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 #211 New Moon of February 21, 2012 Contents copyright 2012 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 issue's due date falls between two local conventions, one for Pagans and Witches and the like, and the other a sort of science fiction folk music festival: http://pantheacon.com/ http://www.consonance.org/ Since I generally attend both of these, time feels kind of short. But I'll probably manage. Despite the disparate themes, I'll probably be seeing many of the same people at both events. These kinds of subcultures seem to overlap a lot. ********************* As I was at the first convention (the Pagan one) waiting for an event to start, the person sitting next to me drew my attention to the carpet pattern. It was a large circle marked by a repeating pattern of light and dark blocks, sort of like marks on a clock dial. He'd just counted them, and had counted 88 pairs, which didn't fit a clock dial or Zodiac or anything like that. I then counted them myself and got the same number. So why that number? To me it was obvious. That hotel gets its carpets from sweatshops on some other planet, one whose Zodiac or clock dial or whatever consists of 88 sets of marks. The hotel management knew that if they told scientists about that planet the authorities would crack down on the sweatshops and maybe also charge taxes on anything they imported from there, so they've kept it a secret so as not to lose that cheap source of carpet. But now we have proof, once the scientists tell us which planet has 88 marks around its Zodiac and/or clock dial, so the hotel people won't be able to hide the truth any longer. ********************* More thoughts on hotel ballroom carpet patterns. The carpet patterns in some of the larger rooms look almost like they could possibly be magical portals. So what if one of them is? Maybe that's how the hotel people can bring in cheap sweat-shop carpet and such from other planets or dimensions or whatever without anyone noticing. Only a few members of the hotel staff know about it, and they make a point of keeping the portal blocked when not in actual use. It's not a problem when the room is occupied, because the presence of an audience can itself deter anything from coming through a portal. But what when the room is deserted? Furniture, such as banquet tables or rows of chairs, can block the portal. And the supervisor in charge of event setup is one of the few humans who know about the problem, and he's careful to never close the room up for the night without some carefully placed furniture blocking the portals. But occasionally things don't go according to plan. That's when it gets Interesting. ********************* Someone at a concert sang a song about Fairies stealing human babies. Since they're immortal they don't have children of their own, but they do want to keep babies around for some reason. So they steal them from humans. Or something like that. Then my scientific side started thinking. If Fairies are immortal and do not procreate, does that mean Fairies are conserved, so that their total number remains constant? If there's some kind of magical Fairy Number like conserved particle numbers in physics, is there some type of Antifairy, analogous to antimatter particles, that can be created in pairs with regular Fairies with the total number remaining constant because the Antifairies count as being negative? If so, what sort of being is this Antifairy? And is there some initial asymmetry in the count, like there seems to be between matter and antimatter, or do the numbers balance out to zero? And what kind of energy does Fairy-Antifairy pair production and annihilation involve? Another thought: At odd times when the scientists are all in bed or off at awards banquets or budget hearings or whatever, do wizards and other magic-users sneak into the various particle accelerator buildings, trying to persuade Fairies to fly round and round the beam circle as fast as they can (assuming it's not a linear accelerator, in which case they can only fly from one end to the other)? Do they try to get the Fairies up to relativistic velocities in hopes of learning more about how Fairy time differs from mortal-world time, and whether the speed-of-light limit applies to them? And are they actually learning anything, except maybe that Fairies are awfully hard to pin down when you're trying to do scientific-type stuff? I doubt that much will come of this, although one never knows. So I'd keep an eye on the literature Just In Case. ********************* Last month I mentioned that I was working on a project. Now you can see what I have on it so far. Just go to http://www.plergb.com/ and click on the link about robots aspiring to be musicians. That leads to a brief article and some YouTube links. You may also recall that I mentioned some possibilities for warning signs for magical hazards. One of the videos has a brief shot of a version of it as it might appear in this context (it might well be different elsewhere). I was assuming a major magic-user making lots of potions that used organic solvents (including ethanol) in some steps of their manufacture (hence the rather high red Flammability number) along with herbs and heavy metal compounds and such likely to be toxic in large doses (hence the high blue Health number). And some of the ingredients just might be capable of exploding (the yellow number). And then, more to the point here, there's that sinister-looking pentagram at the bottom to warn all who enter that there are more than just physical hazards lurking within, perhaps in a world where magic is not very common but not totally unknown either. No wonder they sent those robots in to look things over before risking any humans. ********************* As I was first-drafting some of this the people with the leaf blowers or whatever they were using to make all that noise were over in the neighbor's back yard. Presumably they had other goals beyond just making noise, although I don't have any definite proof of that. Whatever their goals, they eventually took their pursuit of them farther away, perhaps into another neighbor's yard. Eventually they were gone. So were they blowing dead leaves to protect us from zombie trees? If something wasn't done, would undead trees pull up their roots and start walking around, waving their branches and saying "Brains!" in that drawn-out movie-zombie voice, even if they have no vocal apparatus? That could get really scary, especially the part about no one knowing how they manage to talk. So maybe we should be thankful the leaf-blower people come around every so often to scare them away. "Don't show up here unless you want your leaves blown." Or something like that. ********************* More thoughts inspired by recent political developments: Has the Occupy movement gotten into the Donald Duck universe? If so, I would expect Scrooge McDuck's money bin to be a prime target. It's a large, highly visible structure, at least sometimes shown as being on a hill, and since its walls are decorated with dollar signs its nature is almost certainly known to the public. It's probably pretty well defended against actual invasion, but presumably there's some perimeter that protesters could gather on public property just outside of. Have attempts to occupy the money bin shown up in any of the official Disney canon? ********************* Another bit of insight that I should mention: The Trickster has an important role to play in creation. If you assume the theory of evolution is more or less correct, then you need a constant supply of new things to try out to see if they survive. So if the Trickster is messing around in our DNA, he's giving us the raw material for evolution. ********************* Speaking of chemicals and potions and such ... Vapor Virtuoso From early childhood his right-brain half had always loved music. He could sit for hours, Mesmerized by his parents' old Sixties rock records, Playing along on air guitar. Even after he learned to play other guitars Made of wood or plastic or whatever He kept the one made of air. He would play along with some record, But he wouldn't stop when it ended. As his mind wandered and his fingers followed along the strings of his imagination A new song would likely as not be born. His left brain, on the other hand, Loved science, especially chemistry, And knew that music was unlikely to ever pay his bills. Fate's winding road led him onto the faculty at the university: Enjoyable, financially sort of OK, and safe From the big corporations His right brain hated. And he had friends in the music department. One night at a party, As he was answering some question about the atmosphere, Someone asked him if an air guitar could be split up Into a nitrogen guitar, An oxygen guitar, And so on for the rest of the list. And if it could, what would the individual gas guitars sound like? Amid laughter, his left brain brushed the question aside. But his right brain wouldn't let him forget it. He started to experiment. One of the labs he had access to had chambers That could be filled with this gas or that vapor While you reached in with special gloves To work on whatever was inside. In the quiet of the night, With no one around to disturb him, He would play along with his portable music player And when the music stopped, Let his mind wander where the molecules under his fingers Would lead him. Nitrogen didn't seem to do much. He got a song or two about plant food And how to make nitroglycerin: Just enough to tempt him to try others. Oxygen did better: One song about aerobic exercise, Another of a caveman discovering fire, And more about hospital emergency rooms And aviators setting altitude records And even one about astronauts. Then came the gases we can't breathe. Carbon monoxide, full strength? Dark depressing sagas of suicide, And a reminder of how lucky he had been To have found as happy a life as he had. There but for the grace of God ... A recipe for smog Yielded laments for the lost virginity of Earth And pleas for future generations To strive to live more in harmony with nature. Cyanide gave him folk-style ballads Of murderers getting their just reward, Along with a protest song or two Against the death penalty. Another time, amidst thoughts of the Holocaust, The deadly vapors whispered to him Of the faith that lingers after hope is gone, Then roared out an anthem of hate so stirring he hid it away Lest those who agreed with its message be roused to action. A friend into science fiction suggested the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Mars Or the methane and ammonia of the outer planets. With the C-oh-two he expected sagas of the past glories Of ancient civilizations along the banks of the canals But instead heard songs he thinks will be sung By human colonists a hundred years hence. The outer-planet mix hinted of life forms forever adrift Amidst alien cloudscapes, Their hopes and dreams and fears Too strange to really describe, Even in the unearthly scales he could almost but not quite hear. His list continues to grow, As do his circles of friends, Both at the University And on the Internet. If you see him, tell him I said Hello. -- Tom Digby Written 17:47 hr 08/13/2005 Edited 16:18 hr 09/04/2005 Edited 23:43 hr 09/05/2005 ********************* 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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