Lakefront Property on Mars?

If you listen to the news media you may be planning a purchase of lake front property on Mars. However, NASA and others involved in the search for water on Mars are WAY more reserved in what they are saying.

Mars

Mars

Long wave radar has found what may be… moisture… a mile or two below the surface. Whether it is a body of water or mud or something else has yet to be determined. The problem with knowing is from our testing on Earth. The radar returns on Mars look similar to those we find when looking at salty water deep in the Earth. But, we also know other materials return similar signals. More study will sort out what is down there. Study has narrowed the possibilities of what may be there with the probability high it is water in some amount and form.

Much of the NASA press release information is targeted at keeping Americans enthusiastic about space exploration. It is a funding thing. I think we should be funding NASA and space exploration. But, I also acknowledge the spin NASA puts in their press releases and what the media does with the news.

No one will be buying Martian lake front property, water skies, or lawn sprinklers in the foreseeable future.

Unheard RL News

Every so often my irritation with the news media boils over. This is one of the cases that blatantly exposes there is some agenda in the mainstream media. Whatever you may decide it is, it isn’t about saving the planet.

Rainforest Light and Shadow

Rainforest Light and Shadow

You’ll already know many think/believe Anthropomorphic Global Warming is a foregone factual conclusion and everyone agrees it is a HUGE problem. You know, 97% of scientists agree… Whether it is or not, of note is the father of the American Warming side of the debate, James Hansen, has just written an article on Renewable Energy you’ll likely never hear talked about by mainstream media

If you bother to read the article, Thirty years later, what needs to change in our approach to climate change – Boston Globe – June 27, 2018, you might think Hansen worked for President Trump. Whaaat!?! Continue reading

Proportional Shapes in Second Life

Recently there have been a number of articles about the shape and size of avatars and things related. Penny Patton has been on about how camera position affects our perception of size in SL for years. Now the Lab is preparing to support her altered camera position settings. Plus, she has written articles on avatar size and the effect it has on everything else in Second Life™.

This image is the work of Luc Viatour – https://Lucnix.be

I’ve written a number of articles on the same and similar subjects. Several pointing to Penny’s articles and expanding on the subjects. Continue reading

How to Save a Digital Copy of Your Soul…

That is a ‘double take’ inspiring line. For a couple of days, people have been writing about M.I.T.’s project to make digital copies of people that can look and speak like the person. Of course, it is hype based people’s curiosity.

M.I.T. has developed an amalgam of technology that allows the creation of an avatar that looks and sounds like a specific person. (Example) But, that is about it.

See Technology Review’s How to Save Your Digital Soul.

From CG Cookie Tutorial – Click

Second Life has been doing the ‘looks’ part for years. The voice part is new tech. Prior voice imitation was about almost only pitch and word speed. The new tech controls pronunciation, word choice, cadence, and the other factors that make voices recognizable as a specific person. The idea is to have more AI interacting with people. Sort of a replacement for customer service people.

In psychology, the idea of the soul is self-aware life. Figuring these things out gets complicated because we can’t know what another person experiences. There is the challenge of whether the color you perceive as red is the same perception I have.

All your life you have looked at a color people call red. So, you too call it red. We can measure the frequency of the color we all agree is red. The color-blind show us that we are not all perceiving the color the same. For me, there is a huge difference between a bright green and bright red. That isn’t true for the color-blind, as the colors are nearly the same.

We can’t know what color others actually perceive. So, how do we know when another person or creature is self-aware? Are animals self-aware? If so, do they have souls?

Some concepts are just hard to define.

Second Life at Flickr

I’m in my ninth year of exploring and playing in Second Life™. There are some things I think are still difficult to accomplish within the Second Life framework. One of those is finding interesting and beautiful places to visit, very much like real life. Another is meeting interesting people and being able to see them… not just look at them or see their ‘hello’ face, but seeing them in moments of their life. iRL that is usually only possible with close friends.

There is the Lab’s Destination Guide, web and in-viewer, and now Places Pages. Plus, a number of ‘travel’ blogs. They show us various places in Second Life. But, they still don’t do Second Life justice and it can be tedious going through those sources.

smoke.

smoke

People… meeting interesting people is not really hard, there just isn’t any simple… fast… easy… ok, lazy way to do it. Well, like real life you can go to clubs and parties and join groups. Like iRL you can participate and meet participating people with similar interests. My point is you have to put out some energy and spend some time iRL or SL.

Flickr provides a bowl of vignettes of places and people. There the challenge is finding people that can see those places and moments and capture them. These are moments from SL. They are only clues to where you may find people or places in SL. But, Flickr is a rich source of people and places hidden by the nature of life and the virtual world  Continue reading