Some things are important

Some things are important, or why I got nothing done today.

• Salon Magazine
• The Podium
• The Uptake
• I-Witness Video
• Rhetorical Wasteland

If you're not outraged then you're not paying attention.

By the way, according to the search warrents in question, possession of any of the following items, on your person or in your home, could indicate that you may be engaging in potential criminal if not terrorist activity:

• computers
• cameras
• cell phones
• any electronic devices
• paint
• alcohol
• street maps
• glass or plastic bottles
• cardboard boxes
• paper products
• cloth or fabric
• feces
• urine
• free speech

So watch carefully that person who puts out their recylcing each week, or (*gasp*) has a bathroom in their house, because you never know.

You know, suddenly my last post is a whole lot less funny ...

Vice President Airlock

For those of you who think one of our potential first ladies is really an alien bent on world domination, more fodder for you ... could one of our candidates really be a Cylon?

From io9.

1737 Thieves' Cant

Need to know how to talk like a thief 250 years ago ... well here you go.

Hmmm. "School" seemed to mean something else back then. Though you'll be glad to know some of the baser slang hasn't changed a whit.

Builds 15: Critters

Normally I am not a fan of sculpties. At least not until the Internet and the Second Life Servers are both much, much faster. Blob world just doesn't do it for me.

The only sculpties usually found around my work are trees, since they do make for very nice, if prim heavy, trees. But these critters are just to cute to pass up. It looks like they snuck into my garden while I was off doing something else.

The pictures don't do them much credit because they are both beautifully scripted. The bunny is worth it just for the twitchy nose.

No, I didn't make them, just wish I did.

Hamster Valediction

Come to the dark side, we have satire. You know you want it.

From boingboing gadgets.

Copy to the Check

Okay, I said I was going to write about my being summarily dismissed for speaking my mind, if a little adamantly, and have been dragging my feet.

Perhaps, in part, because I just lost my steam. Perhaps, in part, because I think getting fired for speaking my mind is a feather in my cap. Perhaps, in part, because there are so many other interesting things in this world. But I suppose that what I want to say is important, and I need to say it.

So allow me to start with an easy one (in terms of not going on a tirade for the next few hours) and make a truly controversial statement regarding education:

Most faculty who say they are not compensated for developing course content on their own time are, to put it simply, lying.

I know, an amazing thing for a professor to profess. But it is, alas, true.

Are they knowingly lying? Probably not. They probably firmly believe this to be true. But firmly believing something to be true doesn't make it so. More commonly it means one is deceived, deluded, or lying to one's self. To put it more gently, it is a self serving argument with no foundation in reality.

Here is how people's mind's work on this topic:

I am getting paid $nn thousand dollars a year to teach. However, this is a salary and is not earmarked out between class time, grading time, and development time. Since this is not being spelled out, and there is nothing elsewhere in my contract specifically saying that part of my compensation relates to developing course content for course, I am therefore not getting compensated for my course development work.

Does anyone see the problem with this line of reasoning?

I hope so.

If you don't, let me give a concrete example. Note that the numbers are intentionally altered to protect the innocent, but they are close enough for rock and roll.

Let's take a woefully underpaid adjunct faculty member, like I almost was.

Let's say I earn $875 per credit hour for each course I teach. That is 15 weeks of a one hour class commitment, but the external supporting work. A meager sum for the amount of work involved, which is usually at least two hours of desk work for every hour of class time, or a minimum of 45 hours divided into 850, means it is under $20 an hour. Not a terrible salary, but certainly low for a professional field inhabited by people whose student loans debts are second only to doctors.

Now, at the same school, as a full-time faculty member, if I am asked to sit in on a class for another faculty member, I will get $25 for that hour, on top of my normal salary. Now, if we multiply that by the same 15 hours, we get $375. So that is $375 for 15 hours of class time, versus $875 for, ummm, 15 hours of class time. So what is that other $500 for again? Said it above, work outside of class, including course development and grading. And that is for lowly adjuncts. The faculty earn anywhere from a little more to significantly more than that.

Undercompensated perhaps, but not uncompensated. A critical difference. It is the difference between doing something for less than you think it is worth versus doing something for free. Being undercompensated may make us feel like we are uncompensated, but that doesn't make it so.

Why is this relevant? Well, when I asked if I could borrow course materials from another faculty member, they lectured me on how I should be doing my own work because they weren't getting paid for developing the course materials, so why should they share them?

Well, ignoring the fact that the course was originally mine before I left said school ...

In any event, all schools should always require as terms of their faculty being hired that

• course development is part of the work they are expected to do and is included in the determination of their salary, and
• while acknowledging that faculty own the content they create, in paying them to create it, the school has the right to chose to share it with other faculty to ensure course consistency between sections.

Though some schools do exactly this already, those are, almost unbelievably, heretical assertions for many faculty at schools that don't. But there is a very good reason for them, and I don't mean because that way the school covers its legal butt. To put it simply, sharing is important to education, in fact it is critical. Hiding your work under a rock and hoarding it to yourself is not an effective way to educate, to learn, or to grow. We will start to address that next time, because, well, that is the entire point of this.

CERN Rap

Or why we should bring back Scholastic Rock.

Check it.

You know, we used to learn and remember throught music and poetry. The Scientific Revolution set about rationalizing and stamping out such antiquated notions. Perhaps that was a mistake.

Perhaps what we need for students to lern is to return to teaching through poetry, song, art, and hands-on interaction. Rather than hiding in our hallowed halls and putting to paper obscure treastises in even more obsure language in an attempt to create a totality of clearly defined, categorized, and indexed rationality, subsuming the world in an unacknowledged belief in the mystical powers of names and numbers.

While you're at at, puppet socks discuss the free market, from boingboing tv.

Builds 14: More Airship

A shot of the airship overlooking the sim. It is at times like this that you realize how small Second Life is. Each sim no bigger than a high school athletic field. Here we are with the camera cranked to 512m and four sims in the picture, yet it all encompasses only a third of a mile or so.

And the interior, which I am working on. Found some nice wallpapers that look right when deformed by tapered prims.

Builds 13: My What a Big Tower You Have

All the better to see you with my dear.

Okay, really just built it to see how big it would be in Second Life. Thanks to a few huge prims (40 meters each) it is only 49 prims so far. Given the odd angles it wouldn't be possible with smaller prims due to round error issues coupled with maximum link distances.

Even so I couldn't get the corners to match right, especially since that would require tapering in three dimensions instead of two, not something supported by the Lindens as of yet. And for some reason when I tapered the prims, they shrank by one centimeter in height, reducing them to 3999cm and meaning I had to juggle with the ones that were still a full 40 meters. The problem is that the base is a four point star and not a square. Those corners are canted out at 26 degrees in one direction and 1.25 degrees in another. So there is corner overlap on the ends. Well, better than pixel panic I suppose.

It is a real tower, called the Shimonoseki Kaikyo Yume Tower and can be found in Shimonoseki, Japan (山口県下関市).

My version is still very much a draft and likely to stay that way unless I get really inspired. The problem is, where would I put it? Anyone want a reproduction of a 150 meter tall tower with almost no usuable interior space?

The interior of the original is all support structure for the ball at the top, which houses two observation decks (the lower one being a museum with historical information of what you are looking at), a gift shop and a small restuarant. The elevator runs up one of the legs. One of the others houses emergency stairs.

Although it says 153 meters in the overview, it is not clear whether that includes the hill and the platform it sits on, since it is a three storey climb just to the front door, past a conference center and performance space.

It is one of the three Japanese tower stamps (and keychains) that I have to my name. The second is Kyoto tower, and the third is from Osaka. Gotta catch 'em all!

Builds 12: Small Electropunk Aircraft

There, I coined a new word. Not as evocative as steampunk though.

Shots of the little vehicles inside the hangar bay seen in my last builds post.

Will add som better shots of them on their own later.

First, the electroskiff, for ferrying passengers and cargo to and from the ship. Okay, so a little lacking in guard rails. Don't worry, it is woefully underpowered and moves very slowly.

Second, the escape pod, with me sitting in it.

In spite of the small size, it comfortably seats three, two passengers and the pilot. I still have the finish the pilot seat. Need to find a motorcycle pose first though. Then it is time to start playing with scripting it to really fly.

Don't need the name "escape pod" fool you. It is designed to fight its way to freedom if necessary. Aside from a slug gun on the top, the pointy bit on the front is more than decoration. It is part of a system that allows the entire ship to act as a plasma weapon. Sort of a targeted EMP with enough power to burn holes in anything in front of it. Use it sparingly though, takes alot of electricity to generate fields that reach plasma state. The main ship can do the same and has the benefit of not having to be pointed at its target like this little thing. Of course, the EMP itself isn't quite as devastating in a world that has not yet invented the transistor. Difference engines don't really care about electrical disruption, though it can magnetize any magnetizable parts and keep them from interacting properly. Still, don't want to be right in front of it when it goes off.

Welcome to the Arcology

Paolo Soleri may finally have his day.

From inhabitat.

Awesome Ship

Found this totally amazing ship in SL. I am jealous. Of course it is also a total prim hog. All of those panels are separate prims.

Still, amazing to behold, and only 5 meters beyond a no trespassing sign so I couldn't poke around it properly. Oh well.

Reviews: Peregrine Singh

Peregrine Singh is a novelty in Second Life. He is not another blues singer or guitarist or singer song-writer or person with karaoke machine. You are not going to hear covers of your favorite tunes from him.

Instead, he is playing how own music in his own way, and it is just awesome. A sedate, ambient awesome, but awesome.

Peregrine Singh plays his guitar to beat-box accompaniment in ways that explores the realm of world beat music in new and interesting ways, taking us on ambient trips to other realms, his notes evoking moods, feelings, and even images of places kicking in the back of our heads. He pulls in musical threads and beats from around the globe and arranges them into captivating musical ambiance. Simply, he performs musical poetry.

If you promise not to fall asleep during an hour of the truly mellow, he is a must listen. Remember to load up your HUD with the slowest, most rapturous dances you have.

Reviews: Noma Falta

I find I don't have much nice to say about female vocalists in Second Life. Not that I don't like female vocalists, and not that there aren't plenty of good ones out there. There are way more women in my personal music collection than men. Of course, my fascination with J-Pop and Eurodance may be skewing those numbers a little. But in SL, the female vocalists just never seem to thrill me. Don't know why. Maybe the technology used to stream live performances in Second Life was only ever optimized for male vocal patterns making female voices sound somehow off. I have no idea. Not beyond the realm of possibility though.

Noma Falta though, is a just plain amazing singer. It is hard to tell whether she is singing karaoke or playing at least one instrument on her own with synth accompaniment. But if she is running a karaoke machine, I'm not going to hold it against her. Especially when she sings many of her tunes acapella.

Her deep, dusky renditions of the blues and of anything she chooses to sing is well worth the listen. There aren't many SL musicians out there who can hold your attention on unaccompanied voice alone. The quality of streamed audio sees to that. You have to be better than good to overcome the limits of mediocre equipment.

Some of my favorite musicians, including some already reviewed here, are to be found at her concerts, also listening. Musicians that attract other musicians is always a good sign.

Keep an eye, and an ear, out for her.

Claymation Horror

Some Claymation Horror from Japan.

Courtesy of boingboing.

This is pretty cool too, for those of you in the Obama-loving D&D crowd.

Life Imitates Life

Ouch! Had a knock-down, drag out fight on Second Life that fortunately ended sort-of well last night.

Got invited to a friend's rez-day (birthday) party and things were going really well until the manager got bent out of shape and accused me of having an underage avie in the club.

I should point out at this point that I am one of those weird people in Second Life who has made an avie that is a proportional, normal sized human. Which may seem like an odd statement except when Linden Labs created the system, for some reason they set the default high on avatars to 2 meters, or roughly 6'3". Since there is about 50 centimers of give in either direction that means avatars can range from roughly 4'8" to 8'6" or so. Playing a little more with torso length and leg length and you can get that up to over 9 feet tall. Most of SL is probably at least 3 standard deviations from the mean in terms of avatar height versus normal human height. This, along with the default camera position, causes interesting problems with trying to build anything to scale.

Many people who come on to Second Life, perhaps feeling some odd insecurity about their height, I have no idea, like to crank the height of their avatars. This means that as a properly proportioned 5 foot tall avie, well ... let's just say I don't even have to bend over let alone get on my knees. (Don't get your hopes up, it is meant as a visual, not an offer.) I am actually interested in what makes people want to be giants though.

So, in the face of that, why be so small? Well, there are a fair number of us who really take pride in the fact that we have worked really hard to build an avatar this is humanly proportional and could pretty much walk into the real world as is and nobody would bat an eyelash, or look at them funny (except maybe to wonder why their hair looked all clumpy like that). Many of us have built avies that look very much like our real selves (not me, I confess, my avie looks like one of my college roomieswith a touch of Asian spin added, because, well, she's cuter than I am ... and at 40 she has not gotten any taller, or showed even a fraction of sag *grumble*).

Get me on a tirade and I'll say it's because we don't like looking like freaks. Though more to the point, most of the really tall female avies in the game look sort of like Mattel had decided to do an Amazon line of Barbies. Not a characture of woman-hood I have any interest in subjecting myself too. My avie is 5 feet tall, a B-cup, and I am proud of her. And as with many people in such a position, I don't go changing the appearance of my avatar on a whim.

Anyway, I get an IM from the manager of the club telling me that there are no child avies in the club. And I say that is just fine because I am not a child avie.

Usually at this point the manager says "oh, okay, sorry to bother you then," but not this person. She insists I am clearly too short to be an adult avie and I have to grow a few inches or leave. Well, first off, I am not entirely clear how this is different from being told I have to lose some weight, or change my skin color, or leave. Anyone can not only look at me and tell it is a mature avie, but if it became some big legal issue they could even request that Linden Labs review my entire inventory. I don't even have any child avatar shapes or skins in it.

So I did the expedient thing, which is I moved the discussion over from IM to general chat. Where a.) I quickly found that she was also harassing my best SL friend, who is also short, b.) I got reprimanded by the manager for making the discussion public, when, in fact, the (successful) intent was to get the support of all my friends at the party, who will all attest to the fact that I do not play child avies (it's all about having witnesses), and c.) was reminded how many of my friends are drama queens (sorry, you all, but it's true). I didn't even have time to apologize for creating a row before the birthday girls and the person who had organized the party had teleported out and were sending us all invites to come over to a different club.

Then, apparently, a few people flooded the owner of the previous club with complaints about the manager. Who apparently got fired. Not for hassling me, mind you, but for calling the owner an idiot for disagreeing with her on this. I go off easily when I'm annoyed and even I know better than that.

In the meantime we had a wonderful party somewhere else.

Which may seem like a happy ending, but I do feel a little guilty. I really didn't want to be vindictive and get someone fired. I just wanted them to acknowledge that height does not determine age in the game, any more than how much weight we have on our hips, how big our breasts are, or even our skin color. (Of course, that might explain why people are so long lived in so many Asian cultures ... they never get tall enough to get old.) SL is a virtual world where people get to be who they want. If people want to be normal height they should be allowed, and not have to style themselves to be a freak of nature just to fit in.

I find it kind of disturbing that so many people want to be giant Barbie dolls, but I don't go around forcing them to change just because they are not what I expect avatars to be. Playing by the rules and having someone still tell you that you are not allowed to be who you are is downright insulting.

A Short Addendum

Yes.

In case people were wondering, I am available for design work for hire.

Okay, so it will not be as awesome as someone who will charge you tens of thousands of Lindens, but it will be quirky and it will not be another dull, bland cube on the landscape.

And if I have any say, it will be cozy and intimate. One of these days I am going to build a house 100% to scale just so people can understand a major problem with design work in Second Life. Between the camera angle being very far out and most avies being really tall, everything has to be much larger than life to be navigable.

And just for reference, those tools that measure your height under-report it. If you make yourself exactly five feet tall (roughly zero on the height slider) according to the height tool, and then make an object that is 1.65 meters tall (a little over five feet), you will still be a good 3-4 inches taller than the object. And no, that is not all hair.

I would love it if the default camera angle could be adjusted to persist, and if the height tools gave real measurements that could be toggled between inches and centimeters. For instance, height and inseam, instead of height and leg length. Then again, I wish there were many things that could be done with the avie settings that can't be done. People may not think twice about sliding the slider to 100%, but they may hesitate to set it to 250cm or 100 inches (that 8'4").

Builds 11: The Airship

Some more of the current work in progress, an electro-steampunk airship.

Okay, have to say that shopping for clothes to go with the airship is as much fun as building it. And it is probably going to make me go broke. My favorite to date is a toss up between ~silentsparrow~ and BareRose. Current best outfit is a toss up between Black Mist and ~thorns~. Though the new underground ~silentsparrow~ store definitely wins the battle for innovative design, assuming you can figure out how to get in. (Gee, is that a storm on the horizon? Maybe you should look for a place to take shelter ...)

Anyway, two undercarriage views, with some prims that look to be out of place. I'm going to have to check on that tonight. The second shows the inside of the hangar bay.

Open Source College Textbooks

Open source college textbooks, from slashdot.

Original artical in the L.A. Times.

Oooh, and bribes for not going to the open-source side from publishers desperate to push overpriced products.

You too can sign the statement to make textbooks afforfable by taking advantage of open source resources.

And check out the following resources. Even better, contribute.

• MERLOT - Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
• Connexions - Sharing Knowledge and Building Communities
• MIT's OpenCourseWare
• WikiBooks

And let me end with some interesting thoughts on money ... from Princeton via the Japan Times.

The most wonderful thing about the Internet is finding out how many other people share your point of view when you're in a funk and feel like a lone voice in the wilderness.

First Hint of the Rising Sun

I got my fist hit from Japan.

ヤッタ!

It's the little things that make me happy.

Prunes

It's all about the prunes.

From youtube via boingboing.

Copy to the Door

You know, after having been a tenured professor for a period, and then, after some time away returning as adjunct faculty, I overlooked an important point.

Just because adjuncts are accorded intellectual property rights does not mean they are also accorded civil rights. Especially that one involving speech.

The probably didn't like the bit about how hoarding intellectual property instead of developing it collaboratively and sharing it with everyone in the school is inimical to effective pedagogy. All it does is duplicate everyones work load and breed inconsistencies between course sections.

I would be downright enraged if it weren't for the fact that the most energetic response I could muster was "Well, that's going to be inconvenient." Perhaps because it was not only a paycheck, but a meager paycheck that would bring in just enough to allow be to avoid hunting for a real job, or even better starting a new career path.

Yep, yep, you all probably guessed by now that I was canned for speaking my mind about a policy I had issues with. I mean, ignoring the fact that I probably just plain have issues, and my e-mails can be most flame-ridden. Still, no discussion, no counter-arguments, just shut up. Policy should not be questioned and therefore there is nothing to discuss apparently.

I will still be posting my arguments on the topic. After all, I have time to give them even more thought now.

So if anyone needs a firebrand (in the proper geeky sense of effective communication through sniping, harping, bickering, and flaming) who is a social theorist and annoyingly intuitive programmer (don't ask me what I just did, I don't know, it just sort of happened, but it works), you know where to reach me. Looks like my real-life alter ego will be hitting the job boards this week. Well ... next week. I am still wrapping up some summer work this week.

P.S. -- On the intuitive programming. I mean that. I can write code I can no longer understand seconds after I've put it to pixel. It just sort of flows out, like automatic writing. It is usually preceded by my complaining about how finding and easy and elegant solution to the problem, or any solution at all, will be impossible. A little freaky at times. But I only worry when I start to dream as code ... no, not of code, or in code, but as code. Ummm, it's sort of like being an airplane ticket. Not that that probably helps any.

The BoardGame on Terror

Police seize War on Terror board game because its ski-mask "could be used in a criminal act" from boingboing.

Yes, you too can randomly join the axis of evil!

Reviews: Jano Runo

Something about the Latin-style on acoustic guitar. Jano Runo both brings acoustic guitar but also appears to be in a band that provides, in their words, a range of Bossa Nova, Samba, and Tropical music. I have only heard him play solo, so I can't speak to that, but here is the myspace site. He hails from Mexico.

Although I was thoroughly enchanted with his guitar playing and highly recommend him for a good listen, I have to give him a mixed review. When I went to see him, he was very much singing off key. It was that sort of off key one gets when they are used to using a monitor, or have a cold, and can't hear themselves as well as they would like.

Still, the masterful guitarwork easily covered for the ocassional bit of flat notedness.

Look him up, he's worth your time.