Continuing the evolution of the avatar, here is the Girl Dale of
Independence Day 2007, with sparkler and patriotic flag-texture
head-particle, standing outside the shack that I'm renting in the
PIER sim (thought it would be fun to have a roof over my head for a bit).
Have to get a good current snapshot of that boring boy AV sometime too.
*8)
(I also put up a red-white-and-blue version of
the
New Year's fireworks over my shack, just for fun.
No complaints from the neighbors!)
Speaking of red, white, and blue, I'm currently beswoggled with
respect to who might be President of the United States of America next.
The current leading contenders appear to be:
- a woman
(which would be cool, but I would tend to bet that the
USAian electorate isn't ready to do that yet),
- a black man
(which would be cool, but I would tend to bet that the
USAian electorate isn't ready to do that yet),
- a Mormon
(about which I have no opinion in general, but which apparently a
significant number of voters consider not only the wrong religion,
but an actual heresy), and
- a former mayor of New York City (and last time I looked the
country as a whole didn't feel too comfortable being represented
by NYC).
(The fourth of those is perhaps sort of mild compared to the first three;
I expect that for completeness Rudy will shortly announce that he's
a Gay American.)
So it looks like I'll be surprised whatever happens: either someone
besides one of those four will win, which would be surprising, or one
of those four will win, which would be surprising.
NPR this morning had an interview with some very well-spoken guy who
leads a group that is very concerned about "securing the borders".
He obviously loved this phrase, and I found it annoyingly
disingenuous.
Of course everyone wants to secure the borders; no invading armies should
be able to march in, and given recent events no lunatics with explosives
strapped around their waists should be able to get in either.
But the measures that this guy and his friends advocate are actually
aimed at keeping out people who want to come in and earn a living
without filling out the proper forms; it's not clear to me that
most people are all that worried about this sense of
"securing the borders".
Let's visit our ideal collectivist and libertarian states, which we've
neglected for some number of months or years, and see what they do
about Immigration, legal and illegal and all.
In our ideal collectivist state, the local Committee knows who lives
where and who works where, so no illegal workers are going to sneak in.
Any that are found are escorted to the border, or imprisoned, or
whatever.
Anyone from some other place that wants to join the collective can
fill out the forms and apply, and if (and only if) the computer models and so on
decide that having them would be better than not having them,
they are brought in and given a place to live and a job to do.
Simple!
In our ideal libertarian state, there are of course no government social programs
to worry about freeloaders on, so that's not an argument against free
immigration.
The state does provide some very basic police function (probably, heh heh);
should it be possible to get the protection of that police function by
simply moving into the appropriate area?
This is okay as long as moving into that area also causes you to
have to pay your proportionate share of the costs of the minimal
government.
Since I don't think we've quite figured out how that works,
we can just blithely assume that it does.
So probably there is no problem with illegal immigration (there being
no immigration laws), and legal immigration is just fine too (as long
as the immigrants, like everyone else, pay their contract surcharges
or whatever it is that pays for the police force).
As usual, that was pretty easy.
*8)
Working with nonexistant ideal systems is
so much easier than working with reality.
(And here we've come full circle back to Second Life and WoW (in which,
you'll be happy to hear, lil Spennix is now 25th level, well on her
way to 26th).)
So I was thinking of posting a big backdated entry about last week, in the
tradition of previous
Anniversary issues, but the hitch
is that, although we did go to Maine for a week an' eat Lobster an' all,
it's too early in the year to say Happy Anniversary yet.
So I'll just leave out the backdated entry, and you can imagine me sleeping in, eating
lobster, and so on, without an official marker in place to make it official.
*8)
For various logistic and psychological reasons, it was just the four of us
this year, no relatives.
We had a very nice house more or less right on Boothbay Harbor, surrounded on three
sides by the parking lot of the
Lobster Dock Restaurant, which is a v nice seafood place.
This had the great advantage that we could eat there really conveniently
(including phoning them up and having our takeout hand-delivered).
It had the at least minor disadvantage of being surrounded on three sides by
parking lot, with the obvious implications about noise, lack of nearby grass
an' trees on those sides (the fourth side has a teeny lawn and then the street),
and so on.
But all in all it was nice.
Mostly we just slept in, ate ice cream, and were lazy.
The little daughter and I went and visited Bowdoin (pronounced "boh-dn") College
one of the days.
That was extremely cool; I wouldn't at all mind her going there, and I think
she was positively impressed too.
We'll be (somehow!) visiting more colleges this summer, so she gets a good
idea of what's out there.
Me and the kids also went to Popham Beach one day (chilly but fun; M isn't
really a Beach Person, so she stayed back in town), and one morning I snuck
out early and took the Balmy Days harbor tour out to Squirrel Island and back
on the Novelty, because I had to get out on the water somehow at
least once.
(The other year we went all the way out to Monhegan Island on the all-day trip;
I thought that was great then but this year we were too lazy.)
Totally by accident we were there for Windjammer Days, when some extra ships,
some with big impressive sails and some with big impressive
guided
missles, come and hang out in the harbor, and there are various
raffles and musical groups and sales and craft fairs and stuff.
And on I forget exactly which night there were also fireworks
over the Bay, which was especially fun because we could sit on the upstairs
balcony of the rental house and have a great view of them.
Spent a bit of time in Second Life while up there, mostly just lolling
about.
Left the World of Warcraft computer at home (it not being very portable),
so was eager to get back to monster-battling when we got back yesterday.
*8) Spennix is about halfway between level 24
and 25; woot!
This summer's Maine trip was more about pleasant lethargy than about
deep contemplation or listening to the waves at midnight (if one were to
read back over the last eight (eight?) years of these Maine entries that
might well turn out to be a trend).
Need to do more of that "deep contemplation and listening to the
waves at midnight" stuff...
On taking pictures in WoW, reader Ben writes:
You can turn off UI artifacts with the command ALT+z. This is
extremely handy for taking screen shots
The "overexposed" effect you're seeing is what World of Warcraft calls
Main Menu -> Video Options -> Full Screen Glow. The amount of "glow" you
get in the game is dependent on where in the game world you are. Where
the game designers wanted an enchanted setting they cranked up the glow
(like in the elven city of Darnassus your picture is from), and where
they wanted it to seem dark and dreary they turned it down (like the
undead starting land of Tirisfal Glades).
Given the number of WoW players out there, odds are someone has already
given you this information, but you never know.
You were the first! *8) tyvm.
I finished and wrote about a book while up in Maine:
City at
World's End.
Fun, comfortable.
(I also bought or otherwise acquired more books than I should have:
bought five for ten cents each at the Boothbay Harbor Library Used Books
barn, and took two free ones at Travelers on the way back.)
Steve points out a rather clueless piece
in which poor David Gelernter notices that it's hard to see how a computer wired in a
certain way could have consciousness, while apparently overlooking the face that it's
just as hard to see how a bunch of neurons wired in a certain way could (and thus
spends alot of words to no real purpose).
A fun demo of what
Second Life was like a Long Time Ago.
And speaking of Steve and SL, Steve points out this
slideshow
of real people and their avatars in various games including Second Life.
From the little daughter,
The Impossible Quiz.
Very silly, fun, potentially addictive.
(I'm currently on the "End of the World" one; question fifty-something I think.)
Note that there is at least one youtube video of someone solving it; whee!
And finally we note with pleasure the at least momentary return of
spam poetry to our inbox; these subject lines arrived in just this order:
Largely upon incident it
Favorably is there
At his daily labor he
in the history
A moment of fury
In the history, a moment of fury.
