Month: May 2007

Second Life Slides – Inevitably – Into Virtual Kiddie Porn Realm

Buck Banks

From the ick files: I’ve been alternately fascinated and repelled by Second Life, the virtual world where 6 million people around the globe pursue virtual lives. But when I found out that some of those virtual people, or avatars, were having virtual sex with virtual teens and children — in exchange for real virtual money — the needle got stuck way on the repelled side.

Virtual sex with a virtual child is illegal in Germany, but not in America.

The whole idea of Second Life was creepy to me in the first place, but then, I have enough trouble keeping up with my non-virtual existence to imagine having to live in a parallel universe simultaneously. But Second Life has hosted politicians like former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, Reuters and C-Net both have news bureaus there that report on happenings in the virtual world, L$1.93 in Linden dollars is traded in-world every month (that’s about $62.5 million real dollars), and some people have quit their real-world jobs to work full time in Second Life and are making a living at it.

Now German police are investigating reports of child pornography and virtual sex between adult and seemingly under-aged avatars. Seemingly, because there are real people who will take on childlike “skins” in Second Life and have sex as if they were children with adult avatars. Second Life’s touted age verification function apparently is pretty easy to circumvent. Virtual sex with a virtual child is illegal in Germany, but not in America. Same with virtual bestiality, which is reportedly also happening in Second Life.

When I first heard about Second Life, it reminded me of a Philip K. Dick science-fiction short story whose name escapes me. In the story, people in a remote mining colony on Mars play a virtual game using a dollhouse and figurines. By taking a drug, the real people inhabit the dolls and the dollhouse and have collective hallucinations where they explore different relationships with each other and take on different characters and personalities, and even have sex. But when the drugs run out, the social fabric of the colony crashes and real life gets really bad.

Trouble is, in Second Life, unless the world’s power grid fails, there will be no crash. And it’s not surprising that humans would import all that’s bad from the real world into Second Life — it’s natural for humans to contaminate their space, real or virtual. So you have drugs, sex for Linden dollars, virtual child pornography for sale and virtual criminals out to separate naive avatars from their hard-earned Linden dollars.

What really bothers me about Second Life, though, is that while people spend an average of 40 hours a month in that virtual world, the real world is getting progressively worse. There are very real political, social and environmental problems right here, right now, that don’t penetrate the walls of Second Life. It’s kind of like the millenialist Christians who say, Why bother with global warming, the end of the world and the coming of Jesus is nigh — global warming indeed is just another sign of the end times.

Why bother with the problems of the real world if you can stay hunched over your keyboard in whatever basement or cave you’ve descended to to get away from the harsh glare of a world gone wrong, making and spending your Linden dollars in a place that consumes only one extremely valuable non-renewable resource — time.

Florida: More Experiments in Voting

Buck Banks

Still glad I’m an Independent: Florida thinks it has been getting the short end of the presidential primary stick, so it has struck out into the no man’s land of January to set its vote date. This, despite the fact that the Democratic National Committee has threatened penalties, like stripping the state party of delegates, making the vote nonbinding and penalizing candidates who campaign in the state.

Whoa, them’s fighting words, but, like the big Republican-controlled brute it is, the Florida legislature moved the state’s primary from March to January, despite the threats.

Who needs Katherine Harris?

The result could lead to a scenario like this:

On Jan. 29, Florida Republicans and Democrats head to the polls to pick presidential nominees. Republican votes count, just as you would expect, but the results for Democrats would be nonbinding. No delegates would be awarded based upon the results and instead party activists and insiders would decide on some later date how to divvy up the state’s more than 200 delegates to the Democratic national convention.

See, while the Dems face stiff penalties for the primary shift, the Repugs don’t face any. So, we could potentially see Dem candidates giving the state a pass while Repugs campaign all over the place, with a predictable effect on the general election.

Who needs Katherine Harris when you’ve got a Republican-controlled state legislature to influence the presidential election outcome and guarantee we stay a red state.

First Day of Hurricane Season — Three Weeks Early

Trish


By all indications, 2007 will be the year frogs rain down from the sky and sinkholes swallow the Rockies.

My area is under a tropical storm watch. The first named storm of the season is here. She is Tropical Storm Andrea, with top sustained winds of 45 mph. This is huge.

For those of you who don’t know the dates of hurricane season like you know your own phone number, it’s June 1 through Nov. 30.

June 1 — as in three weeks from now — is the official start. The earliest hurricane in our country’s history was Alma, which hit the Florida panhandle on June 9, 1966.

But don’t worry, the federal government is on it. They will release their predictions for the 2007 hurricane season on May 22. I wonder if they’ll predict the season will start on May 9.

By the time they release their forecast, we will have probably had two more storms, four or five more tornados, and the Georgia wildfires will have spread to Washington, D.C. where Bush will give a speech about how it would adversely affect the economy if we were to try to do anything about global warming.

Why Wasn’t Mary Cheney at the White House State Dinner for the Queen?

Jon Ponder

Her baby is due in “late spring 2007” which, granted, is now, but it seems hardly anyone has noticed that Mary Cheney, the vice president’s lesbian daughter, and her partner, Heather Poe, were not on the guest list for the state dinner at the White House honoring Queen Elizabeth this week.

Mary’s non-gay sister Liz and Liz’s opposite-sex married partner were at the dinner.

Mary’s non-gay sister Liz and Liz’s opposite-sex married partner were at the dinner, as were, of course, her parents.

Mary Cheney has said her baby is not a political prop, but you have to wonder if it was decided that the presence of the vice president’s hugely pregnant lesbian daughter at an event honoring the Queen of England was a bit too off-message for the ultra-rightwingers who run the country.

Let’s hope that Mary and Heather were at least allowed to eat in the pantry and then peek through a doorway to watch all the fun.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force — that grimmest and ugliest of gods that men have ever erected for themselves out of the lusts of their hearts. You will find yourself hating and dreading all other men who differ from you; you will find yourself obliged by the law of conflict into which you have plunged to use every means in your power to crush them before they are able to crush you; you will find yourself day by day growing more unscrupulous and intolerant, more and more compelled by the fear of those opposed to you to commit harsh and violent actions.

— Auberon Herbert (1838-1906), British journalist

Dick Morris: Keep Troops in Iraq As a ‘Convenience’ to Terrorists

Jon Ponder

Political terror: One of the stupidest scare tactics deployed by Pres. Bush et al is that idea that if we leave Iraq, the 4,000 or so al Qaeda terrorists there would “follow us home.” Obviously, nothing about our presence in Iraq prevents al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq — or Afghanistan, Pakistan, London, Düsseldorf or anywhere else — from coming here.

“Convenience is a big factor when you’re a terrorist.”
— Dick Morris

You’d have to be pretty thick not to see through that, but since the Bushies continue to hammer at it, it must be working with their base.

Now Dick Morris, the professional Clinton-hater and semi-pro foot fetishist, has taken this dumbest of all war rationales to the next level, saying we must keep our troops in Iraq to serve as live bait for the terrorists:

One of the things, though, that I think the antiwar crowd has not considered is that, if we’re putting the Americans right within [the terrorists’] arms’ reach, they don’t have to come to Wall Street to kill Americans. They don’t have to knock down the trade center. They can do it around the corner, and convenience is a big factor when you’re a terrorist.

Translation: Support our troops by making them terrorist magnets.

What is really scary here is the fact that about a quarter of our fellow citizens are so ignorant and/or easily deluded that they can’t parse the cynicism behind statements like these.

Griffith Park Is On Fire – No Word on Status of Los Angeles Zoo

Jon Ponder

The fire in Griffith Park in Los Angeles has spread to 150 acres. Local news is preempting other shows but no word so far on the status of the Los Angeles Zoo, which is in the park.

UPDATE: (7:15 PM) Finally saw a report on the zoo. The fire was close but not a direct threat. One official said most of the animals were “too fragile” to move in any case. Local TV has gone back to regular programming, which is invariably a sign that the situation is under control and not newsworthy. (On the other hand, it is sweeps month.)

UPDATE: (5/9/07 – 5:15 AM) 600 acres have burned but so far the flames have not endangered the zoo, the Griffith Park Observatory, the Greek Theatre or other structures. However, the city has called for mandatory evacuations of homes in a Los Feliz neighborhood adjacent to the park.

Bush Whines to Texas Friends: Nobody Understands Me

Jon Ponder

In the 2000 campaign, we were told that George Bush doesn’t read polls. Unlike Bill “Finger-in-the-Wind” Clinton, Bush knew his own mind and besides he had his finger on the pulse of regular Americans. In reality, of course, he doesn’t need to read the polls since Karl gives him a full briefing every morning.

“His inability to harvest experience, and so to think and form successful judgments, is just so inexplicable.”

A story at HuffPost appears to confirm that Bush is not only aware he’s tanking in the polls, he’s whining about it:

[We’re] hearing that some big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he’s doing things would be okay…etc., etc.

This is called a “bunker mentality” and it’s not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.

There’s no hope George Bush will learn anything from his failed presidency. What his party might learn from it is an open question.

Update: Trish saw this article at ABC News — 18 Big GOP Donors Dine With the Queen — which may offer a clue to the identities of the “Texas friends” who were subjected to Bush’s whining.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Television is the literature of the illiterate, the culture of the lowbrow, the wealth of the poor, the privilege of the underprivileged, the exclusive club of the excluded masses.

— Lee Loevinger, Federal Communications Commission, 1966.