Madelaine McMasters

Dillon Levenque wrote: The "ejection ....from the Solar System..." really caught my eye. I remembered reading a fascinating tale that involved such a theme. It had to do with science evolving and the way our knowledge of how things work and why, and it had an amazing twist of Greek mythology. I did manage to find it online but it's a LONG story. Not only that, my link has a lot of background imagery that makes in harder to read. When I read originally I was looking at pages in a book. It's by Isaac Asimov, one of my very favorite human beings ever. I am a science fiction fan and it was in that part of the library that I first saw his stuff, but I heartily recommend ALL of his nonfiction books. He had an absolute gift for explaining science in a way that not only educated but entertained and left you seeking more. To anybody who has read the above, here's the link: http://geobeck.tripod.com/frontier/planet.htm You'll need some time but if you can struggle past the dumba** background image I think you'll find the reading well worth your while. I loved that Asimov story, Dillon. A warning to readers, there are quite a few typos in the transcription. I'll make a note to look up more of his non-fiction. I find myself increasingly interested in reality, as it truly is stranger than fiction. I was careful to eject Pluto and Charon from the planetary list, not the system, but my wording was intentionally suggestive. Asimov brings up an interesting topic in that piece, the fundamentally common occurence of "coincidence". I think it was in his book "Innumeracy - Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences", that John Allen Paulos commented that he thinks it's a miracle that, in a world so full of innumerate people, we don't have more miracles. I think I've linked this before, but as a demonstration of our reluctance to accept "coincidence" this is my favorite...

Dresden Ceriano wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: I'll probably never get to 500 million words per minute. I'm lucky if I get to 5 words per minute... it's all Pep's fault that I'm so scared of misspelling a word or using bad grammar that I have to spend twenty minutes rechecking my posts for mistakes. ...Dres (You're right Maddy, Pep is the devil.) I never said he was the devil. I'm the devil!

Perrie Juran wrote: Usive wrote: I have created a to scale replica of the original Library of Alexandria (With potential Shop Space, as well as a working, one of a kind library system to makie actually function as a real in-world library. The library itself takes up about one whole Premium Sandbox, which I believe equals one whole region. i want to use these creations to make a featured destination within Second Life. However, I do not have the land or the finances to purchase the land. I was hoping there was someone out there that had the land and wanted something like this to occupy it. I'd be willing to show any interested parties the building and library system in question. I figure we could work out further details in person. Contact me, Usive Resident in world if interested. That sounds awesome. I hope you can find an interested person because I would love to see this! That would be really neat, Usive. Unfortunately the only contribution within my abilities would be to help burn it down when the time comes. Good luck! ETA: Long ago I had great SL fun walking the halls of Versaille and climbing the Eiffel Tower. The open ended creativity of SL is neat, but RL is full of imaginative structures worth bringing here.

valerie Inshan wrote: So frustrating I can't see the pics (too long to load on an iPhone, it would ruin me, lol) but just wanted to hug you all. Love ya kids!!! Val, the pictures you are missing are absolutely the best that have ever been posted to the thread. People here are gasping for breath, weeping openly and gripping the armrests of their chairs for support. Of all the periods in the history of "The Picture Thread", this is positively the worst time to have taken a text-only vacation. How are ya, btw?

Hippie Bowman wrote: Good morning all! Happy weekend to all of you! Peace! Yes, it's the weekend, dammit. So stop yelling and go away so I can get that some of that "peace" you keep trying to send...

6-22-1978 Astronomer James Christy discovers that Pluto (Greek god of the underworld), the Solar System's ninth and usually most distant planet, is dancing through the heavens with a partner, Charon (Hades' ferryman). In August of 2006, a rising wave of objection over same-sex orbital coupling, voiced by religious conservatives, causes the ejection of Pluto and Charon from the Solar System's planetary list. Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus, all with multiple orbital partners of both genders are spared by a vocal contingent from the polygamous branch of the Mormon church while Mars, with two male moons (Phobos and Deimos) is put on a watch list. Mother Earth and her daughter Moon escape scrutiny. When queried about the apparent oversight, Right Reverend Wright, head of the Righteousness Planet Society opined: "What our planet does with its own family is nobody's business, what other planets do with their families is our business."

Molly, are you wearing an AO? If so, it may have a higher priority than the animation in your scripted object. Try turning it off.

In the dark, beet juice could pass for blood. But I'm having a hard time envisioning little beets with puncture wounds wandering the evening mists in search of prey. No legs and no teeth. If you are happy with a single generation of immortal vegan vamps, living on beets, it'll work. If I had to live on beets, immortality would be an even bigger curse than for the carnal vampires.

Ima Rang wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Ima Rang wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Ima Rang wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Ima Rang wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: I wonder what happened in late 2006. Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar were sentenced to death....and schadenfruede swept across the land by those boasting high self-esteem, but feeling that they deserved the penalty of death. I like that explanation, but the peak of 100 was in August of 2006, Saddam was executed in December, when schadenfreude ebbed at 25. And "boasting high self-esteem"? I really like that! ;-) October 2008 - start of the Great Recession? Higher since, but now in decline? November 2012, Schadenfreude for Romney (that's actually from the chart, which labeled that peak as "A"). The peaks seem more related to specific media articles than to any upswell in public interest in the concept. I've no idea if the general trend up is real or an artifact of changing Internet demographics. And we can't separate the interest of the public from the interest of the article writer. I could imagine a lot of people went looking for schadenfreude because they had no idea what it was. So is this more a measure of literacy than interest? According to the game theory of emotions (another thing I no nothing about) sports, wars and other conflicts are win-lose games, in which there are clear threats. So there's grist for schadenfreude in conflicts, and it's got less to do with self-esteem than with the threat to the thing you identify with (team, army, religion, political party, etc.) I was raised and live in a win-win environment, low in threat, and I don't identify with any team, army, religion or politcal party. So game theory would have me exhibiting less schadenfreude, and maybe being more sensitive to it in others. We've had people in the forums express belief that SL and/or RL was a zero-sum game and get a less than enthusiastic welcome by... win-win people? And so the argument that bragging about schadenfreude is unhealthy might boil down to the reversible "playing the wrong game may appear unhealthy to people playing the right one". I could go on... ;-) Rule changer! You said late 2006...He was sentenced in November of 2006...that's late! Exhibiting less schadenfreude? I'm wondering why it is that you think it is something that can be seen, or detected, when in fact most people probably have no idea what it is and whether or not they are schadenfroh'ish. Personally, I don't believe there is any such thing as a win-win people. And who would determine who is playing the right game and the wrong game? Well, I said I thought trending "schadenfreude" searches might have been a literacy test, so I agree that lots of people don't know the term. But they know the experience. When someone is oddly shadenfroh'ish, you feel it. Just as when someone has a sense of humor at odds with your own. I said the right-wrong phrase was reversible. I think in most situations, both sides think they're right, right? (Though I've been in plenty of situations with others were we couldn't agree that we were agreeing). And while I agree that nobody's win-win, I think there are biases (cultural, personal, both). There are clearly situations in which I'll feel it's win-lose. But even then, I can hope that I'm tempering my malicious glee. And I'm sure not gonna tell you when I'm rolling in it, I probably don't have to. ;-) Read the green! Then I think we gotta stop cuz we're running out of colors. Hahah...Sometimes discussions with you is what I imagine river dancing drunk would be like. Now imagine what pulling that drunk out of the river would be like! Would you do it? ;-) Ima: If I could do it, I would do it. I don't drink, so if I end up in the water from what appears to be drunken dancing, I'm probably trying to lure you in. You've been warned. Maddy said: As Ima noted, there was a lot of public schadenfreude surrounding the hanging of Saddam Hussein. ^^ I was being facetious for the most part. I do actually believe that most people do not take pleasure in witnessing the death of another human being no matter how horrible that human being was. I don't equate the relief that is derived and publicly celebrated when a monster has been removed and is no longer able to murder innocent people in the most horrific and inhumane ways, as schadenfruede. There is no way to determine if the celebrations were a result of relief or a whole crowd of the schadenfroh who were eager to comfort themselves with the discomfort on SH's face as they noosed him up. I know you were being facetious for the most part, but there is probably some truth there. And schadenfreude is only a name to describe something which is surely more complicated than "damage joy" and intermingled with any number of other processes. I was surprised that the fella who discussed schadenfreude in sports said that desire for fan group "belonging" wasn't a factor. I really expected schadenfreude to be amplified by wanting to belong to the group displaying it. So as you say, there are other things at work in the apparent (we don't know it's actual) glee over Saddam's hanging. Ima: Ummm...yeah, may be some truth there, but a Google search of the word schadenfruede is not going to prove a thing other than how many searches for the word took place Of course it is now more complicated, because that is what we do. There is no research grant money for simple straight forward mechanisms A group that displays schadenfreude? It is as if schadenfreude, this sub-conscious thing that we may not even be aware of in ourselves has sprouted legs and walks along side of us instead of deep within us now. Belonging...factor for schadenfreude. I had a beer...ok..two and my mind is not wrapping around that...Like...Oh, there is a group of peeps with aqua blue eyes just like mine! I must join them...oh look how much bluer my eyes got because I spotted that group of peeps! They are my people...Is that what you mean? Sorta...except like if a sober person said it? I don't think it'll be research grant money doing the heavy lifting. It'll be corporate profits. I was intrigued by an article last year claiming that Microsoft employs "game psychologists" to help design endorphin generating rewards into MS Office so that users will spend more time using it. Fast forward 10 years to "Annie Hall Reloaded"... "I used to be a heroin addict, now I'm an Powerpoint addict". Both sides? I suppose if your goal is to prove you are right or be right...then yeah. However, if you are just engaging in a discussion for the purpose of entertaining yourself, right nor wrong is a consideration, as opinions are just opinions. If we're discussing schadenfreude, I suppose there have to be sides of a sort, as it involves comparison. But for plain old conversation, I'm often interested in exploring differences of opinion, even if I have to make them up and argue both sides! Wait what? What comparison does it involve? From what I've heard/read over the years, and from the paper Carole cited, schadenfreude is at least partly driven by comparison of one's self value against the value of the target (envy). If you can't bring your self-esteem up, enjoy the other's fall. I see that as two sides of a valuation comparison. Don't you make me read the WOT's again! Make them up and argue both sides...oh you are an evil one..... I've told you I'm evil! Years ago, when I was a productive **bleep**, I'd go to design review meetings at work and tear into another team's design (that was the purpose), and if they didn't come back with a strong defense, I'd take their side and defend against my own critique, often incorrectly. And that would sometimes draw them out to fully explain what they were doing and why. My goal was never to beat them, it was to get the best answer. I didn't care (much) who had it, I just wanted to see it before I left. I can't readily say that I have ever felt malicious glee. I think that there were times that I may have gloated, silently, but there was no element of malice, no positive uplifting of my self-esteem or ego as a result of having deprived someone of the reaction they thought they would get or proving that they were something, or more accurately, someone that they claimed to be...or not to be as the case may be here with the alts. Oh, I've certainly felt malicious glee, isn't that schadenfreude? I've felt the guilt that follows, too. And maybe that's why I loved the Roadrunner as a child and now love Wile E. I just couldn't live with the guilt!!!! ;-) Ima: Well, I suppose if you felt glee because another person was harmed or damaged in some way...yeah. However...IMO, schadenfreude is not followed up with feelings of guilt or remorse... This isn't the sort of guilt that keeps me awake at night, but it's that niggling feeling that what I just felt doesn't fully comport with the image I'd like to have of myself. Maddy said: When someone is oddly shadenfroh'ish, you feel it. Just as when someone has a sense of humor at odds with your own. When someone has a sense of humor at odds with your own, you typically determine this not by a feeling but by demonstration. Have you really just seen a person across a crowded room and "felt" that they had a sense of humor that was at odds with your own? schandenfreude is a "silent, private feeling." It is not as evident as a cheap knock off pair of wannabe designer shoes or handbags. How might you detect it in others? You can't ever really know what others are thinking and/or feeling unless they tell you and even then you will only be able to equate what is reported with the only frame of reference for feelings you have, your own. We don't (necessarily) consciously demonstrate our sense of humor. What you laugh and smile at, the stories you tell, and the way you tell them, are guided by your sense of humor. Ima: What I laugh and smile at, the stories I tell and the way I tell them are guided by the audience, venue, occasion, etc. I usually clap with the audience too, but I start later and end earlier if I'm not sharing their level of appreciation. I'm even more independent in my laughter. I can get a feeling about someone just by watching them enter a room (body language!). Ima: Body language changes depending on the circumstances as well. I may be able to tell say if we are in a boardroom, that you are business no fluff, in the boardroom environment...but until I see you in a bar, the real you remains suppressed You'll never see the real me in a bar. My ex-husband didn't even see the real me in the bedroom. I was still looking for her ;-) I'm getting closer, but I'll keep her to myself, thank you very much. Maybe not sense of humor, but you get the idea. I can detect schadenfreude absent a public declaration too. Ima: How are you able to detect something that many may not even know about themselves? This happens all the time. Speech affectations, nervous tics, etc. You are used to you, I am not. In a room full of people watching a Darwin Award style YouTube video, I could get some feeling for people's schadenfreude just by observing their reactions. My read will have errors, but so does the scientific analysis. Ima: Erm...that is a good bit like saying that the people attending this horrible death match dog fight are not members of PETA! Well, perhaps not that obvious. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes not. I don't doubt you'd have a keener eye than me, as that's your background, but the Bostom bomber brothers sound like they'd have been a very hard read for any of us. I just participated in a community theater play. It was fascinating to watch the thing grow from auditions to final curtain. I've no time to describe all I experienced, but I read two of the actors completely wrong during the auditions. So yes, plenty of room for error. It's important to make a good first impression on others and important not to believe too much in your first impression of others. Patience can be a virtue. Yes, we never really know what others are thinking. We barely even know what we ourselves are thinking. But we make decisions based on what we believe about others every day, and that affects our, and their, well being. I always know what I'm thinking. What kind of decisions are we making based on what we believe about others..umm...not to include our immediate family members. I highly recommend David Eagleman's "Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain". It's an easy read (I understood it!) and fascinating. When I say I don't know what I'm thinking, I'm referring to the 10% of my brain that's doing the conscious stuff not knowing what the other 90% is doing in the attic (don't make me come up there!!!). I have, at least since I was a teen, had this vague awareness that stuff was going on just out of reach. I really started thinking about it when I was in college and took psych as a humanities elective (which tells you what the college thought of psychology ;-) I was absolutely thrilled to learn how screwed up all the cognitive mechanisms are, how many mistakes they make (optical/aural illusions, hallucinations, memory errors, crappy risk assessment, false pattern detection, etc), yet we are the pinnacle of evolution! Somewhere in "Incognito" is a cool test that ferrets out sub-conscious racism. I'll be remembering this wrong, but I think it glints a little as a 70ms delay from a reference response time in a word-face matching test. I wanna take that test! To step closer to what might be your view of things, I think Ray Kurzweil's vision of a "singularity" where man and machine merge into a seamless continum in 2042, is nutty. In 2042 computers may be "smarter" than us, but we'll still be here arguing about schadenfreude from our rocking chairs, with new evidence to banter about... provided by Google!!!! And the computers will have no idea what we're talking about. ETA: I've been a li'l more conscious of my use of "we". Does it show? Yes! Yay!

Oooh, I'll check it out, Kylie. I love the description. Will I find straw on a floor anywhere? ;-)

Perrie Juran wrote: Again, it is general advice. What percentage of the population has what speed connections is probably anyone's guess. The one thing we do know is that the Servers operate at 1500MPS so the FS Wiki states: Speedtest returns a value of 6.0 Mbps Converting to Kbps gives 6144 Kbps 80% of this is 4915.2 Kbps This is larger than 1500 Kbps, so set the bandwidth in Firestorm to 1500 Kbps. That server hard limit explains why the viewer slider stops at 1500. I've always had mine set there. What I'd not thought of before is that the limit is applied on the server end (which I'm now convinced of) and not on the viewer end. And so the reason I've never had issues is that, by the time I found SL, my connection was already well above the server limit. The evening/wee hour variability gets better every year as well. I'm probably at the point where I could scale back to a less expensive plan, I don't need that much speed these days. Although I can type a wall-of-text with the best of 'em, I'll probably never get to 500 million words per minute.

Perrie Juran wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Perrie Juran wrote: Orca Flotta wrote: bad wireless, drawdistance, graphic settings, to high bandwidth in the settings, and of course low end graphic cards will never give you full capabilities for viewing sl. Eggzackerly! Also the hint not to clear cache was correct as well. Once you've cleared it your PC needs to fill it up again = slooooow! Even Jessica Lyon (head chief mistress of Phoenix/Firestorm) says so. In fact your cache acts like a swimming pool with steady running water supply. Once the pool is full the oldest items get purged to make space for new graphics. No need to purge it completely by yourself. Best way to speed up the rezzing would be to find a good balance of your bandwith speed. Optimal is 1/10 of your actual bandwith. For example if speedtest.net tells you you're on 10 Mbit, set bandwith in Preferences to 1000. I thought the recommendation was 80% of your test to Dallas or San Francisco. 1/10 of a 1MB connection would only be 100kb. These recommendations for setting bandwidth sometimes feel a li'l like urban myth. I've heard that grabbing all the available bandwidth for the viewer causes packet loss, and I've even propagated that story. Why doesn't that happen for any other application running on my computer? Those bandwidth tests I run use up every last bit of it and never report an error. And why is there even a throttle? I've never seen one on any other program I use. I could see limiting SL bandwidth to allow other internet connected programs to run well or to avoid being capped if you have a usage limit, but is there truly a reason to limit it to improve SL performance? Those recommendations are you could say anecdotal and based on the general experience of the Firestorm Team. http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_speedtest There have been a few threads where the Bandwidth Issue has been debated. If someone is having troubles it does give a good starting point to work from. Several years ago Torley did a Video on Bandwidth which eventually was taken down. In it he had recommended that people just crank it up to the maximum and a number of people took issue with that. While is true that on occasion the Firestorm Devs make mistakes, I don't think they are in the habit of just blowing wind. I did two little bunches of tests down to Dallas. I got 33Mbps (16ms ping) about an hour ago and 21Mbps (13ms ping) just now. This is better variability than I saw years ago, when I'd swing from 1-2Mbps (mid evening) to 7-8 (wee hours). If I'd set my limit to 80% of the 33 (if we could go that high), I'd still end up in trouble. I wonder how variable a typical SL connection is over a 24 hour period. Last fall my neighbor tried to use some collaborative music jamming software that uses UDP to reduce latency so he and his friends could jam from their respective college dorms. He gave up on it because the latency was all over the place. Perrie, that "Waiting for Region Handshake" because of blocked UDP suggests that even if we're using HTTP textures, there's still UDP stuff going on under the hood. I've never had SL connection troubles, I should probably stop asking about them, they might hear me.

But beyond that, I'm not telling. ;-)

Theresa Tennyson wrote: My understanding is that the bandwidth is just for the old UDP transfers and it's there because UDP has few good ways to verify data or have a two-way conversation with your viewer so it'll send data at a given speed regardless of whether or not it will be recieved cleanly. Most other internet communication is by HTTP, which has a built-in verification system and can adjust speeds to make the transfer cleaner. You should bear in mind that your actual bandwidth used will be the "bandwidth limit" PLUS HTTP connections PLUS the audio stream. UDP can and will use all of your connection up to 3000 kbps if you don't throttle it Thanks Theresa, that's something to chew on. HTTP's verification is done by TCP just below it. Does this mean that even with HTTP textures turned on, the viewer is still doing some stuff via UDP? And there can be, I think, two audio streams heading to the viewer, one from SL's servers (ambient and UI sounds) and another from the media URL, via things like shoutcast. It makes sense that a parcel media stream would be outside the bandwidth limit. SL server audio too? No need to answer, I'm just wondering out loud. It's been ages since I dealt with this stuff. It seems to me the bandwidth limit would have to be applied at SL's servers. They're the ones feeding torrents of texture data into the internet, destined for our viewers. Without knowing how big our end of the funnel is, they'll just fill their end as fast as they can. So while we're thinking the limit is for our viewers, it's actually for their servers... I think!

6-21-2013 Russian president Vladimir Putin offers to return a replica of New England Patriot's team owner Robert Kraft's 2005 Super Bowl ring. Kraft, who offered the ring to Putin on bended knee in an upscale Moscow bar that year, felt it only fair that the ring be returned after a series of publicity photographs were released, showing a shirtless Putin engaging in manly activities. While the images were generally thought intended to garner support from Russia's women voters, Kraft saw it differently, got tired of waiting for Putin to set a date and requested return of the ring. The whereabouts of the original ring are still unknown to all, except Dmitry Medvedev, who is still busy looking for shoes to match.

That was sweet, Czari. I love that he hit the camera with his hat, then recovered it with his foot. ... swoons.

Perrie Juran wrote: Orca Flotta wrote: bad wireless, drawdistance, graphic settings, to high bandwidth in the settings, and of course low end graphic cards will never give you full capabilities for viewing sl. Eggzackerly! Also the hint not to clear cache was correct as well. Once you've cleared it your PC needs to fill it up again = slooooow! Even Jessica Lyon (head chief mistress of Phoenix/Firestorm) says so. In fact your cache acts like a swimming pool with steady running water supply. Once the pool is full the oldest items get purged to make space for new graphics. No need to purge it completely by yourself. Best way to speed up the rezzing would be to find a good balance of your bandwith speed. Optimal is 1/10 of your actual bandwith. For example if speedtest.net tells you you're on 10 Mbit, set bandwith in Preferences to 1000. I thought the recommendation was 80% of your test to Dallas or San Francisco. 1/10 of a 1MB connection would only be 100kb. These recommendations for setting bandwidth sometimes feel a li'l like urban myth. I've heard that grabbing all the available bandwidth for the viewer causes packet loss, and I've even propagated that story. Why doesn't that happen for any other application running on my computer? Those bandwidth tests I run use up every last bit of it and never report an error. And why is there even a throttle? I've never seen one on any other program I use. I could see limiting SL bandwidth to allow other internet connected programs to run well or to avoid being capped if you have a usage limit, but is there truly a reason to limit it to improve SL performance?

Conifer Dada wrote: For me, any particular version of the SL viewer seems to deteriorate with age. What I mean is that avatar textures take longer and longer to load. Often, when a new viewer update comes out, rezzing is quick to start with but gradually deteriorates. I do the obvious things like 'clear cache' but that doesn't seem to make any difference. Is this deterioration just my imagination or do others experience it? And is there a cure for fixing an existing installation without having to re-download? This idea that our computing experience degrades over time is probably based in a mix of objective reality (fragmentation of hard drive, increased swapping of virtual memory as program sizes increases, increasing complexity of SL sims and viewer software on a machine that's stuck in capability until the next upgrade) and perception (the bike rider who finds increasing fault in his current bicycle as he gains experience, and so upgrades... and upgrades). Someone once told of me that the cheapest way to make your PC faster is to drink three beers. Unfortunately that makes everything faster, including the person competing for your job. ;-)

Hippie Bowman wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: It's raining today Hippie! Time to chase worms!... Hippie gets his electrodes out and puts them in the ground, then turns on the juice. Then he gets a bag and gathers up the night crawlers! Want to go fishing Maddy? HEHEH! Peace! Fishing? Are you kidding?! I'm not gonna touch some wiggly fish! I'll watch you do it while I chase the worms around the boat.

It's raining today Hippie! Time to chase worms!...

Ima Rang wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Ima Rang wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Ima Rang wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: I wonder what happened in late 2006. Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar were sentenced to death....and schadenfruede swept across the land by those boasting high self-esteem, but feeling that they deserved the penalty of death. I like that explanation, but the peak of 100 was in August of 2006, Saddam was executed in December, when schadenfreude ebbed at 25. And "boasting high self-esteem"? I really like that! ;-) October 2008 - start of the Great Recession? Higher since, but now in decline? November 2012, Schadenfreude for Romney (that's actually from the chart, which labeled that peak as "A"). The peaks seem more related to specific media articles than to any upswell in public interest in the concept. I've no idea if the general trend up is real or an artifact of changing Internet demographics. And we can't separate the interest of the public from the interest of the article writer. I could imagine a lot of people went looking for schadenfreude because they had no idea what it was. So is this more a measure of literacy than interest? According to the game theory of emotions (another thing I no nothing about) sports, wars and other conflicts are win-lose games, in which there are clear threats. So there's grist for schadenfreude in conflicts, and it's got less to do with self-esteem than with the threat to the thing you identify with (team, army, religion, political party, etc.) I was raised and live in a win-win environment, low in threat, and I don't identify with any team, army, religion or politcal party. So game theory would have me exhibiting less schadenfreude, and maybe being more sensitive to it in others. We've had people in the forums express belief that SL and/or RL was a zero-sum game and get a less than enthusiastic welcome by... win-win people? And so the argument that bragging about schadenfreude is unhealthy might boil down to the reversible "playing the wrong game may appear unhealthy to people playing the right one". I could go on... ;-) Rule changer! You said late 2006...He was sentenced in November of 2006...that's late! Exhibiting less schadenfreude? I'm wondering why it is that you think it is something that can be seen, or detected, when in fact most people probably have no idea what it is and whether or not they are schadenfroh'ish. Personally, I don't believe there is any such thing as a win-win people. And who would determine who is playing the right game and the wrong game? Well, I said I thought trending "schadenfreude" searches might have been a literacy test, so I agree that lots of people don't know the term. But they know the experience. When someone is oddly shadenfroh'ish, you feel it. Just as when someone has a sense of humor at odds with your own. I said the right-wrong phrase was reversible. I think in most situations, both sides think they're right, right? (Though I've been in plenty of situations with others were we couldn't agree that we were agreeing). And while I agree that nobody's win-win, I think there are biases (cultural, personal, both). There are clearly situations in which I'll feel it's win-lose. But even then, I can hope that I'm tempering my malicious glee. And I'm sure not gonna tell you when I'm rolling in it, I probably don't have to. ;-) Hahah...Sometimes discussions with you is what I imagine river dancing drunk would be like. Now imagine what pulling that drunk out of the river would be like! Would you do it? ;-) Maddy said: As Ima noted, there was a lot of public schadenfreude surrounding the hanging of Saddam Hussein. ^^ I was being facetious for the most part. I do actually believe that most people do not take pleasure in witnessing the death of another human being no matter how horrible that human being was. I don't equate the relief that is derived and publicly celebrated when a monster has been removed and is no longer able to murder innocent people in the most horrific and inhumane ways, as schadenfruede. There is no way to determine if the celebrations were a result of relief or a whole crowd of the schadenfroh who were eager to comfort themselves with the discomfort on SH's face as they noosed him up. I know you were being facetious for the most part, but there is probably some truth there. And schadenfreude is only a name to describe something which is surely more complicated than "damage joy" and intermingled with any number of other processes. I was surprised that the fella who discussed schadenfreude in sports said that desire for fan group "belonging" wasn't a factor. I really expected schadenfreude to be amplified by wanting to belong to the group displaying it. So as you say, there are other things at work in the apparent (we don't know it's actual) glee over Saddam's hanging. Both sides? I suppose if your goal is to prove you are right or be right...then yeah. However, if you are just engaging in a discussion for the purpose of entertaining yourself, right nor wrong is a consideration, as opinions are just opinions. I f we're discussing schadenfreude, I suppose there have to be sides of a sort, as it involves comparison. But for plain old conversation, I'm often interested in exploring differences of opinion, even if I have to make them up and argue both sides! I can't readily say that I have ever felt malicious glee. I think that there were times that I may have gloated, silently, but there was no element of malice, no positive uplifting of my self-esteem or ego as a result of having deprived someone of the reaction they thought they would get or proving that they were something, or more accurately, someone that they claimed to be...or not to be as the case may be here with the alts. Oh, I've certainly felt malicious glee, isn't that schadenfreude? I've felt the guilt that follows, too. And maybe that's why I loved the Roadrunner as a child and now love Wile E. I just couldn't live with the guilt!!!! ;-) Maddy said: When someone is oddly shadenfroh'ish, you feel it. Just as when someone has a sense of humor at odds with your own. When someone has a sense of humor at odds with your own, you typically determine this not by a feeling but by demonstration. Have you really just seen a person across a crowded room and "felt" that they had a sense of humor that was at odds with your own? schandenfreude is a "silent, private feeling." It is not as evident as a cheap knock off pair of wannabe designer shoes or handbags. How might you detect it in others? You can't ever really know what others are thinking and/or feeling unless they tell you and even then you will only be able to equate what is reported with the only frame of reference for feelings you have, your own. We don't (necessarily) consciously demonstrate our sense of humor. What you laugh and smile at, the stories you tell, and the way you tell them, are guided by your sense of humor. I can get a feeling about someone just by watching them enter a room (body language!). Maybe not sense of humor, but you get the idea. I can detect schadenfreude absent a public declaration too. In a room full of people watching a Darwin Award style YouTube video, I could get some feeling for people's schadenfreude just by observing their reactions. My read will have errors, but so does the scientific analysis. Yes, we never really know what others are thinking. We barely even know what we ourselves are thinking. But we make decisions based on what we believe about others every day, and that affects our, and their, well being. ETA: I've been a li'l more conscious of my use of "we". Does it show?

PeterCanessa Oh wrote: Making the large sphere the root prim would still simplify your script - rotate the large sphere to its new orientation (it will take the small sphere and base with it) and then rotate just the base prim back using llSLPPF() Why didn't I think of that!

Carole Franizzi wrote: Maddy: You've stated that schadenfreude is an effect, not a cause. I'm arguing it's both. Carole: No, I didn't, Maddy. (Is Maddy short for Maddening, by any chance?). Right, one last time - what I've been saying is - oh, hell - here it is in pill form:- Initially, psychological issues cause self-defence mechanism (schadenfreude) Yes Schadenfreude is thus an effect of psychological issues Yes Schadenfreude causes a sense of well-being to the self-esteem (its ‘healthy’ purpose) There's room for argument here (but let's not go there!!!!). Like most (all?) of our evolved mechanisms, I expect schadenfreude has flaws too, particularly in light of rapid societal evolution. But this is way, way over my head (as opposed to the rest, which is only way over my head). Too much schadenfreude causes social/relational issues (potential 'unhealthy' effect) This could be a tautology, but I get your meaning. And this is what I've been arguing. Although there's an interesting distinction between simply having too much schadenfreude (which could be entirely sub-conscious) and boasting about it, which requires conscious awareness of it... and pride in it. Way back at the start of this discussion, I said... Maddy wrote: “If that shadenfreude is apparent, might the social dynamics punish the holder?” And you replied... I doubt it. You talk about it as if it is a hypothetical phenomenon, rather than one which actually exists, and, I’m guessing, has always existed. Much of the world’s gutter press is based on the minor and major downfalls of stars, starlettes, politicians and sportspeople. Prince William is losing his hair. Antonio Banderas is looking old. His wife was mistaken for a trout at an angling competition and got a fish hook through her swollen lip. President XYZ has a secret love child… And what about our day-to-day conversations? What percentage of them are hand-rubbing gossip? Let’s be honest… Societies don’t punish all that. They will actually encourage it. If a powerful/rich/leading nation takes a tumble, you’ll see schadenfreude on an institutionalised scale in other countries, including ‘friendly’ ones. I don't think I've shaken your doubt. I surely didn't intend to prove that boasting of one's schadenfreude is unhealthy, just that it's reasonable to think it might be (or not unreasonable to think it is? Pick your favorite weak wording). Your doubt that the social dynamics punish the holder wasn't certainty as you've stated in your last bullet point. My suspicion that it does isn't either. Maddy: I didn't take liberty with the paper, I took liberty with Aethelwine's comment.... Carole (in tears): B-b-b-but YOU said you took a bit (!!!!) of liberty with the paper! Ack, I did misspeak! My apologies! Have a tissue! Here's what I said again and I'll try to clear up my intention after... What I haven't heard or read anywhere is an analysis of people's perceptions of others schadenfreudic behavior. But back to the first paper. This entire conversation started with Aethelwine stating... " Schadenfreude is not a healthy pleasure to be boasting about." I could read this as meaning "schadenfreude isn't healthy", or that "bragging about it isn't healthy". I'm not going to argue the first interpretation, as I don't understand schadenfreude's efficacy as a coping mechanism, particulary compared to other methods like self affirmation (which reduced schadenfreude in the first study you cited). But if you take the conclusion of that paper and take a bit of liberty in rewording it, you can get... "Bragging about low self esteem is not healthy". That statement seems harder to argue with. The logic error I purposely made is that "people with low self esteem experience more schadenfreude" isn't the same as "people bragging about their schadenfreude have low self esteem". People with all levels of self esteem experience schadenfreude, but I think the rejiggering of the statement to show that bragging about schadenfreude isn't healthy will probably find some support, if only because there's maybe a little bit of schadenfreude in it. The liberty I took with interpretation of paper's conclusion (morphing "low self esteem correlates with schadenfreude" into "schadenfreude indicates low self-esteem") was a logical error I purposely made because I think many will make it accidentally. I then cut and pasted that into Aethelwine's statement, to construct what I think more clearly demonstrates why people could think bragging about schadenfreude is unhealthy. But most people aren't actually making that logical error, as they've never read the paper. They're simply drawing on their life experience to conclude that schadenfreude is indicative of low self-esteem, and that bragging about having low self esteem is unhealthy (or that just having low-self esteem is unhealthy, which might not be true if it's an accurate estimation?). I made this substitution because, in my own conversations with others over my life, they've claimed that behaviors like schadenfreude and envy are "indicative of low self-esteem". I've made the same claim, but now with more caution. Somehow, we figured it out (or were taught it) on our own. I also said this conclusion may find support because there's schadenfreude in it. It makes me feel better to think the person who just boasted of their schadenfreude has less self-esteem than me! And please don't tell me I'm wrong, I don't want to hear it!!!! Somewhere back there you said (approximately) that the person boasting about their schadenfreude is the one least likely experiencing it, because they are conscious of what they're boasting about and schadenfreude is sub-conscious. Okay, let's grant you that. So then they are boasting of a conscious damage-joy (can't use "schadenfreude" if that's purely sub-conscious). I'm not sure that makes me feel any better about them! Maddy: We are aware enough of our sub-conscious that we've been able to name it. Our awareness of it is tenuous to be sure, but we say things like "I feel conflicted", or "I just had a thought!", or "What was I thinking?" or "Her name is on the tip of my tongue, it'll come to me in a minute" that suggest we're aware our brains have minds of their own. When our sub-conscious processes can't resolve a conflict, they'll phone the conscious for a consultation. Me: Recognising and naming the phenomenon - intellectual, academic process - is not the same thing as recognising and naming the phenomenon when it occurs SUB-consciously in ourselves - since, if we are aware of the process in act, it can no longer be a SUB-conscious but is then a conscious one. Plus, I think you're confusing all of this with memory and other non-related concepts. We are constantly made aware of sub-conscious processes when they need our attention. Go back to the example I gave of "Her name's on the tip of my tongue". It's on the tip of your tongue, you say so. So you know that your memory (a sub-conscious process) hasn't found it yet. You go back to your conversation and a seconds later, the word arrives. "Oh, it's come to me, her name is Carole!". We often think nothing more of it, but we've just witnessed a query being passed from the conscious to the sub-consious and back within the space of a few seconds. We may have had a difficult time (or no interest) in describing this, but we were at least somewhat aware of it. An aside... when a name is on the tip of my tongue, I sometimes spawn off a little thought, wondering how my brain will find it. When(if) the word finally arrives, I often chuckle over failure of the wondering process to return an answer. But I have, on more than one occasion, had a glimmer of insight return from the expedition. I once pooh-pooh'd meditation... now I'm "changing my mind". Psychologist Julian Jaynes theorizes that this introspective consciousness is pretty new, maybe a few thousand years old. It's pretty cool, that's for sure. Maddy: People feel guilt over schadenfreude...... Me: Contemporary to when they feel it? You sure about that? Hey, I'm not sure of anything! I'm not aware of any research timing the delay for something like awareness of a schadenfreude/sympathy conflict, but maybe the first pangs of "guilt" could arrive within the same time frame as that name on the tip of your tongue? And maybe the more serious the conflict, the faster it comes to your attention? And maybe you don't feel the guilt until something else happens later to change you understanding of the original event? And then the guilt is used to modify the mechanisms that produced the conflict in the first place. That process of modification runs lifelong. In my personal experience, this sort of guilt can come almost instantly, as when watching one of those YouTube videos in which someone does something risky and is hurt. There's other stuff going on as well, as Ima says, including the vicarious thrill of the risky stunt, so sure don't know all that goes into the calculations that ultimately result in guilt. My reaction to such things has changed over time. I don't know if my schadenfreude is being turned down or if my sympathy is being turned up. I only see what appears to be a changing balance in the direction I want it to go. I'm also aware that this balance tips depending on my perception of the person being harmed and the threat they pose, and I can see that assessment change over time. All said, I can still mortify myself. Maddy: Yes, just as I previously observed that you and I, and everyone else, also comfort ourselves. I think I have a self-deprecating sense of humor. I'm also well aware that's a disarming defence mechanism. I (we) also self-protect. Me: We do. You most certainly have. Yes. And yes. Maddy: Hence the old saw "actions speak louder than words". Which is even more pitted with rust holes here than in RL. Me: EXACTLY! Here it's 100% based on what we tell one another about ourselves. There are no observable actions of the person - manuevering a puppet doesn't count. Our bodies by proxy - our avatars - are built to our own specifications and we do with them things we would never ever do with our RL bodies (proof of avatar-operator) detachment. Like the bodies, we create a personality according to our specifications by telling others who we are - which of course really means 'who we want to be'. Which, modifying the words of a wise man, is why you should never believe anything about anyone in here, though I'd add this - you can get very clear ideas of who you're dealing with if you read between the lines, listen to what's not being said and put everything that is being said through a filter. Right, and this applies equally to RL. We've got more cues to work with there, but still not enough to provide certainty. The margin of error on a read of someone here is larger than in RL. Self delusion is easier here as well, we're not constrained by physicality or history, we can invent both from whole cloth. But deception (self and otherwise) happen in RL, too. As I'm sure you've discovered elsewhere (maybe not here ;-), you can derive a lot of pleasure from interacting with these clouds of potentially deceptive delusion. Oh, and you'd not be the first, and won't be the last, to think that Mad is short for Maddening. Imagine what it's like to be trapped in these discussions every day of your life. Then imagine enjoying it. That would be Snugs.

Dillon Levenque wrote: Interesting. I wonder if this will become a whole new Forum trend. Start a thread, read a few answers (without, of course, replying to any of them) and then retitle the OP to something completely different from the original topic, and start all over! :-)

When I was little, I built ever larger trebuchets with my Father. The smallest shot peas at Mom, the largest could toss tomatoes onto the neighbor's roof. As you saw in the video you linked, when very large they are a ballistic ballet. I've visited Morton's Punkin' Chuckin' festival several times. After the day's competition, they'd do battle. The big machines would throw things like lawn tractors and the little machines would try to hit them with pumpkins. They never scored a hit. We didn't care. They set a few junker cars out in the cornfield and pelted them too. The Q36 was the hardest to steer, but packed the biggest whallop. They turned a family size station wagon into a pile of rubble in half a dozen shots. We all gathered round the carcass after the demonstration and marveled at the damage. One pumpkin hit the driver's side door, pushed it accross the car and blew it out the other side along with the passenger side door. Both were a dozen yards away in the field. A smaller car was rolled over on its side by one impact. I hope you get a chance to visit one of these events, Perrie. There is nothing quite like the silliness of adults putting all that effort into throwing pumpkins. Except maybe when they set the pumpkins on fire first.... Oh, the Morton festival has also included a giant corn maze. I did get fairly lost in one and would have called for Mommy, but she was with me (and I was 35 years old), wagging her finger. Now I have an iPhone, and no worries.