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 #205 New Moon of August 28, 2011 Contents copyright 2011 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. ********************* Something slightly weird happened a few days ago. First, some background: I'm known among people I hang out with for blowing soap bubbles. People in most of the various subcultures I'm part of seem to enjoy them, as do at least a few of the more or less ordinary people I meet. As a result, people who know me tend to give me bubble-related gifts. This is relevant to what follows. I'd been running low on chocolate, so I decided to walk down to the store for more. As I was passing the building's dumpster I got the urge to look inside. Sometimes someone throws away something interesting. At first glance the situation didn't look too promising. There were the usual bags of garbage, which I never bother opening. There were also a couple of cardboard boxes, possibly useful for organizing stuff. And almost hidden by one of the boxes was something that looked like either a machine or a container, made of purple plastic. That looked interesting. Moving the other stuff aside revealed a box-like thing about the size of a small toaster with a large rectangular opening in one end, and just inside the opening were two rows of little plastic wands, each wand ending in a distinctive loop shape. It took me a few seconds to realize that someone was throwing away a bubble-blowing machine! It turned out to not be quite in working order. The battery terminals were covered with what could have been either dead-battery leakage or dried-up spilled bubble solution. And the batteries (eight AA cells) were dead. But the rest of it looked to be in good shape. And sure enough, once I cleaned up the terminals and replaced the batteries it worked. I probably won't have much use for it. I suppose I could take it to parties and such, but it's too big for regular use around the house when I'm home alone. Besides, I usually prefer to blow bubbles manually. But it might be useful for some special occasion. But be that as it may, it's the thought that counts. And clearly Someone somewhere was thinking of me. ********************* Another issue of Silicon Soapware is due. Should I go fishing for ideas? Since it will be winter in a few months I should probably go ice fishing. But it never gets cold enough around here for ice fishing, and even if it was I've never done it before and don't think I would want to sit out in all that cold while I figured out how to do it. So maybe instead of trying to mess around with ice I should just get a cartoon saw and cut a hole in the middle of the street, or maybe the floor in the living room, or possibly even the next airplane I fly in. If it's the right cartoon saw it won't damage the plane. Instead of cutting wires or hydraulic cables or whatever, the hole will open into the plane's idea tank, even if the people who built the plane didn't know it had an idea tank. Then I'll be able to siphon out all the ideas I want. Things like that often get left out of official blueprints. You just have to sort of know they're there, and have the right kind of saw to cut the hole with to get to them. ********************* I recently saw a video of a flash mob of musicians playing Ravel's "Bolero" in some public place where people don't usually expect a symphony orchestra to appear. This is one of those pieces that starts small and builds to a climax. As I recall it started with just a flute and snare drum, plus the conductor. Then more musicians wandered in, playing their parts as appropriate. At the end there was pretty much a full-fledged symphony orchestra. Then it ended and the musicians quickly scattered. I've heard other pieces of music that start off with some small number of musicians playing softly, with more joining in at gradually increasing volume until at the climax the entire orchestra is going full blast. It's a fairly common thing. But how common is the opposite? Are there any well known pieces that start off with a full orchestra and gradually dwindle down to one solitary survivor? And have any been done as a performance in which musicians literally walk out, one by one, until only one is left? I can imagine a piece structured that way, with the end coming when that final performer suddenly notices that he is alone and just sort of silently slinks off the stage. Perhaps that could be an allegory for some tribe or movement or philosophy or something. In that case I might expect it to start small, grow into something big and loud, and then gradually fade and die, perhaps with the final survivor not being the same as the one who started it. Has this been done? ********************* If the lifetime of this universe is finite, but there is a Hereafter that lasts forever, will people in that Hereafter outlive the physical universe? Christian authorities seem to say they will. I'm less familiar with other faiths. If Heaven (or whatever) does last forever, when we get there will we find beings from universes that existed before the one we're in now? ********************* I was looking up something to do with chairs in Wikipedia, and noticed a link labeled "list of chairs". So I looked. It wasn't really a list of individual chairs, with entries like "Swivel chair at Tom Digby's place in front of computer", "Beach chair folded up in Tom Digby's car trunk", and so on for all the zillions of chairs in the world. It was just a list of types of chairs, and it didn't even cover all possible sub-types. Part of me wanted to complain about false advertising. I suppose eventually when furniture routinely comes with built-in locater electronics it may be possible for some entity like Wikipedia to compile a complete list of all the chairs in the world, as well as other types of furniture. But it will take a major effort, especially when it comes to antiques, which will have to be either retrofitted or tracked manually. And there's another obstacle: Will people really want details about their furniture listed in Wikipedia for all to see? I can see where it might be useful to the Fire Department to know in advance of entry how flammable the furniture in a burning building is and how it's arranged, and if you have something unique or impressive having it listed in Wikipedia may be something of a status symbol, but I can also see people being afraid that burglars and such may look it up when planning future crimes. Thus many people are likely to vote against this kind of thing, especially if it's going to cost money to implement. So it looks like Wikipedia is going to have to be content with lists of types of chairs, as opposed to lists of the actual chairs themselves, at least for the foreseeable future. ********************* Keeping the Dragons Away He remembers how when he was little the family would now and then visit Grandma's house. And he remembers how at bedtime Grandma would sing him a little song, in the language of her Old Country. There were hand gestures that went with it, and it was supposed to keep dragons away. As he grew older, he would tell Grandma that there was no such thing as dragons. She would just smile and say sweetly, "See, it works!" Eventually he grew up and got married and had children of his own. Grandma translated the little song into English for him, but he refused to sing it to his kids. It's all superstitious nonsense, and he's not going to put any of that Old-Country junk into his children's heads. So life goes goes on, until it doesn't. Eventually Grandma dies. Nothing out of the ordinary seems to happen afterward, at least not at first. But then a few months later there's a fire in a dumpster behind their apartment building. One of the neighbor's cats disappears around that same time. He doesn't think much about either the fire or the cat once the immediate excitement dies down. Then there's another trash fire a block or so away. He still sort of ignores it, but can't help noticing that there seem to be more "Lost Cat" signs here and there around the neighborhood. There's a saying that once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action. When the third mysterious back-alley trash fire happens and the Fire Department investigators start talking about some kind of serial arsonist with a flamethrower or something, he starts to pay attention. Is it more than coincidence that lost-cat posters are more numerous than ever? Is it more than coincidence that the neighbors are starting to catch glimpses of what might be some kind of UFO or maybe a giant bird or something? And is it more than coincidence that his kids are complaining about "monsters" coming in the night to get them? He starts to worry, even though he's not sure what he should be worrying about. Then one day while he's sorting through old papers he finds Grandma's English translation of the anti-dragon spell. That brings back memories of how safe and secure it made him feel when Grandma sang it to him and they did the hand gestures together. He also recalls some expert on child-raising talking about how you can often calm a child's fears by giving the child a feeling of being in control of the situation, even if you haven't really done anything substantive. Other families he knows have little rituals that look like nonsense, and those kids seem to be doing OK. So he teaches his children the little song and the hand gestures that go with it. And it does calm their fears. They tell it to the other kids at school. Some of them laugh, but others had been not-quite-seeing something scary, and they start using the spell to banish it. And again, it calms their fears. There may be one or two more fires after that, but since they're in more distant parts of the city and don't seem to be affecting his children he doesn't pay them as much attention as he would otherwise have. And then the mysterious flame-throwing arsonist is just sort of gone, as mysteriously as he or she had come. And yes, the occasional cat will disappear now and again, but there are no more such cases than is normal. So the anti-dragon spell seems to be working. -- Thomas G. Digby Preliminary draft 2011-06-02 08:11 Near-final 2011-08-29 02:03 Latest 2011-08-31 17:41 ********************* September Dreaming September. The party's over. Although my school days are long past, Thoughts of school and studying and homework Seep into my head Like smoke from burning piles Of old summer dreams. In a sudden burst of movement A squirrel grabs one of the many acorns That lie scattered all around. Is each acorn a future dream? In years to come When the new seedlings start to tower over my head I will see that some of them were Even if there is no way to know beforehand Which ones those will be. -- Thomas G. Digby -- Written 2011-09-01 14:51:51 ********************* 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. Or you can use the above URL to navigate to the appropriate subscription form, which will also allow you to cancel your subscription or change your settings. -- END --