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 #184 New Moon of December 16, 2009 Contents copyright 2009 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 falls on December 16, the day generally accepted as being Beethoven's birthday. I'm not planning on doing anything special to commemorate it, unless reading the "Peanuts" strip in the funny papers counts, but I still thought it was worth noting. What's probably on more people's minds than Beethoven is the fact that it's the height of the Christmas season, with a little more than a week to go before the big day. According to my car radio, the Post Office just had their busiest day of the year for people mailing packages. But how does the total volume of mail around Christmas compare with April, when people do their taxes? I'm also reminded that in years gone by the daily papers would run a countdown of shopping days until Christmas. The papers I read don't seem to do that nowadays. Is there any particular reason, or has it just gone out of style? One possible reason might be ambiguity. In days of yore many of the major stores weren't open on Sundays, so there were six shopping days per week. When more and more stores started opening seven days a week, the count became ambiguous. Should every day be counted as a shopping day? Would counting Sundays as shopping days offend devout Christians, or are they not the people the countdown is aimed at anyway? That could have been a reason for dropping it. Then again, maybe the countdown just sort of went out of style for no particular reason beyond the fact that things sometimes go in and out of style sort of at random. ********************* Hearing a commercial sung to the tune of "Silent Night" led me to thoughts of how I was hearing stuff about Mary being a virgin for years before I got the "birds and bees" talk from my parents. So in effect "virgin" was little more than a nonsense word. I don't think I ever asked what it meant, perhaps because I thought it was just one of Mary's titles or something. I suspect that this problem is less common nowadays, what with sex in general being more openly talked about than it was back then. ********************* Another way future Christmases may be different from the ones I remember from my childhood is that, what with global warming, the north polar ice cap may no longer stay frozen year-round, but may melt in the summertime. If that happens, what will it do to Santa's workshop? Will he move it to some place on land? Get a batch of barges and/or houseboats or some such? Set up an undersea dome? Or is the water too deep for air-filled undersea structures? If it refreezes every winter, might he do some sort of yearly migration cycle? What times of year would the ice be thick enough to support buildings and such and what times of year would it not be? How much of Santa's time would be spent setting up and tearing down? I wouldn't be surprised if he were to split up the actual toy manufacturing operations among a number of land-based locations, and just put up some mostly-for-show temporary buildings at the actual North Pole. That might actually make life easier for him. He could set up a number of supply dumps from which to reload his sleigh on Christmas Eve, and thus not have to lug the full load all the way around the world. This will take some sophisticated inventory management, but if his elves are already building computers to give to good little boys and girls they probably have the necessary expertise in-house. So although global warming will give us lots of things to worry about, the fate of Santa's workshop is probably not one of them. ********************* On one especially chilly morning as I was typing up random thoughts I happened to type the exclamation "Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr". The spelling checker didn't like that, and suggested replacing it with "Irreproachableness". Its second choice was "Businesspeople". I can sort of see how it might have chosen those words. One of them has two of the letter "r" in a row near the beginning and is fairly long, while the other starts with "B" and is also fairly long. But neither is something I would expect people to say as an exclamation to express feeling cold. So in that sense the spelling checker missed the mark. Of course it's possible that once this is published people will start using those words that way, perhaps because it's silly and thus an amusing thing to do. I kind of doubt it will happen, but stranger things have happened in the past. ********************* Speaking of it getting really really cold, how well would the song "Jingle Bells" apply on some planet or moon where it snows methane or some such instead of water ice? First there are the bells. If the planet you're on has enough of an atmosphere the bells should ring more or less like they do on Earth. Of course if all the humans are wearing spacesuits because of the extreme cold they may need some sort of outside microphone to be able to hear the bells ringing. But all in all, hearing the bells may be the least of our problems. Since the words to the song "Jingle Bells" mention a horse-drawn sleigh, we'll need a horse. If our methane-ice planet has life, there may be some functional equivalent of a horse that we can domesticate and hitch to our sleigh. If not, we'll have to bring a horse from Earth. That can get expensive, especially since the horse will need a spacesuit if it's going to be trotting around outdoors. And don't forget the harness and reins. Should they be part of the spacesuit, or would it be better to attach them some other way? Some engineering effort may be required to get this working. At the other end of the reins is the sleigh itself. Would this be like the traditional sleighs used on Earth? If the riders are wearing spacesuits we won't need an enclosed passenger cabin, so something like the traditional open sleigh should work. On the other hand, we may need to make minor changes to allow people to enter and exit and sit comfortably in those bulky awkward spacesuits. One last point: If the snow we'll be dashing through is methane-based or something rather than water-based, will the sleigh still slide across it the way Earth people are used to? Is the somewhat unusual behavior of water ice under pressure important here, or will any smooth surface work? There are many questions here, probably including some I haven't thought of, that are outside my area of expertise. Does anybody know the answers? ********************* A semi-related question: Given snow made of methane or ammonia or carbon dioxide or whatever else may fall as snow on other worlds, what would the snowflakes look like? Would they still have the kind of hexagonal symmetry we expect of water-based snow, or would they be square or octagonal or some other shape? And would they have the variety of intricate structures we see with snowflakes on Earth, or would they be some simple boring shape, all more or less alike? ********************* Back on the matter of whether our winter songs would apply on other planets, what about "Over the River and Through the Woods"? Even if you had a horse-drawn sleigh, perhaps with spacesuits for the horse and riders, and even if you had rivers of methane or whatever with bridges over them, would you have woods to go through? And what of "Frosty the Snowman" and the snowman that they're thinking of building in "Winter Wonderland"? Will snowflakes made of methane or carbon dioxide or whatever stick together well enough to let people build snowmen? If the gravity there is less than on Earth, would that make things easier? And don't forget "Skater's Waltz". How well would ice skates work? For one thing, it might be harder to find "ice" to skate on if lakes there freeze from the bottom up rather than from the top down like they do here. Even if you do find smooth ice, will it be slippery enough for ice skates to work? Since there are no serious proposals for colonizing any such worlds in the next few years, it'll be a while before we really need to answer these questions. But sooner or later we might, so it may be good to at least start thinking about them. ********************* Speaking of singing, the background music in the supermarket was playing "Frosty the Snowman" and for some reason I noticed the line where Frosty only paused a moment when the traffic cop told him to stop. What if that isn't good enough? What if the cop tries to write Frosty a ticket for not stopping still enough, or something? The officer is likely to ask for identification. But as far as I know, Frosty doesn't have any. He's a snowman some kids built who came to life after they stuck a magic hat on his head, and I don't think the kids who built him thought to make up a driver's license or passport or birth certificate or whatever for him. So he's sort of like an undocumented alien, except there's no specific place they can deport him to. So the cop arrests him. Getting him to the jail could be kind of a hassle, because a snowman may not fit into the back seat of a conventional police car. But let's assume they do somehow manage to transport him to the jail. Then the real fun begins. They put him in a cell and leave him for a while. Then when they come back to take him to court or whatever he will have melted. There's a big puddle of water all over the floor, and they're short one prisoner. Maybe Frosty warned the jailers that this would happen, but they didn't believe him, and the top brass won't believe that story either. So there's a lot of bureaucratic finger-pointing that's no fun for any of those involved. And when they start putting up "WANTED -- ESCAPED PRISONER" posters with Frosty's mug shot on them, people start laughing at the cops for putting up pictures of a snowman. It's enough to make everybody connected with the whole affair, with the possible exception of the kids who built Frosty in the first place, want to move to Miami. ********************* Speaking of places where it doesn't snow regularly, this Christmas is the 35th anniversary of "The Christmas Cat". I wrote it at a Christmas party at a coffee house in Los Angeles just after midnight on Christmas Eve of 1974. And it's been several years since I ran it in Silicon Soapware. So ... Comes now the time for the traditional reprinting of THE CHRISTMAS CAT Once upon a time in a village In a little mountain valley in Borschtenstein Lived a wicked millionaire Whose hobby was foreclosing mortgages And sending people out into the snow. He also took great pride in having The best Christmas decorations in the village. Also in this same village In the little valley in Borschtenstein Lived a poor family Whose mortgage, which came due on Christmas, Was designed to be impossible to pay off. The Christmas weather forecast was for snow And the millionaire's eviction lawyers were waiting. Now this wicked millionaire In the valley village etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, Also had the monopoly on Christmas trees To be sure of having the prettiest Christmas decorations In the whole village. Thus the poor family had nothing at all To put their presents under. Now by chance it so happened In that village in etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, The wicked millionaire had evicted his cat Because its ears and tail were the wrong color And it hadn't paid its mortgage. And the poor family had taken it in And given it a home. So just before Christmas When the Good Fairies asked the animals of the village About people in need and deserving of help The poor family got the highest recommendation. "We will help them!" said the elves and fairies, "They won't have to worry about that mortgage And they'll have the prettiest Christmas decorations in town!" The mortgage was really not much problem: If the millionaire couldn't throw people out into the snow He wouldn't bother throwing them out at all. So the elves spoke to the North Wind and they agreed: No more snow to throw people out into. Some people in the village would have liked snow to play in But agreed the sacrifice was for a good cause. Christmas trees were more of a problem: They had already given them out to other needy families And there were none left at all. They rummaged around in forgotten corners But not a Christmas tree could they find. Then someone had an idea: "Let's decorate their cat!" While one of the elves who spoke Feline Worked out the details with the cat The fairies flew around gathering decorations: Borrowed bits of light from small stars nobody ever notices, Streamers of leftover comet tails, And other assorted trinkets From odd corners of the universe. So the poor family gathered around their Christmas cat And sang songs and opened presents And had the happiest Christmas imaginable While all agreed they had the prettiest decorations The village had ever seen And the millionaire's eviction lawyers Waited in vain for snow. So that is why, to this day, In that valley village in Borschtenstein, It never snows Unless the eviction lawyers are out of town And every year the millionaire tries to decorate a Christmas cat But gets nothing for his pains But bleeding scratches. EPILOGUE: While overnight miracles are rare outside of story books, Even those who learn slowly do learn. So keep checking the weather reports for Borschtenstein. If some Christmas it snows there You will know the millionaire has given up being wicked And has found a truer meaning Of Christmas. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ May you have the happiest Yule/Christmas/Hanukkah/Solstice/Whatever imaginable! Thomas G. Digby ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ first draft written 0115 hr 12/25/74 this version edited 2320 hr 12/14/86 format cleaned up 14:19 12/22/2001 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU There are two email lists, one that allows reader comments and one that does not. Both are linked from http://www.plergb.com/Mail_Lists/Silicon_Soapware_Zine-Pages.html If you are already receiving Silicon Soapware and want to unsubscribe or otherwise change settings, the relevant URL should be in the footer appended to the end of this section in the copy you received. 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