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 #128 New Moon of June 6, 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 June, the month when summer comes to this hemisphere. The sun is shining, birds are singing, and all that good stuff, even if summer won't officially be here for another couple of weeks. Of course there are always differences of opinion. Some people have medical problems having to do with sunshine or birds or other aspects of summer, while others just happen to prefer other seasons. I myself am not too enamored of the latter part of summer when the really hot weather comes to California just as the days start to noticeably shorten to remind us of the inevitable passage of time toward another season of cold wet somber darkness. But in general spring and the beginning of summer feel to me like times for rejoicing. ********************* As I was musing at the keyboard earlier there happened to be a few moments with no birds singing, and no clouds visible in the sky. Neither were there any clouds singing, or at least there were none close enough for me to hear them. In fact, as far as I know clouds never sing, at least not on this world, unless you want to count howling winds and thunder and such. Might clouds sing on other worlds? It seems doubtful, at least on worlds with physical laws similar to ours, where clouds are made up of tiny droplets of liquid or particles of solid matter suspended in whatever passes for air. But then one sees cartoons and such where clouds act more like solid objects or living beings floating around up there. Sometimes such cartoon clouds have faces and are depicted as talking, even if they don't sing. Might there be worlds where things are like that, even if those worlds aren't in our realm of reality? And might clouds in some of those worlds sing? We don't know enough about the nature of whatever reality lies beyond our universe to know. ********************* I'm also reminded of something else: In cartoons and such, Christian Heaven is often depicted with the "ground" that people walk on being the tops of clouds. That leads to a number of thoughts. First, the cloud tops often look a bit lumpy, probably drawn that way so the reader will know that it's the top side of clouds rather than dirt or something. Do all those tiny hills and valleys make it harder to walk on? And what does it feel like? I tend to imagine it would feel like walking around on a bed, with the mattress and springs and such, except for it not being level like a bed is. But I could be wrong. There's also a philosophical point: If Heaven is made of clouds (with or without gold paving on top), whoever is living in whatever part of the world Heaven is above will look up and see the undersides of those clouds. So does that mean the people in Heaven can't enjoy it without giving somebody else a cloudy day? But then aviators and such don't generally report seeing Heaven when they're above the clouds. So maybe the whole realm is in some other plane of reality where there's nobody underneath the clouds to be bothered by them? ********************* During all these cloudy musings I got to thinking about some sort of Weather Command Room where the gods gather around a big table and slide little cotton clouds and such around on a map of the world, sort of like generals moving toy soldiers around as part of planning a battle. Then it gets to be lunch time, but they're too engrossed in some new seasonal frontal system or something to want to leave their work to go eat. So they have food brought in. But the servant bringing the food is clumsy. He trips or something, and a tray of food gets scattered all over the table. And the magic of the system is such that anything on the table becomes part of the weather. So that's why we now and then hear reports of fish and such falling out of the sky. ********************* A day or two before a recent science fiction convention someone I was planning to share a room with left a message on my answering machine. The message included the cell phone number of the third person who would be in the room. As I was writing it down I looked, more or less by habit, at the letters on the numbers to see if the number spelled anything interesting. It didn't. But even though it didn't spell much of anything, it got me to thinking. Since most cell phones have internal directories there's less need for humans to remember actual phone numbers when they want to call somebody. So are letter-based mnemonics for phone numbers dying out? ********************* Sometimes when I'm looking for inspiration I just start typing, and hope that it turns out to be about something interesting, even though I have no idea of what that might be. Although that approach works some of the time, it doesn't always bear fruit. Sometimes it just ends up as a paragraph of ramblings that don't really go anywhere. But then fruit trees don't usually go anywhere either, even when they're bearing fruit. If you want fruit, you have to go to the tree. There seems to be no such thing as itinerant fruit trees, at least on this world. Might other worlds have them? You might mention Johnny Appleseed, but then he was a man, not a tree. And he himself didn't bear much, if any, fruit. He planted trees so that people might have fruit later. So he doesn't really count. It could be argued that if you want your food to come to you, you eat meat or birds or fish. That's the kind of food that wanders around, at least on this planet. But what if you don't want to be carnivorous? I suspect that itinerant fruit trees are unlikely to evolve naturally. They could perhaps gain some advantage by wandering around leaving their seeds all over the place, but if there are fruit-eating animals around they can do the job of seed dispersal just as well. If they aren't going to appear naturally, could someone create them artificially? On this planet the functions of bearing fruit and wandering around have ended up in two different kingdoms of life, and combining them may require a major feat of biological engineering. That's not to say it wouldn't be possible, but few might consider it worth the trouble. It would be far simpler to just plant regular trees in wheeled containers and haul those around as desired. So much for mixing metaphors about ideas going places and bearing fruit. ********************* Why don't more seaports have a special Handicapped dock area for pirate ships whose crew members have hooks and peg legs and eye patches and such? ********************* A few days ago I heard a radio commercial where the guy was saying something like "Why buy a make-believe car" when you can get the brand he was advertising for some fairly low price. I'm not sure of the point, but I think he was trying to say that other cars in that price range are just something for people to settle for if they think they can't get his brand. Or something like that. But I got to wondering about taking the phrase "make-believe car" more literally, perhaps in the context of magic. A powerful enough magic-user might be able to do up a transportation spell whereby he could actually go somewhere by pretending to drive. Sit down in a chair or whatever at Point A, close your eyes, pantomime steering with your hands while making engine noises for a few minutes, and when you open your eyes you're at Point B. In some ways that kind of make-believe car might be more useful than a real one, and it could be much better for the environment. So if you're enough of a magic-user to be able to use a make-believe car, why would you want to spend thousands and thousands of dollars for a real one? ********************* I just noticed a jar of bubble stuff with "Non Toxic" in big letters on the label. That got me to wondering: Isn't labeling innocent stuff like soap bubbles as "Non Toxic" kind of redundant? Who would want to manufacture deadly venomous bubbles, guaranteed to spread death and desolation for miles around? I suppose you might be able to get the military interested, but even that's a long shot. It doesn't fit into their current models of warfare. Death-dealing bubbles might have potential as a terrorist weapon, but they're not the kind of thing potential terrorists would expect to find on the open market. So again, labeling regular bubble stuff as "Non Toxic" seems kind of redundant. I suppose someone might make somewhat toxic bubbles, not as deadly as what the military and/or terrorists might want, but still not good for children to be playing with, just out of carelessness or because the ingredients are less costly than the safe stuff. But that's why we have the various consumer product safety people doing tests and making lists of approved ingredients and such. So if a bottle of bubble stuff isn't labeled with big warnings about "MILITARY OR TERRORIST USE ONLY" it's probably safe enough for ordinary people to play with. And even if terrorists were to make their own version of deadly bubbles in hopes unsuspecting users would buy them and thereby spread death and desolation for miles around, they probably wouldn't be above lying on the label about how toxic they were or weren't. So again, "Non Toxic" on the label doesn't really say much. Or is it supposed to be a patriotic statement, like "Support our Troops"? The maker of that brand of bubble stuff is letting the world know that terrorists will have little use for it. Thus it's OK for ordinary people to buy and use it, because it won't get them labeled as terrorists. Notice that "Non Toxic" isn't as potentially controversial as "Support our Troops", which tends to be taken to actually mean "Support Whatever War We're In". Even people who want to bring our troops home are unlikely to be in favor of toxic bubbles. So it's nice to know that the makers of bubble stuff are doing their part to keep our nation secure. ********************* "I laughed so hard I sprayed coffee all over my keyboard. That was very odd, since I was drinking Coke at the time." ********************* There's a creative writing exercise in which you're supposed to just write, even if it isn't about anything in particular. Don't spend time sitting there wondering what to write about. Just write. But how can one write if it isn't about anything? Maybe one could use only words that have no meaning? You might still want some of the standard language-support words like articles and prepositions and pronouns and the like, but for the nouns and verbs and adjectives and such use only meaningless words. Then you would have well-formed English (or whatever other language you prefer) sentences that aren't about anything. Or would you want to go all the way and eliminate the support words as well? Then the writing that isn't about anything wouldn't be in any particular language either. Or would it? Might someone still be able to use statistical methods to infer that whatever you wrote is more likely to be in Language X than Language Y? You might get around that by never using the same word twice, but then you run into problems with limited numbers of letter combinations, at least with short words. Could one get around the letter-combination problem by using ideographs? Possibly so, at least if you make up the ideographs yourself so nobody else knows what, if anything, they mean, but I'm writing this on a computer where the default way of writing stuff is ASCII text. So I'd need different software to do ideographs. Would a paint program suffice? If I'm making the ideographs up as I go along and don't plan to use any of them more than once it might. But be the software as it may, it's beginning to sound like the easy way out is to just let one's writing always be about something, or at least be in a specific language. ********************* Speaking of not writing about anything, or not having anything to write about, or ... Incident Along Fantasy Way Idea Crisis Things are quiet tonight -- Too quiet. There is a severe inspiration shortage. Downtown is silent and dark, With rolls of sidewalk stacked in the parking lots. Store windows are empty And none of the signs say anything. I try making noise But the echoes are only echoes. Two people are conversing on a street corner: "Hey, what's happenin', man?" "Nothin'. What's happenin' with you?" "Nothin'. What's happenin' with you?" "Nothin'." Back and forth endlessly. Most of the newsracks on the next corner are empty. A couple have blank papers And one headlines "NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS" Over a full-page picture Of a Smile Face. My favorite DJ is on the radio Announcing that his station will be playing elevator music Until further notice. Finally I conjure up a press card And inquire at a police station. The desk sergeant looks up from his crossword puzzle And says that the last several days have passed "Without incident." So it looks like I have nothing to write about This time. Thomas G. Digby written 2315 hr 8/16/74 entered 1645 hr 2/27/92 ********************* 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. 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 --