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 #126 New Moon of April 8, 2005 Contents copyright 2005 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. ********************* It's a time of year when the sun is setting later and later each day. That's the case for several months each year, but right now the recent start of Daylight Saving Time adds emphasis to the seasonal change. Then as I was out walking my wandering steps took me down Sunset Avenue, reminding me of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. That in turn raised the question of why I haven't noticed streets named for other times of day like sunrise or twilight or morning or noontime. A quick check of one map listing shows several streets with "Sunrise" in their names. I also seem to recall a "Morningside Court" or something like that somewhere, as well as some with "Eventide" in their names. But what of times of day (or night) other than dawn and dusk? Is there some reason people don't seem to name as many streets after them? Or am I just not noticing them? ********************* Something got me to thinking of the annual Senior Ditch Day tradition at Caltech where the seniors go away for a day, leaving the underclassmen to try to break into their rooms. It's sort of a game, with the seniors securing their doors in all sorts of creative ways that the underclassmen have to try to figure out. There are some unwritten rules about what's acceptable (ingenuity) and what isn't (brute force). The prize for getting in is usually something like a case of beer. I recall some specific examples I'd been told about, such as the door with a bunch of wires sticking out from under it. Many of the wires had various kinds of voltages and signals and such on them. So what were people supposed to do? It turned out that a particular wire or two had to be pulled to open a mechanical latch. There were some that weren't physical at all, but just a riddle that had to be solved. And yes, people respected that. The unwritten rules were generally honored, even if they weren't enforced by any official agency. Tradition can carry a lot of weight sometimes. ********************* Then I got to wondering: What if Hogwarts or Miskatonic or some other such school were to have a similar Senior Ditch Day tradition? What would that be like? And what would it be like at a Toon college? Would there be anvils balanced precariously atop door frames, waiting to fall on whoever was foolish enough to walk through the half-open door? Would jimmying a window release a nest of hornets? Would people saw big round holes in walls, floors, and ceilings, only to trigger some kind of detonator hooked up to a bundle of dynamite sticks? Would the end of the day see entire dormitories in ruins, their occupants all bandaged up like mummies as they try to figure out what hit them? And then would things be pretty much back to normal within a day or two? ********************* Speaking of weather the last few days: Rain (1) Rain is God putting the world through His car wash to emerge fresh and clean and shining. But remember: One of these days, Unless we mend our sinful ways ... HOT WAX!! Thomas G. Digby written 0305 hr 2/12/77 typed 0205 hr 2/17/77 entered 1215 hr 4/09/92 ********************* As I was typing something about the weather, I noticed that my fingers kept wanting to type "clods" instead of "clouds". That would be something. What would such a world be like? Would there be dirt falling from the sky, either all the time or just in showers? And when people got all dirty from the falling topsoil, would they console each other by saying it's good for the farmers? But would it actually be good for the farmers? If the dirt came down in clods it might injure the crops, like hail sometimes does in this world. And even if it came sifting down gently, too much of it falling too quickly could bury emerging shoots and low- growing types of plants. But maybe the life on that world would have evolved to handle those situations. The resulting species might look weird to our eyes, but to those living there they would be normal. To them our world, where (with rare exceptions) the only thing that falls from the sky is some form of water, would be the weird one. Or maybe the dirt doesn't fall from the sky after all. Maybe the clods just float around up there like clouds do in our world. They might block sunlight from getting to what we think of as the ground, at least sometimes, and when (if) it rains water-type rain the area below would get dirty water, but that's about It. Would farmers in that world go up to the aerial clods and plant crops on them? I have no idea what might or might not grow in that situation, but something might well have evolved to take advantage of it. So once the farmers got some kind of technology like balloons or airplanes or maybe just tall towers that gave them access to the clod layer, they might well exploit it agriculturally. Of course there may be areas that some would like to preserve in their pristine state, like some of our parks and wilderness areas here. But I probably don't need to get into details of that now. ********************* It just occurred to me as I was editing the previous item that I'd basically just invented meteorite dust and the asteroid belt. But there's still quite a difference in degree between the world I was describing and the one we live in. ********************* In the previous issue (125) I did a thing about "Edgar Alien Poe" with science-fiction variants on a couple of Poe titles. It probably wasn't really that good a gag, and normally I wouldn't be bringing it up again. But it got some unanticipated reactions: Some readers didn't notice that the middle name in the gag was "Alien" rather than "Allan", and took it straight. That got me to thinking. I was reminded of how our brains more or less automatically filter out background noise from whatever information we're taking in. For the most part that's a useful ability, or else it wouldn't have evolved. But there are times when it gets in the way. Anyone who's done proofreading knows how difficult it can be to turn those filters off so as to be able to notice errors. And writers like me, whose output is sometime noise-like in the sense of being very unlikely compared to whatever the audience was expecting at that instant, could benefit from being able to somehow turn off the readers' noise filters for those low-probability signals that would otherwise be mistaken for typos or mis-heard words or the like. ********************* I was thinking about a book of something like Rorschach ink blots. Every person who reads it sees it as being about something different, so no two librarians can agree on how to file it. But then what do libraries do with it when they somehow find themselves in possession of a copy? If all else fails, maybe trial by combat? Maybe the Library of Congress, or some other such ultimate authority, has a secret dungeon where gladiators who are also trained librarians fight it out over books they can't agree on how to classify. There are only a few such books, so they don't need all that many gladiators, and they prefer to recruit people who are expert librarians from within their existing work force. Thus the fact that the Library of Congress now and then uses gladiators doesn't get noticed by the outside public, even by most sports fans. Besides, most librarians don't like to talk about such things with outsiders. They think it weakens their reputation as scholars. But if you know the right people in the field, and you like watching blood sports, you may be able to get a pass to see the library gladiators in action. But if it's too bloody for you, don't say I didn't warn you. ********************* I dreamed a young woman's body was found hanging from a telephone pole, an apparent suicide. Nobody knew who she might have been. Then I found a scrap of paper that I sort of knew was her suicide note. It was a series of drawings, some with captions and other wording on them, sort of like a page from a comic book. She had come here from another world, part of an exploring expedition. While here she had given birth to a child, and when the others returned home she stayed behind to raise it here. But then the child had died, its soul lost among millions of others on this world. Having nothing more to live for, she decided to end it all. As I finished reading the tragic tale the images faded from the paper, leaving me with no evidence beyond my unsupported word. ********************* Another thought on the space program: There's talk of again sending astronauts to the moon, this time with the idea of eventually setting up some kind of base. There's also speculation that there may be some remnants of life, or some sort-of-alive combinations of chemicals, or something like that, in certain naturally sheltered spots on Mars. If there is, someone is sooner or later going to want to bring back samples for study. So maybe the lunar base should include a laboratory for analyzing such things, so that anything brought back from Mars (or Titan or any other world thought to harbor life or proto-life) can go to the Moon rather than Earth or Earth orbit. That would reduce the chances of anything dangerous getting loose down here. Should the lab be manned? Probably not, because we don't want to have to worry about lab workers getting contaminated. But we may want any humans operating it remotely to be nearby, either on the moon or in lunar orbit, to reduce light-speed lag. Science fiction writers may of course postulate a lab staffed by what amounts to monks, people who have dedicated their lives to the work and who plan to never return to Earth. This may make even more sense for the eventual Mars base, where the possibility of contamination is harder to rule out. But moon or Mars, this scenario doesn't seem likely in real life, at least given the current US culture. But what if the first Mars expeditions aren't from the US? Has this idea been talked about much? ********************* A monthly poetry reading I go to happened to fall on April Fool's, during a spell of unsettled weather. That led me to read this one: Everybody Talks About It But ... Tuesday before last they were predicting a Thursday-- My club meeting night. But when I awoke in the morning It was dull, gray, depressing, dreary, Blue Monday. I was almost mad enough to complain But normally wouldn't bother, Except I needed something to write about And I knew somebody who worked there So I went. The forecaster tried to explain it with a map: "We were expecting this area of Wednesday/Thursday here To stabilize and spread But a long lazy Sunday afternoon That had been quietly hanging there for three days Finally broke up and flowed west So we got Monday." I asked if it was true the days used to be more settled. They say that years ago they went Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Regular as clockwork. You could almost set your watch by 'em. He'd heard that too, But that was before they kept records So he really didn't know. I told him my father's story About how when he was little They once had a month straight Of Monday. He'd heard of that: "It was really bad-- A month of Monday morning blahs And a water shortage from all that Monday washday laundry And with no Fridays, nobody was getting their paychecks. They finally had to declare an emergency and martial law and everything And when the churches tried to organize prayers for relief-- No Sundays. Churches like having lots of Sundays." Interesting conversation, But finally time to go. "Any Thursdays coming up? That's my club meeting And we haven't had one for quite a while." "Sorry, but no. No Thursdays in sight." But sure enough, You guessed it. For the next three days, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. Thomas G. Digby written 0035 hr 2/26/77 entered 0005 hr 2/09/92 ********************* 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. 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