Silicon Soapware #218

[bubbleblower]

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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 #218
                      New Moon of September 15, 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.


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

Summer is over.  It won't "officially" end for another couple of days 
yet, but it feels like it's been over for some time.

There are a number of reasons it feels this way to me, even though in 
this climate some of the hottest days of the year may lie ahead.

First, I think of September as an Autumn month, even though two-thirds of 
it is over by the time the Equinox rolls around.  This may come from 
childhood associations of September with the end of summer vacation and 
the start of the new school year.

The days have been getting noticeably shorter and shorter for some weeks 
now.  It's getting dark earlier in the evenings and staying dark later in 
the mornings.  Also, the sun isn't as high in the sky at midday as it was 
a couple of months ago.

And last but not least, the stores are starting to put their Halloween 
stuff up.

Summer is definitely over.


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

Speaking of endings, there's been some speculation lately about the US 
Postal Service being more or less Doomed, what with various kinds of 
electronic communications taking the place of paper mail.  It may have a 
few more years of life left, but the handwriting is on the wall.  Or so I 
hear.

I don't think I have much to say about that, since others have already 
been saying plenty.

But I can imagine the day the last remaining carrier delivers the last 
letter before retiring, at which point the rest of the organization is 
disbanded.

Maybe there'll be some sort of public ceremony, with dignitaries and 
celebrities and such gathered around the last remaining mailbox to watch 
the last carrier deliver the last letter.  There'll be those VIPs, and 
reporters and camera crews and security people, and maybe also temporary 
bleachers for the rest of the crowd of whatever more or less ordinary 
people manage to get in.

Maybe this last mailbox will be some more or less ordinary one chosen 
more or less at random, or maybe it'll be a special one erected for the 
occasion in front of the White House or some other notable place.  And 
there will be speeches, and bands playing, and maybe a succession of 
people checking the box to see if the mail has come yet, which it won't 
have.

Then along toward the end of the ceremony the last carrier drives or 
walks up with the last letter, puts it in the box, and maybe sets the 
flag to indicate that there's mail.  That part is kind of confusing, 
because the original customary use of that flag, whatever it may have 
been, seems to have faded from public consciousness over the years.

I suppose the carrier should also check the box for outgoing mail, but 
there shouldn't be any if this is the official last delivery.

So he or she puts the last letter in the box, perhaps along with a wad of 
assorted ads and such, and slowly ambles off into the sunset.  And then a 
couple more people make short speeches, the person the last letter is 
addressed to takes it out of the box and opens it and reads it, and then 
the bands play some sad music, and it's over.

Eventually the crowds will have all left, and the last mailbox will 
either be taken down and put in a museum somewhere, or maybe turned into 
a permanent memorial.

And that will be the end of an era.


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

Late-breaking news:

                         Steve Jobs is not a Cow

A few days ago I saw a little item in the local paper where some Thai 
religious figure was quoted as saying that Steve Jobs was doing OK as a 
mid-level angel, and had reincarnated as "half [unfamiliar word] and half 
yak".

I didn't know what the unfamiliar word meant, but I recalled that a yak 
was some kind of Himalayan animal related to cattle and bison and such.  
So I figured that if this other thing could interbreed with a yak it must 
be something similar.  Therefore Steve Jobs was now something like a cow, 
somewhere in the Himalayas.

But I was still curious as to what that other thing was.  So I did a web 
search on the unfamiliar word ("Witthayathorn").  It turns out to be some 
kind of spirit being or angel or some such.  And the "yak" wasn't an 
animal.  It too was an angelic spirit being.  The word comes from a 
different Asian language from the one the animal name comes from, and the 
resemblance is probably just coincidence.

So now the bit about Steve being a mid-level angel makes sense.  And 
despite the similarity of the two words from different Asian languages, 
Steve Jobs is not a cow.


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

King Midas has to be very careful when crossing bridges.  If he touches 
any part of it with his bare hands or feet, the whole thing, or at least 
some significant part of it, will turn to gold.  Since gold is a lot 
heavier than most commonly used structural materials, and also not as 
strong, the bridge may collapse.

He also has to be aware of this any time he's indoors, although carpets 
and wall hangings and furniture items that are not part of the building 
structure may mitigate the worst of the danger.

For some reason that kind of detail doesn't get covered very much in most 
fairy tales.


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

From fairy tales to science fiction: How might beings on some other world 
have 3D vision such that they could develop a 3D movie technology that 
would be incompatible with 3D movies made for humans?

Most alien beings pictured in science fiction have two eyes side by side, 
more or less like humans.  Given that (as far as I know) all the science 
fiction published on this planet is done by human writers or artists or 
actors or whatever, that kind of bias is to be expected.

But what if that human-centric assumption didn't hold?  What if the 
beings we're speculating about didn't arise from something with bilateral 
symmetry?

Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow's space aliens have eyes on stalks waving around 
above their heads.  I suspect this would be unlikely for intelligent 
visually-oriented land-dwelling creatures because eyes on stalks would be 
rather vulnerable, but let's ignore that for the moment.

Imagine a being with one eye on a stalk above its head.  It would not be 
able to see 3D the way humans do because there is only one viewpoint 
available at any one time.  But if it were to rapidly wave its eyestalk 
back and forth from left to right it could get at least some 3D 
information by comparing the views at different points along the way.

Could this work for them in a movie, assuming they were to move the 
camera to simulate eye-waving?  That would depend on the degree to which 
they can synchronize their eye-waving to external stimuli, but in the 
best case it should work.

Now imagine a human trying to watch one of their 3D movies.  The camera 
would be wobbling back and forth maybe two or three or four times per 
second.  Whatever it was focused on (such as an actor's face) might be 
more or less steady in a more or less fixed place on the screen, while 
the background would be constantly shifting from side to side.  Any 
objects in front of the center of attention, such as tree branches or 
window frames, would also be shifting, but in the opposite direction from 
the background.

Some humans might be able to watch that and maybe even get some 
impression of 3D out of it, while others would just get motion sickness.

Or imagine a being with two eyes, but arranged one above the other.  
Their 3D film technology could resemble ours in terms of using polarized 
glasses and such, but would be incompatible in terms of humans being able 
to watch it.  But at least a 2D version, using just the view from one 
eye, should be watchable by humans.  That would not be the case with the 
wobbly eye-stalk.

There are other possibilities, some involving more than two eyes, or eyes 
arranged in other ways or differing from one another in such things as 
responses to different wavelengths of light, but I think that's enough 
for now.


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

One posting on a forum I'm on was a quiz.  Given several interruptions 
happening more or less simultaneously, which would you tend to first?  
The list included a ringing telephone (presumably with no answering 
machine or voice mail), someone at the door, and a crying baby.  What you 
would do in what order is supposed to indicate something about your 
personality.

My answers were something along the lines of telling the person at the 
door to wait, then picking up the phone and asking the caller to wait, 
assuming neither turns out to be of extreme urgency.  Likewise, glance at 
the baby to make sure it isn't in real danger.

Then down to business: Try to find out who the baby belongs to and why 
it's in my bedroom.  If nobody I ask (including the people at the door 
and/or on the phone) admit to knowing anything about it, turn the kid 
over to the authorities.

Whoever posted the quiz didn't post much about the meanings of the 
various possible answers, so I don't know what kind of personality my 
answers would indicate I have.


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

Another thought on that "What would you do first?" quiz where one of the 
competing items was a crying baby.  I suspect the authors of the quiz 
were expecting me to assume the baby belonged to me, or was otherwise in 
my care.  But I didn't go with that assumption.

In those parts of Cartoonland where babies are delivered by the Stork, 
mistakes are not unknown.  And since the Stork, like Santa Claus, the 
Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, has the magical power to enter 
inhabited dwellings unnoticed even if they're locked, a baby could 
suddenly turn up in in some part of your house when you least expect it.

There have been cases where a cop walking a beat in the dead of night is 
passing an abandoned warehouse when he hears what sounds like a baby 
crying inside.  So he finds a way in through a broken window or unlocked 
door or some such, and follows the sound.  And sure enough, there in a 
back room somewhere, surrounded by a dusty floor undisturbed by any 
recent footprints, is a baby.

The standard procedure in such cases is to call for backup: Detectives to 
search the vicinity for clues, along with paramedics to check the baby 
for medical problems.

More often than not they'll find a delivery slip with a street name one 
or two letters different from the street the abandoned warehouse is on.  
Or maybe the number will be one digit different.  Either way the baby 
should have gone across town to a residential area.

A quick call to HQ will turn up a report from that address about how a 
baby some couple is expecting hasn't shown up yet.  Then everything can 
be straightened out and all will be well, at least until the next 
opportunity for something to go wrong and give rise to another story 
episode.

There are of course variations, where the baby has been hidden in the 
warehouse by kidnappers or abandoned by parents for one reason or 
another, sometimes with additional plot complications.  But those can go 
into a separate article.


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

The news had something about this being the season for the grape harvest, 
which reminded me:


                           Quality vs Quantity


"Everybody knows that small wineries make the best wine,"
Said a little old winemaker up Selenaloma way to himself,
"So I will make the best wine possible:
Every year I will harvest, crush, ferment, and bottle
One Perfect Grape.

Chosen from the vine most favored by sun, wind, and rain,
And given the greatest concentration of loving attention,
It will grow to greatness
Just as tinder, under sunlight concentrated by a lens
Glows into flame.

True, the fruits of my labor will not be for the masses
But then great art never is,
And surely there are a fortunate few
Ready, willing, and able to pay the price
And to fully appreciate the result."

So saying, he began to make ready.
Unfortunately, however, word leaked out
And three of his competitors,
Not to be outdone in the matter of small wineries,
Went one better
By producing
No wine at all.

                                        Tom Digby
                                        written 0035 hr 11/24/76
                                        entered          2/16/88
                                        format  1347 hr 12/22/01


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


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