Picture of the Day - 141

"Fly away" Photography by Coco Rudolf

If you wish to see more of Coco's photography, please visit her Flickr photostream here.

Report from the SP Annual Meeting 2014

Due to a busy first and SecondLife I have not been able to post a report from the Annual Meeting of Second Pride earlier, but here are a summary of my impressions.

For the minutes from the meeting and a full running transcript, please visit Second Pride; Second Pride Annual Meeting Minutes July 19, 2014.

Marge Beaumont, Karl Kalchek, Sutry, Petr Hastings-Vanbeeck, Kharissa Indigo & Baz Ceawlin

We started off with the department reports.

Chair - Petr thanked all that had volunteered their time and done a great job for Second Pride. He also reminded us all that the organization relies on volunteerism.

Treasurer - Marge gave us a summary of the financial status, in short all is well and the finances are in good order. (As a personal observation let me say that I believe that Marge may have been in contact with Esme Capelo concerning her presentation, as you see from the example below she used cute cats.) 

Community Relations - Karl informed us that the membership had increased with 25% over the year. He also reminded us that we should be proud of this year was an increasing diversity of the vendors, sponsors, and performers who were part of Second Pride Festival this year. There were many new sponsors and many sponsors who returned after leaving Second Pride for one reason or another over the years.

Security - Sutry reported that there had only been a few griefers that had been swiftly dealt with by the excellent volunteers on the security committee. 

Events - Khar informed us that working with the sponsors created some new and different ideas in this area, by combining main stage events with other stages and settings throughout the entire festival grounds highlighting each unique area. We also had our first King and Queen pageant, 57 DJ’s, a live band, a rock concert and some very talented live singers. This year having an interactive website and a Festival Guide with detailed information about the vendors and events was very helpful, as well as having the DJ’s register online. Having less stages then last year and list of availability of DJ’s on line made it much easier and faster to make the schedule. Kharissa concluded by leaving a short list of suggestions to the coming board.

IT - Baz told us that the Event survey had received about 45 responses from festival attendees. The vast majority or the responses have been Good to Excellent. The breakdown was:
Excellent 48%
Good 34%
Neutral 9%
Poor 5%
Terrible 5%
There were many constructive comments and suggestions made.. the survey will be summarized and passed on to next years board.
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Next we moved on to the question of proposed recipients of donations. A committee has been formed to decide criteria for worthy recipients of donations from Second Pride. The committee will make recommendations to the full board. A method to garner input from the community on where the money should ultimately be dispersed will be made soon.

The meeting next covered the election time table and procedures, among others

• Election procedures will be posted the Second Pride website on July 19th
• Candidate declarations will be accepted from July 31st through midnight SLT August 14th, per the by laws.
• Voting will commence at 00:01 AM September 1st and remain open through midnight September 4th.
• You must have joined the Second Pride Festival Group by midnight July 31st to be able to vote for your candidates.
• Members of the Second Pride Group will need to visit an election kiosk on the Second Pride sim.
• The election kiosk will provide access to an online voting ballot where members can vote for candidates of their choice.
• You MUST be a member of the Second Pride Festival in-world group before midnight July 31st to be eligible to vote. Joining of the Second Pride Group will be closed for the entire election period, July 31st through September 6th.
• Protections have been put in place to block voter fraud through the use of Alt accounts. If you are in a situation were multiple users in your household will be voting from the same device or internet connection, you must inform the election committee prior to voting.

Four proposals for changes in the by-laws were made, in attempts to remedy known problems.

The meeting then stood for one minute of silence in memory of the victims of Flight MH-17, which included over 100 AIDS researchers en route to a conference in Australia. (Picture above)

A call for volunteers to an election committee was made. If you are interested in participating and fulfill the requirements (see the minutes) send a notecard to Karl Kalchek.

Next meeting will be on Saturday August 2nd at 11 AM SLT.

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All in all it was an unusually long and intense meeting with many interesting subjects. The meeting was conducted in an orderly fashion under the excellent guidance of our chairperson.

Remember the Victims of Oslo & Utøya

"If one man can show so much hate, imagine how much love we all can show together."
Helle Gannestad in a tweet on July 23, 2011.

Three years have passed since a single, determined, right-wing extremist with delusions of grandeur killed 8 people in Oslo city center and 69 others, mostly children, on the island of Utøya in Norway.

Remember and honor the victims!

Picture of the Day - 140

"Take your time, don't live too fast" Photography by Deds Deezul

If you wish to see more of Deds' photography, please visit his Flickr photostream here.

Picture of the Day - 139

"Fall In Love With Me" Photography by Francky Levenchy

If you wish to see more of Francky's photography, please visit his Flickr photostream here.

Picture of the Day - 138

"And Time Stood Still" Photography by Leica Arado

If you wish to see more of Leica's photography, please visit her Flickr photostream here.

The European Union & The Malaysian Jetliner (Updated)

On Thursday May 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 (en route from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) crashed in Eastern Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew members.

The tragedy has since lead to many speculations concerning what caused the airplane to crash, among other theories so far it is believed that the plane could have been shot down by a missile.

John Aravosis, over at the AMERICAblog, yesterday posted an interesting analysis of the event and it's political ramifications involving Russia, the European Union and the United States, see Destruction of Malaysia Airlines flight poses huge conundrum for Obama, Europe.

At this point, US intelligence thinks the Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine shot down the Malaysian airliner, and they suspect it was with a Russian (Soviet) “Buk” missile. And the Pentagon said today that it was basically inconceivable that the rebels could have learned to operate the missiles without Russian help. There’s also a serious question as to where the Russian rebels got their Russian weapons from (take a guess).

But it’s worse than that. CNN was saying yesterday that while it would have been obvious to the Russians that this was a civilian airliner, it would have been next to impossible for the Russian rebels in Ukraine to know the difference between a Ukrainian military plane and a civilian airliner. The Russians knew they couldn't tell the difference, the Russians knew they were providing weapons and training to people who were planning on shooting down planes in an area that was a major corridor for international civilian air traffic. And the Russians went ahead and trained them to shoot down the planes anyway (if, everything we now suspect ends up being true).

That’s not an accident. And it’s not simple negligence. It borders on premeditated murder.

You train someone to shoot down planes, in a zone full of civilian airliners, knowing full well that the people you’re training have no way of knowing which planes are civilian and which are military. You know they’re going to be killing innocent people, and you simply don’t care (or perhaps even want them to). That’s not a “mistake.”

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Although we are still at an early stage, and there has been no formal inquiry into the cause of the crash yet, I believe that Mr. Aravosis is on the right track. 

It will now be very interesting to see if - and how - the European Union and the United States decide to take action against Russia and "Little Father" Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, in the latter's attempts  "to reconstitute the Soviet Union in all its deadly glory".

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Update
Malaysia Airlines has released the full names and nationalities of every person on board. There were:

• 192 Dutch, including one who had a dual Dutch/U.S. citizenship
• 44 Malaysian
• 27 Australian
• 12 Indonesian
• 10 British, including one who had dual U.K./African citizenship
• 4 German
• 4 Belgian
• 3 Filipino
• 1 Canadian
• 1 New Zealander