tisiwoota

Ah, my instincts are getting trained: as soon as I read about Tringo, the game originally created inside an online multiplayer game that has since been sold (by the user who came up with it) for commercial distribution in the “real” world, I thought to myself: Hmm, what are the intellectual rights behind that?

Googling around, I found out that the game explicitly allows users to retain intellectual property rights to their creations.

Fascinating things, these game economies…

What do you gain from allowing users to keep their virtual property?
We get the content. We allow people to create a world which will be thousands of times more compelling than we could create ourselves. To date there are 10 million things built by users in Second Life. In other games, it’s all about getting all of the finite amount of content. Once that’s done, players move on. We’re continually updating with user-created objects so we don’t have to put patches or sequels out.

aka Law School Finals Period

[click to enlarge]

On Pain

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses
your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the
daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem
less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart,
even as you have always accepted the seasons that
pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the
winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within
you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy
in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by
the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has
been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has
moistened with His own sacred tears.

–Khalil Gibran

A link clearly momentous enough to merit its own post:

A computer game that turns pet hamsters into virtual man-eaters could be the first in a new breed of games aimed at both people and their pets.

“Mice Arena” is an augmented-reality computer game in which human players are pitted against a real, live hamster.

The hamster is housed in a tank fitted with infra-red sensors that track its motion as it chases after a tasty piece of bait. Its movements are mimicked by monster hamster on a computer screen, which chases a virtual character representing a human opponent.

This was bound to happen as public consciousness about DNA testing for racial heritage expanded:

>>
Alan Moldawer’s adopted twins, Matt and Andrew, had always thought of themselves as white. But when it came time for them to apply to college last year, Mr. Moldawer thought it might be worth investigating the origins of their slightly tan-tinted skin, with a new DNA kit that he had heard could determine an individual’s genetic ancestry.

The results, designating the boys 9 percent Native American and 11 percent northern African, arrived too late for the admissions process. But Mr. Moldawer, a business executive in Silver Spring, Md., says they could be useful in obtaining financial aid.
>>

The article gives no statistics on the frequency of such (ab)use, but seems convinced DNA testing has sparked a significant trend.

[The tests’ speculative nature…] has not stopped many test-takers from adopting new DNA-based ethnicities — and a sense of entitlement to the privileges typically reserved for them.

Prospective employees with white skin are using the tests to apply as minority candidates, while some with black skin are citing their European ancestry in claiming inheritance rights.

One Christian is using the test to claim Jewish genetic ancestry and to demand Israeli citizenship, and Americans of every shade are staking a DNA claim to Indian scholarships, health services and casino money.

“This is not just somebody’s desire to go find out whether their grandfather is Polish,” said Troy Duster, a sociologist at New York University who has studied the social impact of the tests. “It’s about access to money and power.”
>>

Who knows how widespread such practices are, but they’re surely bound to raise challenges to the rationale behind affirmative action programs. It will be interesting to see how universities and employers will respond to any resulting increases in such “false” claims to minority status. Perhaps this will end up bolstering the case for class-based affirmative action. Something to keep an eye on…

genetic genealogy, genetic testing, DNA Test

Extinction of Silence

That it was shy when alive goes without saying.
We know it vanished at the sound of voices

Or footsteps. It took wing at the slightest noises,
Though it could be approached by someone praying.

We have no recordings of it, though of course
In the basement of the Museum, we have some stu­ffed

Moth-eaten specimens–the Lesser Ruffed
And Yellow Spotted–filed in narrow drawers.

But its song is lost. If it was related to
A species of Quiet, or of another feather,

No researcher can know. Not even whether
A breeding pair still nests deep in the bayou,

Where legend has it some once common bird
Decades ago was first not seen, not heard.

–A.E. Stallings

I FLING the past behind me, like a robe
Worn threadbare at the seams, and out of date.
I have outgrown it. Wherefore should I weep
And dwell upon its beauty, and its dyes
Of oriental splendor, or complain
That I must needs discard it? I can weave
Upon the shuttles of the future years
A fabric far more durable. Subdued,
It may be, in the blending of its hues,
Where somber shades commingle, yet the gleam
Of golden warp shall shoot it through and through,
While over all a fadeless luster lies,
And starred with gems made out of crystalled tears,
My new robe shall be richer than the old.

–Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ha. This is fabulous:

The backlash against social networking sites like Myspace and Friendster has begun. Welcome to the antisocial web.

A site called Snubster lets you create a list of people that you don’t want to be friends with [or things you don’t like]. Enter a person’s email address and they’ll get a message to says they are “dead to you”, or “on notice” along with a reason, if you see fit to give them one.

Even better:

…the idea is already being turned inside out as some people are making social connections by browsing each other’s hate lists.

“It has developed into a sort of community atmosphere,” says the guy behind Snubster. “It seems as though people find entertainment and connections in finding other people that hate the same things as them.”

CNN: On the eve of a showdown over what could be a historic overhaul of U.S. immigration law, congressmen drew lines in the sand Sunday, leaving it all but impossible to envision what kind of legislation might ultimately win passage.

You can speak up to Congress here

Google romance? Eh, it was cute. Aliens on Google Earth Area 51? Better. Every other web company getting taken over by Google/Yahoo/Microsoft? Pretty much happening anyway. (And btw, what would be so hard about actually making a virtual pet dragon?)

But then there’s Virgil and Socar. Unlike those wannabes who think they’re being sooo clever by posting on March 30 rather than April 1, these pros get their pranks rolling a full month in advance. And boy are they elaborate. And just like last year, its pure brilliance– they invented a blogger, 58-year old Howard Glassman, who is dedicated to eating the “compleat works” of Neil Gaiman.

By “compleat works,” I mean “everything the man has ever published, be it comics, essays, poetry, or prose.” By “digest,” I mean “pass through my alimentary canal.”

This choice of theme actual reminds me of an author I’ve read– not Neil Gaiman (because I’ve ah, never read him), but Geoff Nicholson. Nicholson’s characters are typified by bizarre obsessions (such as a quest to walk down each and every street in London), which often have some literary element to them or are being charted by a failed writer. These obsessions are employed as devices to make philosophical commentary about literature and the act of writing. In particular I’m reminded of Bedlam Burning, which begins with a pompous bout of book burning by academic types at Oxford, and centers on the travails of a man who finds himself employed as a writer-in-residence at an insane asylum, where he is expected to guide the inmates in producing their own work. Howard Glassman would fit right into the mix– as inmate or observer.

Ah, and here we go: the Nicholesque meta-commentary.

DAY SIXTEEN
…Here’s how I view it. Books are no longer the precious commodity they once were. Gone are the days of short runs and hand-tooled leather bindings. Nobody toils over the printing block, slotting hundreds of individual letters into a wooden frame so we can read a single page. Books were once objects to be revered, it’s true: if not works of art, certainly marvels of craftsmanship. What I’m eating, however, is nothing like that. These are mass-market paperbacks, run off by the tens of thousands. They ship with blobs of glue still clinging to their spines. Their pages come loose on the first read through. You can pick one up anywhere in America for less than ten dollars, or have one shipped anywhere in the world at the touch of a button. There’s nothing precious about the object, only the ideas inside.

It’s also interesting how writing about obsession is at heart an exploration of the way that people categorize the world around them. An obsession about something soon becomes less about that particular something than about how the person decides to parse their own rules and delineate the boundaries of their subject:

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT
Are you planning on printing out and digesting his web-posts?

I hadn’t thought about that. It would be a big commitment, and one that would likely last for the rest of my life. Neil Gaiman is a young man. He is also a prolific Internet poster, if his website is anything to go by. It would take me years just to plow through his journal archives. For now, I think I will stick with his conventionally published material, with the understanding that if he ever launches forth on the ebook market, those will be printed out and digested.

I haven’t decided yet about books on tape. On the one hand, they could be classified as alternate editions. I feel it’s important to eat all the words, but not every instance of the words. On the other hand, the reader’s voice brings something new to the story. It brings an interpretation, of sorts. At the moment, I’m leaning towards ignoring books on tape: I’m not sure the reader’s interpretation is enough to constitute a whole new experience.

…

UPDATE: Ah. I just came to an unmistakable sign of Virgil.
A smattering of rhyming couplets:

Posted on the fridge this afternoon:

Thanks to you, who stole my lunch,
I had to eat a Crispy Crunch.
Thanks for nothing, thanks a bunch.

…I know who did it, I got a hunch.
I got something for him, it’s a punch.

Of course. Well then, that will make next year easy– assuming one small advance in technology. Seeing as Ask.com (that crass Jeeves layer-offer of a search engine) unveiled a “Rhyme Search” feature today, it is only a matter of time before Google adapts its blog search to enable searching for recent blog entries that contain rhyming couplets. Presto! (Or better yet, I’ll use my internal Google contacts to have such a capacity personally developed for me. And then I shall WIN. Win what, you ask? Um… eternal smugness for having found out a Virgil/Socar prank?)