email list included mystical phrases like "merge completely with the essence of something". This seems to go well beyond mere understanding, even if you include the emotions as well as the rational mind in your definition of "understanding". Was it like that in the book, with me just sort of missing it when I read it back in the Sixties, or has there indeed been definition drift? ********************* At a recent party some of us were sitting in the hot tub when somebody remarked on how pretty the stars looked, and wondered whether a certain point of light might be Jupiter. That prompted the host to go fetch his telescope. The telescope had some kind of computerized star-finder controlling a motor drive. It wasn't clear whether it was working strictly on stored data or had a wireless Internet connection, or was using GPS, or what. But in any event he had trouble getting it to find Sirius (a reference star for the computer), apparently because he had made a mistake earlier in the procedure. So then I got to jokingly speculating about how if this were a schlocky 1950's sci-fi movie the problem would turn out to be that Sirius itself was in the wrong place and the gov't had been hushing it up, and he was one of the first civilians to learn that Earth was doomed, or something like that. Others in the hot tub were skeptical, however, because I couldn't imitate theremin music well enough vocally and we didn't have a real theremin handy. And even if we did have one, it could be very dangerous to use electronics from that era in a hot tub. I suggested a musical saw, which sounds similar. The general opinion was that that would make it an even worse sci-fi movie, if they couldn't even afford a real theremin and had to resort to a musical saw. We never did finish working out the rest of the plot. ********************* And speaking of the new year and time in general ... TIME GUM If you've always wanted to roam the corridors of time, To meet Shakespeare, Attend the original Olympics, Or bumble around with dinosaurs, And you're the kind of person who prefers hiking to driving, Then I recommend Time Gum. Some flavors let you chew your way straight into the past That you've always read about in history books While others take you crookedly into other pasts Of dragons And wizards And fairy-tale princesses And still other flavors give you the future. I could say more about futures, But some people feel it's like telling the ending To a movie you haven't seen yet, Or opening your Christmas presents early And having nothing to do on Christmas morning But sit around wishing you'd waited, So I won't. In some ways Time Gum is very mysterious. Like, nobody knows when or if It was, or will be, or would have been invented. But most futures are full of warehouses full of it So nobody really worries about it. Some people wonder if it's safe. The main danger is cheap imitations That aren't really Time Gum at all But just regular gum with drugs in it To make you think you're on a time trip When you really aren't. It seems, however, That dealers in such bogus wares Often suddenly find That their grandparents had no children, And their parents didn't either, And neither will they, probably, So it's never really been a problem. Still, it's safer to buy from someone you trust. Just ask your friends to recommend someone. Chances are they can, Since Time Gum is not as rare As you might think. F'rinstance, If you've ever endured banquet speeches That seemed to drone on and on forever, Or been enjoying a concert When it ended all too soon, Chances are that some of the lumps Stuck to the underside of your seat Are, or were, or will be, or might have been, Time Gum. Thomas G. Digby written 2340 hr Oct 26 83 entered 0415 hr Nov 22 83 ********************* 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. When you receive an email confirmation request go to the URL it will give you. 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