My article on Quakers in Second Life has been published in the June issue of 2Life Magazine (pdf download).
10000-year clock
Ten Commandments of Monthly Meetings for Business
Fantastic post by Johan Maurer at Can You Believe? on Ten Commandments of Monthly Meetings for Business
Animals on the Underground
Absolutely amusing: animalsontheunderground.com
A book review to dream about
As an editor who receives many unsolicited books for review, I sometimes dream of writing a book review like this one from the New York Times: An Assault on Hawaii. On Grammar Too.
On the basis of that detail, you might expect a high level of fastidiousness from “Pearl Harbor.â€
And you would be spectacularly wrong.
Survey of new food criticism
The Columbia Journalism review has an article about recent books that look at modern food production:
Organic food presently accounts for only 2.5 percent of all food sold in the United States–and that counts all the “industrial organic†food Pollan scorns. Are, then, these debates about the ethics and politics of food largely a pastime of a tiny elite–grist for editors’ dinner parties but of tiny relevance to most consumers, who rush to the nearest market and grab what they need?
(via Arts & Letters Daily)
First farmers’ market purchases
The farmers market at Boston City Hall resumed this week, and today I bought a loaf of whole wheat bread and a dozen beautiful, large, brown, free-range, local eggs. Woot!
British Timeline
Cool history resource: BBC — History — Timelines — British Timeline (via Kottke).
A brilliant take-down of entitlement
I’ll only give you one line of setup for the coffeeshop story related at The Panopticon: Dawn of the Dumb
“Um, okay. Well, I have a lot of work to do, and I was really hoping you might be getting ready to leave.”
You’ll just have to go there to see the brilliant resolution to the drama.
RP Redux
Today I came to a degree of clarity about the role-playing situation in Caledon, the Victorian Steampunk region of Second Life. Here’s the entry I posted to caledonforums this evening:
Dear friends and neighbors,
I have today come to the conclusion that I can no longer support Caledon’s military activities. While the original goals are nothing but laudable, and many of you have poured untold hours of heart and soul into the activities of the current situation, I have chosen to visit abroad with my cousin Mr Paderborn until Caledon returns to a state of peace.
Perhaps it may be that I will find a way to contribute to the larger cause by taking some humanitarian role, and I may return from time to time for functions that are purely social in nature.
I look forward to the day when Caledon becomes once again a place of uncomplicated peace and contentment, and I return to my home in Tamrannoch, and to my lakeside cabin in the Highlands.
Yrs, etc.
Miss Hermione Fussbudget
======
End of roleplayAs Miss Fussbudget has noted above, the creators of the current scenario have shown nothing but the highest of ideals and best of intentions. I, however, have felt increasingly confused and put off not only by the activities within SL, but by the discourse concerning the affair on these forums and in the blogs that are fleshing out the story.
I don’t like feeling confused, and so I am choosing to absent myself from the situation.
One of my confusions is the on-again, off-again nature of the role-playing. It is unfortunate that, once having taken up the burden of villainy for the laudable purposes of the scenario, the typists of said villains seem to tire of the role. Having no experience of that burden myself, I hesitate to complain, but I feel it is rude to ask the rest of us to treat them now this way, now that way, and indeed to complain (via these forums and on blogs) when others, within SL, respond in a way appropriate to the role of the villain.
A much greater sense of confusion, all along, has been the question of whether any good can come of playing at war. In RL I have spent most of my adult life as a practicing Quaker. Quakers, as you may know, bear a corporate testimony against war. But I thought, this is just RP, and it makes for some fun opportunities for play-acting, and it’s all just make-believe, right?
But in fact, the choice of a war scenario to raise funds for SLRFL has led directly to ill will and real-life conflict and disaffection. I now believe that these RL ramifications are a result not only of inexperience (which is surely one part of the problem, as described by Her Grace of Loch Avie elsewhere in these forums), but also inherent in the choice of plot.
Respectfully,
the typist for Hermione Fussbudget