Maximius

Little is known to me to be honest, thanks for your comments. A lot of this stuff is small, I wanted it to look delicate, but it could be resized easily of course. Ill stick with individual pieces then, in fact maybe Ill start organizing "mix and match" sets, so a mapper can quickly assemble a variety of pieces into a novel scene. ----------------- Thats right, I did not optimize these in terms of polys, Ill have to take care of that. Off the subject, but do you know how to install F Prime Worley into LW? I have the file on my HD but the guy who sent it to me couldnt remember which folder it goes into. Im hoping to find a happy middle ground somewhere between those different issues. Its been pointed out to me in the past that sometimes too much realism is actually less realistic, because it makes somethings look so good that others look bad and the dissonance is jarring. So Im hoping that the simplicity of these incidental objects combined with some variety will turn the trick. I think that just a few items on a bathroom table or on a dresser can add a lot. And consider this, is it always so bad that items are not immediately noticeable? If I've been in a room twice and the second time I noticed more detail, that I had missed before, could it not serve to actually increase realism? Just a point for consideration.

Thanks Dem, actually they are all separate pieces, I guess I could glue them together into a prefab but I dont know how just yet. Should be easy. Good points about the "shelf life" of the models. It would not be too hard to make a variety of makeup sets and hair brushes (or anything else) , some minor alterations of shape and textures, its learning to do the first ones that sucks. Thats kind of what I was heading for, minor items that add a human touch. Im thinking of kitchen items next, frying pans, knives, bowls and such. I may start making a variety of the simpler items as I go, if you make one clay pot its pretty easy to morph it and recolor it into another.

The grid size in the first picture is set at about 2 meters, is that what you were referring to?

this is a little project Ive been working on, they could do with a lot more detail but I wanted to get some early feedback. Ignore the crappy wall/floor textures plz, I got tired of trying to scale them properly with the surface editor. http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/4268/ma...umrange1rc5.jpg http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/6504/hi...uptable1wq3.jpg Note the bubbles in the soapdish! I tried to make a towel but it looks too boxy.

Its use in analytical philo was primarily to create "What If?" kinds of arguments IIRC, even the people making them would probably happily admit all the criticisms we are discussing here are true, they were just looking at all possibilities. I think some folks outside of A-philo, was it Feynmann who did this?, tried to promote the ideas as being plausible or something but ultimately all such approaches (non-deterministic) rely on incorrect definitions of freedom IMHO.

QM is sometimes used to build models of freely formed thoughts, the idea is that if an idea is the result of a quantum event, its not a part of the deterministic chain of events and therefore we can claim that such thoughts enjoy a degree of freedom not found elsewhere. Even if this is so, the question remains why would a random thought event be any more freedom producing than a determined one. If at any point my actions can be randomly skewed from what my desires wish them to be, it sound rather unfree to me. Like someone who suffers from arbitrary seizures can be said to lack a degree of freedom.

Thanks, I actually found another way but thats good to know.

The other day, I accidentally erased the desktop shortcut to Paint that I used. I went to the accessories under Programs, but the icon is no longer listed under the Entertainment stuff. I had thought the desktop icon was only a copy but I guess it was the freaking original and now I cannot find the program anywhere. Can anyone help me with this none sense? Thanks in advance.

I'd like to ram a stake through that fucking Oreo Cookie Dave Huddleston and that robot drone sidekick of his, Miss Pasty Face.(These are Phillys Fox news anchors.) One night, my girl had them on so we could mock them, and they announced they had a report about a new plan to tackle the cities violence. I listened up, this was only a few weeks after the robbery. When they came back from the break, they gave the story. Heres the big plan. This guy is putting on a two man play at local high schools to try and dissuade the kids from violence. A play. To stop kids from shooting one another. I flipped out, started screaming at the TV, calling them idiots and stuff. Who would even dare run such a story? Who really thinks its making a difference?

ditto what thestemmer said... I used to work for the Franklin Institute here in Philly as a traveling science teacher. Ive been to dozens of schools up and down the middle east coast. THe disparity in the school systems is nightmarish. I would teach in a school in north philly that was falling to bits, cause the local tax base was shit, and then go to a suburban school or a private Quaker school here in town and holy shit the difference: animal cages, fish, greenhouses, theatres, teachers that hugged students instead of treating them like prisoners, blah blah blah. Literally a mile away, utter squalor. Ive seen this in other places as well though I dont know how bad it is except in Philly. But i suspect its bad nationally, our literacy and achievement test scores are in the hopper. If anyone wants to learn more, read any of the books of John Kozol. Hes a education researcher, and he writes that schools today are as segregated and underserved as they were in the 1960s. More and more, schools are run llike prisons, with cops and searches and dogs and what the fuck. No one wants to attack root problems, spend the money, oh wait, its in Iraq or in the hands of the top1 percentile of families. Heres another Philly story, just to show the level of chaos and disrepair and the attitudes that many of these people face. A friend lives in West philly told me the other day, the block across the street had a bad fire, someones BBQ went up. SO the porch is burning, and the FFs arrive to put it out. Except, the water department, in order to stop kids from playing in the hydrants cause they have no pools and no where to go and shit to do all summer, put locks on the hydrants. Locks the Fire fighters couldnt open. So the whole front of the block, connected row homes, went up, like 14 porches. No one cares, no one will be prosecuted. The local newspapers, the stuff of pure idiocy, barely covered it. Stuff like this happens fairly routinely. You are correct, the desire to reduce public spending and increase private accumulation is attacking Europes and Canadas systems as well. South AMerica looks as if its trying to shake off this influence a bit though, I'd rather fight this battle in Canada myself where people actually value themselvse and their communities, instead of this bleak wasteland of finger pointing and near psychotic denials that anything could be done differently or better. Change will come, no doubt, but its going to be a hard slog here.

Socialization is definitely a part of it, but that is not necessarily a voluntary process SD. Teenagers have "follow the leader" instincts at full steam, even as they reject the larger adult authority. They follow one another into trouble like ants to sugar. Its all they worry about, impressing and strutting and all. Its true they make choices, but those are choices buried inside a lot of compulsions, a storm of them. Sure, dont hang out with trouble is good advice, but in some of these places trouble finds you really really easy. Not every killer is a teenager for sure, but LOTS, LOTS are, like 12 and 14 with Glocks. The cops killed a 12 year old a few months back who had a sawed off shotgun and came running at them. Are these kids really mentally prepared to make the choices you describe, even in the best of home lifes and neighborhoods? Now throw in a street culture of machismo, respect, and might as right, and these kids are supposed to be making the right calls?

That is a good question. No one here really talks to or about them, they just plaster their angry faces up on the news as villain of the minute. I know this much, they are overwhelmingly from poor households and run down neighborhoods. The schools are as I've already described. Many come from homes torn apart by violence, drugs, the usual stuff. But not all. Some are "good" kids, who fall into the gangster culture cause their peers are working on them, to gain acceptance, whatever, safety on dangerous streets. Just the presence of a few guns in a neighborhood seems to me to be a kind of mini arms race that demands a response, namely buying one yourself. There is a kind of feedback loop at work. Im sure the original presence of the guns was for drugs and such, but now they are a real and symbolic power item and have become mundane. A friend from West Philly put it this way "No one fist fights anymore." We can root out certain individuals but given the conditions there will be a group that emerges that engages in such things. Violence follows poverty, although oDDIty has a point about some communities who dont respond this way, you have to look at each case indivdiidually. Here, the poverty met up with drug business and helped to spawn a toxic street culture that has little value for human life. Of course, neither does US culture in general, which is perhaps an influence as well. But the facts remain that if the social conditions were to improve, and the guns were taken the fuckaway, these neighborhoods could improve. No one is trying to give them a chance to heal, they just ignore the problem, racism steps in and declares its just the way it is with some people, or classism, or some other ism that helps people maintain their illusions. When more whitekids from good neighborhoods start getting shot, then real change will start to take place. Maybe. Yes, I have a somewhat similar story, projects in my childhood, a divorce that shamed Satan, and I have done well to a degree. But think back, were there any close spotss? Any times you almost fucked up royally? I have a half a million or so to my credit. Its incredible I have made it where I have. But a lot of people I know, good people, didnt, and to say why not is to ignore the fact that people come from very different places, both mentally, physically, and economically. My point is that we should be fostering an environment that gives all a decent shot at a decent life, I think of it as a garden, you can seed a well tilled healthy garden and still get some weeds, no doubt, but a poorly tended garden will definitely give rise to weeds and other ills as well. Why is no one pointing at the crumbling schools, Many residents do, and there are community efforts. But there are big obstacles, distrust of the cops, for good historical reasons and many current ones as well. Some communities clean there streets but the one next door doesnt and the city doesnt really help and so your work is often swallowed up by the general neglect. And the problems simply cannot be solved at the street level, they can be attacked from that angle but its only one. Money, yes money, needs to be spent, on jobs programs that fix up neighborhoods, real work training programs, stuff that uplifts the individual as well as their community. And of course literacy, real schools. Dedicated funding, with strong oversight and control but also with the real freedom to get people involved and keep them there. What exists now is a revolving door gag routine that embitters people and reaps distrust of any and all programs. And believe me, the costs of such programs pale when compared to the costs of widespread ignorance, illiteracy, poverty. Ok, sorry if Im shrill, its been a rough fucking week. But the leadership routine is old hat too Im afraid. Leaders are great but they cannot move mountains. They need solid support and thats not been coming. And so many of these leaders are mere media darlings for a hot second or two, look, a ray of hope, now on to the sports report. We need social spending, it worked in the past as crappy and unstable as it was, but its been ravaged by the conservative rollback of the last three decades, epitomized by Reagan and Ginrichs Deal on America. We need our tax dollars spent wisely to clean up our streets, and get those that need it the assistance they need to get a start. And it needs to stay in place, so that people have time to change their hearts and minds, to become a member of a community, not a thing that happens overnight. BUt none of this will, its going to get worse, mark my words. There is no hope but governmental spending. We need progressive politics with a radical wing, a party that spends our wealth on us, not hands it over to pigs and worms, but thats a pipe dream in this wasteland of ideology and religious thinking. If people were offered real, stable opportunities you would see growth. I agree they need to organize, but that takes a LOT of education, effort, planning, whatever, and no one is stepping up to that challenge. Too many obstacles, racism, classism, pick your poison, for cross cultural organizing. And dont forget, PHilly is as rotten and corrupt as they come, local political elites dont come from bad neighborhoods to save them, they come out of them to sell them out like the whites that came before them did. And if they have nothing to work with, no social net, no bottom line, those efforts are of little or no use. They are lost, frustrated, and eventually such movements simply die out because the problems are too big. They need real money, real organization, to address. This is not coming forth and we are all going to be the sorrier for it in time. Just one example, the deplorable state of American education, and yet we must compete in a world where the bachelors degree is the norm.

You are correct, good point, it is a mixture of extreme poverty (Phillys the worst now I believe in the nation), cultural alienation due to racism and bigotry that keeps Philadelphia deeply segregated, a culture of violence, widespread illiteracy, and yes some bad apples. Its just that over here, all we look at are the bad apples, ignoring the orchards utter disrepair, so forgive me if I lean on those other points. And the killers are not all gangsters or even real hoodlums. Many are just regular kids, who live in a world divorced from the larger one around it, where honor and respect are life and death matters. The police have reported that many of these killings are motivated by utterly stupid things like stolen bicycles and girlfriends. It doesnt help that hi tech pistols and Aks are all around as well, the ease of access to such things is incredible but treated as just a fact of life. Its also a question of the society you want to live in. We could just roam the streets shooting the homeless in the head too, or gassing the mentally ill. But is that the world you want to inhabit? When people are more socially secure, they actually tend to have less children over time. This takes place for a variety of reasons, the knowledge that you can put more resources into one child, the desire on the part of potential parents to save their own leisure time, something else that comes along with a more secure social structure. This trend goes along with higher education levels as well. So a nicer, more humane route to lowering populations is to educate them, give them health care, something to live for Thats simply not true. The few who do make it out of those schools are statistically miracles, the conditions are so bad as to almost guarantee failure. You cannot make generalizations about individuals, as each one is very different inside, with different perspectives on the same things. When you say "like the rest of us" let me ask you did you have rats in your school? Did you have fistfights over the single roll of toilet paper provided by the custodians? Were your textbooks fifteen years out of date? Were their dangerous molds growing in your gym? Was your sports equipment ancient or not there at all? Was the surrounding community covered in trash, filled with rotten homes, homeless winos? Cause for many Philly school kids, thats the reality. That the level playing field. If you want some literature about it Ill find a link to this one book. Apologism is hardly my position, I have worked within this system for a few years now, it doesnt work AT FUCKING ALL, except to keep these people barely straggling along. The support system, welfare, adult services, what ever, are mostly pools for cities to hide cash, for them to keep jobs around, to keep federal bucks floating in, no one really gives a damn about getting shit done or making change. Well, not no one but not enough, thats for sure. There are no jobs in these parts of the city, unemployment is something like 50 percent for some groups, with poor literacy skills and work experience the only options are shit pay exploitation jobs that pay less than poverty and break you mentally and physically. The illusion is that these folks were ever given a real chance, they had a break in the late sixties but since then and especially under Reagan and the scumbags that followed him, the social net is being torn to shreds. And so now we see third world conditions in our cities, rampant illiteracy, almost zero public health system, and on and on. I agree, a few token scholarships are bullshit, there should be no need for scholarships because education is a human right and it should be equally and freely available to all, paid for by the taxes raised by citizens. Our schools should be equal and of top quality, at one time our public system was the envy of the industrialized world, now its a fucking travesty. Im bored with blaming the individual, frankly. Its really easy to do, smacks of retard Christian moralizing, and obscures the complexities that give rise to social problems. It has its place in the scheme of things but on a spectrum of influences from the individual to the varieties of social formations, not as the sole point of inquiry.

Well, orb, I think addressing poverty issues seriously would take care of that rather than encouraging and subsidizing abortions. Although I fully support access to abortions for all women and it should be subsidized if the money is needed. These people are not naturally "potential criminals", they are the product of poverty, of racism, of being ignored and powerless and despised. Like almost all US families throughout our history, they need social support, a safety net to help jump start healthy development, both on a community and individual level.

Good point.

@Orb: Im reading a book right now called "the way we never were", its about myths about the US family. One of the points that the author stresses and I found interesting was how even the language to speak of things in a collective sense has atrophied in this country. We literally lack a robust set of concepts and words in our everyday lives to effectively discuss ideas such as the role of the state, the need for collective action, the public good or a social safety net. We tend to view things as the fault of individuals and their personal choices, generally failing to develop a social context around them. This is how people here in Philly can actually make the argument that its the families of the killers that are primarily to blame for their violence, that if only Mom and Dad were to crack down the problem would dry up. As if Mom and Dad weren't living hand to mouth, as if a kid with a gun is going to stop to listen to Mom or Dad lecture them. As if we didn't live in a culture that glorifies violent solutions and the idea that might makes right. A few voices in the mainstream point to the dire unemployment in these communities, the deep rooted illiteracy, the rotting schools, the crappy public services, the empty lots and collapsed houses filled with vermin, the trash a foot deep on some streets when the wind collects it in a corner, but theres little money for those problems, what with heavily reduced social spending on all levels of government, tax breaks for the 1 percentile, and a never ending war where billions are spent, or lost, merely trying to bribe local governments and leaders to play ball. If anyone is still dying to get US citizenship out there, you can have mine. Im sure there are wonderful places and people here, don't mind all my bombast to the contrary, but ultimately this place sucks, unless you happened to be born atop the heap of rats. Then its a good time, you can spend and do almost as you please. Unlike their counterparts in other industrialized nations, many of the citizens here worship those with the wealth and power. Instead of hating them as their mortal enemies, we are taught that they are our natural leaders, that their position in society is a product of their own great work, and that if you work hard enough, you too may someday get to enjoy such luxury. And the whole sorry lie works when you can provide some level of comfort, keep a fat and dumb middle class to absorb social tremors from below, but now that protection is disappearing. So what comes next, given that something will have to give way at some point (which is not guaranteed)? Revolution or reform or Reich. Reforming this system would be next to impossible as it currently stands in my inexpert opinion, the foxes are in the henhouse and selling eggs, the whole political system absolutely depends on huge amounts of private money, the corporate/government/educational/military circles are tighter and more intertwined than at any other time in history, and the government is piled high with debts and lethargy. Revolution (a socialistic/progressive one) here would also be wildly problematic, its a corrupt rotting beast but its still got a powerful domestic police state, a big military and lots of nukes and worst of all a fairly docile and compliant citizenry still waiting for the USS AMERICAN DREAM to pull up to their dock with Jesus at the helm and ESPN on all the monitors. So, again given some sort of collapse, economic, environmental, political, I see Reich, US fascism, developing. Illiterate in a number of ways, irrational and superstitious, deeply nationalistic, this population seems ripe for a deep reactionary shift. I hope to fuck Im a Canadian by then, at least.

We actually live pretty cheap for the city, though generally you would be correct. We are ready to move but we dont own a car and have no desire to have to do so. Her job moves to East Falls (a nearby suburg) in a week or so, we are looking there, not perfect but safer than where we are right now. But with this god damned kick in the teeth thats only going to be harder to do. But we have to so we will. Komag, Im sorry but its not that simple. The personal responsibility schtick has worn through. I have roughly that much money set aside in fact. It was for another class this semester, but thats out of the question. Its survival money now and I hope its enough to carry me until I find something else. To say one should save up this or that amount is to discount life coming along and taking it away in one swoop. It happens all the time, but we simply mumble "Shoulda saved more." and continue to trudge along like good field hands. No, we should have real healthcare and sick leave laws, like civilized nations do. Instead, we have a insanities like fifteen day cutoffs for paperwork that can help but take three weeks to fill out, medical leave that pays a quarter of your paycheck. I would be financially more secure if I got fired, I could get at least 60 percent. And if saving up three months salary alone for a possible sick leave is supposed to be the standard, we as a nation are in deep shit. Our savings rates are negative, personal debt is at historic highs, we are a constantly unfolding disaster in progress when it comes to personal finance. Most people are several years in debt, let alone three months ahead.

Ok, that sounds fair enough, I allow myself to believe there are monsters under my bed sometimes to give myself a chill, you are aware of the difference and thats what counts. But there is some danger, when these ideas are accepted by others as having truth value. You can maintain the separation but beware those that can't. And you may find in time that while such illusions are enjoyable and have value, there is a self affirming value to setting such things aside and living with the uncertainty intact.

This is how things work here in the US when you get sick: I have recently had to leave work due to post traumatic stress syndrome, a result of my robbery and the fact that I worked in dangerous neighborhoods. I wanted to take Family Medical Leave and I got the forms. I was told that they had to be back in fifteen days, but I told my human resources manager that the therapist Im seeing would not be able to get them back in that period of time. Today, Ive been informed that I am ineligible for the Family Medical leave because I missed the paperwork deadline. Despite the fact that my treatment made returning the paperwork impossible, I am ineligible for paid leave. Besides, the paid medical leave was only one quarter my original pay. Thats right, when you get sick, you can get as little as a quarter of your original paycheck while on leave. But, due to utter circumstance, I get nothing. So now we have to live on one salary. Im going to try to see about unemployment money while I job hunt but Im not betting on getting anything. God, I hate this fucking country, this festering shit pool. What other advanced nation throws their sick onto the streets? It makes no sense from the perspective of maintaining healthy, productive workers, whats the possible point? There is none, its just the usual fuck job, companies trying to get away with the minimum that the already deficient laws proscribe, no safety net to turn to, just the prospect of sink or swim. A nation of starving rats piled one atop another, scrabbling and clawing. Im going to take this to the community legal service people to see if they can find a loophole but Im betting Im screwed.

Ok but mental wandering and choosing to arbitrarily believe those wanderings are two very different things. Im all for mental wandering, for fantasizing, thinking crazy thoughts, letting the imagination run wild. I think such things are absolutely necessary for better rational thinking in fact, at the very least by imagining the impossible we can conceive of new ways of understanding and doing the possible. But you cannot make those ideas a part of your >belief< set without applying some sort of a method to them, some sort of process of filtration to weed out what is sheer fantasy from what are actually our perceptions of reality, whatever that may be. The best process is the scientific method, or its more everyday form evidence based reasoning. You have to have some form of evidence to defend your beliefs, and you have to have a process by which to rate your evidence before you apply it. Not all evidence is necessarily scientific fact, and this leads to different degrees of truth, maybe better a shifting spectrum of truth, but still its a set of things much, much smaller and infinitely more refined than the set of things we can arbitrarily choose to believe about the universe. So what evidence do you have to support your claims? I personally have seen nothing in terms of an afterlife. Theres lots of evidence pointing to the reasons people want and need to believe in such things but the list of evidence for there actually being something is zip, zero, from what I have heard. Now could there be other planes of existence, other dimensions with perhaps life of some kind? I cannot say but it does not seem utterly impossible, one philosopher, David Lewis, believed that all possible modes of a universes existence in fact exist simultaneously. He had his evidence but as far as I can understand it from the show I listened to was that it was mostly a philosophical exercise based on analytical logic and not an empirical study of the world. So it has its value, as a fascinating mental construct of what seems could be but not what actually seems is in existence. This is an example of the variety of truth as I see it, logical truths used as models around which to cast the clay of empirical observation to harden into what we can call truth, with reservations. BTW this show was on that Philosophy Zone show you linked, from a few weeks back.

Oh I have an emotional attachment alright, like a fishhook sunk into my brain. Im leaving this dump ASAP. The "safe" parts of the city amount to little more than a tourist trap anyway, besides school, the museums, a few good bars and eateries, Philly has crap to do or offer. Go get mugged on South Street if you want, its either by the hooligans or the stores, someones getting your money. Everything is jacked up in $$$, everything caters to the $$$ people in town. The transit system is runs by imbeciles and crooks, it costs quite a bit more than NY but its constantly late, detoured without warning, chronically underfunded by the vampires in Harrisburg who think public transit = socialism, and crowded as living hell at times. If you live in the poor areas of town, you may be herded off of a bus halfway to your destination and told to catch the one behind, because they dont want or cant afford to run full bus service. The service to the nice burbs is way better, they spend more money where they dont need it and deny it where its direly needed. I had to stand in a snowstorm one icy January morning because "This bus only runs halfway up the route." and I quote. At 8:30 in the A.M. I've done my part, I've taught in hellish neighborhoods to desperate folks trying to get one last shot at an education. No one cares. A buddy who is a director at another non profit school told me she was told by a big wig director from down town that all these education programs are anyway is a vehicle for pushing people off of the welfare rolls so that the governor looks like a hero to the banjo picking Christian froot loops in the sticks. Might sound like a great idea to some but consider: the uneducated in this nation are swelling in numbers like you would not believe. One in ten adults is illiterate, a shameful number and within ethnic minorities those numbers can soar to seventy and eighty percent. This is our future workforce, at a time when a bachelors degree is becoming the bottom line standard level of education, vast portions of our population will be falling further and further behind.

Yes, she saw a white girl and assumed she was a dipshit, happy go lucky yuppie homeowner like most of the people who live around here. Its so funny, Volvos and Audis down one street, prostitutes and thugs literally a block or two away. You can see the difference between neighborhoods like night and day around here, its surreal.

Working on it. But for the poor, especially if you are Latino or black, forget it, you can't move to the suburbs they cost too much and the country folk dont want you around either. Pennsylvania has some of the highest numbers of skinhead and KKK members on the East Coast, people think its the North but its a lot more Southern than Northern except for the cities. You are stuck living with killers and gangbangers all around you, I don't know how people do it.

And Im in one of the "safe" neighborhoods, believe me. On the unsafe blocks, people don't talk about safe or unsafe neighborhoods, they talk about safe or unsafe corners on each individual block.

Some places in this great land qualify, either by the standard of violence or poverty, almost always both in combination. I read an email a few months back about cholera, fucking cholera, reappearing in some urban centers in the U.S. Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate and trains more doctors per capita IIRC. People here live in a semi dream state it seems sometimes, ignoring raw realities only a few feet away. A real estate agent was showing a home to a young couple a few weeks back as my girlfriend walked by. Eager to sell the overpriced financial bear trap to these suckers, she approached my girl and demanded in a sweet voice that she tell the couple how safe this neighborhood is. My girlfriend replied "My boyfriend got robbed at gunpoint about a block from here." and walked away. She could hear the women sputtering and back-pedaling behind her.