The Blessing of Mozambique Machine Guns
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 02/10/2008 - 15:06On the way to church this morning, we listened to part of a radio broadcast about a helping African-American Teenagers find their dramatic voices. They tied it back to the importance of remembering and telling our stories. It seemed fitting, because for me, church is a time about remembering the common stories of our ancestors and relating it to our contemporary stories and that is what happened at church in a spectacular way.
You see, he had a visit from Bishop Curry. He wore a large heavy cross and at the end or the service, he invited all the children up onto the altar and told the story of the cross. It was made out of pieces of Mozambique machine guns. When the fighting in Mozambique was over, the government got people turn in their guns in exchange for things to help rebuild Mozambique. Then, they destroyed the machine guns and asked artists to do interesting things with the remains.
It is from these parts that Bishop Curry’s cross was made. He talked about how the artists had taken a symbol of death and made it into a symbol of hope, much like how Christ had taken the cross as a symbol of death and made it into a symbol of hope. It is part of taking the common stories of our ancestors and relating it to our contemporary stories. After the service, it was brought home in even greater immediacy as we heard stories about a friend of the church who is a priest in Kenya. Her church, which was well known for its multi-ethnic nature has had to close because it would be a target of ethnic violence.
With all of this as context, Bishop Curry asked the children to join him in pronouncing the blessing at the end of the service. Fiona enjoyed making the sign of the cross from the altar and with that, I pass on The Blessing of Mozambique Machine Guns.
Today in Second Life
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 02/09/2008 - 14:04Outside my real life window the snow is falling. Kim has been fighting a cold and wanted to do something simple but fun with Fiona, so they have headed off to the movies. As always, my inbox is full of interesting things to respond to. On the Second Life Educators list, there has been a discussion about Second Inventory. It looks like it could be a great tool, and potentially very useful in moving objects between grids. I’m going to test it out when I get a chance. There has also been an interesting discussion about avatars, which deserves a post of its own, later.
Meanwhile, the SL’ang Life Health Care Day is taking place from 9 am to 5:30 PM SLT. I’m currently attending it, listening to a discussion about Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and support groups in Second Life. At 1 PM SLT, Sanity Inn will perform as part of Health Care Day. At 1 PM SLT, there will also be a Central Grid meeting. I’ll probably miss this, but I am planning on slipping out at 2 PM SLT to attend a friends wedding in Second Life.
This is a friend that I originally met at a journalism conference. We have several overlapping interests, Second Life being one of them, and I look forward to attending her virtual wedding. Kim and I were married in LambdaMOO, a few days before our face to face wedding. It will be interesting to see how virtual weddings have evolved since then.
Later in the day, some friends from the campaign trail, that I’ve also spent time with in Second Life are having a house party. I intend to stop in on that as well. Finally, tomorrow at 1 pm SLT, Walt Ireton will have a photography show at Not Too Hot. I missed his gallery opening, but I really like his work and I hope I can stop in at the Not Too Hot event tomorrow.
More soon…
ZopaSL and the MilliAU
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/08/2008 - 16:58ZopaSL? MilliAU? No, these are new erectile dysfunction drugs for residents of Second Life frustrated by the Linden Lab banking ban. Oh wait, maybe it could be. Let me explain.
Second Life is a virtual world that some people consider a game, others consider a business opportunity, and still others view as the framework for what people’s experiences of the Internet will be like in the coming years. Whichever opinion you hold, the Linden Dollar, the currency used in Second Life either as a means of score keeping for the game players, or a currency you do some of your business in, is central.
A Busy Day
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/07/2008 - 22:08It has been a busy day, mostly spent in meetings. It has piled up more and more things I need to write about, but at this point, I’m too tired to put the energy into some of the more serious posts, so I’m going to write about some of the more day to day things.
On one list, I was pointed to Yuwie. If you join this MLMOSN, you’ll get paid to blog, upload pictures, spam your friends, and look at lots of advertisements. Next.
BlogCatalog sent out an email that they are doing some sort of partnership with SezWho. “SezWho is a distributed context, rating and reputation service for blogs, forums, wikis and other social sites.” That is, of course if the blogs, forums, wikis and other social sites use Wordpad or Moveable Type. Next.
Two new Ning sites: Visual Editors and Social News Central. I like Ning. I like the sites that friends have built. I gladly joined both groups. I’ll probably even stumble back to those sites one of these days.
That said, the innovate of the day goes to Lillie Yifu for wikiHUD. It is a heads up display (HUD) in Second Life that allows you to look up Wiki entries. Right now, it is set up to look up entries off of the Second Life Wiki. I haven’t had a chance to start playing with Second Life Wiki, but it is a good site.
Another website that was highlighted to me today was Central Grid Community. I’ve got mixed feelings about this. I am already on SLProfiles, SLUniverse, Bloghud, have a stub on Second Life Wiki, am on rezzed.net and probably several others that I’ve forgotten. Do I need yet another site for my virtual world personae? Not really.
Okay. You got me going. Let me toss out a few other things about the move to multiple grids. Have you played with SLURL with other grids? It kind of works, if you’ve got a region in your grid that maps to a region in the main Second Life grid and so on. Take a look at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Central%20Grid%20HQ/130/135/25. It ends up bringing up a Google map without anything to click on. What would be nice would be if you can have an SLURL that would like something like http://slurl.com/Central%20Grid/Central%20Grid%20HQ/130/135/25, where the name of the grid was part of the SLURL. Not there yet. However, going to secondlife://Central%20Grid%20HQ/130/135/25does seem to work in the Central Grid.
While we’re at it, it would be great to see AjaxLife add Central Grid to its list of sites.
Beyond all of that, I set up a Drupal 6 test site today, noted the beginning of the Year of The Rat, and random other stuff.
Clean Laundry and Clean Elections
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 02/06/2008 - 18:12From Project Laundry List, the eco chic activist online group, I have learned about Right to Dry legislation.
Many people in the United States are not allowed to hang out their clothes to dry in the sun. Community covenants, landlord prohibitions, and zoning laws are the three primary means of stopping people from using clotheslines. State and federal legislators are encouraged to introduce "Right to Dry" legislation to stem this growing problem.
The Hartford Courant had an editorial a few days ago supporting right to dry legislation. They note that such legislation would seem to fit nicely with Gov. Rell's OneThing campaign.
The discussion about right to dry promoted me to put up my Wordless Wednesday - Eco Chic picture.
From my wife, came an invitation to join the CT Common Cause Facebook Group. I’ve sent out a bunch of invitations. She also invited me to join the Common Cause group on Change.org. Kim has started as a senior organizer at Common Cause Connecticut. Kim’s key focus is to get people to participate in publicly funded state legislative elections under the new campaign finance laws. Details can be found at CT Citizen’s Elections Program.
Also related to elections is a series of emails and a blog post I put up on MyLeftNutmeg about Voting Problems in Hamden.
