The Wow Factor Quickly Turns Sour

I just came across a game called Second Life. I have never heard of this game before, but supposedly it's been around for quite some time now. With the popularity of the Sims series of games, it guess its not too surprising that a game like this is out and doing so well. I read on Wikipedia that this game has an average of $500,000 flowing through this game a week. That is a ridiculous amount of money to be flowing through an online game. Linden Labs states that you can actually make a living by making objects and selling them in-game for a profit. Generally I would thing this is a cool concept other than the fact that they state in the agreement that they are not liable by law for any money lost. Another thing is, if this much money is going to be flowing through a game, the makers shouldn't have total control of the economy (see below). This is like a tyranny. I mean it is just a game, but I would assume if the coding gets better and word gets out, this is going to be quite a (more) popular game.

The concept for the game is really cool, but after doing a little bit of research and exploring a little bit, the whole idea/workings of the game makes my stomach turn. This seems almost evil what the company is doing, or what they are capable of doing. From what I read, there is already favoritism problems arising between certain "groups" of people and the producer of the game. I hope I'm just looking too deep into this, because it would be great to have a good online game like this. I would prefer a less involved version of it.

PS: The game's name makes me the sickest...

Polar Opposites

Katamari Pyramid Head - Carmen Ramos

Ahh, Humans...

Always keep in mind that we are just a bunch of monkeys. I mean seriously, if you think humans are so different from animals as to be not considered such, please just leave and never come back. Yes, just leave.

I was reading this article this morning. Which was pretty interesting. It kind of brought up ideas that I have had, but didn't really know how to word literally, the idea that near death experience is almost totally a personal experience. Much less of a scientific type thing or (OMG) religious thing. I believe that I have had a NDE, but since NDEs are said to be "outside" of time, it is kind of hard to pinpoint exactly what happened. Some might describe this type of experience as ego loss. Who knows exactly what happened, all I know is that it has shaped me as an individual more so than I can say for many events in my life. After having this mystical experience, it was hard for awhile to believe that it even happened. For about 6 months afterward I didn't even think about it much since it was almost too hard to comprehend.

I won't go into detail as to what I perceived, because it would be almost futile to try and explain. So I will talk about how this has shaped me since. For one, this experience has allowed me to live more freely it seems. Since I was at an extreme intense moment in my life at that very moment (seconds, minutes, hours, who knows?), everyday life after that seems not as intense as it once did (the nature of duality thinking). It also feels as though after having an experience in which I was perceived to be outside myself, it has allowed me too appreciate the feelings and experiences of other people more so than I did before. This has allowed me to be more open to other people's experiences and ideas, as well as being able to share mine more openly without fear of rejection. Many other day to day things such as how I try to mentally shape my attitude has also been an effect of this experience. Obviously, not all of these characteristics can be linked to this one exact moment, but I feel strongly that it did have much to do with the way I have lived ever since the experience. I do not perceive ANY negative side effects from this experience whatsoever. But who knows, I might have massive brain damage and might die at any second.

Interesting Links

Creating Passionate Users - A site about the human experience/brain and making the best of it.

Creativity Machine (article) - Fairly simple idea of the internet an how it works as an organism/machine. Cool concept that I've been thinking about for awhile, they still come to no conlusion as to what we can do with it though. I think Wikipedia is the best example of this machine "grid" idea as of late.

Humans as Prey - A historical theory of the past and an optimist view of the future.

Octomatics - New(?) way of writing the Octal numbering system? Cool layout nonetheless.

Accptable Neurosis

"Ego is a structure that is erected by a neurotic individual who is a member of a neurotic culture against the facts of the matter. And culture, which we put on like an overcoat, is the collectivized consensus about what sort of neurotic behaviors are acceptable."
-Terrence McKenna

I don't know what to think about Terrence McKenna. There is a lot of things which he talks about that make a lot of sense, but it always comes down to the fact that almost everything he talks about is just theory. As an example, one of his theories is that mushrooms containing psilocybin were an integral part of creating "humanness" about 12,000 years ago. He describes this as an opposite to "animal" type nature (dominance). Supposedly, when the climate started to dry up, these mushrooms were not a part of the human diet anymore since they were unavailable. This allowed humans to start reverting back to "animal" type behaviors such as male dominance, heirarchies, etc.

I won't go into detail as to why he believe psilocybin has the effects he does, but here is a link containing information if you're interested.

Most of his theories are like this though, pretty off the wall in the eyes of today's society. I personally don't know what to think about it. A lot of the theories make rational sense, but not enough to make me believe it as truth. I guess the bottom line is that this guy makes me think too much.

Lucidity Wavers...

I had one of my more lucid dreams this afternoon. Luckily it had flying involved in it. Once I found out that I was lucid, I tried flying around the room that I was currently in, which was like a bedroom of sorts. I wasn't having much luck there so I tried the window. After opening the drapes, I was surprised to find pure blackness instead of an outside view. Since the dream was lucid, I knew I wouldn't be hurt by diving into the blackness, but I was still somewhat afraid as to what I might find. I took the plunge anyway. I sailed down the blackness twisting and flipping for what seemed to be a couple seconds. Then I hit the ground. There was absolutely no pain involved at all. I looked around, I was in my peudo-backyard in Fort Wayne. It didn't really look too much like my house, (I don't even remember seeing the surrounding houses, save one) it just was.

This was a much better place to try to fly again. I first tried to levitate to the top of the houses (actually into the clouds, :greedy:), but I only got like 10 feet up and started to fall to the ground slowly. I needed practice. I started jumping around the backyard each time getting higher and higher until I started using, what seemed like, powered boosters coming from my feet projecting me faster into the air. Once I got on top of the house, it was all gravy from there. I jumped from house to house for what seemed like an hour or so. Every so often I would wake up, just enough to be conscious of my real life situation (being asleep in my bed, in my appt), but then I would just relax and go right back to my dream.

I got side tracked by a basket ball hoop. A basketball spawned into my hands. Where did these come from? Who knows, but its pretty convenient considering the circumstances. I proceeded to try to dunk the ball. Much easier than real life. So much fun. Some little kid appeared out of nowhere, he just wanted to watch. He seemed amazed that I could do what I was doing. He didn't' say anything from what I remember. After a couple of regular dunks, I tried some shots. Wow, the shots were MUCH harder than dunking. Once the ball leaves my hands, It just seemed to float, with a weird type of gravity to it. It was almost as if I was adjusting the gravity in order for the ball to come close to the basket. Very strange. Dribbling was even harder. The ball just kept spinning and bouncing really slow, it was really hard to get a handle on it. I eventually was able to keep the ball somewhat in my control. What was weird was that all this time, I was bouncing on grass. Now that I think about it, maybe that's why it was so hard to dribble. Whatever.

Shooting and dribbling go boring pretty quick, so I tried dunking again one more time before leaving. I just started off dunking regularly, gliding up to the rim and dunking it. Something weird happened after this which I never noticed before. I went to grab the ball again, after my first dunk and dunk it again. I didn't have enough time to do what I wanted to do, so I slowed time down... Wow, I didn't even know I could do that. I dunked the ball maybe 5 times in one jump all while the whole rim/basket structure was falling to the ground (destructive I know, what can I say?). That was pretty damn cool.

I opened my eyes. Back in my appt. That was one of my better lucid moments from what I can remember. If anyone ever invents a drug/machine which can induce lucidity, they are going to be a millionaire. Fuck virtual reality, I want MY reality.

You just read 5 hours of perception squeezed into 1 hour of "real" time.

Extremes

It has been brought to my attention that I often times tend to take ideas/actions to the extreme.

I find it ironic that a philosphy that I like to follow by is "Moderation is key."

New Video Card

I just bought a new video card from newegg. I always buy stuff from newegg, they always have the lowest prices. They must get a huge amount of sales to have the prices they do. One thing I noticed while researching cards is that it seems that the mid mid-level cards are starting to become lower priced, while the higher end cards are becoming more expensive. I got an x1600 512mb for $140, which in my book is quite a steal.

I was also thinking about how PS3 and Xbox 360 are becoming more and more like computers. They are almost to the point where its more expensive to buy one of those systems than it is to buy a gaming computer. Nintendo on the other hand seems to want to innovate more and bring creativity to the table, rather than just pure graphics. When the next series of systems comes out, Sony (if still around) and Microsoft really need to start innovating more rather than trying to create a badass computer. In the direction they are going now, I doubt these types of systems will last long.

It was bound to happen sooner or later

I obviously have just started a new blog. This is new to me and I don't really know what I am going to do with it yet. I'm hoping this can be a place where I can post interesting ideas that I might have thought about during the day.