Silicon Soapware #236

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                            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 #236
                        New Moon of March 1, 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.


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

More fiftieth anniversaries of events that reshaped our society back in 
the Sixties: On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered.  What was 
notable about this particular crime was the delay before anyone called 
the cops, and the reaction to reports of this delay.

According to Wikipedia the often-quoted headlines about 38 neighbors 
looking on and doing nothing is an oversimplification.  The action was 
spread out across a parking lot and parts of buildings over a period of 
time in such a way that no one person (other than the killer and the 
victim) got a clear indication of what was happening.  Few if any were 
aware of the gravity of the situation.  Thus it's not all that surprising 
that no one called.

See "Murder of Kitty Genovese" on Wikipedia.

As I recall, none of these subtleties showed up in the accounts that I 
read in the papers or heard on the radio or TV.  Or maybe they did, but 
only after the story had moved off of the front page and was no longer 
the center of attention.

Thus the general mood of collective guilt in American society (as in "we 
all killed Kennedy" less than four months earlier) got another boost of 
the form "We all stood by and let a woman get murdered."


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

Now we have another new month, March, coming in like a lion.  It's 
supposed to eventually go out like a lamb, but that doesn't seem 
consistent with April showers.  Is that lion-lamb thing another example 
of traditional sayings that, like April showers, applied originally to 
some particular place that isn't where I am?


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

I had kind of an odd experience at a fast food place a few nights back.

After I'd gotten my food and taken a seat at a table I noticed that 
someone sitting at another table some distance away looked like he might 
be homeless and possibly drunk and/or on other drugs as well.  He had 
that sort of homeless-person look about him, and he appeared to be having 
trouble staying awake.

Then I noticed another person wandering around the room.  Even though he 
was sort of ambulatory, he appeared to be in worse shape than the one 
sitting at the table.  Not only was his belt down around mid-thigh in 
that "I'm losing my pants" style that's all the rage in some quarters, 
but the rest of his clothing was tattered and in disarray.  Also, he gave 
the impression of being drunk, even more so than the half-asleep person 
sitting down at the table.  The two seemed to know each other.

My immediate feeling was a twinge of fear.  I don't think I was really 
all that afraid of being attacked or robbed or anything like that, 
especially there in the well-lit fast-food dining room.  I might have 
been worried about getting some kind of cooties from them.  But I think I 
was mainly afraid of being asked for money and being forced to decide 
between giving them some or not giving them any and feeling guilty about 
it.

I expected the manager to throw them out at any moment, but she didn't.  
Maybe she knew them, or otherwise felt confident that they were harmless?  
There were fewer than half a dozen customers there so maybe she didn't 
feel any need to be rid of them as long as they didn't accost anyone?

If this kind of thing happens often I wouldn't be surprised if sooner or 
later it somehow comes to the attention of the chain's corporate 
management.  Then the matter will be dealt with.  But no, I don't plan to 
be the one to initiate it.


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

As I mentioned, when I first saw those people part of me was afraid of 
getting robbed or something, if not in the dining room, then maybe on the 
way out to my car afterward.  But then I wondered if that was really a 
valid fear.

The guy with his pants falling down didn't seem to be in any condition to 
rob anybody.  He could barely stumble around the room.  But that aside, I 
suspect anyone planning on going out and robbing people might want to try 
to look more respectable, and/or less unusual, more difficult to describe 
to the cops afterward.  So if I'm going to be afraid of anyone, it should 
be the people who look like everybody else.

Then again, I've heard of robberies where the robber wasn't acting very 
rationally.  So just because someone is wearing his pants so low that he 
might have trouble running away after committing a crime doesn't prove 
he's not planning such an endeavor.

What it may boil down to is that such people are neither more nor less to 
be feared than normal respectable-looking folks.


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

Possibly vaguely related to homeless people in restaurants but maybe not 
really, someone wrote in to one of the advice columns in the paper about 
a woman who didn't wash her hands after using the bathroom.  This person 
doesn't work for the same employer as the person writing in about it, but 
does work on the same floor of the building.  What should she do about 
it?

The answer was basically "Mind your own business."

Then I got to thinking about how far a society could go the other way.

An advisor in such a world could say you should make a complete report of 
the incident, including any information you have that would help to 
identify the offender, to your own employer's HR.  Your HR will pass it 
on to the offender's employer's HR who will deal with the offender 
directly.  If this doesn't solve the problem consider going to building 
management with a request to hire attendants for the restrooms.

Would anyone today consider taking the matter to that extreme?


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

As I was typing up something about hog calling I noticed that the 
spelling checker wanted to replace the "Soooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" 
in the hog call with "Antidisestablishmentarianism".  Is that word 
commonly used for calling hogs?  The Wikipedia article on "Hog calling" 
doesn't mention it.

So now I'm wondering about those who are into debating church-and-state 
politics.  Is their grasp of English spelling such that they would tend 
to type "Soooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" when they're trying to say 
"Antidisestablishmentarianism"?  I kind of expect them to be better 
educated than that.

Or maybe they know the difference but are lazy typists.  On a keyboard 
where any key will auto-repeat if you hold it down, it's a lot easier to 
type "Soooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" than 
"Antidisestablishmentarianism".  Then they can let the spelling checker 
fix it later.  Spelling checkers seem to be pretty good-natured about 
that kind of thing.

That's probably it.


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

The weekly neighborhood paper had a story about a house, vacant for years 
because it's always being worked on to repair fire damage, that has had 
several fires over the past several years.  The authorities strongly 
suspect arson but so far seem to have no leads.

It occurs to me that in the right kind of sf or fantasy universe the 
aftermath of a time traveler whose conveyance is on fire and shedding hot 
debris could look like the work of a serial arsonist to inhabitants of 
whatever spaces and times it's traveling through.
  

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

Homeless people in fast-food places and anniversaries of people getting 
murdered, along with some of the stuff in today's headlines, reminds me 
of this:


                                  Armor


All my life the world has been getting smaller:  
Far-off lands that were once the stuff of legend
Are now a mouse click away.  
In a way that's wonderful.  

But in a way it isn't.  
For all that we have shrunk the world's distances
We have not shrunk the world's pain.  
A whole wide world of suffering and despair
Comes into our living rooms every day, 
Film at eleven.  
How can any sane person stand it? 

One word:  Armor.  

I go clanking through my day like some denizen of the Round Table, 
My visor showing me the narrowest slices of the darkness without
As I strive to keep some flame of humanity burning within.  

But I am still afraid: 
Someday, when I gather with my friends in some safe space
And we decide to open ourselves to one another, 
We may find that our armor has long been empty.  


                          -- Tom Digby
                          Written 17:05 Sat January 1 2005
                          Revised 16:18 Fri January 7 2005


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

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