Giving Second Life a whirl

I started a free Basic account yesterday on Second Life.




I would have to say I am impressed on the whole. The amount of content is just staggering. The locales are extremely varied. I'm very much looking forward to exploring more tonight. I think the operative word in 'imagination'. This is a game that allows you get out what you put in. You can buy virtual land and build a house or start a virtual business and make real dollars in the real world. I'm still so new, I don't want to begin to extrapolate on this game while still being and utter noob.



It's funny though, because I thought it was my old beater computer that couldn't process fast enough, which was making the framerate of the game so ugly. I've since learned it's the lag from their servers...everyone lags I've found out. Even having only played for just over an hour, I can already tell you this video is spot on. Hilarious.



I'm going to give this game a fair shot though. It's a work in progress.

If you want to see what it's all about, get a free download and get started HERE

Things that make you go Hmmmmm....

McCAIN'S NO. 2

The following names have been raised as possible vice presidential running mates for the likely Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona:

• South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford: Strong conservative credentials, would be great for outreach to Mr. McCain's conservative critics.

• Florida Gov. Charlie Crist: Popular governor who helped deliver Florida in the primary, could help deliver it in the general election.

• Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas: Provides a conservative-leaning female face to round out the ticket.

• Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty: Moderate Republican who was an early supporter of Mr. McCain's, could help deliver his swing state in the general election.

• Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal: Rising star among Republicans, he has many already thinking president.

• Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana: Solid conservative pick.

• Sen. Richard M. Burr of North Carolina: Friend of Mr. McCain's and an early supporter in the campaign.

• Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina: Longtime supporter on issue after issue, and possibly his closest partner in the Senate.

• Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: Would bring balance to the ticket demographically and would underscore the national security credentials of the Republican team.

Newsbusted

Whoa, just found these guys. And I was going through some '1/2 Hour Newshour' withdrawals. Not bad...not bad at all. Go subscribe.

Sacrilege, Hillary style

Archbishop objects to Clinton rally - Yahoo! News: "SAN ANTONIO - Archbishop Jose Gomez complained Wednesday about plans for a rally by Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, an abortion rights supporter, at a Catholic university.

The archbishop released a statement noting that Clinton and some other presidential candidates' support for abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research were not in line with Catholic values. He said he was responding to telephone calls and e-mails from concerned Catholics."

Gomez said he was not trying to tell people how to vote, but he noted that U.S. Catholic bishops have affirmed a statement calling on Catholics not to honor or give platforms to political candidates and officeholders "who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles."

-------------------------------

This really does make me sick to my stomach. I'm trying to throw a last minute pro-life demonstration, but it's not looking good.

Obama's 'Patriot' Corporation designator, undressed by commenter

This was a spot on comment on Hotair.com by one of the readers commenting on a post about Obama's thinly veiled socialist/communist and corporation takedowns. This commenter has it right so succintly.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Obama puts his “Patriot Corporation” aims into practice: "The basic tenants of socialism are:
1. Seduce the populace into accepting the government as the arbitrator of all problems; government from cradle-to-grave
2. Begin delivering on those services to make the citizens dependent
3. Take away the citizens’ guns
4. Increase taxes on all services while destroying any free market alternative services
5. Blame the chosen scapegoat for the inability to meet demand for services
6. Have the centralized national police force round up any dissidents

Your new democratic platform: Change!

JustTruth101 on February 13, 2008 at 4:43 PM"

You can't be serious

I can't stop laughing at this empty suited numbnuts. Yeah, Barak Hussein in a stetson. What a Puto.

Junior Boys

Man, these guys rock the house. My friend did an EXCELLENT extended robot dance to this. Was Nice.

I'm a two issue voter

After following the volatile and turbulent GOP primary to its now settled McConclusion (rimshot), unless Huckabee pulls off an upset miracle (rimshot), it's Johnny Mac time. I can hardly believe Mac has done it. After listening and discerning what both sides of the talk radio tug of war have to say, and I think both sides make very, very fine points, I must say that I am a two issue voter with Johnny Mac now on the docket in November.

1. I will cast a vote for Johnny Mac for all of our active duty military, and soon to be active duty military. I served in the US Navy from 1992-1996. I was active duty during the transition of Bush to Clinton. I remember the drag on morale when Clinton cranked out 'Don't ask, don't tell". I remember him gutting our military as part of the backward thinking 'peace dividend'. I could easily digress, but I'm not going to. The fact is is that I know how it feels to have a dirtbag as a Commander-in-Chief. I remember how it felt to have a Commander-in-Chief who didn't hide his disdain for the military very well. I also remember looking at photos of Reagan and Thatcher, riding past some Servicemen at attention...the pride must have been swelling. I cannot imagine having signed a 4 or 6 year contract to the Armed Services, knowing I may find myself in harms way, and then finding out that for the better part of my first enlistment, Hillary Clinton or Barrack Obama is going to be my Commander-in-Chief. I will try to prevent that at all costs for my active duty military. Johnny Mac is a far, far cry from Reagan, but Clinton is a far, far cry from John McCain.


Do not sell out your active duty military by staying home on election night. Go vote for McCain for you men and women serving overseas. Give them a real voice. Give them a leader that loves and respects them.

2. Life, Life, and Life Clinton and Obama are both NARAL saints. They will not only ensure that the bloody abortion mills stay open, they will expand taxpayer funding for the killing fields. Both Clinton and Obama believe partial birth abortion (infanticide) legal. Both barbaric and satanic.

Massive song addiction

I know I'm not the only one with an addiction to this song...

Happy 9th to us!

This picture is on the side of the Alamo, 9 years ago. My God I look hideous in this picture. Hope no one turns to stone out there. If so, my bad.

9 years baby! For some reason I feel prouder than I think I should...I'm not sure what that says about our marriage! It's all good.

Bob Parks on the democrats race conundrum

Outside The Wire: "Democrats now have the shoe on their other foot. They have spent decades honing their skills, planting race IEDs on the sides of the Republican campaign trail, waiting for some unsuspecting conservative candidate to set off a race controversy. Every speech, every appearance, every word uttered from a Republican’s mouth was dissected in search for the intolerance ammunition to be used for Democrat blaxploitation."

Read the full article here

I've still got one more GOP 2008 flip flop in me

This is approximately my 7th or 8th flip flop concerning who to get behind in the 2008 GOP race. I don't feel bad though, or embarassed, because this race IS that tight and IS this fluid. I'm not the only one. So without further adieu, for the third time now in the last 6 months, I am getting behind Fred Thompson. I was for him before I was against him, then for him again, then not, now for him again. Ha, what a hoot. In short, Thompson is just going to be the most electable when it's all said and done. I liked the way he told Nurse Ratchet to shove it at the Iowa debates, small as that incident was, it was revealing. I do like Duncan Hunter the best overall, but it is just looking beyond bleak at this point. At the Iowa debate, he lost track of his bearings while Romney was giving an eloquent response, and when Nurse Ratchet asked Hunter his thoughts to the same question, he confessed he forgot the original question and could she repeat the question. Bad. Very bad. Wake up man. He's not tracking in any poll, and likely never will. I think he drops out of the race in Januaray, and I can only hope he throws his support to Thompson. We shall see.

I'm a Fredhead once again. This time to stay. (I hope!)

The Curt Jester: What in the world?

The Curt Jester: What in the world?: "Here is a senator as pro-abortion as they come who as a state senator did what he could to block a Illinois state version of the born alive infants act. He voted to block the partial birth abortion ban and is in favor of embryonic stem-cell research. He is also in favor of homosexual marriage. So you have a Senator in favor of not only abortion but infanticide once the child is born and yet he is allowed to boost his campaign at a Catholic High School."

The Crescat...: Ugliest Vestment Contest

The Crescat...: Ugliest Vestment Contest: "And the award goes to..."

Hilarious.

Hillary never ceases to amaze

Via Drudge:

Los Angeles Times : Clinton's "don't ask" policy: "“The message was very generic -- and no questions.’’"

Can anyone remember a more vapid candidate, on either side of the aisle, than Hillary? Not taking any questions on campaign stops? With everything that is going on in the country and the world, and she's afraid of engaging Iowans? I guess after all of her plants have now been outed, she's not feeling particularly confident. She knows she's farce, just like the rest of us. What a disgrace. No questions...unbelievable.

New Hot Air video: Pelosi’s Promises

Hot Air » Blog Archive » New Hot Air video: Pelosi’s Promises: "On election night 2006 Pelosi made a few promises to the country during her victory speech. Hot Air TV takes a look at those promises and whether the Speaker fulfilled them."

Heh.

Bhutto assassinated by Satanic terrorist asshole

God be with you, Mrs Bhutto. Thank you for your courage. You knew this was a realistic possibility, but you charged forward regardless. You will not be forgotten. You could be the catalyst for a democratic movement never before seen in Pakistan. I pray it is so.

















Terrorists are Satanic. Their day will come when they will have to account for this. Oh, mark my words. Their day is coming.

Yeeowtch. This could leave a mark

I've read Jonah Goldberg for years at National Review. He's one of the greats. Ooozes with wry, intelligent wit. I believe this would be his first book. Why just now he's getting to his first book is beyond me. Better late than never I suppose. I have a feeling this book is going make a few more waves than most poli-sci books have made in recent years. Just look at that cover! Ann Coulter, God love her, has had a few provocative titles, but this one has got to take the cake. "Liberal Fascism" with a smiley face sporting a Hitler stache. Wow. Just wow.




Now of course, the book is out Jan 8; so I obviously haven't read the book, but I trust that the book and the message intuited by the title is going to be deemed long overdue and most welcome among conservative circles. That's conservative circles, not necessarily Republican cirlces. Conservatives, whether in the pundit class or in grass roots movements I believe have been shut out and shouted down by the liberal fascists to a much greater degree than Republicans in office. The GOP in large part has disowned conservatism for new broader partnerships with Democrats, Corporations (primarily where it concerns illegal immigration, so that corporations can keep the third world work force intact within our borders, and all of the unintended negative consequences that comes with it), and various other special interest groups. As Michael Savage calls our Congressmen, "Republicrats and Demicans". More true than ever before.

But I digress. I have every confidence that Goldberg is going to illustrate with great detail the many examples of liberal tactics in shutting down opposing points of view, which I'm gathering come straight from the playbooks of the world's most well known fascists. Whether it be the recruiter that get shouted off of college campuses or conservative speakers who get food thrown at them. These neo-fascist liberals are all about free speech. Riiiiight.


Actually, I just stumbled on an article from the past that is quite relevant, and will post in it's entirety here:

Leaving the left
I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity

Keith Thompson

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.
I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

Like many others who came of age politically in the 1960s, I became adept at not taking the measure of the left's mounting incoherence. To face it directly posed the danger that I would have to describe it accurately, first to myself and then to others. That could only give aid and comfort to Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and all the other Usual Suspects the left so regularly employs to keep from seeing its own reflection in the mirror.

Now, I find myself in a swirling metamorphosis. Think Kafka, without the bug. Think Kuhnian paradigm shift, without the buzz. Every anomaly that didn't fit my perceptual set is suddenly back, all the more glaring for so long ignored. The insistent inner voice I learned to suppress now has my rapt attention. "Something strange -- something approaching pathological -- something entirely of its own making -- has the left in its grip," the voice whispers. "How did this happen?" The Iraqi election is my tipping point. The time has come to walk in a different direction -- just as I did many years before.

I grew up in a northwest Ohio town where conservative was a polite term for reactionary. When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of Mississippi "sweltering in the heat of oppression," he could have been describing my community, where blacks knew to keep their heads down, and animosity toward Catholics and Jews was unapologetic. Liberal and conservative, like left and right, wouldn't be part of my lexicon for a while, but when King proclaimed, "I have a dream," I instinctively cast my lot with those I later found out were liberals (then synonymous with "the left" and "progressive thought").

The people on the other side were dedicated to preserving my hometown's backward-looking status quo. This was all that my 10-year-old psyche needed to know. The knowledge carried me for a long time. Mythologies are helpful that way.

I began my activist career championing the 1968 presidential candidacies of Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, because both promised to end America's misadventure in Vietnam. I marched for peace and farm worker justice, lobbied for women's right to choose and environmental protections, signed up with George McGovern in 1972 and got elected as the youngest delegate ever to a Democratic convention.

Eventually I joined the staff of U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio. In short, I became a card-carrying liberal, although I never actually got a card. (Bookkeeping has never been the left's strong suit.) All my commitments centered on belief in equal opportunity, due process, respect for the dignity of the individual and solidarity with people in trouble. To my mind, Americans who had joined the resistance to Franco's fascist dystopia captured the progressive spirit at its finest.

A turning point came at a dinner party on the day Ronald Reagan famously described the Soviet Union as the pre-eminent source of evil in the modern world. The general tenor of the evening was that Reagan's use of the word "evil" had moved the world closer to annihilation. There was a palpable sense that we might not make it to dessert.

When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20 million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find "evil'" too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport.

My progressive companions had a point. It was rude to bring a word like "gulag" to the dinner table.

I look back on that experience as the beginning of my departure from a left already well on its way to losing its bearings. Two decades later, I watched with astonishment as leading left intellectuals launched a telethon- like body count of civilian deaths caused by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Their premise was straightforward, almost giddily so: When the number of civilian Afghani deaths surpassed the carnage of Sept. 11, the war would be unjust, irrespective of other considerations.

Stated simply: The force wielded by democracies in self-defense was declared morally equivalent to the nihilistic aggression perpetuated by Muslim fanatics.

Susan Sontag cleared her throat for the "courage" of the al Qaeda pilots. Norman Mailer pronounced the dead of Sept. 11 comparable to "automobile statistics." The events of that day were likely premeditated by the White House, Gore Vidal insinuated. Noam Chomsky insisted that al Qaeda at its most atrocious generated no terror greater than American foreign policy on a mediocre day.

All of this came back to me as I watched the left's anemic, smirking response to Iraq's election in January. Didn't many of these same people stand up in the sixties for self-rule for oppressed people and against fascism in any guise? Yes, and to their lasting credit. But many had since made clear that they had also changed their minds about the virtues of King's call for equal of opportunity.

These days the postmodern left demands that government and private institutions guarantee equality of outcomes. Any racial or gender "disparities" are to be considered evidence of culpable bias, regardless of factors such as personal motivation, training, and skill. This goal is neither liberal nor progressive; but it is what the left has chosen. In a very real sense it may be the last card held by a movement increasingly ensnared in resentful questing for group-specific rights and the subordination of citizenship to group identity. There's a word for this: pathetic.

I smile when friends tell me I've "moved right." I laugh out loud at what now passes for progressive on the main lines of the cultural left.

In the name of "diversity," the University of Arizona has forbidden discrimination based on "individual style." The University of Connecticut has banned "inappropriately directed laughter." Brown University, sensing unacceptable gray areas, warns that harassment "may be intentional or unintentional and still constitute harassment." (Yes, we're talking "subconscious harassment" here. We're watching your thoughts ...).

Wait, it gets better. When actor Bill Cosby called on black parents to explain to their kids why they are not likely to get into medical school speaking English like "Why you ain't" and "Where you is," Jesse Jackson countered that the time was not yet right to "level the playing field." Why not? Because "drunk people can't do that ... illiterate people can't do that."

When self-styled pragmatic feminist Camille Paglia mocked young coeds who believe "I should be able to get drunk at a fraternity party and go upstairs to a guy's room without anything happening," Susan Estrich spoke up for gender- focused feminists who "would argue that so long as women are powerless relative to men, viewing 'yes' as a sign of true consent is misguided."

I'll admit my politics have shifted in recent years, as have America's political landscape and cultural horizon. Who would have guessed that the U.S. senator with today's best voting record on human rights would be not Ted Kennedy or Barbara Boxer but Kansas Republican Sam Brownback?

He is also by most measures one of the most conservative senators. Brownback speaks openly about how his horror at the genocide in the Sudan is shaped by his Christian faith, as King did when he insisted on justice for "all of God's children."

My larger point is rather simple. Just as a body needs different medicines at different times for different reasons, this also holds for the body politic.

In the sixties, America correctly focused on bringing down walls that prevented equal access and due process. It was time to walk the Founders' talk -- and we did. With barriers to opportunity no longer written into law, today the body politic is crying for different remedies.

America must now focus on creating healthy, self-actualizing individuals committed to taking responsibility for their lives, developing their talents, honing their skills and intellects, fostering emotional and moral intelligence, all in all contributing to the advancement of the human condition.

At the heart of authentic liberalism lies the recognition, in the words of John Gardner, "that the ever renewing society will be a free society (whose] capacity for renewal depends on the individuals who make it up." A continuously renewing society, Gardner believed, is one that seeks to "foster innovative, versatile, and self-renewing men and women and give them room to breathe."

One aspect of my politics hasn't changed a bit. I became a liberal in the first place to break from the repressive group orthodoxies of my reactionary hometown.

This past January, my liberalism was in full throttle when I bid the cultural left goodbye to escape a new version of that oppressiveness. I departed with new clarity about the brilliance of liberal democracy and the value system it entails; the quest for freedom as an intrinsically human affair; and the dangers of demands for conformity and adherence to any point of view through silence, fear, or coercion.

True, it took a while to see what was right before my eyes. A certain misplaced loyalty kept me from grasping that a view of individuals as morally capable of and responsible for making the principle decisions that shape their lives is decisively at odds with the contemporary left's entrance-level view of people as passive and helpless victims of powerful external forces, hence political wards who require the continuous shepherding of caretaker elites.

Leftists who no longer speak of the duties of citizens, but only of the rights of clients, cannot be expected to grasp the importance (not least to our survival) of fostering in the Middle East the crucial developmental advances that gave rise to our own capacity for pluralism, self-reflection, and equality. A left averse to making common cause with competent, self- determining individuals -- people who guide their lives on the basis of received values, everyday moral understandings, traditional wisdom, and plain common sense -- is a faction that deserves the marginalization it has pursued with such tenacity for so many years.

All of which is why I have come to believe, and gladly join with others who have discovered for themselves, that the single most important thing a genuinely liberal person can do now is walk away from the house the left has built. The renewal of any tradition that deserves the name "progressive" becomes more likely with each step in a better direction.

Keith Thompson is a Petaluma writer and the author of "Angels and Aliens" and "To Be a Man." His work is at www.thompsonatlarge.com. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/INGUNCQHKJ1.DTL

This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

"God is not great" goes under the knife

Jennifer Graham on Christmas on National Review Online: "But, as it turns out, random encounters with dwarves are more unsettling than Hitchens’s merry assault on my faith. A hardy thing, it survived not only Hitchens, but Sam Harris and Dan Brown, and odds are, it will endure for another Yuletide season despite Mike Huckabee."

In Drunken Rage, Atheist Guru Hitchens Bullies Hero Priest of 9-11

POE.com » Blog Archive » In Drunken Rage, Atheist Guru Hitchens Bullies Hero Priest of 9-11
"You will either die a Catholic or a madman"

Father Rutler is the real deal. Wow.