Madelaine McMasters

cinda Hoodoo wrote: My grandmother was one of the most lovely women I've ever known, she had a pen pal for decades, another lovely lady, she'd never met, overseas in England. How this came about was this English lady, was one of the children from London that were sent to the country sides by train to avoid the city bombings during the war. They corresponded by cursive all the rest of their lives. There were times my grandmother had incessant insomnia, and the only thing that seemed to relax her was a fresh page of stationary, a good pen, and her pen pal. Pages of cursive across decades of time, celebrations, sadness, the baring of souls in their darkest hours. Upon her death I found the boxes of letters, neatly kept by year, and when i wrote the pen pal of my grandmothers passing and received the most beautiful letter back. The last sentences summed up their entire experience: "My sadness at your grandmothers parting although selfish, means the days of the post man waiving the envelope with your grandmothers strongly elegant handwriting has come full circle. Once I was alone and frightened in a dark and depressing world, and those envelopes once opened held the sunshine of her life in line after line of curling, daring handwriting that made me strong in ways I never knew possible." So perhaps there is more to cursive than we imagine, it may be part of our character that perhaps would be missed otherwise. What a poignant story, Cinda. I'm glad you have that record of their relationship. I think cursive is exactly what we imagine, isn't it? I have a few of my Dad's handwritten daily budgets from WWII, in which I get a sense of what a weekend shore leave in Pearl Harbor was like, by seeing what he'd purchased. A movie ticket, a box of popcorn, a chocolate malted, a hot dog and a magazine. I don't recall the total for that Saturday, but it was under a dollar. I love those little budgets. I Googled "telegram love letter" and found this image... No cursive, not even a direct message, just the quote delivered through the window to the Western Union clerk. But the power of the message is there... The Prodigal Son is coming home from the War -(STOP)- There is something special about holding a message in your hand, and it's even more special if it was once held in the hand of the one who sent it. But ultimately, it's the story that moves us, whether written, printed or spoken. Modern technology now makes possible the recording and widespread dissemination of stories from nearly everyone on Earth, in a way we never dreamed of. We define ourselves by the stories we tell. Now may be the best time in human history for the telling of stories. This has reminded me of the Fukushima families who lost everything in the tsunami, finding perhaps nothing but a tattered family photo in the debris. There is a volunteer group that is still painstakingly restoring those photos to the delight of the displaced families. We're heading into a future where such losses can be avoided by storing your digital treasures in the cloud. But... We could have a whole 'nother thread about the ephemeral nature of digital storage.

Dillon Levenque wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: I'd probably be kicked out of the board room before I could vote, which is more satisfying to me than abstaining. ;-) The discussion has moved on, forgive the retrogression. Probably? That would indicate there's some possibility you'd not be kicked out. I think you overstated your chances. For the record, I actually was briefly part of a local school 'advisory committee'. They'd asked for volunteers from the community to join professional educators and I applied and was accepted. I only attended one meeting. I never got invited back. Funny you should mention abstaining. The first version of my sentence was written "...I'd not vote to remove cursive..". I changed it to "...I'd vote not to remove cursive..." before I posted. I know you'll agree: abstention is for weenies.;-) It's that damned illusory superiority again, I can't help myself. Although I'm inclined to agree that abstention is for weenies, I think that's what I'm most often accused of doing... not taking sides. Mom and Dad were also invited to be on the school board "advisory committee". The board wanted input from home schoolers. Until they got it. Sound familiar?

Studio, just to prove I'm not a blind optimist (just a TED addict)... As a Wisconsinite, the locations of all those li'l red USA dots bother me, but I can take some small comfort (and you can beam over your Alaskan "hippy" style schooling) that our states are better than average in high school dropout rate (@8:05). I recommend Matt Ridley's book "The Rational Optimist" for a countervailing perspective. And finally I'll drag out Henry Ford once again to say... “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.”

Czari Zenovka wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Czari Zenovka wrote: Profaitchikenz Haiku wrote: A thought here, would you feel slightly cheated if your birthday/christmas/valentine's card had machine print instead of somebody's handwriting inside it? This reminds me of people I knew in years past who prided themselves on sending Christmas cards to their innumerable "friends" that were lovely and likely expensive. I imagine these people paid extra for their names to be pre-printed inside. No handwritting, cursive nor printed, as a personal touch was added. But, what is this? Ohhhhh yes, here's the "personal touch" - an included lengthy (often several pages) " annual update" on the activities of them and their children; of course all 1,000 of their "closest friends" were just waiting to read this picayune minutea. Often a list of everyone within their immediate family, that apparently encompassed a circle to the sixth degree of separation, who had died in the past year was included. Since I received a number of these cards (it was during the years I was married and received cards from everyone my husband's family had ever greeted on a sunny day), by the end of the holiday season I was depressed at all the deaths. Edit: Grammar Oy, I need to clean my glasses, Czari. I thought you'd gone and quoted something from Edith Grammar. I get a couple of those family portrait cards every Xmas, along with the annual letter from a friend in Michigan. The rest are Hallmark style cards. I don't care if they're handwritten or laser printed, I still think fondly of whoever sent it. Except I was getting them from people I didn't even know just by being married to a man whose parents were wealthy and socially prominent. :matte-motes-sour: I was really answering Profaitchikenz's question and should have made that clear. :-( I wonder how such people as you've described can avoid tripping over their own pretension. I've got some hoity toity neighbors who spend lavishly to impress their friends and nickle and dime everybody else. I can't get away from them fast enough.

Parhelion Palou wrote: Congratulations! Your usual group seems to be away. I know Val's out hunting mushrooms. Maddy's probably stuck deciding which of her schemes is the most nefarious. So many to choose from ... Hippie? 8000 posts? Seriously? What the hell's the matter with you? Get a life!!! Par, selecting a scheme would be easier if they weren't all marked ACME.

Czari Zenovka wrote: Profaitchikenz Haiku wrote: A thought here, would you feel slightly cheated if your birthday/christmas/valentine's card had machine print instead of somebody's handwriting inside it? This reminds me of people I knew in years past who prided themselves on sending Christmas cards to their innumerable "friends" that were lovely and likely expensive. I imagine these people paid extra for their names to be pre-printed inside. No handwritting, cursive nor printed, as a personal touch was added. But, what is this? Ohhhhh yes, here's the "personal touch" - an included lengthy (often several pages) " annual update" on the activities of them and their children; of course all 1,000 of their "closest friends" were just waiting to read this picayune minutea. Often a list of everyone within their immediate family, that apparently encompassed a circle to the sixth degree of separation, who had died in the past year was included. Since I received a number of these cards (it was during the years I was married and received cards from everyone my husband's family had ever greeted on a sunny day), by the end of the holiday season I was depressed at all the deaths. Edit: Grammar Oy, I need to clean my glasses, Czari. I thought you'd gone and quoted something from Edith Grammar. I get a couple of those family portrait cards every Xmas, along with the annual letter from a friend in Michigan. The rest are Hallmark style cards. I don't care if they're handwritten or laser printed, I still think fondly of whoever sent it.

Hi Dorothy, I've not heard of this happening before. If you are trying to edit you profile from within the viewer's browser, try logging into my.secondlife.com from an external browser. Some people have difficulty with Internet Explorer, so you might try Firefox or Chrome. Good luck! --||-

Studio09 wrote: Madelaine, both your and AveryGriffin's videos were very interesting. I have also seen some of the teaching practices from Avery's video in a "hippy" style private school, a private school for students with learning differences and in a one room k-12 classroom in the Alaska bush. In all of these situations the results were very positive due to a great extent to the dissolution of grade-level boundaries, the increased ratio of teachers/aides/student-tutors to students, the encouragement of independent study and projects and unconventional teaching techniques. The only problem I have with the predictions of that video is the allocation of the money available. Instead of paying few teachers a lot of money I think it should go to paying for more teachers. But in either case I think the school facility infrastructure would need to be changed since much of the money is wasted on the current model. I better stop now 'cause I could go on and on. Being a tech person I found your video very interesting but I couldn't help getting flashes of Battlestar Galactica throughout the talk. :smileyhappy: I don't have such an optimistic view of the future unless mankind's spiritual development (I'm not saying religion, more ethics) is as fast our technological development. Much of technology came about because of wars, military advancement or greed. Who spends the money to advance technology? The government to improve their military and companies to make more money. Unless that changes I don't see technology filtering down to the really poor people. So yes technology will advance providing utopia for some but dystopia for others. Call me Maddy, Ms. 09! As the only kid in the class, with a teacher/student ratio of 2+/1, unconventional teaching techniques, and tons of hand-in/on/under/through experience, I want to believe the results were very positive. But, that's probably the Dunning-Kruger effect. I agree that much of the funding for our current public education model is wasted and that more teachers would be better than more expensive teachers. Kahn academy is doing interesting things and the Singapore school system is attracting lots of attention. According to the World Bank, the US spends 23% of GDP on education. Singapore? 12.3%. I think Milwaukee, near me, spends more per student than most places in the nation, producing the worst performing students. Something's broken. I'm an optimist overall, but share your concerns about our spiritual development keeping up with technology. Another thread here has been discussing the "erasing" of posts by young people who come to regret them. People are wired to forgive and forget. That seems crucial to our ability to progress. If we retained exact memory of everything that ever happened to us, we'd soon bog down in recollection and re-analysis of all that information, and absent some kind of depreciating mechanism, ancient wrongs would weigh too significantly against recent rights. Our legal systems contain mechanisms for rehabilitating our reputations. Single misdemeanors can often be expunged from a criminal record, wiping the slate clean. Until recently, the Court of Public Opinion often worked similarly. But the internet never forgets and it seems unlikely we'll figure out a way to give it our kind of amnesia. So we're going to have to grow our empathy to accomodate this perpetual public memory. Can we do it? I hope so. Here's a reason I'm optimistic and have a huge crush on Hans Rosling...

Helium Loon wrote: I have to say I'm appalled at all the support for dropping cursive. A few points to clarify why it's important: 1) The cerebrum part of the brain is a pattern matching machine. It's a BIG part of how our higher brain functions work....by recognizing and matching patterns. Learning (and using) cursive helps train that part of our brains to be BETTER at pattern matching. While there IS a standard for cursive, every single writer using it varies their writing of it in small (or sometimes large) ways. By learning cursive, the brain learns not only to recognize the basic patterns, but also develops the flexibility to still match subtle differences. Surely cursive is not the only way to improve our brain's pattern matching capabilities, Helium. It was not invented for that purpose. If the time spent learning cursive handwriting could be used to do something even more effective for brain development, then cursive should be abandoned as a tool for that purpose and kept only by those who value the original use. There are many ways to challenge the brain's pattern matching machines, with greater future applicability than learning cursive. 2) History and tradition. As another noted, if you can't read cursive, reading many historical documents is closed to you. Old letters your parents, grandparents, ancestors might have written? Unreadable if you don't know cursive. The US Constitution (for americans) is written in cursivve, as is the US Declaration of Independence. Old records? Filled with cursive notes and signatures. I've seen old family letters. My ability to read cursive is of limited use to me there. On my father's side, many of the letters are in German or Polish. My maternal grandmother could not read. Historical documents have never been as available as they are today, witness Project Gutenberg. I understand the connection one feels when holding a letter in hand and reading the words, but I get warm fuzzies reading old e-mails from Dad. By the time I moved out of the house, we'd already been texting between his office and my bedroom (within yelling distance) for years. I have a letter Dad wrote to me in 2003, when he first learned he had Alzheimers. It was his goodbye letter, written while he was still able to do it. It's beautifully composed in Garamond, laser printed and signed with his Palmer method signature, bearing signs of tremble. In the age of the Internet, translation and transcription services are available to virtually anyone who can access the web. The real value of the Declaration of Independence is in the meaning of the words, not their shape. It may be that scholarly analysis of the handwriting could reveal some additional texture, but few of us would have the background to work that out, as that requires knowledge far beyond cursive handwriting. Let people with a passion for such analysis do it, and bring us the results... via the Internet. I'm even more appalled by those who are pleased to see it being dropped because 'it was too hard' or 'I know print, why should I have to learn another writing style?' Think cursive it hard? Ask Japanese students about what THEY have to learn, writing-wise. TWO basic sets (hiragana & katakana), and then over 2000 pictograms (kanji) just for basic literacy. And they have to use those EVERY DAY. And it's more complex than that, since each kanji can have anywhere from 2 to 10 different ways it can be read..... I wish I could find the article I read, perhaps 20 years ago, that claimed that the Chinese alphabet may reduce creative thinking in young Chinese (I imagine the argument would apply to Japanese as well). The 3000+ pictograms of the Chinese alphabet have very little functional, or even metaphorical, connection to the ideas they represent. The authors claimed that so much of a Chinese child's youth is spent memorizing the connections between symbols and meanings that their intellect is steered in the direction of rote memorization. This was seen as a structural disadvantage for the Chinese. That may have been my first introduction to the much argued theory of " linguistic relativity", though I think it's one step removed. I found that article provocative, though I don't know if it's at all true. I have added it to the constellation of ideas I've filed away to give me other perspectives on the ideas I'll encounter tomorrow. Education in the US is rapidly becoming a joke. The whole 'No Child Left Behind' movement, along with litiginous parents who don't bother doing much (if any) parenting is killing the educational system here. Parents don't want to accept that BY DEFINITION, half of the kids (including theirs) are BELOW AVERAGE intelligence. Let's face it.....as the late George Carlin so eloquently and accurately assessed: "Kids are like any other group of people....a few winners, a whole lot of losers." Certainly parts of our educational system are in a shambles, but not all of it. And the decline has been going on for some time. My parents home schooled me, partly because I was "precocious" and partly because they did not like the direction public education was going. That was 40 years ago. I love George Carlin, and the irony of that quote for an audience that believes itself above average (the Dunning-Kruger effect), as most Americans do. It's not as much that way in Europe, and backwards in Asia. I wonder if he'd have gotten applause with that idea in Beijing. I'd love to see a Dunning-Kruger chart for the history of the US. Every child is not a 'special snowflake.' Every child is not smart, clever, cute, beautiful, witty, or any number of other superlatives. Some are. But most, again by definition, are average. And, like any other bell-curve population, there are a few geniuses as well as some real idiots. Accept it. Teach them that with hard work and application, they can still achieve success. We need to quit filling their heads with this nonsense so that when they do get out in the real world they aren't completely unprepared to deal with it. Too many are already out there, with an entitlement attitude that is only made worse by this kind of nonsense. Success is earned, not deserved...... I believe success should be earned, but that's never been the complete reality of it and never will be. Success is a complex mix of fortune, fortunes, ability, effort, attitude, ethics, etc. I'm conflicted about the "special snowflake" treatment. Our goal should not be to endow children with high self esteem, and maybe not even with accurate self esteem, but with healthy self esteem (whatever the hell that is). We must encourage them to reach beyond their grasp, to accept and learn from failure, and find happiness in doing so. Curiously, I'm seeing this attitude of entitlement arise in some of my elderly friends. We're never too old to learn? Cursive was, and is, a pain to learn. So was memorizing multiplication tables, learning fractions, and memorizing spelling. Should we drop those too? After all, we've got spell-checkers, calculators, and more now....... We should not add or drop the learning of skills based on difficulty, but rather on their cost/benefit ratio. This is a squishy metric, as both cost and benefit are often difficult to recognize and evaluate and are constantly changing. I think cursive is under attack because the cost/benefit ratio has eroded. Just becuase we have easier ways to do things thanks to technology doesn't mean a prior method loses value. I'm as susceptible to nostalgia as the next person, but I think that's what this is. I believe in preserving the knowledge of our collective history, and there comes a time when old methods are best abandoned to it. The value of doing math in systems which had no zero absolutely declined when it finally arrived in force around 1500 years ago. Tilling with humans, horses and steam are much the same. Sometimes remembering is better than doing. (Edited typos) (Imagine if you'd handwritten this! ;-)

Dillon Levenque wrote: I hadn't thought about how the pattern recognition skills cursive requres could be a positive for brain development. Your arguments supporting the idea that teaching penmanship should still include cursive script, not just 'block' letters upper case and lower, have almost convinced me I was wrong in my initial response. I really hate when that happens. I said I'd check the history of cursive. I did, in a very unscholarly way. Wikipedia says this: "The origin of the cursive method is associated with practical advantages of writing speed and infrequent pen lifting to accommodate the limitations of the.quill." The quill? Sorry, couldn't resist. There's no argument that writing with cursive is considerably faster than writing with individual letters. I suspect it's slower than typing even at the meager speeds I command. I can't get past your pattern recognition argument. There's no question in my mind that reading cursive on a regular basis will tax the brain's pattern rec hardware and that's a good thing. Maybe there's another teachable way such as the example Avery gave. I don't know. I am now undecided, so if I was on your School Board I'd vote to not remove cursive. Until we know more. A couple of examples of diaries/journals. The first is an emigrant diary, not in my area of interest (1840-1850), just something I found on Google images. To me it is very nearly illegible. Try your luck with the image here. Hint: the second word (I thought: "hound? horns?") is point. The website gives a full translation, if anyone's interested: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/museum/teachers/material/trail/oregon/judson8.htm . In rebuttal, this image I found on the same google page is as readable to me as newsprint. It's from the 1920's and has nothing to do with emigrant crossings but it met one of the words in my search criteria. If you need it, there's a translation on the web page that displayed it. http://escrapbooking.com/diary/ If you buy the argument that cursive handwriting, which was designed for a different purpose hundreds of years ago, helps us learn pattern recognition, imagine how much better off we'd be if we learned things expressely designed to hone our pattern recognition skills, knowing what we do about cognition and learning today. I'd probably be kicked out of the board room before I could vote, which is more satisfying to me than abstaining. ;-)

Perrie Juran wrote: I have just started reading a book, "How Music Works," by John Powell. He discusses the concept of people who have 'perfect pitch' and shows how it is a learned skill. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=speaking-tonal-languages

Just so you know it's not you, Urska, I looked for your profile yesterday and got the "This name is unavailable." message. Today it's fine. Remember, the web profile and feeds are designed by LL. ;-)

I found my John Hartford CD. I saw him at the local Unitarian Church 15 years or so ago and got to shake his elbow. He was ailing from cancer at the time and too frail for a handshake. Yet his hands were still able to produce wonderful music, and this beautiful signature... I will certainly miss seeing people craft such art in the form of their names, but there will be other ways for us to leave our mark.

AveryGriffin wrote: Studio09 wrote: So although some people may not need to learn to write in order to learn, others will benefit from the process. The probelm is that our public schools are like an assembly line. The teaching style depends on the uniformity of the parts (the students). Those that do not fit that mold fall by the wayside. This actually reminds me a lot of a vid I saw recently! I can't embed it here (sadly) but if you guys have like, 15mins to watch something interesting about education - check this out! Avery, that was an interesting video, but left me feeling a li'l deja vu. I was home schooled for 15 years (birth to college). My childhood classroom was very much like that fella predicted would arrive in the next 10 years. My college years were, at times, uninspiring, but I still lived at home and could fall back on my parents for some inspiration. My career was very much like what that fella described would arrive in the next 30 years. I was enticed out of grad school, where I was earning modest grades by my co-op employer because they were impressed by the things I was building. I was judged by my projects, not my grades, just as in the video 30 years from now. So, while the future he's describing sounds very nice, I've already been there. I think others will enjoy it. Here's another view into the future. Handwriting is not mentioned, though there's someone in the audience writing notes...

Perrie Juran wrote: Storm Clarence wrote: Keyboard If you are saying what I think you are saying, that the phrase should have been, "Has The Keyboard Killed Cursive Handwriting," you do make an interesting point. My general habit is when I link an article to use the article's actual title. Maybe it is a sign of the times that the writer of that article used the word "Technology." As I referenced above, when I was a kid not many households to my knowledge had Typewriters, hence, no keyboards. I took my Father's portable to College with me and it got very well used by my dorm mates. Actually it got very well used by their girl friends. A girl who could type was worth her weight in gold and treated very well by the guys. When papers were due, her whim was our command. Which would go back to another comment I made, that I had flunked typing. Typing classes were generally reserved for girls. (Sexist discrimination......training them to be secretaries. Girls were normally the only ones who took short hand also). Regardless, how I ever got assigned to the class was a great mystery. I was the sole hormone ravished teen aged boy in a class full of perky teenage female breasts who was very easily distracted from my work. So one semester of typing and that was it. Well, if the keyboard killed cursive, it sure took it's time. Christopher Latham Sholes invented the first commercially viable typewriter less than a mile from my college in Milwaukee, way back in 1868. Keyboards first hooked up to computers in the 1940s. Computer keyboards penetrated the home in late 1970s. Cursive handwriting was alive and well through that entire century. One could argue that all those things, including pen and paper, were technology. But that's not the way most people use the term these days. They mean high technology, the stuff of computers, the stuff of modern everyday living. I think the turning point was somewhere in the span of time from HTML's arrival on the Internet and now, with Google and cell phones playing noteable roles in making a world of information readily available to people using keyboards. The keyboard was necessary, but not sufficient. Lacking a better way to describe the intersection of computers, digital cellular telephony and the internet, I think Technology will do.

The technical minimum/maximum is as KarenMichelle states, as is the need to check particular sim restrictions, either in the covenant, or by inquiring with the landlord. In addition, as I recall, anything above 400m is not rendered on maps.

Hi Ninna, I've never been able go get LL's auto updater to work for me. It launches weird Python scripts, throws error dialogs, etc. I just manually download the latest update, mount the .dmg file and drag the viewer to my Applications folder. I often throw away the old application folder and clear out the Application Support folder in Libary/Application Support first, just to make sure there's no lint being left behind by the old viewer. If you want to save chat logs, move the viewer's application support folder (Library->Application Support->Secondlife) somewhere else, rather than trashing it. There's also a "com.secondlife..." folder in Library->Saved Application State that I sometimes trash because it can perpetuate problems caused by a previously crashed browser. And finally, I'll sometimes toss the SecondLife folder in Library->Caches. If you do all this, you will lose your viewer settings, but sometimes that's necessary to get things running again. If none of this works for you, come back and edit your question (via Options on the right). Good luck!

There is evidence that writing notes in lecture hall, even if you don't read them again, aids in retention of the material. I used my own sort of ad hoc shorthand, not unlike textspeak. For this reason, I don't rail against cul8r when I see it in an IM, although I can probably type "see you later" as fast as they textspeak it. And there's no cute replacement for Toodeeloo, Caribou! I'm going through my home library, culling out half the books in it. Time Life book of Spacecraft, old Smithsonian magazines, Simplicity pattern books, etc. They're lovely things to hold, but their information is out of date and easily accessible online. I'll keep a few of my childhood favorites, like Wallace Trip's "A Great Big Ugly Man Came Up and Tied His Horse to Me" and all my Twain/Thurber/Feynman. I'll miss the page fanning, but I need room for new things, like another curio cabinet to display my pretty geodes, or perhaps an heirloom quality trebuchet.

I loved the Forrester snippets, Perrie! There was always a keyboard in our house. I briefly used Mom's Smith Corona, but quickly moved to the computer when Dad got one for his office (PDP-11). I got (stole) my own Mac in 1984. I read the e-reader article you linked, and as so often happens, I found a piece of poorly thought out writing. From Gloria Mark at UC-Irvine... "More and more, studies are showing how adept young people are at multitasking. But the extent to which they can deeply engage with the online material is a question for further research." I've read research that says teens are no better at multitasking than any other generation, unless you define multasking as "happily doing a bunch of things at the same time, all terribly". And Ms. Mark fairly questions the studies herself by wondering if multitaskers can deeply engage the material. If she believed the studies, she'd not wonder about their level of engagement. This sort of self contradiction annoys the hell out of me. I don't know if it's possible to measure the value of reading/writing cursive, as learning is an n-dimensional thing and nobody controls all the other variables. I've heard that teaching music helps kids with math. What if you took the hours of music instruction and used it to teach more math? I'm not advocating we do that, we need musicians. Butt these studies are often flawed, drawing conclusions that are not supported by the evidence. For me, reading a paper book is different than reading a book on my iPad. I can't separate my nostalgia from the paper experience. I love books, so much so that I've never wanted to annotate any of mine, leaving them pristine and devoid of that additional usefulness. Yet I'm quite happy to mark up my e-books with digital pastel highlighter and post-its, allowing me to quickly return to things I found interesting last year. I could get used to this.

AveryGriffin wrote: And so it was that I found out my third grade teacher was a big fat liar. I hear ya, Avery! I was home schooled, and although my parents were neither big, nor fat, they were first degree liars and I proudly carry on the tradition. Twain would be proud of my family. I dropped cursive about eleven minutes after learning it, because Dad bought a computer with two terminals and I could text him on it. I considered changing my signature to block caps, but I like signing things in a way that does not reveal my name. As a fan of typography, I'm quite pleased that books are printed in PRINT! (Yes, I used comic sans... shoot me!) ;-)

Kenbro Utu wrote: Cursive died years ago at my hands. So, it was you! You're going to hell, Kenbro. "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." - Mark Twain

Perrie Juran wrote: Czari Zenovka wrote: Perrie Juran wrote: Has Technology Killed Cursive Handwriting? Good? Bad? Ugly? Bad - as the poster above me demonstrated - the group who were born into the computer era don't want to "waste time" learning skills that were once upon a time an indication of being an educated person. There were times in history when women and slaves were not permitted to learn to read nor write and, farther back in history, only those who had the luxury of time (the nobility vs the peasant class) could dedicate time to education and related skills. I do believe it was E.B. White who said, "That which is written with little thought is read with little pleasure." Oh, and I do think it's a bad idea. While I do personally lament my own lack of keyboard skills (I flunked typing in school), there is a joy to be found in putting the pen to the paper. Personally, I've no use for cursive. E.B. White's statement (with which I agree) may well have been typed on his favorite Underwood Standard Rhythm Touch ;-) Mom and Dad were Palmer method kids and taught me the same. I have a CD autographed by John Hartford, who's got the most beautiful signature I've ever seen. Watching him sign it was a sight to behold. Yet I rarely write anything by hand, and when I do, it's in block caps, so others (and I) can read it. I am unconvinced by the research that claims cognitive benefits from handwriting. I don't doubt there are benefits, but that's compared to typing. Are there benefits to writing over drawing, painting, playing the violin? Is an hour freed from handwriting practice and applied to sketching of benefit to a mind? Those questions are not asked. It's always handwriting vs. typing. I once thought that writing equations by hand helped me think more clearly. Well, I still think it. But I've a collegue who grew up with symbolic math programs like Maple and Mathematica. He runs circles around me, not only in expressing equations, but in grasping the underpinnings. He grew up turning the knobs and dials on the simulators, exploring what changing the elements of an equation would do. I wonder if all the handwringing is really the perpetual noise of each generation giving way to the next... I do not lament my lost Palmer skills, there is a joy to composing at the computer. ;-)

Czari Zenovka wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Perrie Juran wrote: Read Chelsea Malibu's comments again. She is the one person here who is an Attorney and this is her field. The original TOS already forbade uploading content you didn't have rights to. The new TOS now grants them more rights: The right to sell. I read it, Perrie. I've highlighted the statement that leads me to believe Malibu doesn't think LL's intent is malicious, but to be sure, I'll ask her. Here's what she said... In the end, this is a "washing their hands move" and little more. Time will tell but as for me, I am no longer creating anything new in this system as long as this TOS is in place. I would advice anyone concerned about their IP rights to do the same. While I've got no shortage of complaints about LL, I'm not ready to call them evil. It may not make a difference. Right after the sentence that you bolded from Chelsea's comment she says, "Time will tell but as for me, I am no longer creating anything new in this system as long as this TOS is in place. I would advice anyone concerned about their IP rights to do the same." So, while Chelsea is providing her professional opinion overall, as a content creator she herself is not creating new content due to the TOS change and advises other concerned merchants/designers to do the same. If an attorney is concerned...good enough for me. Also I don't think I'm assuming too much to say that the merchants who post here regularly and thus are among the most informed on LL policies as they relate to selling within SL are not taking this case in isolation. Just over the past year and a half or so there has been one thing after another - some "small", some not so small - that has impacted merchants, particularly those who sell on the MP, so we've become a bit more "alert" to continued changes that appear to chip away or deviate from what was in place years ago. Edit: Typo Sure, but this can still be chalked up to incompetence. I'm not arguing whether the ToS makes SL a less attractive place to do business, it certainly appears so. I wouldn't bring anything I thought had commercial value within a country mile of LL, but not because I think they're hoodlums. I just don't think they've got a tenable long term business. I asked Chelsea if she thought LL had malicious intent. She doesn't think so, but if they're preening for a sale, she's not ready to trust the next owner. I agree with that. I also don't think LL would survive the backlash that would come from effectively trying to hijack creator content. Someone like Stiletto Moody probably has deep enough pockets to make a royal stink in the press and the courts if LL tries something evil, or stupid. That said, I wonder what Moody's reaction to all this is. And pressing further on the competence front, does anyone know if LL's other endeavors are bearing fruit? After a year in the App Store, Creatorverse has 50 reviews, mostly 5 stars. Bubble Ball, written by eighth grader Nathan Fray two years ago, has over 32,000 reviews (average 3 stars). It's a teen eat company world out there! ;-) Oh, and as for knowing the difference between being incompetent and being nefarious... I'm both, so I should know!

valerie Inshan wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: valerie Inshan wrote: I have empathy for you Snugs. I know that feeling, I've been in her fireplace too. And, the way she stares at you... So freaky. ... glares at you. Me too. :matte-motes-evil: