Existentialism is essential?

According to a late philosophical scholar, Nietzsche and Heidegger's existential views are more necessary than ever to North America, and therefore more relevant.

Feeling Foucault

Reading History of Sexuality this week... came across this....

The central issue...is not to determine whether one says yes or no to sex, whether one formulates prohibitions or permissions, whether one asserts its importance or denies its effects, or whether refines the words one uses to designate it;but to account for the fact that it is spoken about, to discover who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints from which they speak, the institutions which prompt people to speak about it and which store and distribute the things that are said. What is at issue, briefly, is the over-all "discursive fact", the way in which sex is "put into discourse". p. 11

This sounds like a manifesto for how to be a cultural analyst.

Wookiepedia

I guess it was just a matter of time. With the Internet connecting tech geeks, open source freaks and Star Wars fans, the Wookieepedia was probably inevitable.

SL avatar utterly mine?

Cnet recently interviewed Second Life real estate mogul Anshe Chung but SL protesters attempted to disrupt the interview as much as possible by throwing detachable penises at the pair (a process called griefing). A video of the action was caught on YouTube, triggering a protest by Chung and a demand by Chung to remove the video, citing ownership of her avatar, copyright infringement and personal damage.

youTube complied.

Which raises the question...in a Digital social world (DSW) like Second Life, which is facilitated and extended by user content of all kinds, including added and detachable body parts, but whose basic avatar component is owned and provided by Linden Lab, who owns the avatar?

Claiming the avatar is an extension of your meat self makes it an interesting case to watch. Will there be more of these? What are the implications of this for the reality of DSWs?