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 #148 New Moon of January 18, 2006 Contents copyright 2007 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. ********************* The weather here has been quite cold lately, with lows well below freezing in spots. That may not seem like anything to write home about if you're in some place like Minneapolis, but freezing is indeed cold for this part of California. Since I'm in the habit of turning off the heat when I go to bed, I've had to add another blanket to the stack I sleep under. That reminded me of the old joke about needing a bookmark to keep track of where you are. Then I got to thinking about it. If you're lying in bed awake, you usually pretty much know where you are, and if you don't, putting numbers on the blankets would probably work better than trying to use a bookmark. "I'm between blankets three and four in a bed at GPS coordinates so-and-so." If you're not awake, perhaps off in Dreamland and trying to find your way back to wake up, your body should be bookmark enough. If you need anything, it would be something more like a beacon. So again, what we normally think of as bookmarks wouldn't be of much use. Then I thought of the times I'd shared beds with others on a non-sexual basis for various and sundry reasons such as there being more people than beds. Then you might want to assign each person a different level in the blanket stack to cut down the possibility of any unwanted interactions. Actually, in that case it might be better to have a stack of sheets for the people to be between with blankets on top of that for warmth. Otherwise the people near the top of the stack might be too cold while those near the bottom were too warm. And again, you'd want to number the blankets or sheets or whatever, to avoid misunderstandings about who sleeps where. So all in all I don't see bookmarks for beds as being very useful. ********************* I'm reminded of something that may be true or may be urban legend. It seems that railroad workers in Florida were processing a freight train that had just arrived. They found several coal cars full of snow, with no listing of who or what the snow was for. They called Chicago, where the train originated. Eventually it was determined that workers plowing a Chicago railroad yard had needed a place to dump the snow, and figured that those empty southbound coal cars were as good a place as any. The weather in Florida was warm enough to eventually melt the snow, but melting all that snow took longer than it took the train to get there from up North. ********************* While I was working on early drafts of some of this I noticed the digital thermometer showing 66.6 F. Is that the Temperature of the Beast? ********************* If you believe in Santa Claus you might want to skip down to the next row of asterisks. As the holidays were winding down I had a thought that came too late for the Christmas issue but which I didn't want to set aside for a whole year: What would the world be like if Santa Claus was real? To start with, there would be a large influx of goods into the world economy every December. This bounty would not be evenly distributed, but would be greatest in those places where the default culture celebrated Christmas. And it would come from outside the economy, so the total amount of wealth in the world would just sort of suddenly increase. This bounty would come mainly in the form of undocumented in-kind grants from an entity that is accountable to no known governmental agency. Governments that wished to tax it, or even just take a census, would have a difficult time getting an accurate count. Much of it would be in the form of toys and candy and clothing that would look pretty much like similar items produced by anybody else. It might be possible to track those items that had serial numbers, such as computers and cars and appliances, but what portion of the whole does that cover? Speaking of computers and the like, intellectual property could be another tricky area. Who pays whom for copies of software and movies and music and such? Then there are the privacy aspects. Santa gives his gifts to those he believes have conformed to his code of conduct. The amount of surveillance required to support this is staggering. And what constitutes being "good" or "bad"? Is it one universal code, or does it vary from culture to culture? Are the rules published anywhere? Is there a Web site, or do you have to go to the North Pole in person to see the official documentation? Speaking of being bad, does Santa Claus cooperate with law enforcement agencies to help solve crimes? Would Santa's statements as to whether a given person had been Naughty or Nice be admissible in a court of law? If they wanted him to testify in a case, how would they serve the subpoena? There might be interesting questions of jurisdiction there. There are probably more questions here, but this may be enough for a start. ********************* At the fast-food place: "I'd like a burger, and don't put any varshkapong on it." "Any what?" "Varshkapong." "What's that?" "I don't know. But whatever it is, I don't want it on my burger." "Well, we don't know what it is either." "Does that mean you're not putting it on burgers?" "Yes. Er, I mean no. Well, that is .... If we don't know what it is, how do we know one way or the other?" "You've got a point there. Maybe instead of a burger I'll have a turkey sandwich." "Do you want varshkapong on it?" "Does it come with varshkapong?" "We don't know." "Well, at long as it isn't a burger I don't really care either way." ********************* The bit at the fast-food place reminded me of something in a recent issue of Science. Someone had looked at a bunch of job descriptions and for each job had estimated the IQ that would be required to do that job. They then drew a curve (actually a bar graph) of the number of available positions as a function of the IQ the positions required. This was shown superimposed on the curve of actual population vs IQ. The two curves did not match. The job curve peaked around 110 or thereabouts, while the population curved peaked at 100. Thus there's a shortage of workers for jobs requiring an IQ a little above average. On the other hand there were surpluses of workers to fill jobs at the genius level and also for jobs at the below-average IQ level. The accompanying article mentioned that employers were using computers and such to "dumb down" some of those just-above-average-IQ jobs so that more people could fill them. And what of the surplus of genius-level people? Can they fill some of the lower-IQ jobs? Possibly, although for some jobs a person who is too smart will get bored and not perform as well as someone closer to the intelligence level actually needed for the job. Of course there are guesstimates and shaky assumptins and oversimplifications galore in all of this, but it's still food for thought. ********************* Can food for thought give people mental indigestion? ********************* There was an item in the news about some country somewhere planning to outlaw chain saws in order to curb illegal logging. I have this mental image of some kind of Homicidal Maniacs' Association protesting the ban. That could put a real crimp in future slasher movies. Even if most serial killers don't care about the fine points of the law, it could make chain saws harder to find. ********************* Someone sent me an email that's been going around about a serial killer who preys on women in parking lots. I checked that Snopes site that keeps tabs on urban legends and found the story listed as False. Then I got to thinking about how back around the times written of in the Bible it used to be customary to give hospitality to strangers. If someone you didn't know knocked on your door asking for shelter, you took them in. Nowadays you call the cops. Why the difference? What has changed between then and now? Did they have serial killers back then? If not, why not? If so, were people not as aware of them then as they are now? For one thing, they didn't have the news media that we have now. They didn't have TV, nor radio, nor even newspapers. They had town criers and word of mouth, but overall they probably heard a lot less news from outside their immediate neighborhood than we hear now. So even if some equivalent of Freddy Kruger or Hannibal Lecter was terrorizing Damascus, most people in Rome or Athens or Jerusalem would remain blissfully unaware. Come to think of it, they didn't have slasher movies either. They had storytellers, but those wouldn't have had the same impact as seeing some madperson with a chainsaw (which they also didn't have) dismembering victim after victim right before your eyes on the big screen. Did they also have a stronger sense of hospitality, perhaps making them a bit more willing to take the risk of being robbed or otherwise ill-used? I don't have the answer to that. But I think one difference is that we now have, or think we have, organized agencies to deal with those in need. Thus I can tell myself it isn't my job as an individual any more. I suspect humanity has lost something precious here. ********************* Another coffee house near here has started having regular Open Mike nights. I tried it a few days ago and liked the place, and people seemed to like my work at well. I'll probably start going there fairly regularly. http://www.beanscenecafe.com/ This is one of the ones I read for my debut there. ********************* Quality vs Quantity "Everybody knows that small wineries make the best wine," Said a little old winemaker up Selenaloma way to himself, "So I will make the best wine possible: Every year I will harvest, crush, ferment, and bottle One Perfect Grape. Chosen from the vine most favored by sun, wind, and rain, And given the greatest concentration of loving attention, It will grow to greatness Just as tinder, under sunlight concentrated by a lens Glows into flame. True, the fruits of my labor will not be for the masses But then great art never is, And surely there are a fortunate few Ready, willing, and able to pay the price And to fully appreciate the result." So saying, he began to make ready. Unfortunately, however, word leaked out And three of his competitors, Not to be outdone in the matter of small wineries, Went one better By producing No wine at all. Tom Digby written 0035 hr 11/24/76 entered 2/16/88 format 1347 hr 12/22/01 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU NOTE: Some of these addresses may change. Check the latest issue you have. 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. 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