Madelaine McMasters

Our subconsious builds a model of our world and our conscious notices differences between the model and sensory input. Once you've heard a person's voice, it's in the model for that person and forever after, you'll hear that modeled voice when thinking of the person. Absent a voice to model when reading a character's words, we'll create that neutral, barely there voice that I mentioned earlier, or perhaps we'll assign a voice we've heard from someone who's behavior is reminiscent. I think we've all had the experience of seeing a book character come to life on-screen looking and sounding much different than we'd imagined. This is because the director and casting folks pulled from their mental models, not ours. We also can experience this when seeing a radio personality for the first time, where our model of the face is constructed from correlations we've observed between voices and faces.

11-2-2004 Thousands of people attempt to book travel to the International Date Line after The Tonight Show airs a young women being queried on the street by Jay Leno saying, "I don't remember where it is, so I must have had an awesome time there!" 11-2-2009 A naked Morvin Rasmussin tells emergency room physicians that his bruises, lacerations and broken bones were caused by unidentified flying objects. 11-2-2009 Olympic gold medal discus thrower, Kelly McFarland, calls 911 to report being accosted by a streaker while jogging down the street in front of her Brooklyn brownstone. 11-2-2009 Brooklyn public works officials report the mysterious removal of dozens of manhole covers along Ocean Parkway. Neighborhood residents flooded 911 with reports of broken windows and loud noises described as "that funny hubcap sound you always hear at the end of cartoon car crashes".

It's not terribly windy here, but there are wind and wave advisories out for Lake Michigan. I'm gonna go for a walk on the beach in a few minutes. If you don't hear from me within a few days, start watching for me to wash ashore near Normandy.

Hippie Bowman wrote: Pussycat Catnap wrote: I need to get my paws on that iMac in SL. It looks a lot like what I sit down to in RL everyday. Now if I can just find a cheap IKEA desk to go with it... Don't think I've ever posted in this thread (or don't remember when I last did). /wave. Hey ya Pussycat! I want one too! Sigh! Oh yes! Welcome to the Comfy fire! Makes yourself at home! Peace! Welcome aboard, Pussycat! Hi, Hippie and Val! Par lost his power last night, so I don't expect we'll hear from him today.

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Keyboard-shortcuts/ta-p/1086557

A couple years ago BearTrap Rodas made this cheatsheet. I can't say if it's accurate, I've never used it! http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mac-and-Linux-General/Mac-keyboard-shortcuts-cheatsheet-for-Viewer-2-1-here/td-p/319758

Perrie Juran wrote: Velcro was a Martian invention. You needn't punish yourself by watching the clip, I simply couldn't resist the band's name and the song's title. ;-)

Hang in there Par, and good luck! Keep us posted as you can.

I love it, Perrie. That's a keeper. I'm a loner. It hasn't been so much that breaking the ice is difficult for me, but that it took me a long time to see the value of it. Now I jump right in, sometimes like a bull in a china shop. It's exhausting, but worth it. And now that I know you've got shoe laces, I'll be hard pressed to resist the temptation to tie them together. ;-)

I do most of my reading sans voice, or with something I'd describe as being on the edge of a voice. It's non descript and feels as if it's not entirely there. I suspect my subconscious is vocalizing away and I'm only occasionally aware of it. When I want to internally vocalize, I can conjur up endless voices. Perrie, I generally read your posts like most of what I read, with that barely there voice, which my brain also uses for writing (I say "brain" to distinguish from my conscious self, which generally doesn't think about voices when writing, it just thinks about what to write). When you visited my fireplace as Marvin for the "Warm Welcome" I gave you long ago, I did not read your chat text in Marvin the Martian's voice. That's because I was thinking of you as Perrie in a Marvin avatar. When your forum posts infer your being a Martian, I still do not read them in Marvin's voice. But on those occasions where I've responded to you by quoting from Marvin, as in "Where's the Earth shattering KABOOM?!", I vocalize internally in Marvin's voice (well okay, I vocalized that out loud too ;-) When I read something that contains quotes, whether I vocalize or not depends on the context. If it's a quote from Tim Geithner in a Bloomberg News story, I don't vocalize (beyone that automatic barely there voice). If it's a quote from Louis Armstrong, I'll use his raspy voice. If I'm reading dialog between characters in a book, I will conjur appropriate voices, but they are not strong. If I'm reading dialog between characters who's voices I know, for example a dialog between Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, I will vocalize with the full depth and breadth of expression of Mel Blanc's wonderful voice. I think this subconscious ability is natural. Whether we plumb it for pleasure may be a conscious decision.

Charolotte Caxton wrote: Agreed, but the reason evolution can be considered a perfect system is because it created us. If a different system had evolved from the chaos to create us, we could then say that that system is perfect because it created us. The perfect system of evolution is perfect because we can call it so because it resulted in us, however, that by no means means that something created it to be so. Yep, damn our arrogance! ;-)

Porky Gorky wrote: So my point is, billions of years worth of death and butchery in the food chain largely contributed to the evolution of human intelligence. From natures universal perspective this has worked perfectly. Porky, I'm not sure how you can say that without presuming that the universe holds no better approach. What if there is a place out there where evolution from rudiimentary to sentient life form takes place in 1/100th the time it did here? Does our way still look like perfection? And the phrase "nature's universal perspective" is an anthropromorphism, isn't it? To say evolution has "worked perfectly" implies nature has some intent. I've yet to see evidence of that. I do see plenty of evidence that my comprehension falls far short of what's necessary to understand even a tiny bit of what's in front of me. I've no reason to believe that, even if there were a "reason", we'd comprehend it as rational. As I see it (and remember, my comprehension is limited), the general difficulty people have with believing there's no intent comes from our limited comprehension. Knowing that my comprehension is limited is what allows me to say "I don't know". As for UFOs (and their implication of aliens), I'll defer to Dr. Richard Feynman, who deftly summarized them as "much more likely to be the known irrational behavior of terrestrial beings, rather than the unknown rational behaviour of extraterrestrial beings". Our understanding of our understanding of the universe (which I think is the real topic here) is a function of both our understanding of ourselves and our understanding of the universe.

Hi Hippie, Val, Par and whoever else wanders in!!!

I wouldn't. All I have to do is lie on the grass and look up to know why. I have always dreamed of floating just under the clouds on a quiet summer day, looking down on the patchwork quilt of farm fields below and soaking it all in. I worked hard in the summer of 1986, learning to fly. The thrill of actually doing it, and breaking the law by skimming through the flat bottom of a puffy cumulus cloud without having an instrument rating, is hard to describe. My brief plunge through that summer cloud, now a distant memory, was the realization of a young girl's dream... and it fell short. There was no serenity, no sweet smell of nature, no birds coming to say hello, no mist in my face... just white knuckles and woo-hooing, and a tremendous sense of accomplishment. In SL, hanging in the clouds and looking down on the fields below is effortless, anyone can do it. I've done it many times... and it falls short. But, if I lie on the grass here in Wisconsin, and look up at those clouds floating by, I am there, as I was when a child. It is serene, I inhale the sweet mist, wink at the birds and look down on the woman who worked so hard to get here, and learned that she can... by lying on the grass in Wisconsin.

Dillon Levenque wrote: Perrie Juran wrote: Which would bring me to add to my questions, "Is the right to poke fun at or tease someone earned?" I don't mind at all if my GF makes fun or teases me about the wart on my arse, I know she loves me, but should a stranger say something, it could possibly be "fighting words." I think the Forum is an excellent example of how greatly opinions on that vary. I tend to say 'yes': like you, I reserve most of my poking fun for people who know I am fond of them. However, there are plenty of people who feel that anyone doing something dumb is fair game—enough so that it can't really be considered strange or anti-social when it happens. People really are different. Now and then there are trolls unpleasant enough to draw snarkiness from people who don't normally engage in that sort of thing, of course. Those who know me well know I love to tease and flirt and, I hope, feel the affection I fire their way. I generally carry the group tag "Nefarious One" and I try to live up to the expectation that creates. But I do not limit that behavior to those who know me well, and when I interact with people new to me, I do take additional care to make my affection obvious. I also know this doesn't always work and I must make the rare apology for it. I have teased both you and Perrie over the years. Dillon, I know you harbor only a proper amount of ill will against me, and hope the same is true for Perrie, who I thought had revealed that wart, if not the arse that carries it, only to me. ;-)

Perrie Juran wrote: I'm glad someone resurrected this thread because the thought crossed my mind the other day, "what can we do to make new users feel more welcome to this Forum?" I myself would like to see sans flaming more participants and more subjects discussed. But one quickly sees you have to have a thick skin or a very good sense of humour here. Do we sometimes drive new people off when we snipe at what we consider their naive or sometimes dumb points of views or questions? I'm sure the sniping drives some people away, both new and old. We've heard them say so. As for what we can do to make new users feel more welcome, I don't know. We can't rush to the defense every time a newbie gets snarked at. And, if we did, there would be accusations of vigilantism. When I see someone undeservedly harpooned, I often try to offer some support. And when I respond to someone with a very low post count, I do give them a welcome. As a member of the community, I do feel some responsibility to nurture it, but as I've come to learn over the years, one woman's nurture may be another man's nightmare. ;-)

Nyll, the explanations given so far sound far more plausible than what I'll offer, but as the author of one myself, I know it's possible that a particle emitter could do something like what you describe. Years ago I fashioned a "shooting star" emitter that would fire a "meteor" particle across the horizon once a minute or so. I'd forgotten I had this in place when constructing a skybox at the same altitude and was momentarily bewildered by spritelike objects flying through the walls.

I'm an amateur photographer (hoping to become avid ;-) and have run into this same thinking, particularly about digital post processing. When I bring up all the odd things Ansel Adams did to his negatives and prints in the darkroom, the purists make arbitrary distinctions in an attempt to hold their ground. As you've seen, there's a lot of nostalgia here. Technology has made it possible for anyone to achieve, in seconds, on their phone, effects that Ansel worked for hours to achieve by the light of a 25W red bulb. I have friends at Pixar. They truly revere the pioneering hand drawn work of Disney's "Nine Old Men". But they also understand what pioneers do, and they honor the traditions by... continuing to pioneer. In the end, the goal is to tell a story. And therein lies the art.

From the look of the screen capture and the dates in the page's bibliography, it appears this study was done in 2008 or earlier. I too am curious about the results.

Echo Hermit wrote: I'm sure that Virtual Reality can be good therapy for many people, but I am also equally as sure that it can cause people to spiral downwards if they have certain mental health problems already (has anyone done a study on this I wonder?). It's all very interesting, because living in a virtual world is relatively new, and no one can know yet what the long-term effects to a human brain is going to be. All I know for sure is that Second Life can be very therapeutic, relaxing, if I'm exploring pretty places, and it can be extremely disturbing if I happen to run into something that I personally find disturbing. SL is certainly a double edged sword, but I think that it can be managed properly for theraputic purposes. Just as with pharmaceuticals, professional supervision and assessment could ameloriate the risks. Naturally produced endorphins (a contraction of "endogenous morphine") like opiates, reduce pain and produce a feeling of well-being. Endorphins are actually more powerful than morphine. Other naturally produced hormones, like serotonin and oxytocin (the cuddle or love hormone) also create feelings of well-being. Because we are social creatures, it's not suprising that interactions with others, particularly intimate interactions can cause production of these hormones. The shift away from voice communications to texting (cell phones stopped being used predominantly for voice in mid 2010), is thought to be due to people wishing to regain control of their interactions with others. Virtual worlds allow us to carry that control into a fuller realization of ourselves than texting allows. You can't be backed into a corner by a beligerent person in SL. You just TP away. Feeling in control gives us a sense of well-being, with those same hormones at work. I think that at least partially explains the theraputic benefit, for all of us, of being afforded ways of exercising control over our interactions with the world around us. Virtual worlds like SL can do precisely that.

Bree Giffen wrote: Do you have a permanent place or are you a wanderer? I wandered for my first few weeks in SL, changing clothes under a barge in a canal. I was swept off my feet by someone who had a house. I vividly recall the magic of watching her vanish in a cloud of blue light as she teleported between the floors. I then built my own lighthouse, in which I lived for some months before moving to a tropical paradise with her, on which I built almost everything, including palms that beaned visitors with coconuts. Now, in my second Second Life, I rent the lighthouse in Forgotten City, where I lure weary sailors to their death on the rocks outside my window. Did you get a home as soon as you started or did you wait? In my first life, I was content to wander for some time. Now I like to have a place I can call home, even if I spend very little time in it, or SL. Skybox or ground? Own or rent? Mainland or island? Roommates? I have a skybox above my lighthouse, where I incinerate friends when necessary. I've never owned property, though I did share that 1/4 tropical homestead with my partner, which did give me the pleasure of being able to eject a jackass or two over the years we lived there. What is your prim allotment to the parts of your home? Like 50% on the house, 20% on furniture, etc. The Forgotten City lighthouse is a preexisting structure, so my prim allowance of 230 can go entirely to furnishings, my skybox and the rain that constantly falls outside my front door. What do you do in your house? I stand on my ottoman, or in my skybox's fireplace, and chat with friends who are probably dancing or building. Do you recommend homeowning? I once recommended that someone "grow up". That wasn't taken well, so I've stopped offering recommendations of any kind. It hardly seems fair to give advice I don't heed. Does it make you stay in SL? I suspect it's the people that make me stay in SL. Though, if you all left, I might stick around to enjoy the Twilight Zone experience.

Good morning, Par, Val and Hippie! I saw Emmett change his profile name, so he's still alive ;-) Lovely shot, Par. I'm due for a visit. I'm happy to see you settling in Val, but not so happy to see that you could do it in a weekend while I'm still in the middle of it after a year and a half. Welcome back from the woods, Hippie.

Hippie Bowman wrote: valerie Inshan wrote: Hiya Hippie and all! Tuesday hugs all around! I found I have kept the old 1.23 viewer in my apps folder and decided to check how my mesh jacket looks like. Suits nice, doesn't it? OH cool Val! Ladysue still uses phoenix, and mesh don't render correctly on it. So that's how I look to her. Well with the alpha layers on she only sees a head, 2 feet, and to hands! LOL! Hugs to you Val! Peace! Well, that'll teach minature aliens not to mess with Val. She's gonna use their spaceship as a surfboard.

valerie Inshan wrote: Do not be afraid Hippie, coming to rescue you. Careful there, Val. It was Hippie who invited Lia and Emmett to follow the light. Hippie just might be an angler fish in a flowered tee-shirt. And now we see a side of you that raises an eyebrow ;-) It seems I'm not the only cunning one. ;-)

Hippie Bowman wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Good morning, Hippie and all who follow!!! I wonder... what's happened to Lia and Emmet? Morning Maddy! Yes! What happened to them! Come back Lia and Emmet! Follow the light! Peace! - looks at you carefully...