So even though I previously wrote that wordpress 2.5 wasn't ready for me yet, I've upgraded.   It seems that I'm taking chances seeing if my plugins work - so far so good for the most part.  I don't know if I'll say happy with it, but only time will truly tell me.

Wish me luck.

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• Update Wordpress 2.5 not there for me yet: I went and did a quick load on my test blog at creeva.net.. http://tinyurl.com/yvkny3 #

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I'll start off with the fact that I have no interest inbreeding so this is not a justification by any means.   This is just a pondering that stemmed out of an e-mail exchange.   What is inbreeding and what truly defines it.

Wikipedia defines inbreeding as:
Inbreeding is breeding between close relatives, whether plant or animal. If practiced repeatedly, it often leads to a reduction in genetic diversity. A concomitant increase in homozygousity of recessive traits can, over time, result in inbreeding depression. This may result in inbred individuals exhibiting reduced health and fitness and lower levels of fertility.

So we've established that if we agree with wikipedia's definition on inbreeding as a reduction in genetic diversity, what can we say about communal, intellectual, or societal inbreeding?  Is there such a thing?  I think there is, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing is for you to decide.  Let's go over some examples.

A boy that is two years old and walks over to a new born baby girl sitting in a stroller in front of the neighbors house.  He meets her for the first time.   Over the coming years they run around naked in the yard together at an age where it is somewhat socially acceptable.  They go to dances together.  In all ways they are best friends, brother and sister living next door to each other brought together by location and shared experiences.  At the age of 18 they marry.

Socially acceptable?  You answer that.

Another boy is 11 years old, his single father comes back from a business trip and tells his son that he met a woman and they are getting married in 6 months.  She happens to have a 11 year old daughters.  Seven years later the son and the woman's daughter marry.  They are step-siblings at the time.

Socially acceptable?  You answer that.

I can't tell you how you thought and your feelings on it, but if we look at the two above scenarios and define neither of those as inbreeding from a genetic stand point but from a relationship stand point both may be considered incestuous.  Granted incest laws and inbreeding are separate on the moral compass scale, but truly you can't have one without a varying degree of the other.

Some incest and inbreeding are accidental, take the case in point of the separated twins that got married in England last year.  While they would have inbred if they would have had children before finding out they were related and on the strictest sense it is incest since they were brother and sister, if we throw morality out the door for a second is it truly incestuous?  They had less in common in life experience then either the first two examples I gave.  They are further apart so they bring more to the table for a child to learn from in a life experience department.  From a intellectual or communal stand point this wouldn't be inbreeding or incest.   It would be two people that were in love that had the unlucky chance of common DNA.

Part of what was discussed at the time that was a news story was that people are attracted to people that are like them.  So people with similar experiences and interest are going to be more attracted to each other with the more they are like each other.   Unfortunately the more your significant other is like you the more your offspring is going to be like you because of the moral traits and beliefs you and your mate educate your offspring with.     Hence while you may have preserved genetic diversity you have squashed a mutation in the sense of the child being more indenpendent and different then yourselves.   Your child is not likely to be more successful then either you or your mate.  It is likely to fall in the same economic and societal structure as their forebearers.

Socially acceptable?  Sure is.

Morally right when you look at the big pictures?  You answer that.

The reason this comes up is all the friends and communities that people have had for years at a time.  Whether it be a church group, a video game guild, an online forum, or a local chess club the closeness you can evolve with these people can become close enough that you can't differentiate between your feeling for family or your feelings for the group you belong to.  It is a family in every sense of the word except for genetics.    The longer the group stays together and the more they become like the other people the more intellectual and interest stagnation can occur.   If you live your life obsessed with something and so does your mate, highly likely your child will be the same way.

I can say that my wife and I shared friends but we were two very different people.  We knew each other for a few months, and have grown more alike in the decade we've been together, but deep down from shared experiences we are very different people.   However what if we would have met at 11 years old and married 7 years later?  What if we had been part of a video game group that we had let our guard down and accepted as family.  What about truly platonic friends that pick up romance after 30 years of friendship?  At what point would there be a moral difference between communal inbreeding  versus genetic?  Is there ever?

If there is no such thing as communal or intellectual inbreeding, then will identical twins be able to legally marry and be accepted by society once we can do genetic manipulation?  At the point we can do true genetic modification we can insure that no inbreeding at the genetic level will occur.  Sure it still will be considered incest, but what would the health reason or societal reason truly be to keep the people apart?  I'm sure eventually mankind will have to grapple and come up with the moral answer code going forward.  Not yet but someday.

This is not a piece to make you decide something one way or another.  It is more a piece to help you decide in the global communication world we live in that there will things that we need to decide on what is family.   Is family only truly a genetic trait?  Is it a lump of love and shared experiences?  If so at which point will be the truly defining line between where incest and inbreeding live and where societies ecceptable norms lie.

Mutation exists through differentiation, mutation leads to evolution.   What needs to be done to insure evolution at all levels?  You answer that.

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I'll start off with the fact that I have no interest inbreeding so this is not a justification by any means.   This is just a pondering that stemmed out of an e-mail exchange.   What is inbreeding and what truly defines it.

Wikipedia defines inbreeding as:
Inbreeding is breeding between close relatives, whether plant or animal. If practiced repeatedly, it often leads to a reduction in genetic diversity. A concomitant increase in homozygousity of recessive traits can, over time, result in inbreeding depression. This may result in inbred individuals exhibiting reduced health and fitness and lower levels of fertility.

So we've established that if we agree with wikipedia's definition on inbreeding as a reduction in genetic diversity, what can we say about communal, intellectual, or society inbreeding?  Is there such a thing?  I think there is, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing is for you to decide.  Let's go over some examples.

A boy that is two years old and walks over to a new born baby girl sitting in a stroller in front of the neighbors house.  He meets her for the first time.   Over the coming years they run around naked in the yard together at an age where it is somewhat socially acceptable.  They go to dances together.  In all ways they are best friends, brother and sister living next door to each other brought together by location and shared experiences.  At the age of 18 they marry.

Socially acceptable?  You answer that.

Another boy is 11 years old, his single father comes back from a business trip and tells his son that he met a woman and they are getting married in 6 months.  She happens to have a 11 year old daughters.  Seven years later the son and the woman's daughter marry.  They are step-siblings at the time.

Socially acceptable?  You answer that.

I can't tell you how you thought and your feelings on it, but if we look at the two above scenarios and define neither of those as inbreeding from a genetic stand point but from a relationship stand point both may be considered incestuous.  Granted incest laws and inbreeding are separate on the moral compass scale, but truly you can't have one without a varying degree of the other.

Some incest and inbreeding are accidental, take the case in point of the separated twins that got married in England last year.  While they would have inbred if they would have had children before finding out they were related and on the strictest sense it is incest since they were brother and sister, if we throw morality out the door for a second is it truly incestuous?  They had less in common in life experience then either the first two examples I gave.  They are further apart so they bring more to the table for a child to learn from in a life experience department.  From a intellectual or communal stand point this wouldn't be inbreeding or incest.   It would be two people that were in love that had the unlucky chance of common DNA.

Part of what was discussed at the time that was a news story was that people are attracted to people that are like them.  So people with similar experiences and interest are going to be more attracted to each other with the more they are like each other.   Unfortunately the more your significant other is like you the more your offspring is going to be like you because of the moral traits and beliefs you and your mate educate your offspring with.     Hence while you may have preserved genetic diversity you have squashed a mutation in the sense of the child being more indenpendent and different then yourselves.   Your child is not likely to be more successful then either you or your mate.  It is likely to fall in the same economic and society structure as their forebearers.

Socially acceptable?  Sure is.

Morally right when you look at the big pictures?  You answer that.

The reason this comes up is all the friends and communities that people have had for years at a time.  Whether it be a church group, a video game guild, an online forum, or a local chess club the closeness you can evolve with these people can become close enough that you can't differentiate between your feeling for family or your feelings for the group you belong to.  It is a family in every sense of the word except for genetics.    The longer the group stays together and the more they become like the other people the more intellectual and interest stagnation can occur.   If you live your life obsessed with something and so does your mate, highly likely your child will be the same way.

I can say that my wife and I shared friends but we were two very different people.  We knew each other for a few months, and have grown more alike in the decade we've been together, but deep down from shared experiences we are very different people.   However what if we would have met at 11 years old and married 7 years later?  What if we had been part of a video game group that we had let our guard down and accepted as family.  What about truly platonic friends that pick up romance after 30 years of friendship?  At what point would there be a moral difference between communal inbreeding  versus genetic?  Is there ever?

If there is no such thing as communal or intellectual inbreeding, then will identical twins be able to legally marry and be accepted by society once we can do genetic manipulation?  At the point we can do true genetic modification we can insure that no inbreeding at the genetic level will occur.  Sure it still will be considered incest, but what would the health reason or society reason truly be to keep the people apart?  I'm sure eventually mankind will have to grapple and come up with the moral answer code going forward.  Not yet but someday.

This is not a piece to make you decide something one way or another.  It is more a piece to help you decide in the global communication world we live in that there will things that we need to decide on what is family.   Is family only truly a genetic trait?  Is it a lump of love and shared experiences?  If so at which point will be the truly defining line between where incest and inbreeding live and where societies ecceptable norms lie.

Mutation exists through differentiation, mutation leads to evolution.   What needs to be done to insure evolution at all levels?  You answer that.

[More at Creeva's World 2.0]

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This is an old post I found from 03/21/06 - adding it into the correct spot on the blog

I tried second life tonight. And as someone who in SWG enjoyed playing a master entertainer and a merchant (with master rifleman thrown in) it was an amazing experience. The character creation is on par with SWG if not more. It is a game that runs economy of a larger scale then SWG. The only thing it is missing is the mission/attack portion of the the game. Since I joined DnD online I may have the right mixture to do both now and happily have a medium that I can pretend is SWG the way it was - if only fleeting in my mind.

But moving on, I played slot machine - though I'm not sure I completely understood how they were working. I listened to live music for an hour or so. As an ex-entertainer I though the live music was the most fascinating thing that I saw...er heard. I wonder what I'll discover next. Very Very interesting and for anyone that enjoyed the social aspect of swg to try it out.

I can tell you Second Life didn't pan out for me.

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I went and did a quick load on my test blog at creeva.net but it seems some of my critical plugins are not working yet.

/sigh

I was looking forward to the upgrade.  It seems I have to wait until some of my plugins are updated before migrating over to the new version.

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• Catching up on some blog posts /sigh #
• Update Creeva’s Daily Link List 02/23/08:

   
   

   

  Carissa Kni.. http://tinyurl.com/yq2tba #

• Update Creeva’s Daily Link List 02/25/08:

   
   

  Open source compressed .. http://tinyurl.com/2sfxhh #

• Update Creeva’s Daily Link List 02/26/08:
  h1 a:hover {background-color:#888;color:#fff ! impor.. http://tinyurl.com/2ouaxd #
• Update Creeva’s Daily Link List 02/28/08:
  h1 a:hover {background-color:#888;color:#fff ! impor.. http://tinyurl.com/2vwoyl #
• Update Draft Overload: You ever get one of those time that you step away from your blog for a few da.. http://tinyurl.com/2hrsw5 #
• Update Do you feel guilty not using your Web Apps to their fullest extent?: I know we all reach fati.. http://tinyurl.com/2nxn4r #

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I know we all reach fatigue when it comes to using certain web apps / sites / etc.  but at what point do you feel guilty?

When was the last mp3 song you submitted to last.fm?

Hav you updated all your latest photos into Flickr?

Remembering to digg the stories you like?

Saving your bookmarks to del.icio.us and not locally?

Blogging?

Saving all the movies and books you've consumed to allconsuming?

and on..

and on..

Sometimes it's a juggling game that is a huge pain in the ass.  Some application are doing it right, like setting your status messages across multiple social networks.  Because of this I can directly or indirectly thanks to services that interact with it I use twitter the most and the most regularly.

Though I do look at all the things I'm missing to virtually save by being preoccupied with something else.   I can't make a determining factor whether it's a good thing or bad, but with my time wasting normal self I can't say it's that good of a thing, if I had a real life it might be.

I'm working on my guilt, but sometimes I feel like the fat kid who got caught walking out of the Cheesecake Factory by his friends from Weight Watchers.

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You ever get one of those time that you step away from your blog for a few days (ok a couple weeks for me) and it seems that you need to go through the steps to clean up your drafts, finish your writing, and then you may feel complete?  I'm having one of those days.

I've logged in and took out of drafted and posted all my life caching items, I'm startingto go throguh my other drafts and just feeling a little bit overwhelmed.   I have things in all sorts of different stages of draft form.  An article about my paternal grandfather is about 30% done.   A draft on my first day of work with symantec is about 10%.    I have a varied things to finish via life notes.   I have pictures I still need to scan from photo albums.

Arrrrggggg.

Then you have all the things outside of the blog and this writing that causes hassles.  I have house issues I need to worry about, pet issues, relationships issues, my laptop was crashed thanks to an automatic Hardy Heron update (fixed after 3 days of figuring it out myself thank you), community band, Gnome Conduit documentation I need to finish, and work related projects.   We'll say that's just a start - but geeze my life seems to be a whirlwind sometimes that doesn't stop.

And then we're back to the blog.   I'm actually bad.  I need to look and write on the blog more often.  It relaxes me.  It actually completesme in a Jerry Macguiresque way.  Getting more seriouswriting on my blog gives me the true fulfillment in my life that only two other things give me currently.   My wife, she is my stability, my rock, the one that inspires to be better then I am.  She has a higher view point of me then I do myself.   Even though I think she is wrong, I know her beliefs in my skills is not false from her point of view, just false from my belief in reality.   I love her deeply and compeltely.   The last thing that finishes off my triage of life and completes me is playing music in the two community bands I am a member of.

These are the three things that I attempt to focus on - to get out of draft - because it calms and centers me.  I hope the three of them are never finished.

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• @itsally starsofintrepid.com #
• @itsally we're working on an Intrepid History Compendium #

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• ftp from work is the slowest thing in the world #

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• writing my long farewell to SWG #
• Update Intrepid’s History, An Entertainers Farewell:

  SWG, what a long strange journey it&#8.. http://tinyurl.com/yqm2xk #

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