Madelaine McMasters

Ruby Reynaud wrote: Thanks Madelaine for your reply and the great information! I can see I still have a lot to learn about building I'm excited to try this all out tonight ! Thank you! I'm right here in class with ya, Ruby! /me hands you half her Kitt-Katt and blows a raspberry at the learning curve.

Marigold Devin wrote: It often makes me laugh out loud that people wish to climb to the top, but the top of what? Ego is a strange thing. I am also old and tired. When I was 16-18, I would meet my young friends at certain places in my town, and the world belonged to us and us alone. We knew it all. Now the town belongs to the 16-18 year olds, and they know it all, of course. :matte-motes-wink: Ignorance can be bliss. I fear I am ignorant in many things, but what I don't understand, I endeavour to learn about, and if I ever put anyone down, it is done unintentionally. You started a potentially interesting thread, you must focus on the like-minded within it, and discard the flippant and unkind. If someone treats you like you do not matter, better not to even acknowledge they exist, because we don't know what lies behind harsh words, not really; maybe simple arrogance, maybe mental illness. Mari, your "you must focus on the like-minded" seems to contradict your "I endeavour to learn". Do we learn from the like minded? As as to Lucinda's focus, it does seem laser-like to me.

Ruby Reynaud wrote: Hi Scooter! Thanks for your reply. This is a house I bought over a year ago, before mesh was popular. Is it likely that it would still contain mesh? Also--I know how to choose one side of a prim to texture but didn't know I could texture one prim while it's linked to 20 others. You are saying this is possible? thanks! Yes Ruby, as mentioned elsewhere here, check the "Edit Linked" box and you can then select the individual prims in the linkset. The reason to do it this is that you will preserve the ordering of the prims in the set, which may be important to scripts within. When you unlink, that ordering is lost. Upon re-linking, the last prim selected as you aggregate for the link becomes the root prim. If you drag select the entire set, I'm not sure how the ordering is determined. In addition, if I recall correctly, the root-prim propagates its phantom/non-phantom setting to all child prims. There is a script workaround for this that exploits a bug allowing child prims to be set phantom. If your house was not all phantom, it's possible that such a script made phantom the child prim that now blocks you because the prim ordering has changed and the script is phantomizing the wrong prim. Of course I could be completely wrong, it wouldn't be the first time.

valerie Inshan wrote: Yay Maddy! You know, I've been thinking about your comment on my pic last night. Considering ajja and me are supposedly "larger" breeds, that would be some 32 years or so we've been together in dog years! Translating Dog Years into Human Years Age of dog Small breed - age in human years Medium breed - age in human years Large breed - age in human years 1 15 15 15 2 24 24 24 3 28 28 28 4 32 32 32 Well then, I need to increase the size of my CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

valerie Inshan wrote: Good morning happy hippies! Hugs ya all! Have a coffee with me? I'm not a coffee drinker, but just this once I'll have a cup of regular. No de-cat for me! Good morning, Kids!!!

Randall Ahren wrote: Cinnamon Mistwood wrote: I believe there is no pure good or pure evil. Just shades of gray, everything in balance. Cinn Instead of good and evil, let's just consider good and bad. If there was no good and bad, would art still exist? There would be no way to distinguish a bad painting from a good painting. Just hang anything on the wall and call it art. We've been hanging just anything on the wall and calling it art forever, Randall. It's not about good or bad, it's about variation in taste resulting from a combination of things, including cultural and environmental influences, personal nature, social effects and the environment of the art itself (galleries would not worry about presentation if art was impervious to it). When I see or hear famous art, the first question I ask myself is what succeeded most, the art, the artist or the advertising. When I hear a friend wax rhapsodic about the transcendent nature of the unicorn on black velvet hanging over the commode in her newly redcorated powder room, the reality of it slowly sinks in. The men in her life will gaze on it and cringe, likely unaware that the women in her life will not. Beauty is in the mind of the beholder. Cinn, I don't think good and evil are in balance. If the overall prosperity of mankind is "good", then I think good has been winning the war while we focus on the battles she's lost.

Lucinda Bulloch wrote: so you know about the duds then? Dad lost his duds in a wind powered washing machine on Guam when a typhoon blew through.

Griffin Ceawlin wrote: Lucinda Bulloch wrote: the fact that she was on star trek suggest murdered Wut? Actors are expelled from the Guild upon death, accidental or otherwise. If you can tolerate wooden performances, this saves considerable cost, as you don't have to pay scale.

Lucinda Bulloch wrote: It is more likely that she was either lost or murdered, the fact that she was on star trek suggest murdered, she may have stumbled on some things but some very odd things went on, like the issue of known dud fuses on torpedo's, it is still not known why all US subs that went out to sink japs oil tankers only had 1 or 2 torpedo's working, the top brass knew this but allowed it, maybe they didn't want to beat Japan so quickly and needed to drag the war out, don't know. My Dad was in the submarine service just prior to Pearl. The reason each sub carried only one or two viable fish is that the South Pacific Islanders paid so handsomely (well, actually prettily) for torpedo juice.

Lucinda Bulloch wrote: Every one knows about that one but very few people know of the others and that the USA and Russia did a few things together while the cold war was on, so I think a lot of the cold war was false as they both helped each other to develop them, I must say that was one of the oddest things about the cold war, china have only just got in on the act, so they were kept out of it but are part of the club now. What about the supposed Liechtenstein LIDAR installation on Nikumaroro? That thing has been station-keeping a Lockheed Electra at the Earth-Moon L2 point since shortly Amelia Earhart stumbled across something she shouldn't. I have my doubts about Earhart's survival of the Electra's passage through the Van Allen belt on 100 octane, but believe Fred Noonan was protected by a signficant ingestion of 100 proof.

Griffin Ceawlin wrote: Mmm hmm. An evil CIA/Mossad plan. Yep. If you think that was an evil plan, wait till you see mine!

Griffin Ceawlin wrote: Lucinda Bulloch wrote: the USA NEVER WENT TO THE MOON. Yeah, it all took place on a sound stage. :matte-motes-sarcasm: It did!!!!

Randall Ahren wrote: Or as Bukowski's epithet states "don't try". @Maddy, Richard Feynman thought that one of the great heritages of Western civilization was Christian ethics. The answer to every question does not lie within the technical arts. Perhaps the answer to why one should be nice is better answered from a religious or moral perspective. Kindness is the beginning of wisdom, not technical mastery. Randall also wrote: Got a book for you: Be The Worst You Can Be - Life's too long for patience and virtue. He said that in 1956. If you'd asked him about Christian ethics just after the A-bomb drops, when he was walking the streets of New York, wondering why everybody was smiling in the face of almost certain doom, he might have had a different view. If you'd asked him in 1988, as he was dying, me might have had a different view yet again. We've learned a lot in the last 56 years and I don't imagine Feynman would be surprised to see that science has pushed back on the metaphysics so far that naturalism has gained many adherents. He might still think that doesn't matter. In that paper, Feynman addressed (I think) the practical state of things, which is that our beliefs and need for inspiration were gonna hang on to the bitter end, particularly in light of the "cargo cult science" that so often accompanies discussions of religion. His observation that our morality and need for inspiration doesn't seem to erode in the face of the vanishing metaphysics is certainly noteworthy. He doesn't explain why he thinks morality and inspiration seem to run independently of (meta)physics, but people are working on explanations. We evolve much more slowly than we are advancing technologically and socially. So, evolutionary lag comes to mind in explaining the seemingly unchanging nature of morality and the need for us to think about it in the face of social advances it might not handle well. Life was vastly simpler just a few evolutionary moments ago. It may also be that the way we reason (or that we reason at all) evolved to think about gaps or errors in unconscious morality. That said, it's hard to reason through the moral consequences of things that themselves are too complicated to fully comprehend. So, our ability to reason might have limits as well, but it's a pretty neat evolutionary adaptation. Feynman was an athiest and saw no point to, or reason for, existence. I could certainly be wrong, but that belief would seem at odds with thinking that morality is some external thing with intent, guiding us. And so Feynman's "Christian Ethics" have no Christ in them. He simply seemed happy to know that, given our propensity to be moral to some degree, institutions had popped up to codify guidelines to help maximize our outcome. I also don't think Feynman meant to say that Christian ethics were somehow different from or superior to others, but that they were ours and he appreciated them. If science someday pulls back the curtain on the full workings of the human mind (I believe that would count as technical mastery), and discovers that it's all biochemistry and "nothing more", will we still have legions of believers in "more"? Will that belief yield better morality than the truth? That's a future Feynman didn't address.

Hippie Bowman wrote: Thank you Parhelion! You are right! Happy Sunday to you and all! Peace! Happy Sunday to you two and all!

Eileen Fellstein wrote: my guess is it was rezzed right next to or partially on the sim line of your property, or on top of an object (like flooring etc) that slightly overlaps. Objects can get easily flung just about anywhere from sim crossings, even if they arent in motion, though being in motion amplifies the problem greatly. I've had things get pushed underground when rezzed near other objects. If I rez something between my sofa and ottoman (both have sculpties that probably have collision boundaries larger than what I see), there's a chance I'll have to dig it out of the floor.

Randall Ahren wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Well, for one who seems to derive a world view from anecdotes, what are my chances of providing an answer to any question you pose? It isn't easy having a mind that operates on a higher plane than everyone else, is it? Maybe you're trying too hard?

Randall Ahren wrote: None of which is an answer to the question that I posed. Well, for one who seems to derive a world view from anecdotes, what are my chances of providing an answer to any question you pose?

Randall Ahren wrote: The question I posed was "Why to be a better person" as opposed to "How to be a better person". We already know how, it's obvious. Don't lie or cheat, share, be friendly, clean up after yourself, be considerate, etc. Everyone already knows this. But why do it? Does evil really exist? Or is it just something imagined? The light from the stars shines down with cold indifference to both good and evil. Theories of the evolutionary advantages of altruistic behavior have been around for a long time. Game theorists are the latest to tackle this subject. If survival is desireable (good), then I think we have at least some grasp of the "why".

Randall Ahren wrote: Women don't have a lot of seed to spread around, although they're not adverse to letting a bad guy plant one in them on the sly. So yes, even wildly attractive women tend to want just one dude. Men and women have different mating strategies. Poor/unstable society? Ah unstable society is one that fails to produce enough offspring to preserve itself and gets replaced wholesale by a faster reproducing culture. Look at the US, soon to be mostly Latino or the post-Christian Europeans, soon to be Muslim. Unstable does not equal poor. It's not just rockstars. Look at star athletes. Google an article about the NFL players with the most kids. They have harems. Or read about Magic Johnson and his magic johnson. Got a book for you: Be The Worst You Can Be - Life's too long for patience and virtue. This isn't a how question, it's a why question. Not everything can be satisfactorily answered in terms of how. Your apparent infatuation with anecdotes is interesting, Randall. In an age and place where women have contraception and abortion available as alternatives to sprouting male seeds and are getting closer to economic parity (though we still have a long way to go) I think you may find yourself plowing unproductive ground for someone else's pleasure. The statistics indicate this is precisely what happens. As women become more self sufficient, and as child mortality decreases, they become more interested in physical attractiveness than male parental investment. At the same time, birth rate declines. Women have both short and long term mating strategies, which are affected by the environment. Males respond (to varying degrees) by altering their strategies to suit the females. This isn't an error-free process, so male reproductive success is more variable than female. In the US, Hispanic birth rates are dropping much faster than the rest of the US (and their birth rates are lower than in their home countries). I could argue that, coming from a poorer/less stable environment, Latinos bring with them a higher birth rate. Over time, as their cultural memory fades and they share in our relative success, one might expect their birth rate to approach the average for the entire population. This is what's actually happening, though I expect the totality of all underlying causes isn't understood. Or, if you prefer the anecdotal approach, given the dramatic rise in Latin players in the Major Leagues, I suppose I could conclude that Latino ballplayer sterility is rising faster than their bats. There is no doubt that males and female have different sexual selection strategies. There is also no doubt that those strategies are multi-dimensional.

Parhelion Palou wrote: Here's one from the Premium Wilderness: /me swoons. Geez Par, that's a li'l too perfect. Couldn't you have left your bowtie a li'l crooked so I could straighten it? I'd wear the seams in my stockings a li'l off center to return the favor.

Jennifer Boyle wrote: I am posting this here because I think that the people who follow the creation forums all know it already. I never made clothes because I think there's no hope that I could ever make nice ones. However, recently I have become interested in making alpha masks to use with mesh clothing and invisiprim shoes. I became acquainted with clothing/skin templates for the first time, and they were an enormous help. What did not occur to me until after I had spent may hours is that it would be much easier still if I wore the templates as clothing or tattoo while designing and trying on the alpha masks. I am somewhat embarrassed to post this and tell everyone how stupid I am. However, I think there may be someone else who would not realize that wearing the templates is so helpful at first, and I may save her several hours. The templates are here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Clothing_Tutorials You certainly shouldn't feel stupid, Jennifer. SL has a long and steep learning curve. I'm still just scratching the surface after four years here. Some of us came to SL with previous experience and so ideas like wearing the templates might occur quickly. But, these ideas are not obvious to everyone. I'm glad you brought it up!

Innula Zenovka wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Rolig Loon wrote: Innula Zenovka wrote: Wikiepdia explains all. My preferred term, btw, when discussing the creatures in Greek, is Htapothi. /me retracts her "pppppppth" . Scoots back to Wikipedia to discover what kind of creature has retractable "pppppppths" Scoots off to the jira to petition for llSetLinkPrimitivePppppppthsFast() We need this! I'll vote for it!!!

Randall Ahren wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: If my sole interest was a weekend roll in the hay, I'd want to have it with a fella who wouldn't miss me when I'm gone... ETA: If, in the aphorisim "Nice guys finish last", you define the thing that's finished as "a life", then indeed it's true. The altruistic, on average, live longer than others. I think what you posted supports being selfish and mean rather than nice. What do you think guys really want? Take a guy that can have his choice of women, does he want just one? Not usually. Look at rock stars with their groupies or Tiger Woods with all of his love interests. Boredom provides an evolutionary advantage. It causes the guy to move on after planting some bad seed and look for unplowed ground. Winning is propagating your genetic material into the next generation. That's why bad guys persist and why women like them. It's survival of the fittest, not the nicest or smartest. Take a woman that can have her choice of men, would she want just one? Randall, forgive me if I'm wrong, but your understanding of sexual attraction doesn't seem to account for the environment. The behavior you describe, of planting bad seeds and looking for unplowed ground, works best in poor/unstable societies. The third from last paragraph of this article hints at an alternate psychology that doesn't look like your "bad boy" hypothesis. Regarding your anecdotal reference to rock stars... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6976583.stm I have long wondered if rock stars sire more children than average, or if their children fare better than average. I've seen no credible research beyond Dr. Bellis' study, but I have my suspicions. I do believe in survival of the fittest, but don't think "fittest" is quite as you suggest... at least not in my world.

Rolig Loon wrote: Innula Zenovka wrote: Wikiepdia explains all. My preferred term, btw, when discussing the creatures in Greek, is Htapothi. /me retracts her "pppppppth" . Scoots back to Wikipedia to discover what kind of creature has retractable "pppppppths"

PeterCanessa Oh wrote: Since the particle-system rules are so daunting I made a demonstration. Looks awesome with my chameleonic cuttlefish texture. Have a squd squint at this: PS: I also noticed that (un)setting the Z value of the scale vector made absolutely no difference. This is 'as expected' but contrary to my earlier experience and posts. Looks like the 'bug' that let you stop the particle tilting as you adjusted camera height has been fixed (Or maybe previously I was just using a wonky viewer, or going mad, or ...). Peter, I've done this as well and it works beautifully and efficiently, so long as you are emitting the particles with radius, velocity, acceleration, wind, target (and any other motion inducing factors I forget) all set to zero. I'm sure that's what you do in your BaseRules, but it's not shown in your example. I've never seen the "bug" that lets you stop particle tilting. I'd love to exploit it, but think that your going mad is a more interesting explanation and perhaps even more fun to exploit ;-)