This morning, I woke up screaming.
What did I see in my dreams? I have no idea. I don't have the time anymore. I wake up and run off to work and class. I don't eat breakfast. My lunch is what I can grab from the lunchtrucks (the always ubiquitous cheesesteak) and dinner is the dining hall glued to the computer.
Sometimes I stare off. I try to think about things, but then I always tangent into something else. Thoughts about fluidic hepatocyte microchambers drift into job interviews drift into 5 page papers about something or other. Strangely, this has helped because sometimes I have no idea what I'm doing. I snapped out of it a few hours ago and realized I was in chem lab. What? Then I'm walking home. Or I think I am. Then I'm in class. Then work. Then home.
And just what is with our country anymore these days?
My friends seem off to me lately. Ever get the feeling that everyone is just a tad too nice? Did I walk through some stargate? Did everyone get lobotomies? I did as little work as possible in my team's last project and yet no one has said anything. Last week I made a grave error in stoichometry and only the T.A. lorded it over me. I expected a little more, I dunno, laughter or mocking at my incredibly stupid mistake.
I can't say I've even been a good friend. I walked by a guy I knew and completely ignored him. Well, it's just that I didn't see him. I guess I was spaced out again. I do it alot. Thinking. But they are polite about it. And I have no idea why. I would personally be upset. But I guesss I'm different. I guess I'm petty like that. I don't think so.
I spend more and more time walking up and down the River Park. When I get the chance and that is increasingly rare. I find it relaxing despite the fact that it is wedged around freight train tracks (carrying all the lovely products from the oil refinery and other assorted industry across the Northeast). And the river never looks too good. But it's better than nothing. And Fairmount Park isn't too safe these days.
But I can just sit there and watch the sun set. Even though I'm not supposed to. Or really even be out much during the day.
So I work.
I forget things. I forgot this blog. Well, to be fair, I just haven't had the time. I log into Second Life and forget that I'm supposed to be logged in. I drift thinking about other things. Just how do cows with names produce more milk than nameless cows? Usually hardly anyone is online anymore. Maybe I am logging in at the wrong times. Or maybe I'm spacing out again and not noticing the friends' box.
Just what am I doing anymore?
Some say that after you wear a mask, for a long long long time, it leaks into you, it becomes you. You forget who you were before you put it on and when you chose it and why. Who am I anymore? Even though I haven't logged in regularly for about three months, I think of her. And see through her eyes. I don't even know who she is. But she is me, for better or for worse.
Who am I anymore?
My dreams are nightmares, my life are dreams. I don't think I can even tell reality anymore. If there ever was such a thing.
And yet, through it all, I laugh. I have a sense of humor, you see. Hahahah. I laugh at the refinery lit like a Christmas tree. I laugh at the bus, which lowers itself down to make it easier for you to board. I laugh at the professor who says, "I want to show you this..." after each individual slide on her powerpoint. I laugh at the morning glories as they curl at night, and at the few stragglers who don't. I laugh at the medicine and I laugh at the chair. I laugh at the incredibly humorous 'Do Not Wakl' sign the construction workers put up. I laugh at the ROTC guys giving the local Communist party looks, and the snickering the Communists give to the Socialists, and the tsk tsk of the Socialists at the Libertarians, and the cabbie who almost just ran me over. It's just all so wonderful.
Hahaha.
Showing posts with label Trips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trips. Show all posts
Friday, October 9, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Thanksgiving
I stand on the edge of a river so choked with dredge and waste,
only catfish can eke an existence, bodies riddled with Nunchuck only knows how many heavy metals,
Blessed with the tea leaves of oil and cruft leeched from broken freighters and cruisers,
In the light of the towering oil refineries, burning their wastes in emulation of the ancient Pharos,
illuminating the night sky like a comfortable childhood night light,
and coughing yellow clouds water coloring the skies and with all the charm of rotten eggs,
Under city hall who must beg for scraps and dribbles from the state to maintain the meagerest of civil services
while libraries close and schools groan under the weight of neglect and abuse,
while being attacked with screw drivers, too poor even for knives and yet everyone still gets guns,
Which seem to so enjoy flirting deadly paths into the populace, delivering quick vacations to the afterlife,
weeds poking through the sidewalks, sidewalks slowly breaking up under the passage of time,
And home to many without a home, nomads walking through these ruins,
And as they pass by, berated for sloth,
why not just get a job? They say on the way to their suburban homes erected far far away,
Bridges rusting away,
Piers lying abandoned to the sea,
Power lines stretch across the buildings like black spiderwebs,
Above buildings hollowed and forgotten,
Little more than place holders for future empty lots,
Torn down into impromptu parks and parking lots,
Or into dens for the abuser and the abused,
All of it covered in grime from glorious broken industries and diesel trucks,
Else in graffiti, tagged in every corner announcing the existence of its creator, "JD RAW",
All while everyone passes on the Interstates, windows up, zoned out tuned in to their iPhones and iPods,
wondrous fumes swirl from their traffic into the hazy smog wrapping us like a warm blanket,
And filling our lungs with ever pleasant ozone,
And they fly over in their jets, screaming all hours over our heads and writing their lines in white ink across the skies,
A constant klaxon alerting the dreamless,
Always we stand in the shadow of the proud and divine silver towers of Center City, even through the ice and snow,
Sparkling they shine over the city of poverty,
In their shadows,
I stand by the river in all this, my city, and yell,
"God Bless America!"
only catfish can eke an existence, bodies riddled with Nunchuck only knows how many heavy metals,
Blessed with the tea leaves of oil and cruft leeched from broken freighters and cruisers,
In the light of the towering oil refineries, burning their wastes in emulation of the ancient Pharos,
illuminating the night sky like a comfortable childhood night light,
and coughing yellow clouds water coloring the skies and with all the charm of rotten eggs,
Under city hall who must beg for scraps and dribbles from the state to maintain the meagerest of civil services
while libraries close and schools groan under the weight of neglect and abuse,
while being attacked with screw drivers, too poor even for knives and yet everyone still gets guns,
Which seem to so enjoy flirting deadly paths into the populace, delivering quick vacations to the afterlife,
weeds poking through the sidewalks, sidewalks slowly breaking up under the passage of time,
And home to many without a home, nomads walking through these ruins,
And as they pass by, berated for sloth,
why not just get a job? They say on the way to their suburban homes erected far far away,
Bridges rusting away,
Piers lying abandoned to the sea,
Power lines stretch across the buildings like black spiderwebs,
Above buildings hollowed and forgotten,
Little more than place holders for future empty lots,
Torn down into impromptu parks and parking lots,
Or into dens for the abuser and the abused,
All of it covered in grime from glorious broken industries and diesel trucks,
Else in graffiti, tagged in every corner announcing the existence of its creator, "JD RAW",
All while everyone passes on the Interstates, windows up, zoned out tuned in to their iPhones and iPods,
wondrous fumes swirl from their traffic into the hazy smog wrapping us like a warm blanket,
And filling our lungs with ever pleasant ozone,
And they fly over in their jets, screaming all hours over our heads and writing their lines in white ink across the skies,
A constant klaxon alerting the dreamless,
Always we stand in the shadow of the proud and divine silver towers of Center City, even through the ice and snow,
Sparkling they shine over the city of poverty,
In their shadows,
I stand by the river in all this, my city, and yell,
"God Bless America!"
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Random Thoughts In August
I've got nothing in particular to say, so I'm just going to write whatever pops into my head at the moment.
I saw an article yesterday which discussed the dangers of twitting and facebooking about the workplace. Why isn't this common sense? How stupid are people? Here's a simple rule of thumb anytime the asinine urge to publish anything about your place of current employment: If it's something you wouldn't say to your boss to his or her face (or gossipy coworker who might tell the whole front office), then don't stick it on the internet.
It's like the certified moron who I worked with in my last co-op/internship/however-my-school-wants-to-call-it-today. This piece of work decided to fudge the numbers on his timesheet. First off, doing so is intensely wrong as it is akin to outright stealing. You're taking
Second, I'm an inquisitive soul and asked just how much he worked 'overtime'. My dear friend must have slept at work in order to achieve seventy hours a week. You read that right. Seventy hours (70!) a week. C'mon! If you're going to lie, at least be smart about it. Throw something realistic in there.
Third, the entire workplace was wired. You couldn't sneeze without your boss, your boss' boss, and his boss knowing about it. I went just a minute over on my lunch break, and I got a rather cold email about it. Don't worry so much, because for a few days, I accidentally went in ten minutes early and worked too much for the time I was reporting (I had a long commute and always overestimated the amount of time I needed. Also, SEPTA is horrible). But they saw I spent those minutes pissing away on the internet, so it all turned out well.
In short, don't mess with your time sheet. It's a dumb thing to do.
---
Why do people write 'your' instead of 'you're'? I've seen it more and more and, as a certified Grammar Nazi, it's starting to grind on me. I'm not above the occasional error myself (my talking grammar is downright atrocious), but I do try to make sure my audience can tell when I'm talking possessive and when I'm describing something of yours.
Simply put, saying, "your an idiot" will not sway me towards your point of view. "You're an idiot". Get it right.
Also, has 'lol' replaced the period? "your an idiot lol why cant u c that your an idiot lol?" is fairly typical of the internet these days, a fairly sad revelation. I used to defend the denizens of the internet against my snobby friends. I used to say, "Sure, a few folks talk like a drunken seal slapping a keyboard but most people write intelligently." Now, I feel silly and foolish.
But the absolute worst error trophy is held by the number substitutions. "got 2 go 2 8 sum dinner, bbl 4 u" Numbers have only one place, and that's to quantify something in simple digits (after all, writing VII or 'seven' to do multiplication is not easy and is quite painful and counter intuitive).
The only internet jargon I believe has any use is emoticons. They are quite handy in determining the attitude with which a given statement is being delivered. "You're such a fool :D" indicates friendly ribbing, while "You're such a fool" is an offensive impersonal accusation. Although, for some reason, I still have this mental image that emote use carries sarcastic connotations. Maybe it's because I have the arrogant assumption I can parse the 'air' of a conversation without being outright told, and maybe because I feel condescended to, as if I am a child who needs direction in the mannerisms of adults. Maybe I'm just stupid.
---
One of my real life friends was lambasted the other day by some elderly vet because she ran an American flag but not that black POW/MIA one. What a troop-hating unAmerican bitch. She was too flustered to offer much of a rebuttal and personally I'm too much of a coward to have said anything in her place.
But now I'm on the internet anonymous (more or less), so I'm saying I'd have told the twat to piss off. What, if I don't wear everything on my damn sleeve, then I must not support or agree with it? It's stupid, anyway. Why fly a flag for it? I assume no one is cackling with glee at the soldiers stuffed away in POW camps or Missing in Action (most of whom probably, sadly, deceased). I assume most Americans do carry sympathy for such soldiers and their families.
I don't need silly ribbons or flags to display how I feel. If you're so goddamn curious, then go ahead and ask. My house is not a battleship, I shouldn't have to rig a complex network of flags to tell the world everything about me.
And really, I think if you waste the time erecting a flagpole and flying the Stars and Stripes on it, you're probably as patriotic as they come. Especially since everyone I've spotted with flags always seem to keep them clean, do all the right flag protocol, etc. If they were heartless enemies of the state, I doubt they'd bother.
Also, I've never been quite sure, but does it cover all POWs/MIAs, or just American ones? Are the Iraqi and Afghanistan POWs allowed to rot just because they're our enemies and terrorists? Sure, if you accept the idea that our POW camps are ten times better than the homes we caught them in, with good food, water, and ninety channels of digital cable it might seem like a pretty good deal. But would you want to be locked up thousands of miles away from your family? Even if they lived in a shithole? I doubt it. For example, the Army barracks might be better in quality of life than the North Philadelphia slum you came from, but you still come home, don't you?
And that's assuming, of course, that the camps are as we're told they are. Chances are, they're probably pretty shitty. I suppose that's the cold reality of life, after all, they are trying to kill us. But the point remains: aren't they still POWs? I'm willing to bet most of them don't even give two figs about Al Qaeda or anything, they're just defending themselves against an invasion (both cultural and martial) in their homes. Extreme in their methods, perhaps, but so were the Bosnians when fighting against the Serbians, or the North against the South, or the British against the colonists (and vice versa for each of those cases).
Maybe I'm too naive.
---
I know it's just practice for the real world, but it always irks me when I have to write a paper on whatever lab for school. Why? Because inevitably it's just regurgitation of old news. I wrote a lab report on gel electrophoresis and using it to determine the specific sequence of a bacterial genome. Old news. When 'researching' it, I dredged up a billion papers from a million years ago on the thousands of ways to approach this method and so on. If I was inclined, I could have ripped them completely and handed them in as my paper.
My professors wouldn't notice, but they would still mark me down on their seemingly arbitrary standards. On one occasion, I had ten points off because my abstract (the quick run-down you see at the beginning of scientific papers) wasn't detailed enough. It was almost a thousand words. Any more, and it wouldn't be an abstract anymore, it might as well have been the paper itself.
Methods/Materials is another one they like to peg you on. The rule of thumb is that if it's taught on an undergrad level, you can safely generalize about it. For instance, I don't need to go into the details of how I prepared a sample for mass spectrometry (unless I had some brand new revolutionary method on it). I can just say I performed a mass spec. analysis and you can reasonably fill in the blank. But then, they tell me to put in such details so they know I know what I'm doing. When I do so, they mark off points because I didn't write with a scientific audience in mind.
My introductions and results/conclusions are flawless. Yet the stupid abstract and methods murder me.
Oh, and 'future' studies is also laughable. Yeah, what could I POSSIBLY do with this basic technique? How could I possibly expand upon it? I know! A ten second Google search could give me twenty answers because the technique or concept itself is so basic! Imagine learning the basics of a language, and then being asked 'What could you do in the future to expand your knowledge?' Er, Der, maybe try to hold conversations with those fluent in said language? Maybe visit that particular country? Maybe have your teacher move into the finer nuances of it? Or asking a builder in Second Life: "Now that you know how to resize a prim, what are some possible future investigations of this technique?" You'd laugh it off, that's what you'd do.
I figure if you have no clue, not even a semblance of how to take such a middle school level concept to the next level, you probably have no business taking that line of study. At least, not without some serious backbreaking and extremely painful work on your part.
---
As you might have guessed, my field is heavy into science. That's not saying much. I'm told it's a hard field, but personally I think anything can be hard if you don't have the right mind. For example, I cannot speak another language to save my life. Eight years of Spanish in High school and the best I can manage is asking how you are today and that the dog is very fat. Oh, and that the train is blue and grey. Linguistics is definitely not for me.
But, on my mother's side of the family, I'm going to be the first one in that family to get a college degree. And on my father's side, only the third (my father was a pharmacist, and his sister is a nurse). Pretty weighty! The result of this is that I am frequently poked into answering every single question about the universe.
Now, I do know a good deal of things. After all, you can't do what I do without knowing some basics. But asking me the details of astrophysics, I do not know. Or specifics in metallurgy. One person can only know so much. Ask me for the specific pathways for limb development, sure, but forget about the specific types of concrete.
Why? Because it isn't relevant, I guess. Concrete just don't factor much when you're investigating ACL tears. In fact, concrete is bad in such a scenario. Also, I haven't had much study into the specifics of concrete. It's an area outside my expertise. That's pretty important. You wouldn't ask your doctor to check out what's wrong with your sedan.
Which is why they always seem so disappointed when I tell them I don't know, and that I'd have to look it up. And then I feel bad because they feel let down. And then they feel bad that I feel bad because I feel I've let them down. A vicious cycle!
And then there's things no one knows. Why we age is something the world is constantly investigating over and over. And the reasons for it are very complex. No one quite understands. Which, by the way, is why it is heavy in research right now.
One final nail in the coffin is my reluctance to give an answer without checking my data three times over. I won't even give you an answer on the color of my hair without checking it in at least two mirrors and under different light conditions. Too cautious, perhaps, but it's helped immensely in the 'getting things right' category and helped me avoid the dreaded 'everything is totally wrong and I am so screwed'.
---
This blog was founded for two things. The first was to record the random acts of nonsense and writing that Jurin loves. It is certainly much handier to direct people to a simple website to read my crazy rather than getting me to log in and teleport over (at 4 AM Eastern time, I am more nasty and crabby than fun).
The other was to comment on just how crazy Linden Lab can be. Ok, well, more about Second Life in general, but Linden Lab is a big part of it. And I realize that I haven't been discussing them at all in the past few months. Maybe even half the year. I feel an explanation is owed.
I do not know what more to write about them. That is the simple truth. They are crazy and insane. Everyone hates their policies. Often, they bumble about and wreck things like a toddler who found his dad's gun and is now in a pottery shop with an angry bull. Sometimes they're right in whatever move they make. Sometimes they're wrong. And all too often, it is a rat race. After awhile, the feeling creeps into you that you have discussed this policy again, and again, and again, and the time is ripe to just let it die.
Take, for example, age verification. The whole deal with the 'Adult' rated parcels was beaten to death with the advent of age verification, which in turn was beaten to death with the banning of fake porn in that European country and its investigation into Second Life, which in turn was beaten to death with the first age players to settle on the grid. Since at least 2005 (2006 at the latest), we have been talking ourselves into circles!
And the reality is that some verification is required. Just like the sketchy videos on Youtube which ask if you're over 18 before it lets you view it. It's required in the sense of Linden Lab covering its ass. That's all there is, folks. The end.
The taking over of Xstreet is just but one episode of Linden Lab absorbing an existing institution in order to establish their own presence in that niche. This isn't news. And the endless discussions and debates about it have gone nowhere because everything to be said about it has been said more or less for the past four years.
That is why I stopped writing about Second Life, save for the occasional comment on blogs. I just don't feel there's a need to devote reams of useless nonsense, especially when what I say will likely be unoriginal and pointless.
Plus, the entire exercise is not dissimilar to shouting at the wind. Ari has often said that the Lab does listen, but frankly, I don't think so. They do what they want.
---
Why oh why is anyone surprised that SAT scores are still skewed? It's up there with the puzzlement people express towards Linden Labs. This is shown every year. Not like it matters anyway, because scores overall are trending down. At least, according to the article I read.
---
That's about all at the moment.
337
I saw an article yesterday which discussed the dangers of twitting and facebooking about the workplace. Why isn't this common sense? How stupid are people? Here's a simple rule of thumb anytime the asinine urge to publish anything about your place of current employment: If it's something you wouldn't say to your boss to his or her face (or gossipy coworker who might tell the whole front office), then don't stick it on the internet.
It's like the certified moron who I worked with in my last co-op/internship/however-my-school-wants-to-call-it-today. This piece of work decided to fudge the numbers on his timesheet. First off, doing so is intensely wrong as it is akin to outright stealing. You're taking
Second, I'm an inquisitive soul and asked just how much he worked 'overtime'. My dear friend must have slept at work in order to achieve seventy hours a week. You read that right. Seventy hours (70!) a week. C'mon! If you're going to lie, at least be smart about it. Throw something realistic in there.
Third, the entire workplace was wired. You couldn't sneeze without your boss, your boss' boss, and his boss knowing about it. I went just a minute over on my lunch break, and I got a rather cold email about it. Don't worry so much, because for a few days, I accidentally went in ten minutes early and worked too much for the time I was reporting (I had a long commute and always overestimated the amount of time I needed. Also, SEPTA is horrible). But they saw I spent those minutes pissing away on the internet, so it all turned out well.
In short, don't mess with your time sheet. It's a dumb thing to do.
---
Why do people write 'your' instead of 'you're'? I've seen it more and more and, as a certified Grammar Nazi, it's starting to grind on me. I'm not above the occasional error myself (my talking grammar is downright atrocious), but I do try to make sure my audience can tell when I'm talking possessive and when I'm describing something of yours.
Simply put, saying, "your an idiot" will not sway me towards your point of view. "You're an idiot". Get it right.
Also, has 'lol' replaced the period? "your an idiot lol why cant u c that your an idiot lol?" is fairly typical of the internet these days, a fairly sad revelation. I used to defend the denizens of the internet against my snobby friends. I used to say, "Sure, a few folks talk like a drunken seal slapping a keyboard but most people write intelligently." Now, I feel silly and foolish.
But the absolute worst error trophy is held by the number substitutions. "got 2 go 2 8 sum dinner, bbl 4 u" Numbers have only one place, and that's to quantify something in simple digits (after all, writing VII or 'seven' to do multiplication is not easy and is quite painful and counter intuitive).
The only internet jargon I believe has any use is emoticons. They are quite handy in determining the attitude with which a given statement is being delivered. "You're such a fool :D" indicates friendly ribbing, while "You're such a fool" is an offensive impersonal accusation. Although, for some reason, I still have this mental image that emote use carries sarcastic connotations. Maybe it's because I have the arrogant assumption I can parse the 'air' of a conversation without being outright told, and maybe because I feel condescended to, as if I am a child who needs direction in the mannerisms of adults. Maybe I'm just stupid.
---
One of my real life friends was lambasted the other day by some elderly vet because she ran an American flag but not that black POW/MIA one. What a troop-hating unAmerican bitch. She was too flustered to offer much of a rebuttal and personally I'm too much of a coward to have said anything in her place.
But now I'm on the internet anonymous (more or less), so I'm saying I'd have told the twat to piss off. What, if I don't wear everything on my damn sleeve, then I must not support or agree with it? It's stupid, anyway. Why fly a flag for it? I assume no one is cackling with glee at the soldiers stuffed away in POW camps or Missing in Action (most of whom probably, sadly, deceased). I assume most Americans do carry sympathy for such soldiers and their families.
I don't need silly ribbons or flags to display how I feel. If you're so goddamn curious, then go ahead and ask. My house is not a battleship, I shouldn't have to rig a complex network of flags to tell the world everything about me.
And really, I think if you waste the time erecting a flagpole and flying the Stars and Stripes on it, you're probably as patriotic as they come. Especially since everyone I've spotted with flags always seem to keep them clean, do all the right flag protocol, etc. If they were heartless enemies of the state, I doubt they'd bother.
Also, I've never been quite sure, but does it cover all POWs/MIAs, or just American ones? Are the Iraqi and Afghanistan POWs allowed to rot just because they're our enemies and terrorists? Sure, if you accept the idea that our POW camps are ten times better than the homes we caught them in, with good food, water, and ninety channels of digital cable it might seem like a pretty good deal. But would you want to be locked up thousands of miles away from your family? Even if they lived in a shithole? I doubt it. For example, the Army barracks might be better in quality of life than the North Philadelphia slum you came from, but you still come home, don't you?
And that's assuming, of course, that the camps are as we're told they are. Chances are, they're probably pretty shitty. I suppose that's the cold reality of life, after all, they are trying to kill us. But the point remains: aren't they still POWs? I'm willing to bet most of them don't even give two figs about Al Qaeda or anything, they're just defending themselves against an invasion (both cultural and martial) in their homes. Extreme in their methods, perhaps, but so were the Bosnians when fighting against the Serbians, or the North against the South, or the British against the colonists (and vice versa for each of those cases).
Maybe I'm too naive.
---
I know it's just practice for the real world, but it always irks me when I have to write a paper on whatever lab for school. Why? Because inevitably it's just regurgitation of old news. I wrote a lab report on gel electrophoresis and using it to determine the specific sequence of a bacterial genome. Old news. When 'researching' it, I dredged up a billion papers from a million years ago on the thousands of ways to approach this method and so on. If I was inclined, I could have ripped them completely and handed them in as my paper.
My professors wouldn't notice, but they would still mark me down on their seemingly arbitrary standards. On one occasion, I had ten points off because my abstract (the quick run-down you see at the beginning of scientific papers) wasn't detailed enough. It was almost a thousand words. Any more, and it wouldn't be an abstract anymore, it might as well have been the paper itself.
Methods/Materials is another one they like to peg you on. The rule of thumb is that if it's taught on an undergrad level, you can safely generalize about it. For instance, I don't need to go into the details of how I prepared a sample for mass spectrometry (unless I had some brand new revolutionary method on it). I can just say I performed a mass spec. analysis and you can reasonably fill in the blank. But then, they tell me to put in such details so they know I know what I'm doing. When I do so, they mark off points because I didn't write with a scientific audience in mind.
My introductions and results/conclusions are flawless. Yet the stupid abstract and methods murder me.
Oh, and 'future' studies is also laughable. Yeah, what could I POSSIBLY do with this basic technique? How could I possibly expand upon it? I know! A ten second Google search could give me twenty answers because the technique or concept itself is so basic! Imagine learning the basics of a language, and then being asked 'What could you do in the future to expand your knowledge?' Er, Der, maybe try to hold conversations with those fluent in said language? Maybe visit that particular country? Maybe have your teacher move into the finer nuances of it? Or asking a builder in Second Life: "Now that you know how to resize a prim, what are some possible future investigations of this technique?" You'd laugh it off, that's what you'd do.
I figure if you have no clue, not even a semblance of how to take such a middle school level concept to the next level, you probably have no business taking that line of study. At least, not without some serious backbreaking and extremely painful work on your part.
---
As you might have guessed, my field is heavy into science. That's not saying much. I'm told it's a hard field, but personally I think anything can be hard if you don't have the right mind. For example, I cannot speak another language to save my life. Eight years of Spanish in High school and the best I can manage is asking how you are today and that the dog is very fat. Oh, and that the train is blue and grey. Linguistics is definitely not for me.
But, on my mother's side of the family, I'm going to be the first one in that family to get a college degree. And on my father's side, only the third (my father was a pharmacist, and his sister is a nurse). Pretty weighty! The result of this is that I am frequently poked into answering every single question about the universe.
Now, I do know a good deal of things. After all, you can't do what I do without knowing some basics. But asking me the details of astrophysics, I do not know. Or specifics in metallurgy. One person can only know so much. Ask me for the specific pathways for limb development, sure, but forget about the specific types of concrete.
Why? Because it isn't relevant, I guess. Concrete just don't factor much when you're investigating ACL tears. In fact, concrete is bad in such a scenario. Also, I haven't had much study into the specifics of concrete. It's an area outside my expertise. That's pretty important. You wouldn't ask your doctor to check out what's wrong with your sedan.
Which is why they always seem so disappointed when I tell them I don't know, and that I'd have to look it up. And then I feel bad because they feel let down. And then they feel bad that I feel bad because I feel I've let them down. A vicious cycle!
And then there's things no one knows. Why we age is something the world is constantly investigating over and over. And the reasons for it are very complex. No one quite understands. Which, by the way, is why it is heavy in research right now.
One final nail in the coffin is my reluctance to give an answer without checking my data three times over. I won't even give you an answer on the color of my hair without checking it in at least two mirrors and under different light conditions. Too cautious, perhaps, but it's helped immensely in the 'getting things right' category and helped me avoid the dreaded 'everything is totally wrong and I am so screwed'.
---
This blog was founded for two things. The first was to record the random acts of nonsense and writing that Jurin loves. It is certainly much handier to direct people to a simple website to read my crazy rather than getting me to log in and teleport over (at 4 AM Eastern time, I am more nasty and crabby than fun).
The other was to comment on just how crazy Linden Lab can be. Ok, well, more about Second Life in general, but Linden Lab is a big part of it. And I realize that I haven't been discussing them at all in the past few months. Maybe even half the year. I feel an explanation is owed.
I do not know what more to write about them. That is the simple truth. They are crazy and insane. Everyone hates their policies. Often, they bumble about and wreck things like a toddler who found his dad's gun and is now in a pottery shop with an angry bull. Sometimes they're right in whatever move they make. Sometimes they're wrong. And all too often, it is a rat race. After awhile, the feeling creeps into you that you have discussed this policy again, and again, and again, and the time is ripe to just let it die.
Take, for example, age verification. The whole deal with the 'Adult' rated parcels was beaten to death with the advent of age verification, which in turn was beaten to death with the banning of fake porn in that European country and its investigation into Second Life, which in turn was beaten to death with the first age players to settle on the grid. Since at least 2005 (2006 at the latest), we have been talking ourselves into circles!
And the reality is that some verification is required. Just like the sketchy videos on Youtube which ask if you're over 18 before it lets you view it. It's required in the sense of Linden Lab covering its ass. That's all there is, folks. The end.
The taking over of Xstreet is just but one episode of Linden Lab absorbing an existing institution in order to establish their own presence in that niche. This isn't news. And the endless discussions and debates about it have gone nowhere because everything to be said about it has been said more or less for the past four years.
That is why I stopped writing about Second Life, save for the occasional comment on blogs. I just don't feel there's a need to devote reams of useless nonsense, especially when what I say will likely be unoriginal and pointless.
Plus, the entire exercise is not dissimilar to shouting at the wind. Ari has often said that the Lab does listen, but frankly, I don't think so. They do what they want.
---
Why oh why is anyone surprised that SAT scores are still skewed? It's up there with the puzzlement people express towards Linden Labs. This is shown every year. Not like it matters anyway, because scores overall are trending down. At least, according to the article I read.
---
That's about all at the moment.
337
Monday, August 24, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Singularity
Uploading your brain into a computer in order to achieve a higher existence and become one with the singularity is an interesting idea. Eternal life would be yours, so long as you avoid the Recycle Bin. At your fingertips would be the immense speed of a bazillion computers or so.
But wait a second.
Where does all my brain data go? Can I really trust Mr. Server hosting it? Would I be charged rent? Sure, I could drift across the internet lazily but then I'd be exposed to all sorts of malicious code out to rend my brain and make me a virtual vegetable. Or even deleted. I am unsure whether or not I'd be able to afford it (both initial investment and presumably some kind of monthly cost to hold my brain data). Oh, what a mess.
It has to go somewhere. Perhaps a giant robot? I'd need a mechanic. And spare parts. A power supply. Preferably a good sensor set (I'd like to continue being able to watch my garden grow, thank you, or taste a ripe tomato and so on). All of those aren't cheap.
Would I even want to 'live' forever? Sure, it sounds nice and all, but at some point wouldn't you grow a little senile? Or bored? Part of the fun of life is the urgency with which we live it. And my non-uploaded friends would wither and die, would I want to watch that?
I suppose my 'data' would be uploaded into some virtual world, but what would be the fun in that? If I knew I could create and do anything I wanted, I think I'd get bored fast. The possibilities would be infinite, but also tiring. "Ok, another Gor roleplay Matrix. Whoop-de-freaking-do." I'm not very imaginative, so I imagine it'd be boring after a while.
And now that I think about, I think the biggest question would be: would I even be myself?
I upload my brain into the computer. But it's not really me: it's just a compilation of my thoughts, behaviors, fears, memories, and so on that the computer recorded. That set of data might have its own consciousness, but it wouldn't be me. I'd still be the sack of meat left behind. Me as the person would only notice my data being downloaded. I'd go on to live the rest of my life pretty oblivious to what virtual me was doing (who thinks she is the real me, when I'm really the real me, although we're both me technically).
I'd still die. My imprint would march on, but Anna Tsiolkovsky would die. Oh bugger. Uploading my brain wouldn't help me achieve immortality in the physical sense. Unless a giant needle inserted into the back of my head was required, I wouldn't notice at all.
I suppose uploading my brain into the singularity would be like having a kid: after it's born, it does its own thing. If you're after a monument, a testament to generations to come, something to show the future who you were and who you were like, then uploading would be nice. But in terms of helping you live forever in a perfect blissful virtual world, keep dreaming. You won't feel a thing.
A copy of me helps little to avoid death in the long run. My body, my own grey matter, with its quirky and faulty neurons making me who I am (or who I aren't, either why) would die and disintegrate.
But hey, my copy would be running around the world, assuring everyone I'm alive and well as I'm wasting away and later rotting in a coffin.
In fact, it might make life horrible for me, because I'd just be some leftover, a shell, a physical ghost of my digitalized self. My clone would continue on, claiming to be me (which is true, to an extant) and everyone would probably just ignore little ol' meat body me.
That's scary.
391
But wait a second.
Where does all my brain data go? Can I really trust Mr. Server hosting it? Would I be charged rent? Sure, I could drift across the internet lazily but then I'd be exposed to all sorts of malicious code out to rend my brain and make me a virtual vegetable. Or even deleted. I am unsure whether or not I'd be able to afford it (both initial investment and presumably some kind of monthly cost to hold my brain data). Oh, what a mess.
It has to go somewhere. Perhaps a giant robot? I'd need a mechanic. And spare parts. A power supply. Preferably a good sensor set (I'd like to continue being able to watch my garden grow, thank you, or taste a ripe tomato and so on). All of those aren't cheap.
Would I even want to 'live' forever? Sure, it sounds nice and all, but at some point wouldn't you grow a little senile? Or bored? Part of the fun of life is the urgency with which we live it. And my non-uploaded friends would wither and die, would I want to watch that?
I suppose my 'data' would be uploaded into some virtual world, but what would be the fun in that? If I knew I could create and do anything I wanted, I think I'd get bored fast. The possibilities would be infinite, but also tiring. "Ok, another Gor roleplay Matrix. Whoop-de-freaking-do." I'm not very imaginative, so I imagine it'd be boring after a while.
And now that I think about, I think the biggest question would be: would I even be myself?
I upload my brain into the computer. But it's not really me: it's just a compilation of my thoughts, behaviors, fears, memories, and so on that the computer recorded. That set of data might have its own consciousness, but it wouldn't be me. I'd still be the sack of meat left behind. Me as the person would only notice my data being downloaded. I'd go on to live the rest of my life pretty oblivious to what virtual me was doing (who thinks she is the real me, when I'm really the real me, although we're both me technically).
I'd still die. My imprint would march on, but Anna Tsiolkovsky would die. Oh bugger. Uploading my brain wouldn't help me achieve immortality in the physical sense. Unless a giant needle inserted into the back of my head was required, I wouldn't notice at all.
I suppose uploading my brain into the singularity would be like having a kid: after it's born, it does its own thing. If you're after a monument, a testament to generations to come, something to show the future who you were and who you were like, then uploading would be nice. But in terms of helping you live forever in a perfect blissful virtual world, keep dreaming. You won't feel a thing.
A copy of me helps little to avoid death in the long run. My body, my own grey matter, with its quirky and faulty neurons making me who I am (or who I aren't, either why) would die and disintegrate.
But hey, my copy would be running around the world, assuring everyone I'm alive and well as I'm wasting away and later rotting in a coffin.
In fact, it might make life horrible for me, because I'd just be some leftover, a shell, a physical ghost of my digitalized self. My clone would continue on, claiming to be me (which is true, to an extant) and everyone would probably just ignore little ol' meat body me.
That's scary.
391
Monday, June 8, 2009
Tug Boat Rizzo
Toot toot, I am a humble tugboat.
My name is the Rizzo the Tugboat.
I push things. Sometimes I pull things, but mostly pushing.
When I'm not working, my owners tie me to a pier.
It tickles when they play and fix my engine.
I think I like being a tugboat, but I've never been anything else so I wouldn't know.
The End
415
My name is the Rizzo the Tugboat.
I push things. Sometimes I pull things, but mostly pushing.
When I'm not working, my owners tie me to a pier.
It tickles when they play and fix my engine.
I think I like being a tugboat, but I've never been anything else so I wouldn't know.
The End
415
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Wall Paper
Some time ago, I was a little saddened by the fact that my walls were depressingly bare.
An additional problem was my increasing collection of MRIs of my head. Something definitely had to be done with those as well.
The solution was elegant. I hung the images on my walls. I hung some christmas lights behind them so if I so desire I can light up the room with slices of my brain.
Why do people think this is weird?
427
An additional problem was my increasing collection of MRIs of my head. Something definitely had to be done with those as well.
The solution was elegant. I hung the images on my walls. I hung some christmas lights behind them so if I so desire I can light up the room with slices of my brain.
Why do people think this is weird?
427
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Evolution
I picked up 'Spore' the other day. While the game itself is fun, if a bit simple and a tad too easy, I have to berate it for getting evolution wrong.
In 'Spore', their concept of evolution is a progressive Intelligent Design. The creature in question depends upon the player to add parts which may or may not be related to anything you've actually done in the game. Some may point out that there is a token evolution in that if you are a consistent predator, you can only unlock predator style parts, but I dismiss that as part of any normal game mechanics. According to the game, I can 'evolve' from a snake to a giraffe within one generation with no intermediates or anything resembling logic.
It's innocent enough but it's irritating to me when the thing it touts as mimicking in the game is essentially shafted. There could have been ways of incorporating the idea without sacrificing it.
One confusing aspect was the transition between the 'tribal' stage and the 'civilization' stage. Because I'm a coward, I befriended the tribes of other creatures rather than outright killing them. At the end of the stage, there were tribes of intelligent snakes living alongside my terribly unoriginal dinosaurs (partly due to laziness, as the shape is easy to transition from the beginning cell stage). Upon progressing to 'Civilization' those snakes... just disappear. I scoured my planet's surface to no avail, those snakes were in oblivion. I guess in between winning the 'tribal' part and progressing to the 'civilization' era, my little band of saurians killed off their snake friends in a wonderful show of "et tu, brutus?"
Despite those complaints, it's immense fun as long as you don't think too hard about it.
Just that that evolution blunder really gets under my skin. It's just what the world needs: another wrong take on evolution. It was bad enough after Pokemon, after which I found a lot of people viewed evolution as leveling up and the next generation as always better or more powerful than the previous one. One confused individual thought that chimpanzees actually had leveled up into human beings (which is why we are physically weaker than chimps?).
Perhaps because it's a complicated and counter intuitive idea. The creature or plant in question doesn't have a say in it. There's no overreaching mind guiding it. It just is. And we, as creatures who designed and developed tools for thousands of years, cannot visualize this. A bronze tool is better than a stone tool, so we designed more bronze tools afterward. On outward appearances, camouflage is better than none at all, so stick insects must have designed their appearance to look like twigs. And chameleons have to be at the pinnacle, since they can change colors to fit in at will. Even better designed, since they're lizards which are obviously much better than insects because lizards are closer in relation to us than bugs. And that makes sense to us, because we ourselves design camouflaged clothing to blend in.
Or something. There's more to it than that.
But it doesn't work that way. Evolution is more of a pressure. It's a sort of balance between what's there, what could possibly be there, the drive to reproduce, and the environment in which that reproduction occurs. Sex drive is easy: everything wants to reproduce and make more of itself. That's about it.
However, factors can impede or facilitate this. Namely, the environment. The environment itself doesn't have a distinct conscienceness, it's just there. It more or less sets the boundaries. It's called 'natural selection' but that's something of a misnomer because it's not actively choosing anything. It behaves more as a filter. Picture it as a giant filter. For instance, it's hard to reproduce when you're melting due to your environment being a lava flow. The lava flow is not choosing you in particular, anymore than it would choose chickens as victims, either. It's just that the environmental filter we passed through didn't involve lava flows. So there was no particular reason why anything related to surviving and reproducing in a lava flow was necessary.
Then there's the 'what's there, what could be there'. It's also known as mutation, although not always does one need an entire new feature. In fact, sometimes you don't need to add anything at all. It all depends on natural selection. A mutation that enables a person to live in lava is not going to do well since there's no apparent need. Mutations themselves are random. Most of the time they're horribly bad, as anyone with muscular dystrophy and other genetic diseases will tell you. Sometimes they're neutral. Occasionally they're beneficial.
Mutations do not automatically mean something brand new. Often it's a retooling of some previous implement. For example, our spinal columns did not have to be 're-engineered' from scratch just because we became bipedal. Instead, our hips and spinal curvature adjusted from a horizontal to a vertical weight bearing. In fact, it's this hijacking of that nature which causes a lot of back problems and pains.
Now, let's tie it all together. The things best able to endure will reproduce. Usually this means a good allocation of energy and time. Natural selection will cut down those lesser abled, with mutations filling in the blanks on occasion.
The next consideration is that these things are occurring in tiny increments. Eyeballs and arms do not just suddenly appear, they slowly flow and develop over time in baby steps. Think of it as tweaking, or better yet, imagine it as adjusting the temperature of the shower. You just don't open up the head and have it the perfect temperature, but instead twist and adjust until the temperature is just right.
Now, let's look at the big picture. You have something attempting to survive and reproduce. The environment takes its toll upon the population, the ones who are able to reproduce (not necessarily the best or the brightest) will survive. This acts on an incremental scale, and flash fractures will not have the time to survive (jaguars transplanted to the south pole are just not going to do well), they won't have time to survive to reproduce, and they 'evolve' into extinction. Mutations, good or bad, thrown into the mix will help or hurt in the general aim. And it all works without any specific design in mind.
Perhaps we should look at an example. Something that's easy.
Let's say that we have a bunch of lizards. One day, some of our intrepid lizards wander into a cave, which collapses and traps them inside. They survive, but now they're stuck in the cave. The cave is obviously completely dark, but our lizards have good senses of sound and smell. Overall, they manage fairly well, aside from being in perpetual night.
Now, let's say one thing that pops up on occasion is near sightedness. Out in the world, being near sighted meant being unable to see dangers and opportunities at a distance, so near sighted lizards were eaten. Since they were eaten, they weren't able to reproduce and thus near sighted lizards are really rare. But in the cave, there's no way to see their own paws in front of their faces, so being near sighted isn't really all that bad. It slowly creeps into the population.
Now, let's say some of those lizards develop really bad eyesight. And that trait, too, does fairly well, because there's no need for efficient sight. Some of those bad eyes might be due to deformed eyes due to faulty eye genes or something. But it doesn't matter, because in the land of the eternal dark, the blind are on par with the sighted.
So, we get eyes in these lizards which are mostly useless. They remain there, but over this amount of time (long time), the genes governing them have not been subjected to the natural selection filter of broad daylight where it's necessary to spot that hawk swooping at you. Since there's no pressure, there's no quality control and things run wild.
Now, let's look at something else. Let's say one mutation causes skin coloration to degrade. Not by a lot, just a little, just slightly. They look just a little pale. And because of that, more energy can be directed towards sexy lizard time or other activities which will help the lizard with it to reproduce a lot. Lizards that spend a lot of energy developing full pigments (in the egg) and then maintaining that pigment (the cells need food/oxygen) will be left slightly out of the race, like a slightly overweight runner in a marathon.
Then, there's an even lighter color due to less pigment, so even more energy can be freed up. Those fully colored exotic lizards are progressively left behind. They spend a lot of energy trying to maintain the metabolism or whatever to keep the pigment, which doesn't aid in camouflage (the environment is totally dark) or in mating (it's hard to look attractive when no one can see) or knock some of the sunlight out (as with melanin, which in the cave is pointless). Eventually, you can reduce this all the way down until you have lizards which are complete albinos. Notice we didn't just have white lizards pop out over night. It was a progressive shift. It would be like watching paint dry, and then fade.
This shift can occur ever so slightly that we don't or can't notice. Sometimes, rarely, it can occur quickly. For instance, if you had type O blood during the Black Death, you were at a severe disadvantage as, if I recall correctly, people of that type had immune systems that did not recognize the disease, or something along those lines. Type O took a big hit. These days, while still rare, it's not such a disadvantage because there's medical treatment which enables someone to contract and survive the plague. The environmental pressure is removed.
The main goal is to get the next generation out. The best way to get there will usually win. The 'best way' may not necessarily be THE best way, but it works better than something weaker or nothing at all. Rarely (in fact never) will something completely new suddenly develop, what usually occurs is a hijacking of something else that 'jury rigs' to something else. But there's no deliberate attempt to adapt. It's all pressure and advantage.
It requires a lot of thinking to probably wrap your head around it, and there is a high chance that I've fumbled somewhere up in there. I believe it's due to this that people tend to simplify it or ignore it and such. It can be really difficult to really follow it through. Simplifications might also overlook the idea itself.
For instance, there's the popular "only the strongest survive", and the belief that it leads to selfishness and cruelty. How can we explain why people are nice? And why we think we should be nice? I do not know. That's the honest answer. I'm not that smart to be able to venture a guess. Does that mean there isn't an explanation? No.
"Survival of the fittest" has been used for social evolution. Capitalism usually employs this. Democracy too, to a degree in that the best ideas will survive a harsh look by the populace. The melting pot can be a variant of it. Parts of a culture are absorbed, and those which for whatever reason don't get through the filter (which isn't an active choice per se, it's more a passive feeling) don't join the general mass culture.
It does lead to a rather uncanny valley of culture. You look at it from the outside, and you see some familiar things, some unfamiliar. But, for better or for worse, it's become the culture. What you see has passed through the mental filters of the public and survives to continue on. It doesn't mean that what floats to the top is the best, or that what's dropped is the worst. It just... is.
Second Life is no different. We can see a steady progression, almost evolution in Second Life. There's the obvious in the game and grid appearance. Obviously way back in the day there was no windlight nor prim hair, and you had to walk fifteen (15!) miles from where you could teleport to where you wanted to go. That kind of evolution was Linden driven, Linden directed, with some small input from the residents. All things considered, it's not really evolution at all.
There has been a social evolution of sorts. There was a time where using the default linden skin and hair was only an indicator that you were poor. Over time, we've come to associate with newbies, or day old alts about to grief you, your spouse, and your children. This came about due to hard learned experience. The 'pressure' of learning too late that your house was filled with crap because a day old alt filled it with feces forced one to try to identify potential griefers. Some of those traits were young avatars, with default skins and hair. Now, newbies really feel an honest pressure to spice up their avatars early, and the Lindens are now even offering hair to complement the new 'newbie look'.
There's been less pressure to not consider Second Life a 'game'. I suppose back in the past this was a reaction, an attempt to separate it from those other games, like World of Warcraft, which everything on the internet is compared to at some time or another. These days? Everyone knows what Second Life is. Plus, everyone's tired of correcting newbies. I can remember when I swung the game label about in 2007, I was given a verbal beat down. 2009? No one cares.
Names were normalized. I can't remember meeting anyone with numbers in their name. Aside from one person (who used a 1 instead of an i in order to get his preferred name), everyone tended to chose fairly pedestrian first names. Now every Tom, Dick, and Harry57 has some form of counted names. Part of it may be due to such a massive influx of people who all want the name 'John'. Plus, a good number of them turned out to be fairly A-OK people.
It's an unconscious evolution. A few people have pointed out this progression, but for the rest of us it just slowly passes over us. It occurs in tiny steps.
If you told me two years ago that people would be asking the Lindens to not change things, I'd have called you crazy. But some of the Linden moves, such as attacking ageplay and moving adult content to a separate isolated continent, have people now asking them to stop changing things. After the implementation of Windlight, a good portion of Second Life felt that while it was pretty, it only added to the lag. Linden Lab's attitude towards grid repair changed, people's attitude towards the Lindens and the Grid changed.
I wonder how Second Life will evolve in the years to come. I can't recall the specific site, but one person suggested that Second Life itself has stabilized. The first few years were the initial testing phase, then a tremendous expansion as Second Life opened up, and now it's approaching a more stable population (since during the explosion the retention rate was abysmal). Now we're settling into a more stable pattern (whether this is the era of bots or a dedicated core of users is debatable) and probably cruise on that for a while.
Could it be a long and slow death? Or a peaceful glide into obscurity? Or a slow recovery to super stardom and the days of 900,000 concurrency? Who knows how its evolution will play out.
433
In 'Spore', their concept of evolution is a progressive Intelligent Design. The creature in question depends upon the player to add parts which may or may not be related to anything you've actually done in the game. Some may point out that there is a token evolution in that if you are a consistent predator, you can only unlock predator style parts, but I dismiss that as part of any normal game mechanics. According to the game, I can 'evolve' from a snake to a giraffe within one generation with no intermediates or anything resembling logic.
It's innocent enough but it's irritating to me when the thing it touts as mimicking in the game is essentially shafted. There could have been ways of incorporating the idea without sacrificing it.
One confusing aspect was the transition between the 'tribal' stage and the 'civilization' stage. Because I'm a coward, I befriended the tribes of other creatures rather than outright killing them. At the end of the stage, there were tribes of intelligent snakes living alongside my terribly unoriginal dinosaurs (partly due to laziness, as the shape is easy to transition from the beginning cell stage). Upon progressing to 'Civilization' those snakes... just disappear. I scoured my planet's surface to no avail, those snakes were in oblivion. I guess in between winning the 'tribal' part and progressing to the 'civilization' era, my little band of saurians killed off their snake friends in a wonderful show of "et tu, brutus?"
Despite those complaints, it's immense fun as long as you don't think too hard about it.
Just that that evolution blunder really gets under my skin. It's just what the world needs: another wrong take on evolution. It was bad enough after Pokemon, after which I found a lot of people viewed evolution as leveling up and the next generation as always better or more powerful than the previous one. One confused individual thought that chimpanzees actually had leveled up into human beings (which is why we are physically weaker than chimps?).
Perhaps because it's a complicated and counter intuitive idea. The creature or plant in question doesn't have a say in it. There's no overreaching mind guiding it. It just is. And we, as creatures who designed and developed tools for thousands of years, cannot visualize this. A bronze tool is better than a stone tool, so we designed more bronze tools afterward. On outward appearances, camouflage is better than none at all, so stick insects must have designed their appearance to look like twigs. And chameleons have to be at the pinnacle, since they can change colors to fit in at will. Even better designed, since they're lizards which are obviously much better than insects because lizards are closer in relation to us than bugs. And that makes sense to us, because we ourselves design camouflaged clothing to blend in.
Or something. There's more to it than that.
But it doesn't work that way. Evolution is more of a pressure. It's a sort of balance between what's there, what could possibly be there, the drive to reproduce, and the environment in which that reproduction occurs. Sex drive is easy: everything wants to reproduce and make more of itself. That's about it.
However, factors can impede or facilitate this. Namely, the environment. The environment itself doesn't have a distinct conscienceness, it's just there. It more or less sets the boundaries. It's called 'natural selection' but that's something of a misnomer because it's not actively choosing anything. It behaves more as a filter. Picture it as a giant filter. For instance, it's hard to reproduce when you're melting due to your environment being a lava flow. The lava flow is not choosing you in particular, anymore than it would choose chickens as victims, either. It's just that the environmental filter we passed through didn't involve lava flows. So there was no particular reason why anything related to surviving and reproducing in a lava flow was necessary.
Then there's the 'what's there, what could be there'. It's also known as mutation, although not always does one need an entire new feature. In fact, sometimes you don't need to add anything at all. It all depends on natural selection. A mutation that enables a person to live in lava is not going to do well since there's no apparent need. Mutations themselves are random. Most of the time they're horribly bad, as anyone with muscular dystrophy and other genetic diseases will tell you. Sometimes they're neutral. Occasionally they're beneficial.
Mutations do not automatically mean something brand new. Often it's a retooling of some previous implement. For example, our spinal columns did not have to be 're-engineered' from scratch just because we became bipedal. Instead, our hips and spinal curvature adjusted from a horizontal to a vertical weight bearing. In fact, it's this hijacking of that nature which causes a lot of back problems and pains.
Now, let's tie it all together. The things best able to endure will reproduce. Usually this means a good allocation of energy and time. Natural selection will cut down those lesser abled, with mutations filling in the blanks on occasion.
The next consideration is that these things are occurring in tiny increments. Eyeballs and arms do not just suddenly appear, they slowly flow and develop over time in baby steps. Think of it as tweaking, or better yet, imagine it as adjusting the temperature of the shower. You just don't open up the head and have it the perfect temperature, but instead twist and adjust until the temperature is just right.
Now, let's look at the big picture. You have something attempting to survive and reproduce. The environment takes its toll upon the population, the ones who are able to reproduce (not necessarily the best or the brightest) will survive. This acts on an incremental scale, and flash fractures will not have the time to survive (jaguars transplanted to the south pole are just not going to do well), they won't have time to survive to reproduce, and they 'evolve' into extinction. Mutations, good or bad, thrown into the mix will help or hurt in the general aim. And it all works without any specific design in mind.
Perhaps we should look at an example. Something that's easy.
Let's say that we have a bunch of lizards. One day, some of our intrepid lizards wander into a cave, which collapses and traps them inside. They survive, but now they're stuck in the cave. The cave is obviously completely dark, but our lizards have good senses of sound and smell. Overall, they manage fairly well, aside from being in perpetual night.
Now, let's say one thing that pops up on occasion is near sightedness. Out in the world, being near sighted meant being unable to see dangers and opportunities at a distance, so near sighted lizards were eaten. Since they were eaten, they weren't able to reproduce and thus near sighted lizards are really rare. But in the cave, there's no way to see their own paws in front of their faces, so being near sighted isn't really all that bad. It slowly creeps into the population.
Now, let's say some of those lizards develop really bad eyesight. And that trait, too, does fairly well, because there's no need for efficient sight. Some of those bad eyes might be due to deformed eyes due to faulty eye genes or something. But it doesn't matter, because in the land of the eternal dark, the blind are on par with the sighted.
So, we get eyes in these lizards which are mostly useless. They remain there, but over this amount of time (long time), the genes governing them have not been subjected to the natural selection filter of broad daylight where it's necessary to spot that hawk swooping at you. Since there's no pressure, there's no quality control and things run wild.
Now, let's look at something else. Let's say one mutation causes skin coloration to degrade. Not by a lot, just a little, just slightly. They look just a little pale. And because of that, more energy can be directed towards sexy lizard time or other activities which will help the lizard with it to reproduce a lot. Lizards that spend a lot of energy developing full pigments (in the egg) and then maintaining that pigment (the cells need food/oxygen) will be left slightly out of the race, like a slightly overweight runner in a marathon.
Then, there's an even lighter color due to less pigment, so even more energy can be freed up. Those fully colored exotic lizards are progressively left behind. They spend a lot of energy trying to maintain the metabolism or whatever to keep the pigment, which doesn't aid in camouflage (the environment is totally dark) or in mating (it's hard to look attractive when no one can see) or knock some of the sunlight out (as with melanin, which in the cave is pointless). Eventually, you can reduce this all the way down until you have lizards which are complete albinos. Notice we didn't just have white lizards pop out over night. It was a progressive shift. It would be like watching paint dry, and then fade.
This shift can occur ever so slightly that we don't or can't notice. Sometimes, rarely, it can occur quickly. For instance, if you had type O blood during the Black Death, you were at a severe disadvantage as, if I recall correctly, people of that type had immune systems that did not recognize the disease, or something along those lines. Type O took a big hit. These days, while still rare, it's not such a disadvantage because there's medical treatment which enables someone to contract and survive the plague. The environmental pressure is removed.
The main goal is to get the next generation out. The best way to get there will usually win. The 'best way' may not necessarily be THE best way, but it works better than something weaker or nothing at all. Rarely (in fact never) will something completely new suddenly develop, what usually occurs is a hijacking of something else that 'jury rigs' to something else. But there's no deliberate attempt to adapt. It's all pressure and advantage.
It requires a lot of thinking to probably wrap your head around it, and there is a high chance that I've fumbled somewhere up in there. I believe it's due to this that people tend to simplify it or ignore it and such. It can be really difficult to really follow it through. Simplifications might also overlook the idea itself.
For instance, there's the popular "only the strongest survive", and the belief that it leads to selfishness and cruelty. How can we explain why people are nice? And why we think we should be nice? I do not know. That's the honest answer. I'm not that smart to be able to venture a guess. Does that mean there isn't an explanation? No.
"Survival of the fittest" has been used for social evolution. Capitalism usually employs this. Democracy too, to a degree in that the best ideas will survive a harsh look by the populace. The melting pot can be a variant of it. Parts of a culture are absorbed, and those which for whatever reason don't get through the filter (which isn't an active choice per se, it's more a passive feeling) don't join the general mass culture.
It does lead to a rather uncanny valley of culture. You look at it from the outside, and you see some familiar things, some unfamiliar. But, for better or for worse, it's become the culture. What you see has passed through the mental filters of the public and survives to continue on. It doesn't mean that what floats to the top is the best, or that what's dropped is the worst. It just... is.
Second Life is no different. We can see a steady progression, almost evolution in Second Life. There's the obvious in the game and grid appearance. Obviously way back in the day there was no windlight nor prim hair, and you had to walk fifteen (15!) miles from where you could teleport to where you wanted to go. That kind of evolution was Linden driven, Linden directed, with some small input from the residents. All things considered, it's not really evolution at all.
There has been a social evolution of sorts. There was a time where using the default linden skin and hair was only an indicator that you were poor. Over time, we've come to associate with newbies, or day old alts about to grief you, your spouse, and your children. This came about due to hard learned experience. The 'pressure' of learning too late that your house was filled with crap because a day old alt filled it with feces forced one to try to identify potential griefers. Some of those traits were young avatars, with default skins and hair. Now, newbies really feel an honest pressure to spice up their avatars early, and the Lindens are now even offering hair to complement the new 'newbie look'.
There's been less pressure to not consider Second Life a 'game'. I suppose back in the past this was a reaction, an attempt to separate it from those other games, like World of Warcraft, which everything on the internet is compared to at some time or another. These days? Everyone knows what Second Life is. Plus, everyone's tired of correcting newbies. I can remember when I swung the game label about in 2007, I was given a verbal beat down. 2009? No one cares.
Names were normalized. I can't remember meeting anyone with numbers in their name. Aside from one person (who used a 1 instead of an i in order to get his preferred name), everyone tended to chose fairly pedestrian first names. Now every Tom, Dick, and Harry57 has some form of counted names. Part of it may be due to such a massive influx of people who all want the name 'John'. Plus, a good number of them turned out to be fairly A-OK people.
It's an unconscious evolution. A few people have pointed out this progression, but for the rest of us it just slowly passes over us. It occurs in tiny steps.
If you told me two years ago that people would be asking the Lindens to not change things, I'd have called you crazy. But some of the Linden moves, such as attacking ageplay and moving adult content to a separate isolated continent, have people now asking them to stop changing things. After the implementation of Windlight, a good portion of Second Life felt that while it was pretty, it only added to the lag. Linden Lab's attitude towards grid repair changed, people's attitude towards the Lindens and the Grid changed.
I wonder how Second Life will evolve in the years to come. I can't recall the specific site, but one person suggested that Second Life itself has stabilized. The first few years were the initial testing phase, then a tremendous expansion as Second Life opened up, and now it's approaching a more stable population (since during the explosion the retention rate was abysmal). Now we're settling into a more stable pattern (whether this is the era of bots or a dedicated core of users is debatable) and probably cruise on that for a while.
Could it be a long and slow death? Or a peaceful glide into obscurity? Or a slow recovery to super stardom and the days of 900,000 concurrency? Who knows how its evolution will play out.
433
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Terrible Day
Today was the worst day of this year thus far.
I got up two hours too early. The shower was stuck on cold. I almost choked on my pills. I missed the shuttle. When I tried to hit the El, it was off schedule and I got to work late. At work, I completely and utterly screwed up. What's worse is that everyone is smarter than I am, so any mistake is compounded by the fact that they probably look down and think, "whelp, can't expect too much, can we?" These are the people under me. I shudder to think of my boss' opinion. I missed the shuttle after work, so I walked home instead. It was about a few miles, but it was a nice day out (one of the few blessings today) and the (relatively) fresh air cheered me up. Then I got home and realized that the reason everyone was giving me a wide berth was because I reeked of formaldehyde. Then I realized I didn't have anything for dinner. So I have to order out or something.
Hopefully, this will remain my worst day of 2009. Or, even more hopefully, worst day for the coming decade.
434
I got up two hours too early. The shower was stuck on cold. I almost choked on my pills. I missed the shuttle. When I tried to hit the El, it was off schedule and I got to work late. At work, I completely and utterly screwed up. What's worse is that everyone is smarter than I am, so any mistake is compounded by the fact that they probably look down and think, "whelp, can't expect too much, can we?" These are the people under me. I shudder to think of my boss' opinion. I missed the shuttle after work, so I walked home instead. It was about a few miles, but it was a nice day out (one of the few blessings today) and the (relatively) fresh air cheered me up. Then I got home and realized that the reason everyone was giving me a wide berth was because I reeked of formaldehyde. Then I realized I didn't have anything for dinner. So I have to order out or something.
Hopefully, this will remain my worst day of 2009. Or, even more hopefully, worst day for the coming decade.
434
Monday, May 11, 2009
Alternative Universe
I was thinking about what I would be like in an alternative universe. The usual speculation is that your alternative self is your exact opposite in every trait. So, for instance, in the Alternative Universe I'm actually a good writer.
But let's go further. There's a long way to go, after all, it's a big universes. The possibilities are infinite. And here is the conclusion I reached.
That's all well and good, but what about me? Well, what is my complete opposite? What is the Anti-Anna Tsiolkovsky? What would she be like??!?!
Well, let's consider. I exist. Everyday, I'm here writing about things, and playing in Second Life, and holding down a real life job, and trying to consume the jelly beans my little sister dumped on me because she couldn't eat them all. Everyday I grace your existences! So, what's the opposite of existing? That's right: not existing.
In an alternative universe, Anna Tsiolkovsky would not exist. No goatee, no good twin (assuming I'm the evil version of myself), nothing. I'd simply cease to be as that is my polar opposite.
So if any of you are planning to visit an alternate universe and give me a call, don't bother because I won't exist. Steer clear of Juran, though. I hear she kicks puppies.
443
But let's go further. There's a long way to go, after all, it's a big universes. The possibilities are infinite. And here is the conclusion I reached.
In an alternative universe, everything is the complete opposite, to which we have always assumed would mean that good people would be evil, dogs would be cats, and Jurin would be Juran, an evil greedy land baron who uses Copybot and runs an illegal underground casino in the grid of 'Alternate Existence' which the weak and ineffectual Lindens.
That's all well and good, but what about me? Well, what is my complete opposite? What is the Anti-Anna Tsiolkovsky? What would she be like??!?!
Well, let's consider. I exist. Everyday, I'm here writing about things, and playing in Second Life, and holding down a real life job, and trying to consume the jelly beans my little sister dumped on me because she couldn't eat them all. Everyday I grace your existences! So, what's the opposite of existing? That's right: not existing.
In an alternative universe, Anna Tsiolkovsky would not exist. No goatee, no good twin (assuming I'm the evil version of myself), nothing. I'd simply cease to be as that is my polar opposite.
So if any of you are planning to visit an alternate universe and give me a call, don't bother because I won't exist. Steer clear of Juran, though. I hear she kicks puppies.
443
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Normality
Why is it that in Second Life, where anything is possible,
we still yearn for mundane real world things?
445
we still yearn for mundane real world things?
445
Friday, May 8, 2009
Friday
The word 'friday' is a great one. The way it alliterates with 'final' which accents its proper place as the 'final' day of the week is but one of the ways it fits perfectly. On a friday, I sit on the bus and think to myself, ah another week down. Perhaps if the weekend is sunny I'll go down the beach (summer is almost here!).
Friday is a good wood for a good day at a good time.
446
Friday is a good wood for a good day at a good time.
446
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Soaring
There is a zero to zero chance of me ever actually obtaining a pilot's license or an airplane. In fact, I think it's illegal in twenty two states for me to have either (same to you, Missouri). In fact, it's illegal in all of them. Screw you, FAA.
Thus, I buzz about Second Life in planes of my own making. Half of which are horrible failures. When they do work, Second Life and its sim seams eat the remaining half. It's not terribly hard scripting them as I just tweak the one I got (it was a freebie which is all but unrecognizable from its original form). It's not terribly hard building them either, as in SL I can completely disregard all laws of physics. I could build a flying sofa if I so wanted.
Most of my planes are pretty vanilla. But I like them that way. I'm totally a traditionalist. I'm boring that way. On the other hand, it does cut down on IMs inquiring as to why I am flying a giant turd.
I'm also traditional in how I like my planes to fly. None of that mouse view junk. Or that one plane which required inputting half a million commands just to take off. Give me a throttle and a control stick, maybe some rudder, and I'll be set. Simple as can be without all that junk in the interface. Half of it is pure junk. 'Press T and chat '/2 gurp' to execute so and so maneuver'.... why bother when I can just pull the same stunt with a little action on the arrow keys and throttling down a bit?
Some may complain ban lines interrupt their flight, but go up a hundred meters or so, up above the clouds, and you can go anywhere. With Windlight, it's really beautiful. And if you really really have to absolutely touch the ground, well, find a linden sea or park and swoop in a little bit. By definition, the airplane should be in the air, anyway.
Having to focus your energies on altitude maintenance is relaxing. It's also fun attempting to IM friends while pulling off barrel rolls. I'm not nearly that big of a thrill seeker (SL's lag discourages such things anyway, a little lag and you'll find yourself embedded in someone's house fast). No, I'm quite content to just watch the sun on the water in Windlight while chugging across the landscape, blissful of everything down below. Above your petty squabbles and concerns of intellectual property. Ah, escape.
I love it. But I still wish I could break half a dozen regulations in real life.
Oh well.
447
Thus, I buzz about Second Life in planes of my own making. Half of which are horrible failures. When they do work, Second Life and its sim seams eat the remaining half. It's not terribly hard scripting them as I just tweak the one I got (it was a freebie which is all but unrecognizable from its original form). It's not terribly hard building them either, as in SL I can completely disregard all laws of physics. I could build a flying sofa if I so wanted.
Most of my planes are pretty vanilla. But I like them that way. I'm totally a traditionalist. I'm boring that way. On the other hand, it does cut down on IMs inquiring as to why I am flying a giant turd.
I'm also traditional in how I like my planes to fly. None of that mouse view junk. Or that one plane which required inputting half a million commands just to take off. Give me a throttle and a control stick, maybe some rudder, and I'll be set. Simple as can be without all that junk in the interface. Half of it is pure junk. 'Press T and chat '/2 gurp' to execute so and so maneuver'.... why bother when I can just pull the same stunt with a little action on the arrow keys and throttling down a bit?
Some may complain ban lines interrupt their flight, but go up a hundred meters or so, up above the clouds, and you can go anywhere. With Windlight, it's really beautiful. And if you really really have to absolutely touch the ground, well, find a linden sea or park and swoop in a little bit. By definition, the airplane should be in the air, anyway.
Having to focus your energies on altitude maintenance is relaxing. It's also fun attempting to IM friends while pulling off barrel rolls. I'm not nearly that big of a thrill seeker (SL's lag discourages such things anyway, a little lag and you'll find yourself embedded in someone's house fast). No, I'm quite content to just watch the sun on the water in Windlight while chugging across the landscape, blissful of everything down below. Above your petty squabbles and concerns of intellectual property. Ah, escape.
I love it. But I still wish I could break half a dozen regulations in real life.
Oh well.
447
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Jelly Beans
Jelly beans are a concoction of the devil. Not only does their gooey consistency encourage cavities and dental decay, their small size lures you into a devious slippery slope. One, on its own, tastes quite good. Two is better. But they're small so two can't hurt. A third is eaten on the basis that if two small ones are alright, three can't be much worse. It all goes downhill from there.
Candy corn is kind of similar. It is also a small confection that is irresistible. Thank the Lord that Halloween is the exclusive haunt of this candy. But jelly beans know no boundaries and that's what makes them so dangerous. They're an all year threat. They don't peg onto a single holiday, although they can be partial to Easter. This candy train never hits the last stop.
Someone needs to stop me. I'll just keep eating and eating them. I can't stop myself! Oh god, save me!
Candy corn is kind of similar. It is also a small confection that is irresistible. Thank the Lord that Halloween is the exclusive haunt of this candy. But jelly beans know no boundaries and that's what makes them so dangerous. They're an all year threat. They don't peg onto a single holiday, although they can be partial to Easter. This candy train never hits the last stop.
Someone needs to stop me. I'll just keep eating and eating them. I can't stop myself! Oh god, save me!
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Skeletons!
There's a skeleton in our closet. A very big and very old one.
It's plastic.
It's an old teaching aid that is trotted out dutifully for daily classes. It's fully articulated (which makes it a pain to move, all the joints flop about) and even markings for muscle and tendon attachments. Little yellow plastic strings stick out of the spine to illustrate the central nervous system. It's an old warrior who is fast approaching forty years of duty (thirty six, but who's counting?).
The poor fellow is slowly rotting and wearing away. Years of abuse at the hands of professors attempting to maintain the interest of their students by demonstrating just why the elbow does not bend that way have taken their toll and the screws holding all the joints are starting to give. Recently, an entire arm fell off at the shoulder. This thing does not have much longer to exist.
To be fair, despite its age and the image I have painted above, it still enjoys good health. The problem lies in the screws, they are getting stripped from their sockets. The epoxy resin is giving to the strain of the weight behind the screws. Or so it would seem. I suspect part of it is also attributable to the aforementioned professors who enjoy whipping the arms and legs around. This essentially turns the limbs into a giant screwdriver which if throw in the right direction will unscrew the limb from the rest of it.
So the arm fell off. We're set to receive a brand new one and here's to hoping it lasts as long as its predecessor. In the mean time, we're having fun playing with the detached arm in the usual and completely unoriginal ways. "Can you lend me a hand? chuckle". Shoving it up your sleeve to replace your actual arm. Using it as a pointer. And in general just playing around with it. We're childish that way. Somehow the bony arm holds a magical 'fun' property. Perhaps it harbors some power to keep one endlessly entertained.
Then, one day, something both surprising and terrible occurred. Someone replaced the arm to its rightful owner.
What's frightening and mysterious is that no one seems to have done it. We've asked everyone in the building and no one touched either arm or skeleton the day it magically reattached its own arm. Very few have access to the storage closet in the first place! Some entity came in the dead of night and reacquainted our old friend with his detached limb. Some entity with the power to evade security, gain access to the locked closet, and screw the arm back into place with some implement available to it as we don't keep tools in there either. It's quite a mystery, wouldn't you agree?
Except...
...
...
...
...I know who did it.
It was me.
But would I ever tell anyone? No. In fact, I'll never tell any of them.
Why?
Because what's life without a little mystery to it? Right now, there is unease around the building about who did it. Scientists, dedicated to finding the facts and determining explanations for the world around them, are looking over their shoulders as for once all methods have failed. There's no video surveillance (I have no idea why) and no witnesses. The skeleton could not have possibly reached out and screwed itself back together. It's a true unknown. And yet it's not a menacing unknown but something gentle and benign. It didn't go on a killing spree seeking revenge for those who have used it carelessly in the past. No, it was content with putting itself in proper order.
I think we need something we can't explain. In these days, at least for me, it helps break up our world. The supernatural, although I know it to be false, holds an allure. It doesn't need an explanation, its mere existence is sufficient and the fact that it is forever beyond any and all attempts to come to a reasonable explanation or verification is appealing to me. Today we're slowly working away at how our bodies work, how our universe works, and more. While all these mechanisms are wonderful in themselves, there's the feeling underneath that is a little disappointed at what we've lost by knowing. Some of that realm of endless possible explanations is lost forever. We can't hold onto our ignorance, for better or for worse.
Years ago, no one quite knew (and they still don't to a degree) what lay hidden underneath the ocean's waters. It was populated with all manner of creatures and environments. Dread and fear stood next to idle puzzlement and awe at what mysteries could be down there. With expeditions into the deepest trenches and the discovery of all the life around the deep sea vents (so unusual and proving the old saying that reality can be forever stranger than we can ever imagine) it killed all that mystery dead. We read novels written ages ago which pondered and explored and utilized this mystery and we chuckle to ourselves with some satisfaction at the inaccuracies and what we know now. I, too, do the same but I also feel a little loss that in such novels I can't partake in that wonder in which the author wrote with his or her general ignorance.
Most of my life I have lived almost always pursuing what was out there and why. I think my strange fixation on the supernatural might be due to my scorn for such things in the past (obviously fairies are not real!) and what I lost of that part of my childhood. I feel sometimes like a kid who desperately wants to believe in Santa even though I knew since forever that he is not real. I so desperately want to believe but I know the truth. I can't.
And so I read into such things with a sense of sadness over what I've lost and what I wish I could have experienced. No matter how hard I try, that brain will whisper to me about how bogus that UFO is or how silly the Loch Ness monster is.
And I enjoy sparking that feeling that I wish I could have in others.
Also, it was a fun prank.
It's plastic.
It's an old teaching aid that is trotted out dutifully for daily classes. It's fully articulated (which makes it a pain to move, all the joints flop about) and even markings for muscle and tendon attachments. Little yellow plastic strings stick out of the spine to illustrate the central nervous system. It's an old warrior who is fast approaching forty years of duty (thirty six, but who's counting?).
The poor fellow is slowly rotting and wearing away. Years of abuse at the hands of professors attempting to maintain the interest of their students by demonstrating just why the elbow does not bend that way have taken their toll and the screws holding all the joints are starting to give. Recently, an entire arm fell off at the shoulder. This thing does not have much longer to exist.
To be fair, despite its age and the image I have painted above, it still enjoys good health. The problem lies in the screws, they are getting stripped from their sockets. The epoxy resin is giving to the strain of the weight behind the screws. Or so it would seem. I suspect part of it is also attributable to the aforementioned professors who enjoy whipping the arms and legs around. This essentially turns the limbs into a giant screwdriver which if throw in the right direction will unscrew the limb from the rest of it.
So the arm fell off. We're set to receive a brand new one and here's to hoping it lasts as long as its predecessor. In the mean time, we're having fun playing with the detached arm in the usual and completely unoriginal ways. "Can you lend me a hand? chuckle". Shoving it up your sleeve to replace your actual arm. Using it as a pointer. And in general just playing around with it. We're childish that way. Somehow the bony arm holds a magical 'fun' property. Perhaps it harbors some power to keep one endlessly entertained.
Then, one day, something both surprising and terrible occurred. Someone replaced the arm to its rightful owner.
What's frightening and mysterious is that no one seems to have done it. We've asked everyone in the building and no one touched either arm or skeleton the day it magically reattached its own arm. Very few have access to the storage closet in the first place! Some entity came in the dead of night and reacquainted our old friend with his detached limb. Some entity with the power to evade security, gain access to the locked closet, and screw the arm back into place with some implement available to it as we don't keep tools in there either. It's quite a mystery, wouldn't you agree?
Except...
...
...
...
...I know who did it.
It was me.
But would I ever tell anyone? No. In fact, I'll never tell any of them.
Why?
Because what's life without a little mystery to it? Right now, there is unease around the building about who did it. Scientists, dedicated to finding the facts and determining explanations for the world around them, are looking over their shoulders as for once all methods have failed. There's no video surveillance (I have no idea why) and no witnesses. The skeleton could not have possibly reached out and screwed itself back together. It's a true unknown. And yet it's not a menacing unknown but something gentle and benign. It didn't go on a killing spree seeking revenge for those who have used it carelessly in the past. No, it was content with putting itself in proper order.
I think we need something we can't explain. In these days, at least for me, it helps break up our world. The supernatural, although I know it to be false, holds an allure. It doesn't need an explanation, its mere existence is sufficient and the fact that it is forever beyond any and all attempts to come to a reasonable explanation or verification is appealing to me. Today we're slowly working away at how our bodies work, how our universe works, and more. While all these mechanisms are wonderful in themselves, there's the feeling underneath that is a little disappointed at what we've lost by knowing. Some of that realm of endless possible explanations is lost forever. We can't hold onto our ignorance, for better or for worse.
Years ago, no one quite knew (and they still don't to a degree) what lay hidden underneath the ocean's waters. It was populated with all manner of creatures and environments. Dread and fear stood next to idle puzzlement and awe at what mysteries could be down there. With expeditions into the deepest trenches and the discovery of all the life around the deep sea vents (so unusual and proving the old saying that reality can be forever stranger than we can ever imagine) it killed all that mystery dead. We read novels written ages ago which pondered and explored and utilized this mystery and we chuckle to ourselves with some satisfaction at the inaccuracies and what we know now. I, too, do the same but I also feel a little loss that in such novels I can't partake in that wonder in which the author wrote with his or her general ignorance.
Most of my life I have lived almost always pursuing what was out there and why. I think my strange fixation on the supernatural might be due to my scorn for such things in the past (obviously fairies are not real!) and what I lost of that part of my childhood. I feel sometimes like a kid who desperately wants to believe in Santa even though I knew since forever that he is not real. I so desperately want to believe but I know the truth. I can't.
And so I read into such things with a sense of sadness over what I've lost and what I wish I could have experienced. No matter how hard I try, that brain will whisper to me about how bogus that UFO is or how silly the Loch Ness monster is.
And I enjoy sparking that feeling that I wish I could have in others.
Also, it was a fun prank.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
On Memory
The other day, someone (never mind who) was apologising for their infrequent appearances in Second Life. It was alright, however, as they did not think that anyone in particular would notice or care if they disappeared.
I promptly called bullshit on this.
Of course people would notice if you're gone! Unless you were a hermit, chances are you have some friends. And chances are those friends are, whether you know so or not, attuned to your comings and goings. And chances are that said friends would be saddened at your disappearance. Even a casual acquaintance would shed a tear. OK, that's a little dramatic.
But to casually say no one notices, with the implication that no one cares, is inherently stupid. I personally found it insulting as I am one of those acquaintances! And I certainly do care! I am also not alone, because I'm certain I'm not your only friend. Your statement is untrue and thus flawed.
So there. Neener Neener!
The other day, the Lindens unveiled the Memorial Park, at which you can remember those who have gone silent or died. There's small monuments for Kendra, Ginny, and Sojouner as well as a small garden for the rest of us faceless anonymous alts. Narrow woodland paths and candle lit vigils also dot the island.
Have you ever wandered a graveyard and wondered who the names were on the tombstones? I never knew Kendra, Ginny, or Sojouner. Never even heard of them until they died. All I have are their low prim graves and the same epitaph accompanying it. No more and no less.
Those are just three of the hundreds who come and go, and many more thousands if you could those who join up and mysteriously go AFK forever.
Such is life.
I promptly called bullshit on this.
Of course people would notice if you're gone! Unless you were a hermit, chances are you have some friends. And chances are those friends are, whether you know so or not, attuned to your comings and goings. And chances are that said friends would be saddened at your disappearance. Even a casual acquaintance would shed a tear. OK, that's a little dramatic.
But to casually say no one notices, with the implication that no one cares, is inherently stupid. I personally found it insulting as I am one of those acquaintances! And I certainly do care! I am also not alone, because I'm certain I'm not your only friend. Your statement is untrue and thus flawed.
So there. Neener Neener!
The other day, the Lindens unveiled the Memorial Park, at which you can remember those who have gone silent or died. There's small monuments for Kendra, Ginny, and Sojouner as well as a small garden for the rest of us faceless anonymous alts. Narrow woodland paths and candle lit vigils also dot the island.
Have you ever wandered a graveyard and wondered who the names were on the tombstones? I never knew Kendra, Ginny, or Sojouner. Never even heard of them until they died. All I have are their low prim graves and the same epitaph accompanying it. No more and no less.
Those are just three of the hundreds who come and go, and many more thousands if you could those who join up and mysteriously go AFK forever.
Such is life.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
On Hobbies and Indulgences
What do I do when I'm not playing around in Second Life?
Well! I'm glad you didn't ask. For giggles, I'll throw in some other random junk.
I enjoy mopping. There's something cathartic about running it up and down the floor. Plus, when you're done there's a refreshing feel of cleansed flooring. It's a wonderful smell. It is being reborn. And free of skid marks and dirt. And more hygienic. Hard work but rewarding.
I take hideous amounts of time during any given meal. It's not that I eat a lot, but I believe that one should take the time to enjoy the flavor, the smell, the environment, and company. After a long day of running around the rat maze, I love to sit down with friends and family and others I tolerate. The refreshing break is something I love to squeeze in whenever possible, from lunch to dinner to sometimes breakfast (I am perpetually late so I almost never have a 'true' breakfast).
It is saddening to think that all too often people shovel things down like hog slop. The chefs (or whoever is preparing the food) usually take the time and care to ensure that everything is cooked and prepared properly and in a wonderful fashion. We walk in, and it's wam bam and gone. It seems that, at least among the people I hang out with, meals are nothing more than a twenty minute period during which simple hunger is satisfied with no interaction. In other words, just a means to an ends or an obstacle eating up potential free time.
I find mechanical drafting utterly fascinating. AutoCAD is out there and steamlines many things but taking a straightedge and a pencil and making exacting and detailed plans and images of almost everything. The last time I took a course in it was freshman year and unfortunately I've never had the time to go further. What a shame. I can't draw much otherwise freehandedly, and I've never understood why. Perplexing.
Actually, I can doodle a fairly disturbing picture of a human arm boiling away as it touches an extremely hot source. A visit to a psychiatrist is probably in order.
I'd have loved to be a pilot. I love things that fly. Birds, planes, rockets, shit, pigs. Just drifting across the sky and watching everything and everyone race around on the ground. Or, if on a rocket, watching everyone on the hemisphere you can observe. And of course, zipping about in three dimensions. I'm sure this particular fascination has actually been brought up several times, so this isn't exactly news.
For many many multitudes of reasons, the possibility of me earning a pilot's license is on par with the possibility of Jesus coming down from heaven and declaring He loves Slim Jims. And I lack the patience to invest and fly model airplanes and such. I do have a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator although I am certain it is not normal to fly a Cessna with a keyboard. If so, I am so qualified.
I like honeydews and other melons. You cannot deny they are tasty.
Once I tried to bake bread. It came out horrible. Bakers have my respect.
When the weather is nice and clear, I take frequent walks around anywhere. Looking around and witnessing the surroundings when you're not shuttling between point A and B in a car or bus. Probably more than a bit foolhardy on my part, but it's a fascinating experience. Even better when you get friends to tag along. You might even learn a few things about them.
Like one who told me in hushed whispers that we had to be careful around the 'urban people' while walking from the El to the local Pepboys for some thing or another that has escaped my mind. 'Urban people'? That label only applies to 1.4 million people in this city alone. Let's clear the air and admit what you really meant: African Americans.
The other conclusion is ridiculous, that all urban people are scary and should be treated with caution. I find it ridiculous since I am one of those urban people having been born and breed here. But I guess I was the special exception. Not to suggest that caution should be thrown to the wind, but to feel threatened on Market Street, one of the main thoroughfares in the city, is ridiculous and the chances of anything significant happening are only slighter higher than my chances at being a pilot. Probably the same chances as getting victimized in Times Square. That's a topic for another day.
I can't think of anything else off the top of the head. So I think I will let this topic rest for a while. Enjoy.
Well! I'm glad you didn't ask. For giggles, I'll throw in some other random junk.
I enjoy mopping. There's something cathartic about running it up and down the floor. Plus, when you're done there's a refreshing feel of cleansed flooring. It's a wonderful smell. It is being reborn. And free of skid marks and dirt. And more hygienic. Hard work but rewarding.
I take hideous amounts of time during any given meal. It's not that I eat a lot, but I believe that one should take the time to enjoy the flavor, the smell, the environment, and company. After a long day of running around the rat maze, I love to sit down with friends and family and others I tolerate. The refreshing break is something I love to squeeze in whenever possible, from lunch to dinner to sometimes breakfast (I am perpetually late so I almost never have a 'true' breakfast).
It is saddening to think that all too often people shovel things down like hog slop. The chefs (or whoever is preparing the food) usually take the time and care to ensure that everything is cooked and prepared properly and in a wonderful fashion. We walk in, and it's wam bam and gone. It seems that, at least among the people I hang out with, meals are nothing more than a twenty minute period during which simple hunger is satisfied with no interaction. In other words, just a means to an ends or an obstacle eating up potential free time.
I find mechanical drafting utterly fascinating. AutoCAD is out there and steamlines many things but taking a straightedge and a pencil and making exacting and detailed plans and images of almost everything. The last time I took a course in it was freshman year and unfortunately I've never had the time to go further. What a shame. I can't draw much otherwise freehandedly, and I've never understood why. Perplexing.
Actually, I can doodle a fairly disturbing picture of a human arm boiling away as it touches an extremely hot source. A visit to a psychiatrist is probably in order.
I'd have loved to be a pilot. I love things that fly. Birds, planes, rockets, shit, pigs. Just drifting across the sky and watching everything and everyone race around on the ground. Or, if on a rocket, watching everyone on the hemisphere you can observe. And of course, zipping about in three dimensions. I'm sure this particular fascination has actually been brought up several times, so this isn't exactly news.
For many many multitudes of reasons, the possibility of me earning a pilot's license is on par with the possibility of Jesus coming down from heaven and declaring He loves Slim Jims. And I lack the patience to invest and fly model airplanes and such. I do have a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator although I am certain it is not normal to fly a Cessna with a keyboard. If so, I am so qualified.
I like honeydews and other melons. You cannot deny they are tasty.
Once I tried to bake bread. It came out horrible. Bakers have my respect.
When the weather is nice and clear, I take frequent walks around anywhere. Looking around and witnessing the surroundings when you're not shuttling between point A and B in a car or bus. Probably more than a bit foolhardy on my part, but it's a fascinating experience. Even better when you get friends to tag along. You might even learn a few things about them.
Like one who told me in hushed whispers that we had to be careful around the 'urban people' while walking from the El to the local Pepboys for some thing or another that has escaped my mind. 'Urban people'? That label only applies to 1.4 million people in this city alone. Let's clear the air and admit what you really meant: African Americans.
The other conclusion is ridiculous, that all urban people are scary and should be treated with caution. I find it ridiculous since I am one of those urban people having been born and breed here. But I guess I was the special exception. Not to suggest that caution should be thrown to the wind, but to feel threatened on Market Street, one of the main thoroughfares in the city, is ridiculous and the chances of anything significant happening are only slighter higher than my chances at being a pilot. Probably the same chances as getting victimized in Times Square. That's a topic for another day.
I can't think of anything else off the top of the head. So I think I will let this topic rest for a while. Enjoy.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
On Statistics
I recently put in a tracker out of boredom and because I was tired of estimating how many people were visiting. Also, I wanted to thumb it at those who insist I get a lot of eyeballs visiting this site. And I must say, I was surprised. I have calculated that there are a total of six or seven of you out there who regularly come to read me. Thank you, thank you.
I also got a fun chance to see what the other one-shot wonders were searching for when they stumbled onto me. This list is at once amusing and disturbing:
1) Second Life beginner island
2) "second life" astronomy stars viewer
3) sl "script limits"
4) Nova Albion Infohub
5) bradford reagent ldh
6) adult free pronvideo
7) Anna Nalin, PA
8) second life zeppelin -led -lez
9) how to make bot using pluto
10) besteality stories
11) copybot torley
12) pluto their ailens
Adult free porn? Besteality stories? Their ailens? Who in Nunchuck's Good Green Grid is searching for "Anna Nalin" in Pennsylvania? I have no idea why anyone is trying to connect Torley with Copybot or how to make one. The stupider idea would be someone trying to copybot Torley, as if he wouldn't notice. I'm pretty sure the 'bradford reagent' is due to me copying a lab report in here somewhere in a drunken stupor one night. That's pretty redundant since I usually post in a drunken stupor.
In terms of the most visited page, the 'Great Evils' posts seem to draw the most attention. Maybe I should do more of those. There's also someone who is continually accessing the archives for October 08 and is most certainly a bot. Attention Bot: there is nothing interesting there. Sorry. At least, I think so. I'm not going to dig through the hundred pages or so in my archives. And on that tangeant, I'm not going to count them either, probably in the two hundred range.
Finally, just to freak out the bot, I'm going to insert the following phrases:
Pigeons diarrhea Samsung Pringles number two five four three two one mirado warrior Troll Ink Printer AIDS thumbnail anal coronal totally patent patient Oregon Trail drill The Great Escape Emergency 911 silverware desire Girl Scout Cookies California Here I Come Terrorist machine gun curve cubane predebtor rojak declassification jitter Federalized Athwart Dammit Slily Lily Lillee Garment Roadrunner Comcast lust Sydney Dyspareunia Family Friendly Fun
And this is certainly going to be fun!
I also got a fun chance to see what the other one-shot wonders were searching for when they stumbled onto me. This list is at once amusing and disturbing:
1) Second Life beginner island
2) "second life" astronomy stars viewer
3) sl "script limits"
4) Nova Albion Infohub
5) bradford reagent ldh
6) adult free pronvideo
7) Anna Nalin, PA
8) second life zeppelin -led -lez
9) how to make bot using pluto
10) besteality stories
11) copybot torley
12) pluto their ailens
Adult free porn? Besteality stories? Their ailens? Who in Nunchuck's Good Green Grid is searching for "Anna Nalin" in Pennsylvania? I have no idea why anyone is trying to connect Torley with Copybot or how to make one. The stupider idea would be someone trying to copybot Torley, as if he wouldn't notice. I'm pretty sure the 'bradford reagent' is due to me copying a lab report in here somewhere in a drunken stupor one night. That's pretty redundant since I usually post in a drunken stupor.
In terms of the most visited page, the 'Great Evils' posts seem to draw the most attention. Maybe I should do more of those. There's also someone who is continually accessing the archives for October 08 and is most certainly a bot. Attention Bot: there is nothing interesting there. Sorry. At least, I think so. I'm not going to dig through the hundred pages or so in my archives. And on that tangeant, I'm not going to count them either, probably in the two hundred range.
Finally, just to freak out the bot, I'm going to insert the following phrases:
Pigeons diarrhea Samsung Pringles number two five four three two one mirado warrior Troll Ink Printer AIDS thumbnail anal coronal totally patent patient Oregon Trail drill The Great Escape Emergency 911 silverware desire Girl Scout Cookies California Here I Come Terrorist machine gun curve cubane predebtor rojak declassification jitter Federalized Athwart Dammit Slily Lily Lillee Garment Roadrunner Comcast lust Sydney Dyspareunia Family Friendly Fun
And this is certainly going to be fun!
Friday, April 10, 2009
On Short Hair
Today (or more accurately right now) I let my (Second Life) hair down. I had a run of short hairstyles that I bought on a whim on my birthday and as I hadn't changed my appearance for some time, I decided the time was ripe for a hairdo to be done! Of course, unless you hung out with me a lot in Second Life, you probably didn't notice and this post isn't going to make a lot of sense. Oops.
In any event, no one seemed to notice too much. I think Madison made a comment, but it was only because I was changing it directly in front of her. Am I an attention seeking narcissist? Oh Yea! I was kind of sad that no one said anything to feed my insatiable appetite. I suppose no one really takes a good look at each other to notice. "Oh, she's got hair, nothing new. Just like every other human being I have met."
One thing that did cause quite a start among everyone was my experimentation with different colors. 'Dying' my hair was very entertaining. People may not notice the style but they certainly notice the shade! Which is understandable as you don't need to alt-zoom into my follicles to notice, right?
I first tried it jet black, and was asked if I was going 'emo'. When I said no, then I was obviously 'goth' it seems. The concept of dark black hair was too much and there must have been some deep meaning into it! I tried brunette next and no one seemed to mind that much. Aside from the 'you changed your hair!' comment after the fact. I went through about seven shades of that, even a few with streaks (one made me look like I was on fire literally with the orange and red highlights), and the reaction was mostly 'blah'.
White was met with 'Hey Grandma' and I am way too young for that so that was quickly ditched (My friend Winter, though, does not seem to mind it as much. Then again, Winter's a ghost and doesn't care much for the earthly plane as it is). And I wasn't about to try any sorts of redheads because I just have this aversion to it. At one point, almost all my friends were fiery and I fear blending in. Except when something nasty (like a rabid dog or a neurologist or a loan collector) comes and then I wish I could blend into the wall. They'll never take me alive.
I think next time I'll try truly ridiculous styles and colors. Gigantic purple pigtails, anyone? How about ankle length blue hair with dotted navy streaks? An Afro? I'll keep you guys updated if and when I do.
In any event, no one seemed to notice too much. I think Madison made a comment, but it was only because I was changing it directly in front of her. Am I an attention seeking narcissist? Oh Yea! I was kind of sad that no one said anything to feed my insatiable appetite. I suppose no one really takes a good look at each other to notice. "Oh, she's got hair, nothing new. Just like every other human being I have met."
One thing that did cause quite a start among everyone was my experimentation with different colors. 'Dying' my hair was very entertaining. People may not notice the style but they certainly notice the shade! Which is understandable as you don't need to alt-zoom into my follicles to notice, right?
I first tried it jet black, and was asked if I was going 'emo'. When I said no, then I was obviously 'goth' it seems. The concept of dark black hair was too much and there must have been some deep meaning into it! I tried brunette next and no one seemed to mind that much. Aside from the 'you changed your hair!' comment after the fact. I went through about seven shades of that, even a few with streaks (one made me look like I was on fire literally with the orange and red highlights), and the reaction was mostly 'blah'.
White was met with 'Hey Grandma' and I am way too young for that so that was quickly ditched (My friend Winter, though, does not seem to mind it as much. Then again, Winter's a ghost and doesn't care much for the earthly plane as it is). And I wasn't about to try any sorts of redheads because I just have this aversion to it. At one point, almost all my friends were fiery and I fear blending in. Except when something nasty (like a rabid dog or a neurologist or a loan collector) comes and then I wish I could blend into the wall. They'll never take me alive.
I think next time I'll try truly ridiculous styles and colors. Gigantic purple pigtails, anyone? How about ankle length blue hair with dotted navy streaks? An Afro? I'll keep you guys updated if and when I do.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
-D
I walk with a hasty pace down 35th. My purse is clutched deep against my side but my gut is too preoccupied with other things than to whine with pain. Why had I delayed and squandered time, I thought. What costly absentmindedness! I pour my concentration into the long path ahead.
The dim warm sodium lights did little to illuminate the path, accentuating instead the night. I scurry between them, each an island such as they are distantly spaced. Along my path imposing rows surround and encase me. Their windows betray not a flicker of a candle. They are bottled up and against the night but some are simply empty and some are simply empty lots. All loom from the depths and just as quickly return to it.
Down the scarred sidewalk I hurry. Each step is one closer to home. The sounds of insects and birds and people are absent but not for lack of notice. I pull my purse tighter ruining the smooth surface with my nails digging deep into it. The contents are surely just as ruined. But that does not matter nor is it noticed now. Perhaps later.
The sound of a distant rumbling resonate through the ground. Just the trains, I thought with a startle, and I am rewarded with the accompanying squeaks and protests of brakes and electric lines far off. The wish of a bus line here to accompany it crosses the mind. It's a dream unfortunately denied.
The sound of footsteps catch my attention, behind me, then muffled and distant as its owner, invisible in the night, wanders off down a different block, no longer behind me. A rustle alerts me as a harmless bag drifts across the road kicking up trash along the way. More rustling as the wind picks up and blows it all around playfully.
Snapping attention upwards from that sudden distraction, a white light emanating from one lot ahead brightens the path. I feel pulled towards it like a moth spiraling slowly to the flame. I wondered, what could be there? Why such an attraction at such a time? I slowly approached the source apprehensively, keeping a vigilant eye upon the neighborhood.
A sole floodlight is keeping watch over this particular residential vacancy. A silhouette stands against it. The broad tall figure casts a lone long shadow which reaches towards me. I am transfixed by the scene. The surroundings dissolve around me, my focus drawn solely on this man.
And then he turns to me:
The dim warm sodium lights did little to illuminate the path, accentuating instead the night. I scurry between them, each an island such as they are distantly spaced. Along my path imposing rows surround and encase me. Their windows betray not a flicker of a candle. They are bottled up and against the night but some are simply empty and some are simply empty lots. All loom from the depths and just as quickly return to it.
Down the scarred sidewalk I hurry. Each step is one closer to home. The sounds of insects and birds and people are absent but not for lack of notice. I pull my purse tighter ruining the smooth surface with my nails digging deep into it. The contents are surely just as ruined. But that does not matter nor is it noticed now. Perhaps later.
The sound of a distant rumbling resonate through the ground. Just the trains, I thought with a startle, and I am rewarded with the accompanying squeaks and protests of brakes and electric lines far off. The wish of a bus line here to accompany it crosses the mind. It's a dream unfortunately denied.
The sound of footsteps catch my attention, behind me, then muffled and distant as its owner, invisible in the night, wanders off down a different block, no longer behind me. A rustle alerts me as a harmless bag drifts across the road kicking up trash along the way. More rustling as the wind picks up and blows it all around playfully.
Snapping attention upwards from that sudden distraction, a white light emanating from one lot ahead brightens the path. I feel pulled towards it like a moth spiraling slowly to the flame. I wondered, what could be there? Why such an attraction at such a time? I slowly approached the source apprehensively, keeping a vigilant eye upon the neighborhood.
A sole floodlight is keeping watch over this particular residential vacancy. A silhouette stands against it. The broad tall figure casts a lone long shadow which reaches towards me. I am transfixed by the scene. The surroundings dissolve around me, my focus drawn solely on this man.
And then he turns to me:
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