Monument to Alfredo Kraus

Monumento a Alfredo Kraus
Originally uploaded by Miguelángel

Maestro Alfredo Kraus is remembered in a statue erected in his honor at Las Palmas, at the entrance to the auditorium that was named after him.

Going Independent

Well, as some of you may or may not know, the Second Life News Network has expired. I do not know what its ultimate fate has been, since I myself stopped writing for the newspaper after finding out that my employer was a socialist and that she endorsed Barack Obama.

Instead, you may soon find me plying my skills at the Metaverse Messenger. They sent me an e-mail indicating they would be thrilled to have me among their reporters. Let us see how that goes!


Of course, I can't exactly change the name of my blog , so let us leave it at that and we'll keep it in fond memory.


Until then

Nosy Newshound

Since SLNN has gone offline...

Since SLNN has gone offline, I am archiving the website's post about the Institute here:

The Objectivist Institute in Second Life set to open
by Delaynie Barbosa
January 30, 2008
previously at http://www.slnn.com



Fleets Cove Beach- The Objectivist Institute opens to the general public on February 1st. Founded by Merryjest Chatnoir, Kain Scalia, Kadar Talbot, and Alexandra Talbot, The Objective Institute was created to represent the philosophy of Objectivism in Second Life.

Objectivism is a branch of philosophy developed by author Ayn Rand in the twentieth century. Many of the author's works were based on her philosophy. Rand's philosophy has grown so popular that a real life learning facility, the Ayn Rand Institute, was opened in Irvine, California.

While The Objectivist Institute is not associated with the Ayn Rand Institute, the founders of the hope to gain enough interest in Second Life to collaborate with the Ayn Rand Institute in virtual worlds. Accomplishing this goal would allow seminars and classes at the Ayn Rand Institute to be streamed into Second Life; students from around the world who do not have the means to travel to California would be able to attend the Ayn Rand Institute's classes in a vitual setting.

"We are an association of individuals who are interested in the philosophy," Alexandra Talbot, co-founder of the Objective Institute, said. "[We] wish to provide a place to meet, learn and discuss, and for those who may be curious about the philosophy to get a first exposure with introductory materials."

The Objective Insitutute is a five story structure containing an art gallary, a meeting space, a parklike roof terrace, and two lecture halls- one of which will also serve as a concert hall and general autotorium. The third floor features the Reference Room, where many free items, information about philosophy, Objectivism, and Ayn Rand can be found. This is the place to start for anyone interested in these subjects.

The Grand Opening of The Objective Institute will take place on Friday, February 1st, 2008. The Innauguration Ceremony takes place at 12:30 p.m. SLT , and encompasses a speech by Kain Scalia about what Objectivism is.

Following the Innauguration Ceremony, a series of live events will take place as follows:

1:00-2:00 SLT: Jaynine Scarborough (Juliane Gabriel).
Gabriel worked and performed with the Berlin Chamber Opera, David First (The Manhattan Book of the Dead), and Walter Norris; assisted Tom Waits/ Robert Wilson (alice/ alice in bed). Gabriel developed a vowel modell, that makes it possible to experience and explore energy and presence through voicework in the body.

2:00-3:00 SLT: Benito Flores.
The virtuoso pianist Benito Flores studied piano with Marco Vincenzi, obtaining the diploma with honours (summa cum laude) and he continued his studies at the 'Scuola di Musica di Fiesole' with Maria Tipo and Pietro De Maria. Besides his musical studies he also obtained a graduate with honors in philosophy at the 'Università di Pavia' with a thesis about Fernando Liuzzi's philosophy of music. He was also a merit student of the Almo Collegio Borromeo, one of the most ancient and important European colleges. After winning several national and international awards, Alessandro appeared in many musical events in Europe, both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. He is recording the complete piano works by Rossini (Pechès de vieillesse) for Naxos. In 2007 he won the prestigious “Amici di Milano” International Prize for the Music.

3:00-4:00 PM SLT: TomoFumi Mayako.
TomoFumi is a piano student attending the Manhattan School Of Music in New York City. At the age of 18 TomoFumi has demonstrated the talent and the character to become a virtuoso in the field.

4:00-6:00 SLT: Break in performances for informal meet and greet between staff and guests, free time to explore The Objective Institute, and engagement of informal discussion.

6:00- 6:30 PM SLT: Jaycatt Nico.
Jaycatt was born Sacramento, California and now resides in Oregon. He recently re-discovered the joy of playing the piano and, together with his roomate and friend Frogg Marlowe, he has become one of the most well-known performers in Second Life.


Interested parties are invited to attend the Grand Opening, explore The Objectivist Institute, and join the group, "The Objectivists." The group can be found in Second Life's search function; it is open enrollment and free of charge.

The Enchantress of Numbers

Augusta Ada Byron, during a nine-month period in 1842-1843, Ada translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea's memoir on Charles Babbage's newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes which specified in complete detail a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, recognized by historians as the world's first computer program, making Ada Lovelace the first programmer in history.

Ada received tutoring in mathematics and music, as disciplines to counter dangerous poetic tendencies (her father, the reprobate Lord Byron, was a poet, libertine, lecher and other things aside). But Ada's complex inheritance became apparent as early as 1828, when she produced the design for a flying machine. It was mathematics that gave her life its wings.

One of the gentlemanly scientists of the era was to become Ada's lifelong friend. Charles Babbage, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was known as the inventor of the Difference Engine, an elaborate calculating machine that operated by the method of finite differences. Ada met Babbage in 1833, when she was just 17, and they began a voluminous correspondence on the topics of mathematics, logic, and ultimately all subjects.

Babbage was an English mathematician, philosopher, mechanical engineer and (proto-) computer scientist who originated the idea of a programmable computer.

Babbage designed his "difference engine" like his other steam-powered mechanical monsters. It's basic architecture was astonishingly similar to a modern computer. The data and program memory were separated, operation was instruction based, the control unit could make conditional jumps and the machine had a separate I/O unit.

Ada called herself "an Analyst (& Metaphysician)," and the combination was put to use in the Notes. She understood the plans for the device as well as Babbage but was better at articulating its promise. She rightly saw it as what we would call a general-purpose computer. It was suited for "developping [sic] and tabulating any function whatever. . . the engine [is] the material expression of any indefinite function of any degree of generality and complexity." Her Notes anticipate future developments, including computer-generated music.

Babbage wrote the following on the subject, in his Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1846):

I then suggested that she add some notes to Menabrea's memoir, an idea which was immediately adopted. We discussed together the various illustrations that might be introduced: I suggested several but the selection was entirely her own. So also was the algebraic working out of the different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the numbers of Bernoulli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Lovelace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment, having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the process.

Lovelace's prose also acknowledged some possibilities of the machine which Babbage never published, such as speculating that "the Engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."

Ada died of cancer in 1852, at the age of 37, and was buried beside the father she never knew. Her contributions to science were resurrected only recently, but many new biographies attest to the fascination of Babbage's "Enchantress of Numbers."

Over one hundred years after her death, in 1953, Ada Lovelace's notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were republished after being forgotten. The engine now has been recognized as an early model for a computer and Ada Lovelace's notes as a description of a computer and software. The modern computer programming language Ada is named in her honour.

If the Analytical Engine had been built, it would have been in many ways more advanced than some of the first computers that emerged in the 1940s. It would have been digital, programmable and Turing complete. Unfortunately, in 1878, a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science recommended against constructing the analytical engine, which sank Babbage's efforts for government funding.


As for the Difference Engine, it was finally completed from his original plans, in 1991. Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, the finished engine functioned perfectly.

We can only imagine what would have happened if the benefits of the Difference Engine had been available in Victorian society. Very much like Leonardo DaVinci's discoveries, kept secret instead of being published, they might have started the age of computers a century earlier!


This bust of Lady Lovelace is in the Babbage-Lovelace park in the Babbage Canals sim.