Silicon Soapware #235

[bubbleblower]

Silicon Soapware #235 is out. Look in

http://www.well.com/~bubbles/SS0235.txt

or check out my main page at

http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                            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 #235
                       New Moon of January 30, 2014


Contents copyright 2014 by Thomas G. Digby, and licensed under a Creative 
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.  See the Creative 
Commons site at http://creativecommons.org/ for details.

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.


                          *********************

Groundhog Day is nigh as I start this, but will be past by the time you 
see it.  The holiday that will be big in the media will probably be 
Valentine's Day, perhaps mixed with Presidents' Day.

When I think of Presidents' Day I get a mental image of something dull 
and gray and boring, not much of a festive holiday at all.  This probably 
comes from my long-ago school days.

Back then there were two official February holidays, Lincoln's birthday 
on February 12 and Washington's birthday on February 22.  They had not 
yet been consolidated into Presidents' Day and moved to always be on 
Monday.

These holidays may have been good for a day off from school preceded by 
an assembly with some speeches and such to break the normal classroom 
routine, but they were not something I looked forward to like the 
year-end holidays of a couple of months earlier.  Neither were they a 
reminder that the school year would eventually be ending.  That happy day 
was still far in the future.  They were little more than just another 
history lesson.

So even though days in February were often as not bright and sunny, my 
memories of those February holidays feel kind of dull and gray.


                          *********************

There was also Valentine's Day.  It had the advantage of being kind of 
festive and playful, even though we didn't get the day off.

In elementary school we did a Valentine box every year.

This was a big cardboard box with a slot in the top, all decorated with 
hearts and such.  We were supposed to take valentines (probably mostly 
store-bought by our parents), address them to various other kids of the 
opposite sex, put them in envelopes, and drop them in the box.  I don't 
recall whether we signed them or sent them anonymously.  There may have 
been some of each.

Then on Valentine's Day the teacher would open the box and hand the 
valentines out to whoever they were addressed to.  We would count up how 
many we had gotten, and show around any that we found especially 
interesting.  It was all a game, and I doubt that any of us really knew 
what it meant to adults.

We all knew that eventually boys and girls were supposed to pair up and 
fall in love and get married, and that all this may have had something to 
do with where babies came from, but few if any of us knew how it worked.  
And even if we did, it wasn't the kind of thing you were supposed to talk 
about.  There are lots of subjects that are discussed pretty openly now 
that just weren't talked about back then.

As I recall, grades in which most of the kids were old enough to know how 
to make babies didn't do Valentine boxes.

Does anybody still do Valentine boxes nowadays?


                          *********************

While we're reminiscing, I should mention that I did walk to school 
through snow once.  According to the Wikipedia article on "Snow in 
Florida" the day I walked to school through snow was probably February 
14, 1958.  But I didn't get to walk back home through snow because it had 
all melted by the time school let out.

No, I wasn't barefoot.  I had shoes.  And there were no hills to speak of 
along the way.  So I definitely had it easier than my parents and 
grandparents.
 

                          *********************

Talking about how we walked to school through snow leads to thoughts of 
people grumping about how the younger generation is doing all kinds of 
things wrong.

But then I'm reminded that all present-day natural languages (as opposed 
to constructed ones like Esperanto and Klingon) are the result of 
generations of people speaking and writing older languages badly.  So 
getting stuff wrong may not be all bad.


                          *********************

This rainy season has been rather dry, as have the previous two or three, 
so they're talking about ways to conserve water.  We've been through this 
before, and one bit of advice that always seems to come up is not to 
flush toilets as often.

So I'm wondering if anyone has looked at those automated toilet-flushing 
gizmos found in many public restrooms.

In my experience it's not unusual for an automatic toilet to flush 
several times in a single session, often before I've done anything worthy 
of even one flush.

On the other hand one person I mentioned this to said that she'd never 
noticed this happening.

So are the things more sensitive to some people than to others, perhaps 
due to differences in skin temperature or clothing or tendency to move 
around?  What has your experience been?

And assuming they really do flush more often than is really necessary, 
can they be set to be less sensitive?

(I did a writeup on this in a previous issue of Silicon Soapware.  See

  http://www.well.com/~bubbles/SS0175.txt

and scroll down to the second topic, not counting the header stuff.)


                          *********************

Back on anniversaries, we're coming up on fifty years since the Beatles 
appeared live on US prime-time TV, on the Ed Sullivan show.

I looked the performances up on YouTube.  I'd forgotten how much things 
had changed since 1964.  For one thing, their hair wasn't all that long 
by today's standards, although their style of combing it down over the 
forehead may have made it seem longer.  Also, they were wearing suits and 
ties.  That's still the norm in some musical genres, but not in rock.

Those weren't the only things that have changed since then, but they were 
the most obvious ones I noticed while watching the videos.


                          *********************

Early February (records differ as to the exact date) also marks 21 years 
since I got my first "real" Internet email address: 
bubbles@well.sf.ca.us, since changed to bubbles@well.com.

Although I'd had a sort of an email address on Prodigy before that, it 
didn't feel like a "real" Internet address the way the WELL address did.  
Even if we could exchange messages with people on other services, the 
emphasis was on communicating with other Prodigy users.  And although I 
don't recall details, I sort of have a feeling that it was kind of 
"dumbed down" for non-tech folks.  Whatever the actual details, it feels 
like the Prodigy email somehow didn't count.

So I count the WELL address as my first "real" email address.


                          *********************

Valentine's Day reminds me of this:


                                 Together

Together --
Feeling each other's warmth with only skin for separation.
Little tricks with fingers and tongue in strategic spots
     and private places
Or just lying there
In each other's arms,
Legs entangled --
Intertwining of bodies.

Together --
Enjoying sharing whatever thoughts arise --
Intertwining of minds.

Together --
Face to face
Nose to nose
Lips to lips
Eye to eye
Gazing into each other's depths --
Intertwining of souls.


                                   Thomas G. Digby
                                   written 0330 hr 11/03/76
                                   typed   0030 hr 11/06/76
                                   entered 1655 hr  4/11/92


                          *********************

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