Silicon Soapware #229

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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 #229
                        New Moon of August 6, 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.  


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

Among other things around this time of year, August 6 was the anniversary 
of the bombing of Hiroshima.  This year wasn't a major anniversary like 
the 50th or 75th, and most people alive today weren't born yet when it 
happened back in 1945, so it didn't get much media attention.

But I am reminded that I've long thought that part of why we didn't have 
a major atomic war in the 1950's or 60's is that atomic weapons got used 
just enough to demonstrate how unacceptable large-scale use would be, 
even for the nominal "winner" of the conflict.  In other words, they got 
developed just in time to end a war and that discouraged people from 
using them in subsequent conflicts.

Had the A-bomb appeared earlier in the war it might well have seen much 
more use, leading to even more environmental damage than we saw from 
atmospheric testing.  But had the war ended without it being used at all, 
it could have been more likely to have seen large-scale use around the 
Cuban missile crisis or some other high-tension situation.  Either way, 
we would have been much worse off.

Now that more and more nations are getting into the act, and the 
generation that has seen the horrors of atomic warfare firsthand is dying 
off, it may get used again.  Let's hope that if and when that happens, it 
doesn't lead to large-scale escalation.  Instead let it serve as a lesson 
for another generation, and that the lesson will not need even more 
repetition.


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

Over the last month or so there was a high-profile murder trial.  The 
person who seems (according to popular opinion among people I know) to 
have been the Bad Guy admitted shooting the victim but claimed 
self-defense.  He got off when the other side couldn't prove beyond a 
reasonable doubt that he wasn't really defending himself.

Along about this same time there was a plane crash.  Various people 
connected with the case made statements about what caused it, while 
others said they would prefer to wait until the data from the "black box" 
became available before giving too much credence to any one theory.

Likewise with a train wreck around that same time: They think they know 
what may have caused it, but won't know for sure until they've analyzed 
the "black box".

All this leads to the thought of what if we had "black boxes" for people?

I'm thinking that when a person dies or is found unconscious or something 
the last few minutes or hours leading up to their death or whatever other 
fate had befallen them would be on record and could be examined to 
determine whether foul play was involved.  In addition, if a person goes 
missing the last few hours of available data might contain some useful 
clues.

The biggest problem is probably not the technology, but how to set up the 
system so it doesn't become a tool for some Orwellian Big Brother regime 
to go after people they just happen not to like.

Ideally the data should not be stored on the subject's body where an 
evil-doer could alter or destroy it.  It would need to be transmitted, in 
pretty much real time, to some other location for storage.  But that 
location shouldn't be too easy for the government to get access to 
without proper legal process.

Perhaps the key would be to distribute the data across an international 
network of encrypted storage sites, with no one nation's authorities 
having the power to delete or alter data.  And perhaps no one government 
should be able to look at the data except under strict privacy protection 
rules.

There are of course problems and unanswered questions.  But if we think 
of them as engineering challenges rather than reasons it can't be done we 
may end up with something workable and useful.


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

If a resume lists jobs you've had in the past, would a presume list jobs 
you'll have in the future?


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

Someone talking about kinky sex practices posted something about buying 
and selling used panties. That's apparently not really that unusual a 
thing, but for a moment I misread it as "used parties". So I got to 
wondering what that might entail.

When you buy a used party do you get a rather messy room littered with 
paper plates full of half-eaten munchies and plastic glasses with the 
dregs of half-drunk drinks? Are there tattered remnants of crepe paper 
streamers hanging from the ceiling, perhaps at one time festive but now 
just looking sad and forlorn? Perhaps one wall holds a paper donkey with 
tails pinned all over it?

Much will depend on what kind of party it was: A birthday, a holiday, a 
celebration of a job promotion or some such, or just friends getting 
together. Perhaps a grandchild won a contest at school. Or maybe some 
kinky friend was house-warming their new basement dungeon. Those would 
look quite different, even if some of the after-party feelings of letdown 
and dreading the chore of cleaning up the mess are similar.

Often the physical trappings of the party will matter less than the 
overall mood.  For example, two election-night campaign parties might 
look similar but feel quite different if the candidate or cause being 
celebrated by one won while the other lost.

The matter of mood is not always that simple.  Since the feel of a party 
includes the sum total of all the people attending, something like a New 
Year's Eve party may end up with a complex mixture of individual triumphs 
and tragedies, victories and defeats, joys and sorrows.  These are the 
parties most prized by connoisseurs, provided they have not been melted 
into a gooey sludge by too much alcohol.

And no, I don't really have any advice for people in the market for a 
good used party. Just try to think through what you really want and why 
you want it before start looking, and think again before plunking down 
your money.


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

I'm reminded of another instance of confusion over word meanings.  Many 
years ago, back when I was a child, some political upheaval somewhere far 
away sent large numbers of refugees fleeing to neighboring countries, 
with news stories describing them as asking for "asylum".

Problem was, the only context in which I had previously encountered the 
word "asylum" had to do with locking up crazy people.  So were these 
people fleeing to some neighboring country's funny farm?  That seemed 
unlikely.  Eventually I looked it up or asked or maybe just figured it 
out from context or something, and found the more general meaning of the 
word.

Similarly, in Sunday School they kept referring to Jesus Christ as "Lord 
and Savior" at a time when I hadn't been hearing the word "savior" in any 
non-religious contexts.  It was just an otherwise meaningless word that 
people used when referring to Jesus.  It took some time for me to 
encounter enough other uses of the word to get its more general meaning.

So has anything like this happened as you were learning words?


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

I recall a dream fragment from a few days ago: I was at the barber shop 
in the town I grew up in, looking at the men hanging out there.  Several 
of them had glass (or maybe transparent plastic) windows set into their 
skin so you could see their internal organs working.  One had fish 
swimming around inside his head.

It occurred to me later that the windows could have been fake, perhaps 
some sort of 3D video screen.  But in the dream I just assumed they were 
real.


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

Another thing that had once been science fiction is now showing up in 
real life: Scientists have grown meat in the laboratory using cells taken 
from a cow.  So far they don't have the fat cells that make for juiciness 
and much of the flavor, but they expect to get there sooner or later.

Some might argue that even the process of getting a cell sample is 
painful and thus something a cow (or other non-consenting animal) should 
not be subjected to.  Will these people start offering their own cells 
for truly conflict-free meat?

I'm reminded that back when I was living in Los Angeles some restaurants 
featured sandwiches named for movie actors and other celebrities.  If the 
right people can be persuaded to give cell samples those places may 
sooner or later be doing more with famous people than just naming 
sandwiches after them.

Now I'm thinking of all those hot dogs that get sold at big-league ball 
parks.  Will this be a lucrative new line of merchandise for big-name 
athletes?  And how long will it be until your home-town team starts 
showing up in your supermarket's frozen-food section?

The future is on its way here.


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


                        Incident Along Fantasy Way 
                          The Recycler of Dreams


I had often seen him,
In expected places and in unlikely ones --
A kindly old man
Who by his looks ought to be running the toy shop
     in some quaint European village,
Always with a large sack
Filled with things picked up from the ground
And an ornate German pipe
Whose smoke he would now and then
Blow into someone's face,
Always without being noticed.  

Driven by curiosity, I made inquiries
And we were eventually introduced.
He is the one known,
In those mythologies in which he is known at all,
As the Recycler of Dreams.

Through the ages he has wandered
Through the halls of kings' palaces,
Along the quiet lanes where lovers linger,
Into bars and taverns and the "In Places",
Or like a phantom through the walls of prisons
Or corporate boardrooms
Or research laboratories,
And even along glittering Broadway --
All the places where dreams
Have been dreamed
And broken.

There he wanders,
Not always in the form I saw,
Collecting pieces of broken dreams
To make into new dreams
To distribute around the world.

Humanity needs its dreams,
And cannot grow or prosper without them.  
But reality is hard on dreams
And on dreamers.

"Take 'Flight'," he says for an example,
"I must have picked that one up a thousand times
From the bottom of this or that windswept hill
And blown it, like smoke,
Into the head of another dreamer
Until it finally bore fruit.
And others, like 'Perpetual Motion'
Or 'World Peace'
Or 'Immortality'
I may be recycling forever,
Along with 'True Love'
And 'Winning the Sweepstakes'
And 'Being a Movie Star'.
That one has gotten many of you
Through some dark and stormy nights."

"Yes, I see the need for the grand dreams
And the smaller dreams
And even the silly dreams.
But what of the darker dreams?
The visions of world conquest,
The elusive Perfect Crime,
The glory of the Master Race?
Do you handle these also?"

"I'm afraid I must," he sighed,
"Regardless of how horrible the possibilities
I cannot label a dream as 'evil' 
And put it away on a shelf.  
The gods by whose authority I operate
Say that that judgment may only be made,
Not by themselves, as you might expect,
But by you mortals."



                                        -- Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 0140 hr  9/29/74
                                        revised 0245 hr  3/17/83
                                        entered 1230 hr  4/09/92
                                        format  13:52 12/22/2001


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

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