Because everyone seems to be doing it….

Am I not handsome?

(And yes, you could undistort that.)

I’ll be mostly incommunicado for about four days. I might pick up a connection in the middle of the journey, but who knows?

I’ll leave you with this image of a little something I’ve been working on….

There’s something wonderful about making an object that’s the size of a house, even if it’s not real, and then shrinking it down to the size of your hand.

I’m most proud of the vacuum tubes.

Most days I fool myself.

“Just the email.”

Hah.

Apparently Xanga was kindasorta broken for anonymous comments. John, intrepid XangaGod, has sent some poor soul to fix it.

So if you had anything to say but didn’t because the site was broken…. Sooooooon. Very soon.

Bouyed by my relative success at building a wreath out of torii, I decided to dive into another project I’ve been entertaining. Here’s the beginning of it:

It’s a giant vacuum tube standing in for the traditional fireplace, and NPIRL sofa, at my tiny plot in Ville Spatiale. Ville Spatiale is an ultra-modernist place, designed to mimic the ideas of a real life architect named Yona Friedman. A wider view:

The Ville Spatiale is utterly confusing, being devoid of anything resembling normal or traditional architectural cues. There are no doors or walls, you can fall through the floor easily… It really makes no sense until you spend a bunch of time there. Which means that it still doesn’t make that much sense to me. Part of the experiment is that what’s there changes to suit whatever culture emerges, rather than the other way around. This anarchic nature has its charm, but I just wish the place weren’t so… white.

I ended up with a plot there by showing up for an art exhibit. Before I knew it, the guy who runs the place offered me a spot. And now there’s a glowing vacuum tube.

Zeinrich helpfully points to this article from CNN about CNN’s new news hub. Guess what, CNN? Reuters (and a bunch of others) beat you to it.

I don’t have a journalism degree, but maybe I should work as a reporter, covering the beat of Second Life. W00t.

Speaking of which….

I met Tuna Oddfellow. He’s the nicest guy in the world. Very generous. He’s a real SL entrepreneur who isn’t doing poorly in the LindenBux category. Magic shows, parties, and SL wedding planner. Yes, there are SL wedding planners, if you can wrap your head around that. I had the opportunity to talk to him about it, and he was very clear that he took SL as seriously as his RL work, and valued his SL work accordingly.

He’s hosting a party tonight at 9PST, in fact, so log in and IM me for a teleport.

So we’ve got this nominee for Attorney General, Mukasey. He has waffled before his confirmation committee on whether ‘waterboarding’ is torture or not. Personally, I think there are more interesting issues on which to hang the guy, but we’re choosing torture, apparently.

Except no one hung him. He was approved for the job.

But you know who didn’t vote?

Wait, wait… Let me back up a second here.

The reason we’re discussing whether ‘waterboarding’ (AKA ‘partial drowning technique’) is or isn’t torture by definition is because it’s very clear that the Bush administration *has used* this torture method. But the Bush administration seeks to justify itself by defining this form of torture as something other than torture. OK?

So the Bush administration wants to be able to torture people, and the Congress (in the Senate) just gave BushCo yet another pass on this issue by approving Mukasey. Are we clear here? Bush -> torture.

If you’re like me, you wonder whether the President of the US should have the ability to torture people. You might also wonder whether the President of the US might start torturing US citizens. And it turns out that Bush has done so. Jose Padilla was kept for three years in disorienting solitary confinement, where he was deprived of sleep, deprived of sensory input, deprived of human companionship, and deprived of regular meals. For three years. Is that torture? The Bush administration wants to argue that it isn’t. I would argue that the Bush administration is full of shit.

I would argue that the US government, on the orders of the White House, tortured a US citizen. I think they did it just to see if anyone would really care, and apparently no one does. Some do, of course. I do. A few others do, enough to get Padilla charged with an actual crime, rather than just rotting away in a super-high-tech dungeon.

But I digress. The issue here is Presidential power, and Presidential latitude. I explored this issue in a previous entry. In that entry, I argued basically that it’s safe to assume a President will abuse his or her power if he or she can get away with it. It’s just a given. And that’s how our Constitution is written: A system of checks and balances is supposed to protect us from the excesses of government. So it’s Congress’ job to restrain the President (so to speak).

But the Senate just handed Bush a fresh new Attorney General who will play nice and lead the DoJ against Democrats and in favor of Republicans, and who won’t prosecute anyone for ‘waterboarding.’ He said so. The Senate did this.

And you know which Senators didn’t vote on this issue? The Democratic party Presidential hopefuls. Let us name them:

On the nomination of Michael Mukasey to be Attorney General of the United States:

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY: did not vote.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill: did not vote.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn: did not vote.
Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del: did not vote.

I’m going to spell this out so there’s no need for anyone to catch my drift: It is clear to me that these candidates wish to maintain the possibility of torturing people, perhaps even US citizens. Their non-votes could be explained politically, as inside baseball and so forth. But it’s much easier, from a defending-the-citizenry-from-the-tyrrany-of-government standpoint to just assume that these politicians want to be able to torture.

Maybe even US citizens.

I set a challenge for myself: Build something for the Dreams Island building contest.

(I gaze blankly into the hypnotic wreath…)

The rules are that every primitive has to be a torus, with a 50 prim limit. I used 45 for the wreath, and three for the display, which you can only see a bit of here.

I surpised myself by doing it in an hour and a half, with a little tweaking later to make it glow at night.

The actual competition will be underway while I’m traveling, so who knows how well I will do.

Dreams Island is a really interesting place. I mean, the place itself isn’t that interesting, but the concept is very, very cool. It turns out that a bunch of stroke survivors built it as a sort of occupational therapy place. They teach building classes and run contests. That is, recent stroke survivors, who might not be able to walk or even move their face, are flying around learning and teaching how to build things. They also have support group type meetings, specifically one for Asperger’s Syndrome people, and another for parents/caregivers and educators. In addition to the huge sandbox.

So entering the contest is basically a way to give L$25 to support the island. I might see about selling wreaths as a fundraiser, too. Just like the old high school fundraisers. (Note that L$25 is about US$0.10.)

“Voila le conversation dans la parc!” always cracks me up.

Second Life uses a scripting language called Linden Scripting Language, or LSL. Some links I’ve found to help learn LSL:

The official LSL wiki. Purely documentary; confusion for newbies.

LSL Wiki. Not the official one, but the useful one. Includes the excellent script library.

Kan-Ed’s tutorial page. This is a very good introduction from the standpoint of doing things in LSL, rather than theory. If you have a passing familiarity with any programming language, a good place to start. I also like that the Kansas Board of Regents has implemented a bunch of distance learning curriculum and is teaching students to script objects in Second Life.

Updated as I find stuff.