OR You Get What you Pay For
A Brilliant Idea
Whilst raking leaves today, not our leaves, our neighbors leaves because our yard is the neighborhood leave magnet, my wife, Madame W, had a brilliant idea...she has many but this one stood out. First, a little context. Recently I created an avatar on Second Life, more or less to see what the hubbub was all about. Madame W and I, during the creation of my virtual self, had a rather deep conversation about the nature of community and irony that sometimes virtual communities cause isolation. Heavy stuff.
Yesterday was our Southern Illinois family’s Thanksgiving feast (many siblings, lots going on Thanksgiving day). We kept the politics to a minimum and ate for the most part. My sister in law was trumpeting the first time she voted (she’s 32) and how she voted against a school referendum. Turns out the local depressed school district isn’t getting much in the way of Federal or State money anymore and there has been an influx of new families to the area (a part of the ex-urban phenomena). The schools can’t accommodate all these new kids without extra cash. ALSO, the local town, run by the GOP, won’t impose a school impact fee on new development, so my sister in law, who confessed she “didn’t vote the way I’d want her too” was loathe to support the referendum.
This got my wife to thinking. Way not create a virtual reality world, a la “Second Life” based on the premise that the GOP runs everything...a real Twilight Zone scenario where only the wealthy get roads, schools, safe water and food, and the rest of us scavenge on the rubbish pile. In fact, Jeannie was thinking coming up with two different worlds: GOP - Land and the Democratic alternative. The idea is to make the connect between our daily lives and how elections (and our voting patterns) affect those daily lives.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the technical chops to create such a world, but I bet someone on dKos does. Food for thought and comment.
Time to Investigate Jeff
OK, now that we are back in power, is anyone else interested in why Jeff Gannon was given unlimited access to the Whitehouse a couple of years ago and who the hell he was seeing? Time to resurrect that little scandal and determine who knew what, when did they know it, and why did it cost $3.99 a minute?
Yes, a Daily Kos twofer!