Wednesday, February 28, 2007

The Reader's Garden

I want to apologize to all of my in-world friends. I'm not deliberately putting you off, I am just focusing heavily on developing the Reader's Garden. There's just not enough time in the day for one life, let alone two.

The Princess and I are making it a goal to open the Garden to the public sometime next week. We're running into Prim overload right now, and we're going to have to make some design changes. My book flower script is almost ready. So far I have book daisies, but I also want to make some other varieties. That's minor though. Getting the script to work is the biggest thing.

Please join our group, if you feel so inclined. It is called the Book Discussion Circle. You can either IM the Princess or me to get us to send you an invite, or you may just do a group search and join yourself. There is (of course) no cost, and the enrollment is open.

No proof can exist for God's non-existence

The Proof of the Mischievous God

1) Suppose that God exists, and that this God is all powerful and all knowing.

2) God can, then, influence the human mind and make one believe whatever He wants us to believe. This would certainly fall under the heading of what an all powerful person could do. (As for making us believe anything, see my earlier post about unreasonable doubt.)

3) God could, for example, cause one to believe a false proof for God's non-existence, and to believe it for as long as He so chooses.

4) Therefore, there can exist a situation where a proof for God's non-existence exists despite God's persistent existence.

5) Under these circumstance, the proof would be false There would be no way to determine if these circumstances exist, because God, being all-powerful and all-knowing, could keep us from finding out.

6) Any proof for God's non-existence could therefore be false beyond our ability to prove otherwise.

7) Since a good proof, by its definition, can never have a false conclusion, it follows that God's non-existence cannot be proved.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Second Life / Second Chance.

In the last month, I have spoken with multiple brilliant, friendly philosophers, sold two Saunas, and sold four copies of paintings that have been sitting in my home gathering dust (not even room in my little RL house to hang them on the walls), listened to some outstanding live performances, built and torn down a house, attended a poetry reading, saved a friend from a sexual predator, and have been given a plot of land in Cybrary City II for no charge to explore my vision of a Reader's Garden.

On of my neighbors, An Eon, is a professional artist in RL. She saw samples of two of my paintings and showed them to a gallery owner, who said that I should give up writing because I can tell a story better through my art.

So, wow!

I am yanked in a thousand different directions at once. Fixing Saunas, uploading more art, building our Reader's Garden, shopping, attending concerts and fireworks displays and meetings and classes. I've spoken to both dogs and cats and received very reasoned responses. I've flown on a dragon, a cow, and a penguin. I've fallen with my friends from 4000 meters without a parachute.

How can Real Life even begin to compare to this? I would never have had these experiences, and felt this validated, in all the years remaining to me as an oxygen breathing entity. All of this in one month. I've barely even begun to live. I am trying to build a Second Lifetime of experiences in a few days.

It's gradually destroying my first life. I can't let that happen. My first life pays for the computer access.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Perspectives on a Unified Universe

I find myself regretting my flippancy about Mykyl's views yesterday on the concept of perspective. I wish I had saved the conversation so I could study it in detail. My brain did not immediately wrap around the idea, which only means that I haven't touched upon it closely enough yet in my worldview. I need to understand it better, and greatly desire to discuss it further with her.

The universe as a unified entity is, however, a concept that I embrace strongly, although I'm uncertain how the scientists react to it. The question becomes one of chaos theory and the range of the butterfly effect. If the inverse square law of gravity is real (it HAS been accused of late of changing over great distances), then it follows logically that, in some way, each particle of mass in the universe affects every other particle, of mass or not. The flapping of a butterfly's wings in Borneo may eventually cause a hurricane the hypothetical planet Zeta Zeta Zeta, the most distant world in the visible universe.

And if this is true, it throws the concept of the quantum uncertainty principle to the wind. The uncertainty principle states that a particle does not exist in one state or another until observed. As far as I've learned, though, what an "observer" needs to be has never been clearly defined. In my view, so long as a particle’s state affects something--anything--else in the universe, then it is always being "observed" (perspective?) and thus the uncertainty principle has no meaning. Schrödinger’s cat is safely either alive or dead in his little box--not both simultaneously. (Catherine, worry not. Your cat is safely alive in SL’s universe.)

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Alex has a hissy fit.

Excerpt from the never-to-be-published book, Of Cabbages and Kings, chapter 3. Alexander Taber, the protagonist, loses control during a board meeting.


“Rita, this is by far the stupidest, most poorly conceived, and most unworkable plan you and your group of butt-kissing sycophants have ever come up with!”

“Butt kissing…?”

“Exactly! Do you have any idea of what you’re asking us to do?”

“Alex…”

“It’s not as if you’ve given us a square peg and asked us to fit it into a round hole. Nothing remotely that simple. What you’ve done instead is given us a broken aluminum deck chair and told us to make it work as a suppository. And, ridiculous as that sounds, somehow we’ve got to make it work, because one way or another, whatever we come up with is going to get shoved right up our ass!”

Friday, February 23, 2007

Poem: I don't watch you

This is the first time I've sat down and said, "I'm gonna write a poem," in years. Catherine and her entourage are a bad influence on me. As if I don't have enough directions to be split into.

I don't watch you.
Your granite eyes
. scrutinize me blindly,
. finding fault in the empty air.
Your pain so deep--
smashing your soul
. to a smoky powder:
. a stone crushed by the hand of God.
I can't see you.
Your words whirlpool--
. sucks my spirit away
. and turns my brain into black mud.

. [Rest is impossible.
. Awareness is as well.]

I can't find you.
Eyes scratchy, sand
. in their bony sockets
. wishing away the shell that you left.
You are safe, just.
Only because
. your broken, injured flesh
. can't convey you too close to the knives.
. (the pokeys in the plan)

I don't watch you
for you're not there.

Only your black shell
which I must love
for it’s all that remains of you.

Blog rations

I have rationed myself to no more than two posts a day. There is so much I want to share that I feel tempted just to dump my backlog and drown my nonexistent readers in a verbal flood. I will instead parcel it out slowly, savoring the taste of the words before I dispense them.

I am building a Reader's Garden in Cybrary City II. I will have a way for readers to plant flowers with information about books that interest them. (How I will do this, I don't know. I always come up with plans for things before I figure out if they're possible or not.) It will also have areas where like-minded readers can gather in small groups just to talk about their favorite books, and a larger area where readers can have book discussions, or poets can give readings, or...whatever. I don't want to limit the potential for this area.

The Princess has gone Prim Crazy, buying two more plots in Kush with my grudging consent. My focus is on the Reader's Garden right now. She is building sky boxes for people to rent over our original plot. I had her asking me questions about fences at 4am. The woman is more obsessed than I am.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

All Possible Doubt and Descartes

There is nothing that can be proven beyond all possible doubt, for all-possible doubt includes unreasonable doubt, and without reason, the concept of proof is meaningless.

The rl world is full of mental hospitals that hold people who believe they don't exist. Try to use Descartes' reasoning with them. See if it convinces them of their own existence.

A transition of soul between two worlds

What is it about this place? Why is it so all-consuming to me? This fantasy world is slowly sucking my real-life alter-ego's soul out through his computer keyboard. Can a spirit be "rezzed" in an imaginary land? If so, where does that spirit go when the land is down.

Is it a hope for recognition? For hope of being given the opportunity to share my alter ego’s thoughts and perspectives and dreams, because in the place where he lives, his thoughts and perspectives and dreams are ignored? Here I feel I can reach out and touch the souls of others, at least that part of the soul that has been passed into this land. I have seen things, met people, and had experiences in my relatively short existence that my real-life self has not been blessed with his entire life.

I feel strongest as Alphonsus Peck, the wise man. It is this persona that is so rare in SL. I have seen people who have chosen to be fantasy selves -- furries, dragons, children, other genders -- but even so, I have never seen another person here who has chosen simply to make his hair gray. Almost everyone here seems about 25 in rl years...I suspect that in my aspect as the wise man that I am one of the few who has actually chosen to appear older than his rl age. It helps me "feel" the role that I play...this aspect of my rl self that so wants to share what he has learned with others.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Poem: Sitting in her daddy's Rolls...

Sitting in her daddy's Rolls
there lounged a pretty girl
And laying back, she saw a star
(which she mistook for a pearl).

But when she reached up to the sky
to pull the bauble down,
the Universe fell across her lap
and wrecked her pretty gown.

Alphonsus Peck's real life avatar. Circa 1980 something.

My Introduction post. Hi there.

This is the posting place for the fictional character Alphonsus Peck, librarian in Second Life. In addition to my exalted profession, I am a philosopher, prim builder, artist, poet, writer, High Priest of the Primarian Church, computer programmer, reader, and all around nice guy.

It should be quite clear from the above that I am also unable to focus on things for great lengths of time, which makes me a jack of all arts, master of none.

I suspect that there will be little comment on my postings here, and I am uncertain how long I will be able to maintain a concentrated interest in this blog. It's okay. I'll share what I can, while I can, casting my quiet bytes to the vast sea of the web....

If a fictional character cries out in cyberspace and no one is there to hear him, does he really exist?