bubbleblower | Silicon Soapware #206

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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 #206
                      New Moon of September 27, 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.


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

Summer is officially over as of a few days ago, but summer weather (what 
there has been of it this year) still lingers on.  There was a bit of 
rain in the forecast for this past Sunday, and it supposedly did 
actually rain a bit in other parts of the area, but all we got right 
here was a bit of a cool spell.

Now they say another storm system is on the way, with "real" 
rainy-season rain.  So maybe it'll finally happen this time.

But then again, I seem to have the impression that this area is known 
for weather that doesn't stick to whatever "normal" is supposed to be.  
That is, of course, unless whoever decides such things has decided that 
"normal" is when it's acting up.  Then the only way it can act up is to 
conform to the statistical norms.  Or something like that.

I get the feeling I could go round and round on this, like a cyclone or 
something, assuming I want to keep to weather-related analogies.  If I 
don't, then I suppose we might want to go round and round like something 
else.  Or not, if we so prefer.


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

Somehow the phrase "Weird Coffee Tales" popped into my mind a while 
back.  My first thought was to do a Web search.  The search came up 
empty.  So maybe I should do something with the phrase?

Or maybe I could make a game of seeing which phrases of the form "Weird 
____ Tales" come up empty and which have been used somewhere.  Who 
knows, it might actually be useful as a source of ideas.

"Weird Piano Tales" is another one that came up empty.  Somehow I feel 
better able to come up with something along those lines than with 
coffee, perhaps because pianos (and musical instruments in general) are 
more a part of my life than coffee is.  But then I already did a bit 
about flaming zombie pianos of doom a few months back.

And I later got a similar result with "Weird Chocolate Tales".  I may be 
onto something here.


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

Related to this, I notice that some search engines seem to really hate 
coming up empty.  They'll suggest alternative spellings or removal of 
quote marks or other things to make the search show SOMETHING, even if 
it isn't exactly what I asked for.

That's kind of OK, but what bothers me is when they actually show the 
results of the altered search without first asking.  Then I have to go 
through extra steps to tell it that what I really wanted was what I 
typed in, not what it thinks I should have typed in.

Sometimes, as when I'm looking to see if an idea has been used yet, I 
want the search to come up empty if nobody else has done anything with 
it.  In other words, sometimes no news is good news.  What I don't want 
is a game of "Nature abhors a vacuum."


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

According to a news story, a man is suing Facebook for letting his 
12-year-old daughter post suggestive pictures of herself.  The suit 
claims the pictures have come to the attention of various people the 
father does not consider to be desirable companions for his daughter.

Facebook has a minimum age of 13, but it's apparently easy to 
circumvent.  Just lie about your birth date when signing up.

During a discussion of this story someone asked if there's really any 
way to tell who is or is not being truthful about their age online.

One of the less practical methods might be astrology.  Have an 
astrologer read the person's postings for a while, until they can get a 
good idea of various personality traits that would tie into the 
positions of the outer planets in the person's horoscope.

Then once they have the outer-planet positions they can calculate 
whether they're consistent with the stated birth date.  If they're not, 
appropriate action can then be taken.


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

Among the things I found myself idly reading on Wikipedia recently was a 
bunch of articles on sorting algorithms as used by computers.  This got 
me to thinking about how humans sort things, and whether future 
massively parallel computers might work in a manner similar to the way 
humans would do it.

For example, consider a bunch of humans standing around.  They're all 
wearing name tags.  Now imagine that at a given signal they are to all 
line up in a designated area in alphabetical order based on the names on 
their name tags.

Assuming they're all literate enough to do this, and assuming they all 
agree to do it, how long will the sorting process take as a function of 
the number of people to be sorted?  I suspect it won't increase as much 
as the time required for one sorter to sort them all because you have 
everybody effectively working in parallel.  But how much less time will 
it take?

Does it matter whether or not they're all using the same algorithm?  Are 
there pairs of algorithms that are workable but incompatible in that 
either will work if and only if no one is using the other?

How exhaustively has this been studied?  As massively parallel computers 
become more common, this kind of thing may become more important than 
the traditional single-process algorithms.


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

As so often happens nowadays, I recently got to reading random stuff in 
Wikipedia.  It started with a reference to Venus de Milo, and got into 
stuff about Greek sculpture and related items.

That led to wondering how they did the actual carving back then.

There's a cartoon cliche where a sculptor starts with a block of marble 
(or whatever) and just starts chipping away everything that doesn't look 
like whatever the eventual subject is supposed to be.  I have doubts 
about the real-life practicality of that approach for major projects, 
although I've heard that some artists work that way, at least for small 
pieces.

I've also seen photographs of work in progress, where the block has been 
marked with outlines of what the final shape will be, and they're sawing 
off corners and such to make a rough approximation.  Then they start 
chipping and grinding and polishing on that, usually with some sort of 
power tools.  It looks like a big job.

So what did they do in the days before power tools?  Did they just have 
a whole bunch of apprentices and such doing lots of slow boring work?  
How long did it take to make a life-size statue of a human?

And does it make sense to try to calculate what the equivalent cost of 
making something like the Venus de Milo would have been in today's 
dollars, or is the set of stuff money could buy back then too different 
from what it can buy now to allow valid comparisons?


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

We've probably all speculated, or imagined others speculating, on when 
human languages arose.  But have we given much thought to the question 
of when humans started analyzing languages, either their own or others?

How long after one sound started meaning "stick" and others took on 
meanings like "rock" and "fire" and "cave" did our distant ancestors 
start coming up with meta-concepts such as "words" and "grammar"?  When 
did they start analyzing their language more or less formally?

And did the process require contact between tribes or groups that used 
language differently, so the contrast would make the concepts 
noticeable?  Think of how fish that spent time in tide pools would be 
more aware of water than the fish that stayed in the deep ocean.

Questions abound.  Answers may not.


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


                              The Flu Shot


The other day I got my annual flu shot
And then I started thinking I should write a poem about it. 

At first I imagined some sort of military analogy,
Throwing a scare into the troops to keep them on the alert, 
Or maybe bringing in fragments of enemy weapons and uniforms
To be analyzed by some immune-system equivalent of the CIA.  

I had an image of cartoon white cells, 
Vaguely humanoid in shape, 
Marching past, row on row,
With rifles on their shoulders
While an unseen band
Played whatever that kind of cell
Might think of as marching music. 

Since I didn't know as much of the details as I would have liked,
And could have used some fresh ideas,
I went to the Internet and started reading.  

Talk about rain on a parade!

What we think we now know about all this 
Isn't like an army at all.  
Part of it is more like police
Demanding that other cells show their papers
And executing any whose documents are not in order.
But that's not the part the shots are for.  

Imagine a horde of assassins, 
Each born with an image of one foe 
Their lives are dedicated to slaying.  
There are millions on millions, 
Each with a different image in mind,
Perhaps painted by some distant relative
Of those monkeys who will some day type
All the works of Shakespeare.  

Each waits patiently 
For its one big chance,
For a villain that looks enough like its assigned quarry
To justify 
Action.  

"I've found something!"
And that one assassin becomes many, 
Sending its children throughout the realm
To seek out and do battle with the invader.  

In this case it's a false alarm, or maybe a drill,
Only scraps of uniforms and broken pieces of weapons,
Or perhaps dead enemy bodies
Or cartoonish buffoonish caricatures of soldiers
Not really capable of doing much.  

Whatever the threat, 
Is is soon vanquished, 
Leaving most of the defenders to fade away.  

But some veterans remain 
And remember,
So if a real invader matching that description 
Ever shows up again
There will be more defenders at the ready sooner,
Giving it less time to establish a foothold.  



                                       -- Thomas G. Digby
                                       Written 2011-10-01 15:59:39
                                       Edited  2011-10-02 17:35:49



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

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