Silicon Soapware #232

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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 #232
                       New Moon of November 3, 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.  


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

In a couple of weeks we'll be seeing the 50th anniversary of the JFK 
assassination: November 22, 1963.  For a while it was sort of customary 
for people to ask one another "Where were you when you heard the news?"  
Then over the years as the most common answer changed from "at work" or 
"in school" to "kindergarten" to "too young to remember" to "not born 
yet" people gradually quit asking.

I was at work, at my first job.  I had just gotten my college degree and 
had been hired straight out of college by a big defense contractor in the 
Los Angeles area.  It was routine engineering-type stuff, mostly checking 
the designers' work by calculating stresses on components in a missile.

This was before cubicles were common, with the workspace being one large 
room with row upon row of desks.  Although I never paid attention to it, 
there must have been a steady background hum of conversation, 
typewriters, and other such noises.

The assassination happened at 12:30 pm Dallas time, which was 10:30 am 
California time.  I don't know exactly what time we actually got the 
news, but sometime in the late morning I sensed something different in 
the general mood.  I don't know what it was I noticed, perhaps a change 
in the background noise, but all of a sudden things just sort of felt 
different.

Then people around me started saying that the President had been shot.  I 
don't know how they got the news: Perhaps someone had heard it on their 
car radio on the way to a meeting or something, or maybe someone's 
friends had phoned them with the news.  However the news got there, it 
spread throughout the office almost instantly.  Then someone came on the 
office speaker system and confirmed it.

I wasn't completely taken by surprise.  I'd heard about the supposed 
Zero-year Jinx whereby a long string of presidents elected in years 
ending in zero had died in office.  So even before the 1960 election I 
was sort of half-expecting something to happen to whoever won.

One thing that I wasn't expecting was the mass outpouring of collective 
guilt from the media: "We all killed Kennedy."  Supposedly our culture 
glorified violence and therefore led Oswald (and/or various conspirators) 
to do it.  Or something like that.  I never really quite figured it out.

The other major development that I noticed was a push for gun-control 
legislation.  Since Oswald had bought the murder weapon by mail, people 
starting calling for restrictions on "mail-order guns".  So we started 
getting rules requiring waiting periods and ID checks and such for gun 
purchases, along with restrictions on weapons with certain physical 
features.

There were other social and political ramifications spreading out like 
ripples from a stone tossed into a pond.  This was a major factor in 
defining what people nowadays refer to as "the Sixties".


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

In addition to the JFK shooting, we recently had another round-number 
anniversary of a media event that has over the years become legendary.  
So where were you when Martians invaded Earth?

For this one my answer is "I wasn't born yet."  When I asked my parents 
they said they were out on a date and missed it.

The date was October 30, 1938, seventy-five years ago, and it was the 
famous (or infamous) radio drama of the War of the Worlds.  And as usual 
nowadays, Wikipedia has an article on it:

  The War of the Worlds (radio drama)

You might want to read it.


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

We also have Veterans Day coming up.  This year will be the 95th 
anniversary of the end of the First World War.  That means that this 
coming year will mark the hundredth anniversary of various events leading 
up to the start of that war.

It's something else you might want to follow.


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

A couple of weeks ago my bottle of one-daily multivitamin tablets ran 
out.  So I went to the drugstore to buy more.  They didn't seem to have 
the exact kind I'd been taking, so I looked for the closest equivalent.

They had several expensive name brands, but only a limited selection of 
store-brand stuff, labeled as coming in separate men's and women's 
versions.  I got the men's.

Then I got to wondering what if you were to take the wrong kind?

Say there's a heterosexual couple living together, each taking their 
sex-appropriate vitamins.  But then one of them runs out of pills and it 
isn't convenient for them to go to the drugstore, so that person starts 
taking the other's vitamins.  They figure "vitamins are vitamins" and 
taking the "wrong" ones for a while shouldn't make much difference as 
long as they switch back to the "right" pills as soon as possible.

But what if they're wrong?

I once saw a cartoon where a man and his dog got into an accident of some 
sort.  The ambulance people had human blood plasma and dog plasma, but 
got the bottles switched so the man got the canine version while the dog 
got the human stuff.  Hilarity ensued, with the man doing dog-like things 
while the dog took on more of a human role.

So if our vitamin-sharing couple are cartoon characters something similar 
could happen to them.  But what of the rest of us?  Does it really make 
any difference?


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

A few days ago they tore down a house at the other end of the block.  I 
pass the site fairly often on the way to other places, and so far it 
doesn't look much different from any other torn-down house.

But you never know.  Since the last time I looked the cops may have 
planted the lot with poison ivy to keep time-traveling burglars from 
camping there and going back in time to when there was a house there that 
their campsite would have been inside of.  That's not a common M.O. for 
burglars, but that may be because the cops are diligent about planting 
poison ivy where houses have been torn down.

You may doubt me because you've never seen cops planting poison ivy at 
the sites of torn-down houses.  That's because they're careful not to 
stir up too much publicity lest they start a panic about time-traveling 
criminals and government agencies abusing time travel to fight them.  
Likewise, if you go to the police station and ask them if they plant 
poison ivy on the sites of torn-down houses they'll look at you funny and 
say No.

If the police do tell you they don't plant poison ivy on the sites of 
torn-down houses it's best to at least pretend to believe them.  This is 
not the kind of thing you want to get into arguments with the cops about.


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

I've been seeing stuff in the news lately about high-school football 
players suffering permanent brain damage from concussions.  The problem 
isn't limited to the high-school level, but that's where the emphasis 
seems to be.  It also isn't limited to football, but it's probably more 
serious there than most other high school sports.

Something also reminded me of those indicators that you can attach to 
delicate stuff like electronics when you ship it.  If the package gets a 
severe bump that might damage the contents, the indicator changes color 
or something.

So I got to thinking: What if you put those on football helmets?  If it 
changes color or whatever it indicates the player should be looked at by 
a doctor or other qualified expert before being allowed to continue 
playing.

You might object that that kind of indicator is too simple to be useful.  
What you need to be looking for is a pattern, not one simple jolt.  OK, 
then maybe that simple indicator won't work.  But nowadays you should be 
able to put an array of accelerometers, a fairly respectable computer to 
analyze patterns of impacts, and batteries good for longer than a game 
will normally last into a football helmet without appreciably altering 
its feel or performance.  Put an LED on the outside, and if during the 
course of a game it changes from a slow green flash (which tells you the 
thing is working) to a more rapid yellow or red pattern you know that 
player at least needs to be looked at.

This could also be set up to record all the bumps and jolts for an entire 
game, to be fed to external storage afterward.  Then if a player shows 
symptoms later this would allow after-the-fact analysis, like the "black 
box" on an airplane.

Is anyone doing this?  If not, shouldn't they be?


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

Halloween stuff is fading until next year, but someone's mention of a TV 
series in which vampires are coming out to demand equal rights with the 
living reminded me of this:


                       Incident Along Fantasy Way 
                               Rush Hour


The party was fun,
But it lasted longer than usual.
By the time my bus arrives
The sky is beginning to lighten.
It is standing room only, and hardly any of that --
A sea of pallid faces.

I resist the urge to draw my coat collar tighter:
In these days of hemoglobin pie in the supermarkets
And bars serving real Bloody Marys
I need not fear vampires --
And besides, someone might be offended.

Three stops later is the cemetery.
Then I have the bus
Almost to myself.


                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 2325 hr 12/14/74
                                        entered 1240 hr  4/09/92



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

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