Madelaine McMasters

Dillon Levenque wrote: Almost nobody, it seems, agrees on exactly how much of each is involved in any particular case. Half nature, half nurture, half unknown.

Sylvia Tamalyn wrote: Morning hugs to all (OK, it's afternoon now)...I haven't had a chance to read the thread yet but I wanted to pop in and wave! What's that thing you're waving?

Dillon Levenque wrote: Ishtara Rothschild wrote: ETA2: If culture was entirely learned, immigrants would quickly adopt the majority culture of their new home country. Instead, they tend to form cultural ghettos and try to preserve their original culture as much as possible. Cultural integration usually takes several generations and some gene flow between the host and immigrant populations. On this point I can disagree with the backing of a great deal of experience, having been born and raised in California. I went to school with kids whose parents were braceros (migrant workers from Mexico) with no more English than I have say, French. Those kids by adulthood were completely immersed in and a valuable part of the local culture. I've seen the same thing happen with immigrants from Asia. Sadly, among some of the immigrant communities there have been movements in recent years to preserve not just the cultural identity, but the entire culture. That's a trend I think wrong-headed, frankly. I must say I had hoped the General Discussion Forum would be the place that Nature v Nurture would be settled once and for all, but it appears the debate will continue. :smileyhappy: I've had the same experience, DIllon. My neighbors across the street are an example of the power of immersion. He's from Jamaica, she's from a Detroit ghetto (each is an alien world to my neighborhood). Both speak "Network News Anchor English" and are Republicans of the first degree. That's cultural integration in less than one generation. My bridesmaid is from Iran and speaks with a lovely accent, but has a pop culture knowledge that amazes me. The local Hmong population is fascinating, with grandparents who don't speak a word of English, parents who have accents and kids who are indistinguishable from the rest of the noisy rugrats meandering about the farmer's market. Yet they do manage to propagate their work ethic without as much apparent "dilution". Why some chose to immerse and some chose to segregate, I don't know. I do know who gets the jobs.

Sy, The simplest way to avoid this problem is to set the sun either Midday or Midnight. Midday puts the sun straight overhead, evenly illuminating surfaces, midnight does the same, only darker and cooler. If you want the warmth of morning/evening light, you can get that from various windlight settings.

Lillie Woodells wrote: This is going to be a long long road for his recovery, but I still have my dad! I'm so glad to hear he's recovering, Lillie. It will be a long, long road and he'll need all the support he can get, as will your Mom. Though we have only words to offer here, they're often just the right thing to help "mind over matter". So I'm sending you and your Dad my best wishes and a vat of chicken juice. I know he's hungry, but just have him soak in it. He's in no condition to take it internally. Lots of hugs!

Sylvia Tamalyn wrote: I was kinda hoping that the crooked eyeholes would impair your ability to hit me with fireballs... :smileysad: Where there's a will, there's a way.

Electronic Mode wrote: Slotography means SL photography http://www.flickr.com/photos/electronicmode nothing special, just simple things, I do so called enviroment photos. Never liked to do avatar photos I live in Forgotten City (your last few street shots are from my neighborhood) because of those silent streets. Sometimes simple is best. :-)

Charolotte Caxton wrote: All of reality is an illusion. If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain - Morpheus We can feel, smell, taste and see things that are not real. Memories of real experiences are evoked by current virtual ones. At the end of our days, when it's all memory, I wonder if we'll have a hard time untangling the worlds we've inhabited.

Sylvia says she saved me the time and effort of conjuring up a Halloween costume... She's one smart Cupcake, knowing I'll never ask her to do my laundry again.

I participate in a half dozen professional fora, none of which has any trouble at all with spam. Several of them are volunteer staffed. Before anybody trots out the "security by obscurity" trope, I'll counter that SL itself is obscure and the forums even more so. The weekly post count on one of the volunteer run forums I frequent is considerably larger than here. Our spam problems are, I think, entirely the result of neglect. What baffles me is that LL took the time and expense to switch forum tools and then walked away from it. If we're not worth the effort, pull the plug, if we are worth the effort, plug the holes.

DQ Darwin wrote: Maddy I have to know what your planning to give out on Halloween when the young ones come knocking at your door??? Give out? I'll be going door to door with the li'l ones myself. Eight bags each, what a haul!

JeanRicard Broek wrote: Just wanted to share the work of so many talented artists over the past 3 years . Here is a link.. Sit back, put on some music , get a glass of wine, and be amazed. The collection is of work from approx 2000 SL residents, with 2400 SL snapshots & images http://www.flickr.com//groups/secondlife-bestofthebest/pool/show/ JeanRicard, what magnificant proof that art flourishes here in SL!

Hippie Bowman wrote: As you may, or may not know, Lil's father was involved in a bad auto accident yesterday! Please, all of you, keep him in you prayers, and thoughts. He is in critical condition, with blood sugar issues. He is partially awake, and in lots of pain. Please, please all of you, lift him up in your thoughts today. Lil! We love you! Please let us know if there is anything we can do! Peace! I'll pitch in by serving up breakfast this morning. It's an old recipie (some of you have had it before), but a good one... Clam chowder, chowder crackers, crackers and cheese, cheesecloth Hot dogs, dog chow, chow mein, Mein Kampf Baked Alaska, Alaskan king crab, crab cakes, cake pans Raspberry tarts, tart apples, apple cobbler, cobblestones Fried chicken, chicken soup, soup bones, boned corsets Lemon grass, grass fed beef, beef wellington, Wellington boots For those with only tiny recipe cards, there's the condensed version... Clam chowder crackers and cheesecloth Hot dog chow Mein Kampf Baked Alaskan king crab cake pans Raspberry tart apple cobblestones Fried chicken soup boned corsets Lemon grass fed beef Wellington boots Hugs, Everybody! Hang in there Lillie, we're all pulling for your Dad and your family. Good thoughts can make a difference everybody, so jump in and pull!

Rodvik Linden wrote: p.s. sadly, I am likely only going to get more scruffy and poorly dressed over time so I cant promise any progress there You just did. ;-)

I've always thought of alcohol as pulling your foot off the brake, not grabbing the steering wheel out of your hands. When I was in college, my friends often went to the bars with expectations already in place for how they'd act. It was pretty clear to me that they were going to use alcohol as the excuse. It's an expensive way to toss personal responsibility out the window. Why not just drop the pants and go to town with all faculties intact? Wisconsin leads the nation in binge drinking. That there are folks still driving the streets of my town after six DWI convictions seems like a celebration of the carnage they cause. It hardly suprises me that so many people don't think twice before driving drunk. It's what we do!

Ian Undercroft wrote: Since using Firestorm, I thought at first that search had stopped working for me. However, for some reason it opens as a closed window (if that makes sense) in the top left of my screen. It's hard to see and is easily missed. However, when I click the square to expand the window, I see the full search page. Same for me, Ian. I believe the person who coded that thought "Search" was what we were supposed to do, not what the computer was supposed to do. So it plays a "Where's Waldo" trick on us, minimizing the search window and parking it up in the corner.

Charolotte Caxton wrote: Oh dear Madelaine, I believe that's called Karma, as the portrait of Q can attest to Pfft!

Cinnamon Mistwood wrote: I hope someone benefited from the surge of extra power I worked so hard to generate. The law of unintended consequences strikes again... Next time walk rather than sprint?

Rage Hyx wrote: But I'm guessing that the # of User IDs and Group IDs are a maximum of 65535 in Linux. UUIDs are 128 bits long. That's more than enough to ID every atom in New York City, but not enough to describe, down to the quantum level, your fingernail.

Void Singer wrote: preferably not at the same time. Aww c'mon Void, if you can imagine a bad outcome, why can't you imagine a good one?! Look Ma, no hands!

Void Singer wrote: Deltango Vale wrote: An important reminder: born in San Francisco in Feb 1955 to [unmarried] students Joanne Schieble and Syrian-born Abdulfattah Jandali adopted by a Californian working class couple had a summer job at Hewlett-Packard while at school - later worked at Atari dropped out of college after six months and went traveling in India, where he became a Buddhist interesting, and explains a few things to me... intelligent kid from medicocre background seeking meaning becomes jaded and builds an empire out of crass commercialism. (a compliment, even if backhanded) Void, I don't think Jobs was jaded. But you're another story entirely! ;-) http://allthingsd.com/20111006/walt-mossberg-reflects-on-life-and-career-of-steve-jobs-for-fox-business-video

Surely this has been posted before (maybe by me?!)...

Ishtara Rothschild wrote: So Steve Jobs really did what Johannes Gutenberg had done before him: He took the art of calligraphy and manual lettering, combined it with modern technology, and made it available for the masses PS: I learned calligraphy in vocational school (along with mechanical typesetting, the use of Letraset transfer fonts, diatype photosetting, and other things that I thought would be useless for me in later life). It's nice to know that I have something in common with Steve Jobs, no matter how little. Ishy, this merging of art and technology is something Jobs talked about often and it may be why techno-geeks get so bent out of shape over the success Apple enjoys. While the engineer in me may be curious about the technology of a thing (and I can recognize elegance there), the craftsman/artist in me cares very deeply about the aesthetics of a thing, too. I've spent more than two decades splitting my day between PC and Mac environments (now entirely on Apple hardware) and they feel very different to me. I remember the joy I shared with my Father as we played with our first Macintosh in 1984. I still feel it when I touch their plastic bags, close the smart cover on my iPad, or have a video chat with Mom. And that this joy extends to watching Pixar movies tells me that Mr. Jobs genius was in seeing through my eyes. Maybe the reason the loss of Steve Jobs resonates with us so is that he had more in common with us, and more hope for us, than we ever understood.

Void Singer wrote: :: watches unfortunate consequence of single person in power replying to the crowd as elements of the crowd all dredge up their own personal causes :: popcorn anyone? This is the beauty of people with vision, they're looking elsewhere.