Silicon Soapware #220

[bubbleblower]

Silicon Soapware #220 is out. Look in

http://www.well.com/~bubbles/SS0220.txt

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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 #220
                      New Moon of November 13, 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.


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

By the time this issue of Silicon Soapware is out it'll be within a few 
days of Thanksgiving, at least in the US (many other countries either 
don't celebrate Thanksgiving or have it on different dates).

There's some possibly-interesting date trivia this year.  Barring future 
changes to the formula, Thanksgiving will be on its earliest possible 
date: November 22.  Then next year (2013) it'll be on its latest possible 
date, November 28.  In subsequent years it will gradually work its way 
earlier until it hits the limit and then once again jumps back to being 
at the late end of its range.

Other holidays that are observed on a fixed day of some week within some 
specified month (such as Labor Day on the first Monday in September) 
follow a similar cycle of gradually getting earlier and earlier over the 
course of several years and then jumping back to a late date.  But those 
may not get noticed as much as Thanksgiving because Thanksgiving also 
defines the supposed "official" start of the Christmas shopping season, 
at least in many people's minds.  Merchants like early Thanksgiving 
because many of them believe, rightly or wrongly, that a longer Christmas 
shopping season will bring them more revenue.

Another thing about this Thanksgiving that may or may not get much media 
attention is that it's the anniversary of JFK getting shot.  Since it's 
not a round-number anniversary this year (2013 will be 50 years) and it's 
getting to be long enough ago that most people around nowadays weren't 
born yet when it happened, it won't be big news unless something related 
happens to make new news.

Sort of related to this and to the recent elections, Obama is the first 
President who's probably too young to remember the JFK shooting.  He was 
born (or cloned or built or whatever, depending on whether you accept the 
official birth certificate) in 1961, making him just a few months over 
two years old when JFK died.  Thus I wouldn't expect him to remember 
much, if anything, of it.

On the other hand, the next most recently-born Presidents were born in 
1946, making them teenagers at the time.  Thus they would probably be 
able to tell you where they were, what they were doing, and how they felt 
when they got the news.

Likewise, while Obama may remember some events of the late Sixties, he 
would have had a different view of them from what Bush and Clinton had.  
And whoever gets elected in 2016 will probably remember even less of that 
era.  In terms of generations, we're starting to see members of the 
post-Boomer generation taking the top positions of power.

Having people in top positions with little or no memory of the Sixties 
will almost certainly affect future politics, even if I don't know what 
that effect will be.


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

In the children's version of the Star Trek universe, does Santa still 
personally visit every child's home to deliver his gifts, or does he just 
beam them there from his workshop?


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

I saw something kind of odd but also appropriate for the season at a 
fast-food place a few days ago.

After I ordered I went to set my stuff down.  The best vacant table was 
halfway across the room, by the windows.  The table next to it had 
several people.

As I put my bag on the table to stake out a space one of the people at an 
adjacent table said hello to me.  He was one of a bunch of people, some 
of them apparently homeless and some of them drunk most of the time, who 
congregate around a nearby bus stop.  I'd bubbled them a number of times 
(getting mostly-positive reactions), so I wasn't surprised that they 
recognized me.

By the time my food arrived (delayed by some kind of kitchen mix-up?) 
there were only three of the homeless people sitting at that other table.  
Two of them had their backs to me.  Since I wasn't watching them, they 
paid no attention to me.

I wasn't paying much attention to their conversation, but I couldn't help 
overhearing them discussing something about who had what "cards" and when 
they would expire and so on.  At first I just sort of assumed they were 
talking about identification cards or driver's licenses or some such.

Then one of them got out a cell phone and started calling someone on it.  
So the "cards" they'd been talking about had been for their phones.

From what I could hear he was calling relatives.  He introduced himself 
as "Uncle [name]" and asked people at the other end questions like how 
old and how tall they were: The kind of thing you might ask children 
you're related to but don't see very often.  Nobody seemed to be asking 
him questions about how he was doing.

They also talked about the possibility of getting pictures of the 
children emailed to the phone he was using.  There was nothing said about 
sending them pictures of him.

After a while they finished their conversation and left.  Then I finished 
reading my paper and went home.

So this homeless man who spends much of his time hanging out with drunks 
at a bus stop has a family somewhere.  I have no idea how close by or 
distant they may be geographically, but they're too far apart in other 
ways to consider getting together any time soon.

I started to wonder why these relatives, whoever they were, didn't seem 
to be trying to help him.  But then I recalled things I'd read about 
"enabling" addictions and other maladaptive behavior.  I don't know what 
his situation is, but it may well be such that any attempt by his family 
to help him would be futile, leading inevitably to their ruin along with 
his.

Others can pray for him, or offer spiritual energy, or whatever other 
words your personal spiritual path uses for whatever is analogous to 
praying or offering spiritual energy, but in the end it is up to him to 
take the first steps up the trail out of the pit.

I wish him well on the journey, if and when he decides to embark on it.


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

Over the years I've heard various proposals to simplify the tax laws.  
The question of how to handle charitable contributions almost always 
comes up.  I think it could be dealt with by turning the tax deduction 
into a matching funds program: For whatever amount an eligible charity 
collects in contributions, have the government contribute as additional 
percentage.

There's little point in going through the math here.  But it should be 
possible to come up with a rate such that if people continue to donate 
the same after-tax amounts (their previous donation less the amount 
they'd been saving in taxes by taking the deduction) the various 
charities would be about as well off as they are now.

Something like this would be simpler to administer than the present 
system, since there are fewer organized charities to keep track of than 
there are individual taxpayers.  Also, there would be little need for the 
charities to keep track of individual donations, as long as they reported 
their total take accurately.  Cash donations, such as money dropped into 
those Salvation Army kettles that appear around the holidays, would still 
get a matching contribution from the government even if the identities of 
the individual donors are not known.

Organizations that make a public show of honoring donors according to the 
amount given would need to make adjustments, probably by adding the 
government contributions to those of the donors who triggered them, but 
that shouldn't be too big a problem.

So going to a simplified tax system won't necessarily be bad for 
charities.

There are those who would want to get the State completely out of the 
business of donating to charities.  That could still be done, but at a 
later time, perhaps by gradually reducing the matching amount over a 
number of years.

There is of course one big unknown: The psychological implications of 
"saving money" by making a donation that you can take a tax deduction 
for.  People aren't always rational about this kind of thing.  So further 
study may be needed.


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

The recent elections, especially the campaign rhetoric about the ballot 
propositions, reminded me of my tongue-in-cheek proposal to require the 
bylaws of a club I was once active in to be written as poetry:

  All of our bylaws are written in verse,
  With rhyming and meter and form.
  And every amendment, for better or worse,
  If it be lengthy or if it be terse,
  Whether a blessing or whether a curse,
  Will have to adhere to this norm.

Now the thought had occurred to me to wonder what if someone were to 
propose something similar for California ballot initiatives, perhaps with 
the stated purpose of making them less boring for voters to read.

On further thought we might want to also require a super-majority for 
passage, with the required votes depending on how good it is as poetry, 
perhaps as judged by a panel of poets and musicians and such.  That would 
give an incentive not to skimp on the poetic elements.

Actually setting your proposal to music would be optional, but might be 
worth the trouble depending on how enjoyable it is to sing.  If people 
started singing your proposition because they liked the way it sounded, 
you might not have to spend as much money advertising it.

But there's a caveat: Many songs include nonsense words and phrases, like 
the "Fa la la" lines in "Deck the Halls".  These will need to be checked 
very carefully, lest some hidden meaning slip through to be revealed only 
after the measure passes.  For example, in the song "Mairzy Doats" the 
seeming nonsense words are eventually revealed to be "Mares eat oats".  
Were that song part of a ballot proposition its passage might end up 
affecting the laws regarding the feeding of horses.

Some would say that the increased entertainment value of the campaigns 
might be worth a small chance of this kind of problem cropping up 
occasionally.  Other would disagree.  We may not really know until we've 
tried it.  And I suspect that won't happen any time soon.


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


                            The Blind Wizard 


The blind wizard walks the streets of The Ancient City, 
With guide birds singing directions 
In a language only he and they know.   
He doesn't look wizard-like: 
His robes are plain, devoid of magical symbols he will never see,  
And his magic wand doubles as a cane 
To feel his way along.  

Strangers gasp in horror at his face, 
Its empty sockets like twin caves 
Within which nameless beasts may be hiding, 
Waiting to pounce upon the unwary.    
He will not say who or what took his eyes.  

But eyes or no eyes, his world is not one of darkness 
When one of the sockets holds an eye-stone. 

One is a gray pearl,
A gift from the gods of the ocean.  
As an eye it shows him the wonders of the sea, 
Shipwrecks and lost treasure and the bones of lost sailors,
And the strange creatures that live 
In the eternal darkness of the deepest depths.  

A sphere wrought from meteorite iron reveals the depths of space: 
Worlds around stars whose light will not reach us
For thousands and thousands of years.  
Strange are the ways of those who inhabit those worlds, 
Beyond even the ability of wizards to describe.  

Still other eye-stones look into the distant past, 
Or the tree of possible futures, 
Or the mazes of might-have-been,
While others open into the realms of the spirits, 
Or give form to the musings of mathematicians,
Or warn of evil in the hearts of others.  

None see the physical here-and-now.  
That the gods have forbidden.  
In a way that may be fortunate.  

Those who have met the wizard's wife 
Say that her face is even more horrible to look upon than his.  
He has been spared that affront to his senses, 
While his favorite eye-stone, 
The one that lets him see past the physical shell,
Delights him with the inner beauty of her soul.  


                                        -- Thomas G. Digby
                                        Written 22:32 04/04/2002
                                        Revised 07:37 04/05/2002
                                        Revised 17:08 04/10/2002
                                        Revised 15:34 06/19/2002


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

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