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 #102 New Moon of May 1, 2003 Contents copyright 2003 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 New Moon is on May Day, and that reminds me of a conversation at a recent social event. One of the people I was talking with was a school teacher, and when the subject of May Day came up she said that they don't do Maypoles in public schools nowadays. Too many people would object on religious grounds. That reminded me that back when I was little we did have Maypoles at school, and they had little or no religious significance. A Maypole was just a thing people did to celebrate the season, like "Trick or Treat" for Halloween or turkey dinner for Thanksgiving. If any of the adults were aware of the fertility symbolism of the Maypole they didn't tell us innocent children. I think my first Maypole experience was in kindergarten. I have this memory fragment of a bunch of us kids holding ribbons that were attached to some kind of tall pole. In retrospect it was probably a Maypole, although I suspect I didn't understand what was going on at the time. They also had one when I was in first grade, but I missed it. I have this memory of being driven off in the car and looking back and seeing the other children standing around a pole holding ribbons. I think I was being taken to the hospital to have my tonsils out. As far as I can recall they didn't have one the years I was in second and third grades. May Day would have been on a weekend, although I don't know whether that was the reason. Then one year they did put up a Maypole, but the ceremony got rained out. Or maybe there was a thunderstorm, and they didn't want to take a chance with a tall pole and lightning. Be that as it may, I recall being inside looking out through the window at the pole with its brightly colored ribbons under the threatening skies, and I recall that we never did get to actually do anything that May Day. Then the school quit having Maypoles. This would have been the early 1950's. Was that when the Soviets started taking over May Day as a big military parade day? I recall seeing pictures of May Day military parades on TV and in the papers, but few if any mentions of Maypoles. Maybe celebrating May Day had become somehow unpatriotic? Nobody seemed to be interested in doing Maypoles in college either. My next experience with Maypoles came after I got into Paganism. Nowadays Pagans and Witches and such do them, but public schools don't. Apparently the Maypole now belongs to that specific set of religions, so it's no longer allowable in the supposedly religiously neutral public schools. How things have changed. ********************* Something reminded me of the cartoon cliche of the hole in the bridge or whatever, with cartoon characters walking right across on thin air as long as they don't look down. So some blind guy has a seeing-eye duck that can fly across such gaps, so he never notices the difference. ********************* This neighborhood has overhead phone lines and TV cables, some of which are visible from my window. And as I sit at my computer I now and then see a squirrel running along the wires. Do they have no fear of heights? Squirrels are fairly small, so falling from that height may not hurt them, for square-cube reasons. And they seem pretty secure up there, what with their claws and all. In other places I've seen rats walking along overhead phone wires. If a rat meets a squirrel on a wire, who gets the right of way? Does it go by species, or direction of travel, or what? Now part of me is wondering if squirrels and rats and any other animals that travel along overhead wires might benefit from something like a railroad dispatcher to avoid right-of-way conflicts when two animals want to go in opposite directions on the same wire. One problem is language: How does the dispatcher communicate with the traffic? Maybe play the relevant animal noises for "come here" or "stay back"? Or put nozzles around to spray pheromones to signal "Go" and "Don't Go"? Another problem is when an animal is already on a wire and then changes its mind about which way it wants to go. That could really mess up traffic. Does it happen often? I think it does happen sometimes, such as when an animal sees a potential mate going the other way on another wire. So we'll need some way to discourage that, or at least detect it and notify other traffic accordingly. An even bigger question is why bother in the first place? The animals seem to be muddling through OK with the present non-system, at least with the rather low levels of traffic I see from my window. Deciding not to bother also solves the problem of how to pay for it. The audio system for playing animal noises, along with that pheromone spray stuff, would probably cost a fair amount of money, not to mention operators' salaries and other expenses. So there's a lot to be said for just letting the animals handle it themselves. But might there be reasons to do it, even with the problems? Perhaps it would be a way to create jobs to boost the economy out of its present slump. Nationwide there would be millions of openings for squirrel dispatchers, not to mention the business that could be generated building the equipment, so it could be a big economic boost. And the jobs don't need much in the way of special qualifications. It's not like railroad dispatching or air traffic control, where a collision is Really Bad News. So what if a squirrel gets into a fight or falls off a phone wire now and then? It has a good chance of escaping uninjured, and even if it doesn't, what's one squirrel more or less? So it's the kind of job almost anybody could do, even if they're not very good at it. Of course if the squirrel falls into the path of something like a Presidential motorcade, and the limo driver swerves to avoid it and ends up killing several bigwigs, that could be a problem. But they could always put in temporary special operators for that kind of thing, so it's not a reason not to proceed with the program. So if you think this is a good idea to help the economy, write your Congressperson today. ********************* A few days ago the news from Iraq was about how we'd gotten hold of some Iraqi bigwig's personal phone book, with numbers for other high officials and such. Part of me wants to give the phone book to telemarketers. That might be worse than anything our military could do to them. Or would that violate the Geneva Convention? ********************* "The concept of gloobulon is hereby abolished." -- Official Decree Q: What does "gloobulon" mean? I'm not familiar with that word. A: It doesn't mean anything. The concept that it used to be the word for has been abolished. Q: So it used to mean something? A: Yes, at one time it did. Q: So why don't I remember what it used to refer to? A: Because you are a loyal subject of our Leader. When the abolition decree came out, you immediately purged all memory of the former concept of gloobulon from your mind. Q: But shouldn't I still be able to look it up in dictionaries and such? A: Not really. It is said that even the stars in the sky move in accordance with the will of our Leader. So when the concept that the word gloobulon once referred to was abolished, it instantly vanished from all books and other documents, just as it faded from your memory. Q: So how do I know there was ever such a thing as gloobulon in the first place? A: Because our Leader says so. ********************* One email list I'm on has been having a flap about astrology and related matters. Somebody posted something about seeing more snafus and such because Mercury was about to go retrograde, whereupon someone else responded with a rather scathing rant against "pseudo-science". He went on at some length about how astrology was just a bunch of baloney (although he used a less polite word than "baloney"). The original poster replied along the lines of "Astrology may be false for you, but it works for me," whereupon the other replied with "Astrology is false for everyone, including you, and you're just deluding yourself if you believe otherwise." He then went into a discussion of how there is no plausible physical mechanism by which it can work, so therefore it must not work. I then chimed in with a few points. First, how do we know that what we think of as "reality" is real? It seems real, and it usually works to our advantage to assume it's real, but do we really Know? Perhaps I'm really some kind of creature that the present "me" has never heard of, somewhere off in the Fifth Zfexlthrop Dimension, and that creature is just dreaming that it is me. If that's the case, how would "I" know it before the dreamer woke up? I probably wouldn't. Or maybe we're the gods playing some game akin to "Dungeons and Dragons" to while away eternity. If so, what can the characters (as opposed to the players) know about the rules of the game? And even if we are who we think we are and the world is pretty much what we think it is, there are limits to the scientific method. I'm reminded of the cartoon titled "One Froggy Evening" in which the protagonist (Porky Pig?) finds a singing dancing frog. Problem is, it will perform for him but not for anybody else. If anybody else is around the frog just sits there, maybe giving an occasional croak, but never doing anything resembling singing or dancing. So all our hero ever succeeds in doing is making people think he's crazy. He finally gives up and gets rid of the frog, leaving it for somebody else to find. Although the makers of the cartoon probably didn't intend it as such, it's a demonstration of one of the limits of the scientific method: If a phenomenon is intelligent and doesn't want to be found, then the scientific method won't find it, even if it's real. So if whatever deities there may be don't want scientists to find them (and are smart enough not to be outsmarted by the scientists), they won't be found. And those gods may also be hiding the whole realm of what we might call paranormal phenomena. We just can't know. ********************* Cotton Clouds We don't want to make the gods sad, But for the sake of the green earth We need to give them headaches. Headaches? Why would the gods need headaches? Once upon a time there was no such thing as rain, And the world was all dry and brown. But then one god got a headache And took pills to relieve it. He threw the cotton from the pill bottle Away into our sky Where it became a rain cloud. With the rain came green growing things But they didn't last. After a while they withered back to brown Until the next time some god got a headache And threw his pill-bottle cotton Into our sky to make more clouds. When the gods decided they needed to have headaches more often To keep the world green They created humanity. Our job is to do strange quirky amusing things To get them thinking and wondering and laughing so hard That they get constant headaches And have to keep tossing pill-bottle cotton To make rain clouds to keep the world green. But we have to be careful. If we go beyond the strange and quirky Into the truly hurtful Like wars and murderous cruelty and taking evil advantage of others It makes the gods sad And they won't want to watch our strange amusing antics And won't get headaches And won't throw away pill-bottle cotton And the world will again be all dry and brown. -- Tom Digby First draft 17:30 04/15/2003 Entered 13:34 04/18/2003 Revised 13:54 04/30/2003 Revised 02:12 05/01/2003 ********************* 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. (If you're already on the list and want to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list posting you receive.) To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or bubbles@well.com). I currently do that one manually. -- END --