Military memories

Every now and then I'll read, hear, or see something that reminds me of a past experience. I was reading a comment thread on Digg.com about how Bush's approval rating had dropped to 26% and the posters were arguing about how/why people in the military voted in the last presidential election. One commenter stated that most of the people in the military voted for Bush because they (at one time) legitimately believed he had some sort of plan in Iraq and that it had nothing to do with how Republicans increase military budgets.

This caused a spark or two to go off in my weak brain and I remembered one time when I was stationed at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama and we were FORCED to go to church one Sunday (I'm an Atheist, so you can imagine how upset I was), and the guest speaker was some Sergeant Major that talked about how "God says it's o.k. to kill if it's for the right reason" and "there's no such thing as a [politically] liberal soldier on the battlefield". This was right after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991 under Bush Sr. (the last successful Bush family member to be elected to office) and they were going full force with the whole brainwashing thing before a single U.S. soldier stepped foot on the sands of the middle east. They were expecting a horribly bloody ground war (much worse than we are currently experiencing in Iraq) and wanted to stretch out the time between a lot of soldiers dying and the living soldiers becoming disgruntled with the war.

/End of flashback

More Second Life observations

One of the first things I noticed about SL was that, just like in real life (RL) or 1st life, men get much less attention than really good looking women. I created a really good looking female avatar and people go out of their way to answer questions, or just say "hi". My male avatar could have exploded in a huge mushroom cloud (I'm sure it's possible to do in SL) and no one would have noticed.

The next thing I discovered is that people have virtual relationships in SL. Boyfriends, girlfriends, life partners, slave, whatever. They apparently treat it as if it were completely real by building a house and just hanging out staring at a fireplace and spooning on the sofa.

Further, the 1st life gender of the avatar doesn't seem to be important any more. The first 10-15 years of cyber sex held the stigma of "dude, that was probably a guy you were talking dirty to. What are the odds it was a hot 19 year old girl?" Apparently, SL has given people such a huge suspension of disbelief that they no longer care of who is sitting at the keyboard on the other end.

Of course, only SOME people are able to let go of their inhibitions there. Some people are just as big of a jerk in SL as they are in RL, or their avatar is a very close replica of their RL body and all of their phobias go with it.

There is apparently something for everyone in there. . .

Stay tuned.