Scylla Rhiadra

Wow. Eva.

lol I think I like you. I've been using mesh clothing since 2013, but first started using mesh body parts a little less than a year ago. There is, unquestionably, an awful learning curve. And those learning are definitely not assisted by the failure of mesh creators (especially for mesh bodies and heads) to get it together enough to standardize the way these work. In part as a result of that lack of standardization, there is also a real lack of tutorials and knowledge bases for how this all works. However, it does get much easier. There are places you can get help, notably here on the forums (we have some incredibly knowledgeable and generous people who jump in to answer questions and help solve problems), and Kiri's advice, above, is also good. If even a dolt like me can master it (mostly), so, I'm sure, can you. And it looks so much nicer. Really. Even the boobs (although I still think that even mesh boobs are mostly pretty crap).

I think that there's always a tension between "popularity" (which is, in a sense, about how effective something is) and the need to not reduce everything to homogeneity. Yes, we need movie theatres, and they service more people than art galleries and theatres. But without the latter, we would be much impoverished. In SL, if the only criterion were popularity, we'd have nothing left by box stores and sex sims.

But this is the entire premise of my point. Do we really need to tell LL what is in their best interests, as a business? Probably true. Should we care, though? Should they? It's their business, and they get to call the shots -- just as a sim owner can make entirely arbitrary decisions about their sim. As I see it, there's a sort of general confusion of categories here. Maintaining an abandoned region for business purposes isn't "socialism" (and I know that you aren't claiming that it is, but others have) or public-spiritedness, or philanthropy, or governmental overspending. It would most assuredly be a business decision. I agree totally. But it most often doesn't happen. The tragedy of the commons?

Out of curiosity, why not? If LL has determined that the relatively small sums involved add to the value of their product (i.e., SL), then why would they not? I think there is a sort of mistaken assumption here that LL taking over and maintaining popular or interesting regions is somehow "doing favours" for the original region owner. It's not: it's entirely an exercise in self-interest. To put it another way, they are simply appropriating something someone else has put the time, effort, and money into building, and turning it to their own advantage.

Blue Moon Bay (near FogBound) http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Blue Moon Bay/134/20

Kinda my point. Which is not to say that they always make the best decisions. When Greenies disappeared, or most of AM Radio's installations, it probably appeared to them that SL was sufficiently vibrant and creative that they need only wait around for the next, even better expression of innovative creativity. And, although there have been many new and beautiful new things created since then, I'm not sure that was an entirely a good decision. To begin with, it's a little like suggesting that we don't need to worry about conserving the work of Monet because there is sure to be an even "better" and "more interesting" new painter along soon.

The obvious answer is . . . whoever is footing the bill. In this case, probably LL. The primary reason LL might get behind such a plan is because they see benefits, in terms of retention, PR, or attracting new users to the platform by retaining particular content. The calculation of what to keep would be built around that assumption: what sims regions contribute in sufficiently positive ways to the platform to make it worth hosting them? Did they generate traffic, and, as importantly, do they represent SL as Linden Lab would want SL to be seen? A sex sim, for instance, might get a lot of traffic, but is that really the element of SL that the Lab wants to highlight? What would look good on a splash page, in an advertisement, or in a news story?

I guess, maybe? I don't know how you'd measure that, though. Every culture brings its own "good things" to the table, but these inevitably mean trade offs of some sort. So, for instance, while I am by no definition a "patriotic" Canadian, I am happy being Canadian, and wouldn't move to the US on a bet -- because the particular things that *I* value are weighted a bit more heavily here (e.g., public healthcare, gun control, social services, etc.). But I'm very aware that there are ways in which US culture is "better." You've created a culture there that is, for instance, much more "creative" and innovative than ours. I think it's often a question of how you weight the criteria. I'll agree that there is much to be admired in First Nations cultures, and a great deal that we can learn from them. But I'm also leery of romanticizing them into a sort of 21st century version of the old "Noble Savage" myth. Indigenous cultures featured, historically, their own fair share of violence and inequality; the part of Ontario I live was the home, before about 1650, of the so-called "Neutral Confederacy," a first nation that was literally annihilated by war with the Iroquois nations. Whatever their culture, people are pretty much always people, and we all share that tendency towards violence and injustice. On the whole (and I'm not sure I'm really disagreeing with you on this), I think we should look to see what all cultures have to offer, and try to find ways to reconcile and integrate the best of what each has created.

That's pretty hilarious. Who needs Red Green after all? It's also pretty familiar looking. There's a Canadian version of this, associated with summer cottages: you probably wouldn't notice much difference, except that the beer would be better (don't get a Canadian started on the subject of US beer . . .), and the music maybe a little different at times (because, Shania Twain notwithstanding, Anglo Canadian country music is a bit more influenced by English, Irish, and Scottish folk music).

Oh, sorry! I did not mean to convey the sense that Canadians were "better" at any of this. Just different. As I said, our national myths like to convey the idea that our growth was, in important ways, more peaceful than that of the US -- and there is some truth to that. But those myths also mask a whole lot of violence. In the other thread, I made mention of the establishment of residential schools, beginning in the last decade of the 19th century, and continuing well into the middle of the 20th. These were establishments that "catered" to First Nations children forcibly taken from their parents, given new "European" names, forbidden from speaking their native tongues, and generally kept in horrendous conditions that resulted in the death of thousands of them. It was an outright attempt to extinguish indigenous identity in Canada, and it was by any definition cultural genocide, verging in places on murder by neglect. We're only now coming to terms with the horrendous damage we caused, both to the individuals involved, and to the cultures we tried to annihilate: a "Truth and Reconciliation" commission that reported on it a few years ago has laid out some of the necessary groundwork, and agonizingly small and inadequate steps have been taken to put that into effect. There is nothing "better" about that, in any sense. It's the most shameful chapter in a history that hides a great many shameful moments. At the same time, Canada's historic dependence upon the exploitation of natural resources has led to some pretty horrific environmental damage. Our federal government's recent decision to take control of and build a huge oil pipeline from the Alberta tar sands, over some very loud protests from the First Nations communities and any one else who cares about the environment, is proof that we haven't wrestled that demon to the ground either. As for the potshots at those damned Yankees that punctuate our history books, that's an inevitable corollary of being a small nation trying to define, and differentiate itself in the shadow of a much larger one, one that threatens (purposefully or not) to overwhelm us all the time. Understanding the myths that underwrite a nation's view of itself can lend really useful insights into its culture and workings. But it's important to remember that they are just that: myths.

What I think you get from the Glen Gould movie -- and this is pretty typically Canadian, probably -- is a sense that Canadians, or at least non-indigenous Canadians, always feel a little overwhelmed by our landscapes in the west and north. We are a relatively small nation (under 40 million) spread across a really huge expanse of land, and mostly concentrated within 100 kms or so of the US border. So, we are, almost literally, overwhelmed by the expanse of space. A little like what Maddy describes, actually. And there is, I think anyway, always a bit of an undercurrent of feeling intimidated by it. My perception -- and I'm certainly open to correction on this -- is that in the US, new territories were something to be conquered, to be wrestled into submission, and to be "filled" with people. That's very different from the Canadian relationship to our land.

Well, Canada, like the States, has a really pretty diverse range of geographically-determined cultures, and I speak from the perspective of only one -- albeit, a very influential one. Canada's attitude to the history of our expansion westward has changed, and continues to change really quite radically, as our relationship to, and understanding of, indigenous cultures and first nations evolves. But the older "official narrative" (i.e., the one that appeared in textbooks, and on CBC) of the west was that it was essentially empty space that was gradually populated by tiny clusters of European settlers, mostly, after about 1890, immigrants from Eastern Europe. The building of the intercontinental railroad tied these tiny rural communities to the larger urban centres: it was literally a precondition for Confederation in 1867, as the building of the CP line to the west coast was an actual precondition of the western provinces and territories signing on to the new nation. The hammering of the "last spike" of the intercontinental in 1885 is an iconic moment (and photograph) in Canadian history. We used to like to pretend that our relationship with western First Nations was peaceful and well-ordered: the Mounties, in their early incarnation as the Northwest Mounted Police, supposedly used reason and diplomacy rather than guns to keep the peace. A famous story is of the arrival of Sitting Bull and the Sioux as refugees from the States after the Battle of the Little Big Horn: this "fearsome band of warriors" was "subdued," we used to be told, by a single Mountie who greeted and welcomed them to Canada, firmly insisting that this was not the USA, and that no violence would be tolerated. Of course, the truth is a bit different. The Sioux were "settled" peaceably, but no provision was made to feed them, as they were not native to Canada. They eventually began starving to death, and most drifted south again, back to the USA. And we had two rebellions by First Nations peoples in the West, the Metis, led by Louis Riel. Both were crushed by military force, and Riel was eventually tried and hanged. He is now regarded as something of a Canadian hero, actually, which shows how things are changing (although he's always been revered in French Canada, because the Metis spoke French, and were the descendants of intermarriage between early French trappers and the local indigenous populations). It's an evolving story, as I said, but it is different from the US one. In fact, many of the stories about violence and conflict in the Canadian West (and especially in the Yukon, which is a whole other story) traditionally centre around gun-toting, whiskey-smuggling Americans. What is true, I think, is that our "myths" don't focus upon movement, or "expansion" as such. They are instead mostly (whether accurately or not) about stability, community, and that most Canadian of concepts, "good government."

Of course you do. Except, now, they are all of them miniature marvels of modern engineering. Oh, sure. I'd always find things to do! There was a huge sandlot (a giant pile of sand for laying on the "beach" front of the cottage) that was amazing for making sand forts and such. And there was a closet full of games, most of them cheap and kind of stupid, but still fun. And cards. And every once in a while, I'd get (literally) lost in the woods, forcing my parents to have second thoughts about the wisdom of owning a cottage . . . Actually, that's I guess one of the differences between the Ontario "cottage," and these sorts of trailer parks. Cottages usually have a reasonably substantial acreage of woodland attached to them. I don't know how large the woodland plot that was part of my parent's cottage was, but it was, as I say, big enough for me to get lost in it. Getting lost in the woods (and worrying about bears, of course) was/is another Canadian rite of passage? Yes. This. That's ideal.

The Red Green Show is hilarious. But it's also kind of odd, in some ways, because it's really an affectionate parody, written by and for urban folk like myself, of life in small town Ontario. It's full of funned-up cliches about "being Canadian," but, again, in the context of a particular cultural milieu. In one way, it's a prime example of the Canadian talent for making gentle fun of ourselves (cf. Bob and Doug Mackenzie), but it's also, at least maybe, a sort of condescending portrait of non-urban Canadians, as viewed from the perspective of the so-called "urban elites" (who are the main demographic, I suspect, of the CBC). BUT . . . as I say, it is affectionate. I don't know how those who live in the small towns of Ontario that it is sort of ridiculing feel about it, but mostly we (Canadians) are pretty slow to take offense. I suspect that they find it funny too, even as they recognize themselves in it? I do remember, btw, The Red Fisher Show, which is one of the things that Red Green is parodying. It was hilariously awful. If you like Red Green, it's probably worth dragging up an episode Red Fisher: it's unintentional self-parody!