Silicon Soapware #228
Jul. 12th, 2013 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bubbleblowerSilicon Soapware #228 is out. Look in
http://www.well.com/~bubbles/SS0228.txt
or check out my main page at
http://www.well.com/~bubbles/
http://www.well.com/~bubbles/SS0228.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 #228
New Moon of July 8, 2013
Contents copyright 2013 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.
*********************
The Fourth of July holiday weekend is over, and for many people the same
old routine is starting up again. Mornings are often as not gray and
overcast, lending more of an aura of dreary dullness to the scene.
And there on my doorstep is the morning paper, lying there looking thin
and pitiful, like a starving kitten or something.
Sunday sees a hint of newspapers' former glory, although even the Sunday
paper is much thinner than in years past.
And hard times are affecting other media as well.
One fast-food place I go to about once a week has a TV in the dining
room, tuned to a special cable (or maybe Internet) channel produced
especially for restaurants. It too appears unwell.
Part of the content has included ads. Apparently the idea is that as
long as the stuff being advertised isn't a competing restaurant there's
no problem with showing ads to restaurant patrons. So in the past I'd
seen ads for cars and TV shows and such. I'd also seen ads for those
"Forever" postage stamps that will still be enough to mail a letter even
when rates go up again, as well as public service spots for animal
adoption and such.
On my most recent visit a few days ago I noticed them playing what
appeared to be at least eight or ten repeats of the exact same Forever
stamp spot during the time it took me to eat a sandwich and read the
morning paper. Sometimes the spot would play over and over again two or
three times in a row.
There were a few other public service things such as how to do CPR if you
see someone collapse on the street, but as far as I recall there were no
other "real" ads for paying sponsors other than the restaurant itself.
So are the media in general, or at least those that depend on paid ads,
falling upon hard times?
One free weekly paper is still looking reasonably healthy, but most of
its ads are for local bars and restaurants and other entertainment
venues, not to mention a big pile of medical marijuana promotions and
some "massage" services that may offer more than just massage (wink,
wink, nudge, nudge). These kinds of things may be all well and good for
a weekly paper whose readers are planning their weekend, but are less
well suited to a daily paper, especially one claiming to be aimed at a
family audience.
So will the day come when I look out at my doorstep first thing in the
morning and see, not the morning paper itself, but just a chalk outline
of a newspaper, drawn by some coroner's assistant or whoever it is whose
job is to take dead things to the morgue?
*********************
The ads for those Forever stamps claim that you'll be able to use them
"forever". I kind of doubt that claim.
Suppose someone several thousand years from now finds a stack of these
stamps somewhere. He (or she or whatever) manages to find enough
information to figure out their origin and function. Given that
information, will that person be able to use them?
If there exists some entity that charges a fee to physically deliver
small objects from one person or location to another, and if that entity
decides that honoring the stamps as a form of payment would be a useful
publicity stunt, then they may be usable. But that's a big If.
Even if there is nobody in the business of delivering anything like
today's paper mail there still may be some hope. If there's some entity
whose predecessors can be traced back to the US Postal Service to the
extent that it can be held responsible for the Postal Service's debts,
then the people with the stamps might be able to claim that they are
financial instruments, evidence of debt owed by the USPS and therefore
the successor entity. That's assuming such debt hasn't been wiped out by
bankruptcy or something.
If, however, there is no such organization (or at least none that will
admit to it) or that organization refuses to honor the stamps as evidence
of debt, you may be out of luck unless you have very good lawyers who are
willing to work cheaply enough to make it worth trying to pursue the
matter.
Perhaps our descendants would be better advised to hope that something
like the hobby of stamp collecting still exists, and that some collectors
are willing to pay well for items of that vintage.
*********************
From a speech by an official of the Starfleet Galactic Exploration
Academy:
You may have heard about a bit of controversy at a nearby religious
school about student dress codes. That has led to some discussion of our
rules on that subject. Those rules are there for a reason.
The rule at that other school was that boys' hair was to be cut so as not
to touch the shirt collar. There was no corresponding rule for the
girls. The analogous rule here at the Starfleet Galactic Exploration
Academy is that no one's hair is to touch their spacesuit's helmet collar
flange. That's so that hair won't get in the way if you have to seal up
your spacesuit quickly in an emergency. Now emergencies that require
spacesuits may not seem likely at our ground-based facilities, but even
so we do occasionally wear them. And we do want our students to become
accustomed to thinking in terms of how likely they are to need a
spacesuit at any given time.
Likewise with clothing. We don't have much in the way of rules about
looks or style or "decency", although some instructors have been known to
discourage scantily clad students by quietly lowering the air temperature
in the room. We do, however, ban things like scarves and capes and long
flowing sleeves and billowy skirts. Again, it's a matter of being able
to get your spacesuit on quickly without clothing getting caught in the
joints.
We have other rules as well, mostly enacted for good and logical reasons.
Those who consider breaking them know when they do so at their peril,
even if nobody sees them breaking any rule, and when they may break the
rule with impunity.
In other words, these rules don't always apply, but the list of
situations where they do or don't apply is too complicated to spell out
in detail. But if you know the reason for the rule you can figure out
whether it applies right then or not.
On the other hand, we do have some arbitrary rules that don't really make
sense but have to be obeyed because they're the rules. And they're there
for a reason as well.
As our graduates go out exploring the galaxy they will inevitably run
into situations where there are rules that are there for a good reason
which cannot be explained. Perhaps it involves some kind of alien
taboos, or technical stuff that can't easily be explained, or some kind
of sensitive negotiations that need to be kept secret. So they need to
be aware that rules sometimes do need to be obeyed even if there's no
apparent reason for them, and they need to be able to see when they may
be getting into such a situation.
The military branches of Starfleet have it simpler: They simply treat all
rules as rules that must be obeyed even if you don't know the reason.
This has been the norm in the military since before the days of star
travel, and it has served the military well.
But Starfleet's Galactic Explorers are not the military. They're more at
home in situations where they have to think for themselves, while
remaining aware that some things just can't be solved by thinking them
through. And they know that sometimes rules need to obeyed while at
other times they may instead need to be bent or even broken.
*********************
Speaking of rules and laws, I learned in school many years ago about how
a bill becomes law in the US. It's passed by Congress (or a state
legislature) and signed by the President (or the Governor). They also
explained the less common ways a bill can become law without the
President's signature, such as by overriding a veto. So far, so good.
But what I was never taught is who tells the police about changes to the
laws. When a new law outlaws or legalizes something, that somehow has to
get translated into orders to the cops patrolling the streets to start or
stop arresting people for doing whatever that thing is. So is there an
official channel for this, or the various enforcement agencies get the
news over various random ad hoc channels?
*********************
Seemingly unrelated to Starfleet Academy, some people around me were
discussing first aid and triage and such, mainly from the standpoint of a
writer writing about medical first responders. That leads to thoughts
about emergency responders in various science fiction universes. How
will the needs of various kinds of extraterrestrials differ from those of
humans?
For example, how would first aid for a damaged exoskeleton differ from
first aid for a broken bone in a human? And even if beings of different
species appear superficially similar, what internal differences might one
need to be aware of? Imagine the possibilities: Different body
temperatures, different organs in different locations, different blood
chemistry, and so on. Should a medical responder even try to memorize
all this stuff, or will they just depend on some kind of portable
communicators tied into some kind of central databases?
That may be what saves them. Any civilization advanced enough to be
dealing with beings from large numbers of different planets is likely to
have advanced database technology, image recognition, and so on. So you
just upload a photo of the creature you're dealing with and get back the
information you need, in your language.
In a fantasy (as opposed to science fiction) situation, where you're
dealing with elves and gnomes and dragons and such as well as humans,
you're likely to have magic-based ways of dealing with the situation.
These may not look all that different from our technology-based systems,
since any magic that actually works can be considered a form of
technology.
If you don't have much in the way of either technology or magic, then you
may be doomed. But then through much of human history real-world medical
technology wasn't all that good. So you're probably not much worse off
than you would have been in the real world a few hundred years ago.
*********************
Walls
I was born in a country of thrown stones
And spent my days retreating into exotic lands
Of imagination
Or else hiding behind walls
Of forced wit and nervous laughter
Listening to the pitter-patter of pebbles
Against my stronghold.
I eventually fled that land
And wandered in poverty
Until I found a realm
Where my fortune in strange coin
Would be accepted.
Still I built walls --
Until I noticed that here thrown stones were few
And bruises healed easier
And the view, fresh air, and sunshine
Were more than worth sweeping up
An occasional broken window.
No more walls?
But I am by nature a builder,
Scheduled for frequent deliveries
Of lumber, nails, bricks, and mortar:
All the materials for building walls.
No more walls?
No more walls.
But the materials for building walls
Can also be used
To build bridges.
Thomas G. Digby
written 0315 hr 3/05/77
typed 0410 hr 5/22/77
entered 2210 hr 4/12/92
*********************
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