Wandering the byways of the virtual world Second Life one day, I came across an extraordinary vision of reality in the Japanese fishing village Hosoi Yu Ch’un and the farming village Hosoi Lung Ch’un built by Amiryu Hosoi at Hosoi Ichiba on Virgin Island.

Fishing boats beached in village cove

Here’s why this could be the most peaceful place in all of Second Life…

Hosoi Ichiba is an old-style Asian market with luscious oriental gardens surrounding a peace garden for meditation and quiet reflection. It’s a wonderful place to sit, relax and contemplate. (More about the market in a companion post here.)

Freshly caught fish drying on a rack in the village

On the day I happened to visit the quaint fishing village there was a lovely Cherry Blossom Festival and Relay for Life public service event for the American Cancer Society.

Fish traps on a cart in the village

Can you hear the water dripping as this cart’s cargo dries?

Baskets drying on a porch in the village

The hot Sun dries and cleanses these baskets, readying them for another day’s catch.

Boat beached next to a house in the village

The breeze waves the cloth hanging as a kind of front door of this typical village house.

Swinging rope bridge

Swaying to and fro as you lope across these sturdy knotted planks.

Abandoned boat beached at village

Amiryu Hosoi’s creations have been called “the most beautiful sims in Second Life.” For me they certainly are among a tiny handful of the very best.

House in fishing pond with Asian water lilies and lotus flowers

There are hidden bounties behind the village’s tranquil facade. It oozes bucolic charm and is surrounded by lush vegetation and the beautiful blue-green waters of the Second Life ocean. Those are Asian water lilies and lotus flowers floating atop the water.

House walkway through Asian water lilies and lotus flowers in fishing pond

Every day at Hosoi Yu Ch’un new catches of fresh fish and a variety of crustaceans can be seen tossing helplessly in baskets and crates before being taken to market and sliced into succulent cuts of sashimi.

Houses on water with Asian water lilies and lotus flowers

Sometimes the quietness of swaying ocean waves is transformed briefly when events bring many visitors to the Hosoi Ichiba market. For instance, the charming show staged in September 2008 by the Yoshiwara Oikya Geisha School, a training school for women. Such events commemorate the market’s heritage.

Blue sampan and footbridge

I’m hoping Amiryu Hosoi will offer a sea-produce fair on Virgin Island sometime soon. I can just imagine stands offering thousands of cuts of fresh sashimi and other local products, as well as the usual festival food. I’m pretty sure I would pass up the tentacles and endangered sardines, but others might love them.

Blue sampan and sailing ship

Tourists from all over Second Life would have a wonderful opportunity to go home with lovely souvenirs from Hosoi Ichiba on Virgin Island.

Houses with a footbridge across a stream

In the real world, a sleepy fishing village in Japan — previously famous only for its mackerel — gained renown in November 2008 when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The Japanese fishing village’s name is Obama.

Boats beached in village cove with houses

In California, according to the U.S. National Park Service, Terminal Island — also known as East San Pedro — was acknowledged in the years before World War II as a typical Japanese fishing village. Until February 1942, a community of about 3,000 Japanese Americans lived and worked in the area of Terminal Way and Tuna, Cannery, Albacore, and Pilchard streets. According to the park service, development of the fishing industry in Southern California resulted from their pioneering efforts in gathering, drying and canning abalone at White Point, and fishing for albacore off San Pedro.

Red gates

The red gates are torii commonly found at the entrance to a Shinto shrine. Sometimes they are found at Buddhist temples. A torii has two upright supports and two crossbars on the top, and usually is painted Vermilion red. Torii mark the boundary between the sacred shrine environment and the normal world. Some shrines have many torii, as below. Sometimes a person who has been successful in business donates a torii in gratitude.

Learn more about Hosoi Ichiba on Virgin Island:

See my second post about Hosoi Ichiba on Virgin Island.

Here is a link to a Flickr set of my photos of Hosoi Ichiba.

Here is the Hosoi Ichiba blog.

The stunning machinima about Hosoi Ichiba that won the first Hosoi Ichiba Machinima Awards.

Here’s a machinima about the Little Yoshiwara Geishas at Hosoi Ichiba.

Here’s the SLURL direct link to Hosoi Ichiba on Virgin Island in Second Life.

There’s a discussion of Shinto in Wikipedia.

Information about the Relay for Life charity.

What could be better than relaxing in front of the big-screen TV watching the astronauts fly by overhead?

What is this place anyway?

Most of the 12.5 million or so residents of Second Life get in free. Each has the right to do whatever they can imagine and is possible in a virtual world.

Townscape memorial to singer/songwriter Harry Chapin (1942-1981).

Who are they?

They are human beings from more than 100 countries around the globe with concentrations in North America and the UK.

They range in age from 18-85 and are 60 percent men and 40 percent women. The average resident is in her or his mid-30s.

Interior of Borg Cube in the Second Life sky where “resistance is futile.”

Are these people computer geeks?

No. In their real lives they are , like the popular 1945 Hoagy Carmichael song, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief. They also are artists and musicians, architects and programmers, policemen and firemen, political activists and leaders of religious flocks, housewives and househusbands, college students and their professors, business owners and store clerks, retirees, active duty military overseas and their spouses back home, and game players, to mention only a few.

You name a group and it is likely to be represented in Second Life. Unless, of course, the group is under 18, and even then they can enter Teen Second Life if they are 13-17.

Student center at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

Some people ante up.

They all can get in free, although there are a few who pay a small monthly membership fee.

Why would anybody pay for something they can get for free? Because there is that one thing you can’t do without the premium membership. Own land.

Campus directories at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

The urge to be creative drives the need to own land in Second Life. After all, the virtual world is whatever you make of it, and to display your handiwork permanently you need land to put it on.

Everything you can imagine can exist in Second Life. That makes it not only a spectacular place to visit, but also a great place to build things that other people will use.

Stone’s Point Park is a vast public facility keynoted by its lighthouse.

The question is, “Then what?”

SL creator Philip Rosedale is said to have noted, “You can get everything you want on the first day. What’s interesting is what you do the next day.”

While most residents shop, explore mountain tops and ocean beaches, and hang out with friends in houses, parks or nightclubs, there are those who want to create something, to build and script houses, furniture, cars. clothing, and endless variety of objects even including avatars.

Waterslide Waterpark with the seaside photo gallery in the background.

Residents love to share

For those with no previous experience in 3D building, there is a plethora of classes where a new resident can learn how to construct stuff.

The fact is building is easy using the built-in tools, and there are lots of classes taught by residents every day and self-guided tutorials to help you learn.

Here’s some good news: you will own anything you create. SL residents retain the so-called IP rights over their in-world creations.

Stone’s Point Academy is the Second Life Center for Scholarly Research in Social, Political. Economic, Scientific and Literary History.

The people who do spend huge amounts of time building and scripting things do it to increase their enjoyment of the SL experience.

Some even have the desire to operate a business selling goods and services out of their own buildings. They not only profit from the experience, but a few make substantial financial profits. On the other hand, many don’t sell their creations. They give them away so others can have pleasant experiences.

Familiar tools.

Second Life includes easy-to-use building tools to create stuff in much the same way you might create a presentation in PowerPoint or modify an image in Photoshop.

Architects love it because real full-scale structures can be replicated and demolished in seconds. But you don’t have to be an architect. Many an ordinary citizen has built his or her dwelling from scratch in Second Life.

Stone’s Point Academy operates this Bathysphere Research Station on the ocean floor at Stone’s Harbor.

So, land lets you have an on-going presence in-world. Even if you’re not online, your acquaintances, friends, family members and customers can stop by to look at your production, leave you a message or even spend money in your shop if you have one. That makes SL sort of a home away from home.

By the way, you don’t have to build on land just because you own it. You can just live, work and play on it as you found it. if you do choose to acquire land, however, you will pay Linden Labs a monthly maintenance fee based on the amount of land you own.

What have I built?

It’s 455 days and counting for me in Second Life. What in the world have I done with those 39 million seconds?

• 39,312,000 seconds
• 655,200 minutes
• 10,920 hours
• 65 weeks
• 1 year, 2 months, 29 days

Well, I spent some time learning how to build things and then the rest of the time building a bunch of stuff.

Last year, master builder Lillyanne Lustre, owner of L.Lustre Designs, helped me learn. Lilly’s prizewinner

The photos in this blog entry are visual samples of several of my complex constructions. These are parts of the dioramas that are my places in the sun after 455 days in Second Life.

SLURL & Gas Co., Pumping Station #3, in the Dust Bowl 2013.

Second Life fills the bill when you happen upon those RL times that remind you of the way Harry Chapin put it back in 1972, “Anywhere’s a better place to be.”

Millions of colors. The phrase rolls easily off the lips, but what does it really mean? What colors are we talking about? How many millions?

HALEY Salomon at Woodstock last August for a performance by one of Second Life’s best singer/songwriters, Rich Desoto.

Suppose someone hankered for just one of the millions?

The phrase “millions of colors” refers to the hues we use in making pretty pages on the Web and in Second Life. The actual total is 256×256x256 or 16,777,216. Let’s round off to, say, about 17 million.

I know, people say 16 million colors all the time, but they weren’t present the day they taught rounding.

Anyway. we have about 17 million different colors to play with.

Pick a color…

AliceBlue, AntiqueWhite, Aqua, Aquamarine, Azure, Beige, Bisque, Black, BlanchedAlmond, Blue, BlueViolet, Brown, BurlyWood, CadetBlue, Chartreuse, Chocolate, Coral, CornflowerBlue, Cornsilk, Crimson, Cyan, DarkBlue, DarkCyan, DarkGoldenRod, DarkGray, DarkGreen, DarkKhaki, DarkMagenta, DarkOliveGreen, Darkorange, DarkOrchid, DarkRed,

DarkSalmon, DarkSeaGreen, DarkSlateBlue, DarkSlateGray, DarkTurquoise, DarkViolet, DeepPink, DeepSkyBlue, DimGray, DodgerBlue, FireBrick, FloralWhite, ForestGreen, Fuchsia, Gainsboro, GhostWhite, Gold, GoldenRod, Gray, Green, GreenYellow, HoneyDew, HotPink, IndianRed, Indigo, Ivory, Khaki, Lavender, LavenderBlush, LawnGreen, LemonChiffon,

Hat by Lillyanne Lustre

LightBlue, LightCoral, LightCyan, LightGoldenRodYellow, LightGray, LightGreen, LightPink, LightSalmon, LightSeaGreen, LightSkyBlue, LightSlateGray, LightSteelBlue, LightYellow, Lime, LimeGreen, Linen, Magenta, Maroon, MediumAquaMarine, MediumBlue, MediumOrchid, MediumPurple, MediumSeaGreen, MediumSlateBlue, MediumSpringGreen, MediumTurquoise,

Oh, this is not the green castle. This is the other one.

MediumVioletRed, MidnightBlue, MintCream, MistyRose, Moccasin, NavajoWhite, Navy, OldLace, Olive, OliveDrab, Orange, OrangeRed, Orchid, PaleGoldenRod, PaleGreen, PaleTurquoise, PaleVioletRed, PapayaWhip, PeachPuff, Peru, Pink, Plum, PowderBlue,

Standing in for Jean-Luc.

Purple, Red, RosyBrown, RoyalBlue, SaddleBrown, Salmon, SandyBrown, SeaGreen, SeaShell, Sienna, Silver, SkyBlue, SlateBlue, SlateGray, Snow, SpringGreen, SteelBlue, Tan, Teal, Thistle, Tomato, Turquoise, Violet, Wheat, White, WhiteSmoke, Yellow, YellowGreen.

I told you the dragon is green.

What did you choose?

Those are the color names understood by most Web browsers. A long way from 17 million names, but it’s a good start. By the way, these are merely nicknames for their real names in computer-speak, which read like FAEBD7, CD5C5C, and 4682B4.

Here’s a place you can bone up on HTML colors and color names and color values.

Second Life surely is a rainbow-hued world.

What’s in your wallet?

If you had all these color names to choose from, would you select green?

Well, my old SL friend and neighbor HALEY Salomon did and she loves it!

In fact, she tags herself as the princess of green. She lives in a green castle. She always wears green. Even her dragon is green.

We’re talking green here. If it’s green, she loves it. DarkGreen, OliveGreen, ForestGreen, LawnGreen, LightGreen, SeaGreen, LimeGreen, PaleGreen, SpringGreen, YellowGreen, and their variants. Her shade is green.

Oh, by the way, my Mac tells me that YellowGreen and GreenYellow are two different colors. Imagine that! It says GreenYellow is ADFF2F and YellowGreen is 9ACD32. How’s that for splitting hairs?

It also says the color we see depends on the wavelength of light we receive in our eyes and has nothing to do with its intensity or lightness. Whew! This Mac is way too geeky.

Anyway, check out this royal’s green wardrobe. What do do you think?

From back in the day, an honest-to-god poodle skirt. I kid you not.

The infamous attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941.

When President Roosevelt spoke to a joint session of Congress the next day, he called December 7 “a date which will live in infamy”.

September 11th Memorial wall in Second Life is etched with nearly 3,000 names of victims of the 2001 terrorist attack against the United States

Fast-forward 60 years

On September 11, 2001, a total of 19 men affiliated with an Islamic extremist group calling itself al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial passenger airliners en route to California from Logan International Airport at Boston, Dulles International at Washington, and Newark airport at New York City.

The planes were loaded with fuel as the hijackers circled back and intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the World Trade Center in New York City — one plane into each tower — resulting in the collapse of both buildings.

The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. Passengers and members of the flight crew on the fourth jetliner attempted to regain control of their plane, but the hijackers crashed the plane into a field near Shanksville in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

Second Life residents show their respect for those killed in the Islamic extremist attack by placing flowers, candles and other commemorative objects near names of their lost friends and loved ones.

In addition to the 19 hijackers, 2,974 people — mostly civilians — died in the attacks:

• 246 died on the planes

• 2,603 died in New York City

• 125 died at the Pentagon

The terrorists’ main weapons were Leatherman multi-function hand tools.

Remembering the heroes

The suicide attacks created thousands of victims, but also many heroes, some unsung.

Among the dead were 343 New York City firefighters, 23 New York City police officers, and 37 Port Authority police officers.

Visitors are entranced by the collection of pictures of most of the 2,974 victims.

The attacks were immediately overwhelming to the people of the United States who who found them abhorrent and their perpetrators beneath contempt.

Muslim organizations in the United States condemned the attacks. The American public felt great gratitude toward uniformed public-safety first responders, especially firefighters who had taken great risks to save lives.

The attacks horrified the world. France’s Le Monde newspaper headlined: Nous sommes tous Américains.

Six years later

Remembering the heroes of 9/11 on the sixth anniversary of the attacks, Second Life residents marked the day in 2007 at a new September 11th Memorial.

A Second Life resident is moved by the sea of names surrounding the name of her friend lost in the 9/11 tragedy

The names of the 2,974 people from 82 countries who were lost on 9/11 are inscribed into the memorial according to their location on that fateful morning.

I had to see it

The monument, which is shaped as several large engraved walls reminiscent of the Vietnam War Memorial in RL Washington, D.C., is a place of beauty that inspires great reverence and recalled emotions.

All of the available photos of the victims have been mounted on inside walls — thousands of little pictures forming a giant mosaic.

It rains perpetually on the land as clouds gather overhead and thunder rolls across the sky.

Heavy traffic

There was a steady stream of Second Life residents teleporting in while I was there.

They obviously were awestruck by the reverential beauty as they chatted solemnly and respectfully, clearly moved by the display.

Winfried Ferraris, left, and Sundra Petrov greet guests at the memorial. llvllagic Merlin also was on hand for the solemn occasion.

The original concept for the memorial is attributed to llvllagic Merlin. Winfried Ferraris owns the land while Liam Kanno designed and built the emotional tribute. Kanno was best known previously as chair of the Obama for President campaign in SL. Sundra Petrov also worked on the project.

It was a diverse team:

• Winfried Ferraris is from Amsterdam

• Liam Kanno is from New York

• llvllagic Magic is from Indiana

• Sundra Petrov is from California

“Liam Kanno was our phenomenal builder,” Petrov explained. “He graciously donated his time to the project.”

Visitors dropped flowers beneath those names they sought

“This is a permanent Memorial and the donations go to cover the land cost,” Petrov said. “Those [names on the wall] with stars had photos available to place on the wall.”

“Sundra’s role was for the most part in PR and promotion,” Winfried Ferraris said.

“Our hope is to offer the families, friends, loved ones and visitors from all over the world a place in SL to come and pay tribute to the victims,” the memorial developers say in a notecard brochure at the site. “A place to gather with those affected and share as a way of healing and honoring those who lost their lives.”

The notecard is accompanied by a white rose given to all who visit and, as you might imagine, many of those roses end up at the base of the wall where a particular victim is commemorated.

“You can leave it on any spot to your likings on the memorial,” the developers say. They have left build permission open to facilitate dropping of tributes in front of the wall.

Entrance to the picture room

Visitors also leave comments about 9/11 at the memorial and those are posted on the memorial’s blog.

As you might expect, there also is a box for donations to help defer the costs of operating the the memorial.

“This memorial will continue to stand,” the developers say, “just as our hearts will always hold those listed on the walls dear.”

“We have had about 1,000 people visit here just in the last 36 hours,” llvllagic Merlin reported.

“We hope it brings comfort to those visiting,” Sundra Petrov said.

“This is a place for people to comfort them in light of the events of September 11th, 2001,” Winfried Ferraris said.

A moment of silence and then the people spoke

by Stone Semyorka

Ten million people around the world could die from breast cancer in the next 25 years if a cure isn’t found.

That’s a lot of people, but their situation isn’t hopeless.

They have compassionate helpers on their side in the world’s largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists — the former Susan G. Komen Foundation, known now as Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

I’m sure you’ve seen those pink ribbons everywhere

Money raised is intended for curing breast cancer, from the causes to the cures, to the pain and anxiety of the moments in between.

The Komen group tries to improve the quality of life and, in fact, save lives through community grants for breast health, risk factor screening, diagnosis and treatment. They make available information and tools for patients and survivors.

A cause without borders

The Komen group puts a global face and voice to the breast cancer movement with local people on college campuses and in 125 US cities and communities, along with local, state, federal and international advocates, and with with projects underway in a dozen countries.

To date, the Komen group has provided millions in funding outside of the US for breast cancer research and international community education and outreach programs.

Main entrance to the Pink for Life sim on Elyseum

International affiliates are active in Europe and Central America with Komen Race for the Cure events.

A long history

This is not new, of course. The Komen group has supported breast cancer research for 25 years.

Millions of people have taken part in the annual Komen Race for the Cure in thousands of local communities.

Komen was founded on a promise between two sisters. Here is Susan G. Komen’s Story.

Today, the Komen organization is politically active.

Pink October

October has been designated international month for the fight against breast cancer, and called Pink October.

Elyseum’s chief designer Yogi Huldschinsky chats with visitors and staff

Pink for Life

In France, a day of charitable activities called Pink For Life is set for this October.

It’s a sequel to last year’s successful 100 Women for Life which gathered 126 famous women in fighting breast cancer at an event sponsored by Gustave Roussy Cancerology Institute, which is the main European research center in cancer research.

In fact, on the Champs-Élysées in RL Paris on October 9 and 10, there will be a huge exhibition followed by an auction of pink objects donated by famous fashion designers and manufacturers of luxury brands.

Champs-Élysées is the most prestigious and broadest avenue in Paris.

Simultaneously, a Second Life design firm — ConceptSL — will bring the event into SL.

ConceptSL has created a Second Life exhibition of some of those special pink luxury creations and will conduct an eBay auction of those items. To allow time for a maximum number of people to see the SL exhibition and bid in the auction, the in-world event will be in place from October 1-10. The eBay auctions will cover the same period.

Taking a look

I wanted to see for myself so I teleported over to Elyseum where I ran into chief designer Yogi Huldschinsky. He took me on a quick tour of the exquisite facility.

A visitor descends a ramp walkway connecting venues on the Elyseum sim

“This is the Exhibition Hall,” Yogi said. “We are working with the French Institute of Cancerology, Gustave Roussy.

“There will be an RL exhibition on the Champs-Élysées in Paris in October,” he said. “We’re preparing the SL side of it, which will be [open] during the RL event.”

I wondered how long it took to build the lovely sim.

“Maybe one month,” he replied. “Plus a couple of weeks for the shop only.

“We tried to optimize the number of prims required, so we built big first and then reduced it,” he said. “We wanted to build something nice.”

One novel approach by Yogi and his crew was the use for teleport stations of miniature models of the various venues on the sim. The rotating 3-D models replaced the usual 2-D pictures many designers use for TP links.

The strongest points

For me, there are two most important features of the sim: the boutique shop and the Pink for Life area.

The Shop

Les Plus Belles Lunettes du Monde is a boutique. The name translates to “Most beautiful glasses of the world.”

Stephane Sarnin from Histoire de Voir designs glasses using leather cuts from Hermes

“This is a 3-D modeling of a real shop in Paris,” Yogi explained. “The RL shop is covered with purple plus Svarowskis diamonds.

The shop has an RL website.

“We covered the wall here with more than 400 stars representing the sky and constellations,” Yogi explained.

Glasses on display in a shop case against the star-studded wall

“This shop has been built to present designers’ work and universe in SL,” he explained, “not much for the selling.”

The fashion designers

“We have three fashion designers represented here,” he said.

“This one is Stephane Sarnin from Histoire de Voir. He designs glasses using leather cuts from Hermes,” Yogi explained. “Look at the texturing.”

“This one is Ricardo Nava, a spanish glasses designer,” he said. “Some [of his] glasses have been built from 3-D RL modeling.”

“The third designer is Koali,” he said. “designing glasses inspired by wild life and animals. Mostly texturing work more than modeling.”

Koali’s designs for eye glasses are inspired by wild life and animals

It wouldn’t be a shop in SL if it didn’t have free gifts for shoppers.

There are “some freebies here, also,” Yogi pointed out. “Some gifts from the real world : bags and boxes.”

The Pink for Life area

“We are working on a big mix-reality event,” Yogu said. “This is a non-profit event for breast cancer research.”

Yogi shows a visitor the Exhibition Hall, which houses the Pink for Life exhibits in SL for the Gustave Roussy French Institute of Cancerology while the RL exhibition is on the Champs-Élysées in Paris in October.

“SL Insider called it rose for life,” he said, but “we call it Pink for Life.”

The Pink for Life website has details.

Touring the sim

The main entrance has a huge book on top. The information desk is a kiosk with an “i” on top.

A visitor reads from the huge book atop the sim’s main entrance

The Parisian-style boutique Les Plus Belles Lunettes du Monde is a mix of optical products, luxury goods, and fashion designs. Shapes, textures, colors and lighting have been given special care to obtain a final Second Life rendering very close to the original model.

Other areas in addition to the shop include the NoMajors café and concert venue, a fashion show arena, an exhibition hall, a lounge bar, a lovely garden and an overlook.

The café and concert space is sponsored by NoMajors to help their recording artists meet fans and present their latest albums.

The exhibition hall is a generic space to organize exhibitions, recreate arts galleries, or show pictures or banners.

The space will be entirely redesigned for each show and customized to host the collections of designers and artists.

The lounge bar is a sophisticated, comfortable private space for VIP meetings, concerts, performances, conferences or after-show parties.

The fashion show arena is a podium for fashion exhibitions and designer product presentations.

What’s in a name?

Yogi, himself, has a novel avatar. I had to ask what character he was modeling.

“It’s a mix of Zeus with a tall black guy,” he said.

Yogi Huldschinsky welcomes visitors at the main entrance

I asked if his avatar’s name is significant?

“Friends call me yogi in RL,” he replied.

I reminded him of the comic character Yogi Bear.

“Yep, exactly,” he responded, “although i don’t look like a bear.”

“I liked the comic character,” he explained.

Think you’re alone? Visit the Komen message boards.

See the Komen for the Cure websites.

Read about the Susan G. Komen the Cure organization.

by Stone Semyorka

Have you heard of Ira Flatow? No? Well, 1 percent of Americans have.

He’s the host of that National Public Radio (NPR) show, Science Friday, with the catchy slogan Making Science Radioactive.

Crowd gathers to see Ira Flatley at the Science School

According to the stately News York Times, radioman Flatow is one of the world’s most influential communicators of science. Apparently, some 3 million people believe it and tune in to his talkfest for two hours every Friday afternoon.

It’s a weekly dialog with scientists during which listeners phone in questions, ideas and opinions.

Ira’s avatar was in-world

That phone-in thing was a little different last Friday when Ira Flatow’s avatar, Ira Flatley, showed up at the Science School sim for a broadcast about our happy little virtual world.

Ira Flatley waits for his cue at the Science School

After a lot of prior publicity, a crowd big enough to bust a sim showed up. That would be about 72 people who got in and a huge bunch of frustrated others spread across the grid who couldn’t get in to see their Mr. Wizard.

Unfortunately, they wouldn’t have been able to see their guy in SL, anyway.

“I’m a SciFri staffer manning Ira’s avatar,” Ira Flatley explained.

The audience was perturbed at that news.

“Aha! Imposter!” OneBigRiver Stork said.

Cybergrrl Oh chimed in, “Oh no – a FAKE IRA.”

I’m “passing your comments to Ira, though,” Ira Flatley replied.

That’s Ira in brown khakis and white SciFri t-shirt with his back to the camera just left of center.

Three scholars and a Linden

Ira Flatow’s live guests for the broadcast –live, that is, from remote studios across the US — were mostly academics:

Dmitri Williams, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles. USC has it’s International Virtual Worlds Portal for Public Diplomacy here.

Sherry Turkle (SL avatar Rachel Frobozz), director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Initiative on Technology and Self, which is a program in science, technology and society at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Eric Lofgren, a PhD student in epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which has five islands here.

Cory Ondrejka, co-founder and chief technology officer at Linden Lab’s HQ in San Francisco. LL’s village and office is here.

Fans were concerned briefly when Ira crashed out of the overloaded sim. He was back within minutes despite the extreme burden of residents on the land.

Game keeps turning up like a bad penny

It was disappointing to hear Flatow and some of the guests and callers refer repeatedly to Second Life as a game. Anybody who’s been in for any time at all can see it’s not. There are no rules, no scoring, no winners, no losers. There are, of course, outcomes of the type you encounter in the game of life.

Even more unpleasant — dare I say horrifying — was the idea put forth by some scientists who want to use those of us who are residents of virtual worlds as guinea pigs so they can “better understand RL,” as NPR put it in publicity for the show.

Sounds like a nice idea, all warm and fuzzy, right? Well no!

Lofgren proposed unleashing a virtual epidemic in our online community to see what we would do. Like watching mice running through a maze.

The crowd at Science School was aghast.

“So, in a virtual epidemic, could our avatars be killed off permanently? As happens in RL?” wondered Delia Lake.

“I will pass on the epidemic part,” Silvershadow Kleene said.

Brigitte Kungler agreed, “I don’t want to be tested with an epidemic.”

Rebekah Vella foresaw a problem for epidemiology researchers, “An epidemic wouldn’t be taken seriously in a virtual world.”

Hey! We’re real people in here

Second Life is a place where real human beings are behind the keyboards. They bring their RL baggage into this pastime and create a state-of-the-art social networking place — better, I think, than MySpace and Facebook because this world moves. It’s not static and not old-hat.

Facebook claims to be “a social utility that connects you with the people around you.” I would suggest that SL does that and then you can dance to boot.

The broadcast was positive because they didn’t dwell on the male exhibitionists, slave masters and ageplayers on the loose in SL. It would be nice to think mass media finally is getting over that.

Maybe the biggest positive of all…virtual swag. Ira Flatley was handing out SciFri t-shirts from a little red bag he was carrying.

________
Photo: Ira Flatow as host of public television’s Big Ideas in 2003. The broadcaster grew up in Brooklyn and Long Island, NY. He was graduated with a degree in engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has been reporting on science for NPR since 1971. For several years, he was host and writer of Newton’s Apple, a PBS science program for children. He is 51, married, with three children.
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Learn more about avatars and how they compare with their RL manifestations: Digital Culture — Alter Egos in a Virtual World

by Stone Semyorka

Remember Pleasantville? Where Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon were transported from their tumultuously teenage lives in a stereotypical 1990s household back into the calm and collected black-and-white world of a TV sitcom set in a perfect 1950s town? You know, something like the hometowns of Father Knows Best or Leave It To Beaver?

A yurt welcome center greets a visitor to the post-apocalyptic Wasteland

Reese is hot and Tobey is a nerd, neither of which was imaginable in ’50s Pleasantville. Back home in the ’90s, he had been a couch-potato expert on Pleasantville trivia. She had been sexually precocious.

In the ’50s, she worries about her figure when her stay-at-home mom ladles on breakfasts of eggs, bacon, ham, waffles and pancakes. Reese finds the innocent basketball team captain and teaches him about sex, which changes everything for the satisfied folks enjoying their simple lives in Pleasantville.

A cold war

TV does not always mimic RL in the same way SL mimics RL. For instance, the superpower rivalry in the 1950s was anything but the simple life depicted in TV sitcoms back then.

Wasteland of rusting junk strewn across the post-apocalyptic desert

A major period in the Cold War, the 1950s was a time of intense tension and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union that continued to the ’90s.

The Cold War was about political ideology, military coalitions, weapons industries, psychological operations, espionage, technological developments, and massive spending on a nuclear arms race.

Mutant humans salvaged remnants of a long lost technology to construct shelter and tools for existence in the desert

Golden Age of sci-fi

The renowned writer Robert A. Heinlein tells us science fiction is “realistic speculation about possible future events.”

The 1930s and ’40s were the Golden Age of sci-fi. By the time of Pleasantville in the 1950s, sci-fi writers like Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Donald A. Wollheim, Frederik Pohl, James Blish, Judith Merril, Arthur C. Clarke, A. E. Van Vogt and William S. Burroughs were stimulating readers with a plethora of sci-fi genres.

Whatever can be found must be salvaged when you have nothing else

Contemplation of what we now call nuclear winter pushed amazing realities out of the minds of science fiction writers through their typewriters onto paper and film.

One popular sci-fi storyline depicts a dying earth in the far distant future where the Sun has faded and civilization has long since declined.

A spinoff from that is apocalyptic fiction about a catastrophic end of civilization through nuclear war, plague, famine or some other disaster.

Only scattered elements of pre-catastrophe civilization remain

Beyond that are post-apocalyptic stories about civilization in the world after such a disaster.

Post-apocalyptic fiction

A post-apocalyptic story might be about the physical and psychological troubles of survivors either immediately after a catastrophe or considerably later when much memory of the pre-catastrophe civilization has been lost, myths have grown and only scattered elements of technology remain.

He who has the most junk in the end wins

The Mad Max series of films are popular examples of post-apocalyptic sci-fi stories depicting a bleak Australia of the future after a breakdown of civilization.

The three films from 1979-1985 were Mad Max, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, and Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome. A fourth movie, Mad Max 4: Fury Road, was not released.

A modern marvel when it was built in the Pleasantville era of the 1950s, this section of interstate highway has long since decayed and collapsed onto the desert floor

Do oil shortages sound familiar?

Mad Max was not nuclear-holocaust fiction about a large scale exchange of bombs among warring powers. Rather, the films depict a bleak, degraded future environment populated by an impoverished society after a breakdown of civil order due to, according to the second film, widespread oil shortages. Imagine that.

The office of a wrecking and salvage company

Like the expression from Mad Max 2, “In the future, cities will become deserts, roads will become battlefields,” Second Life sims by NeoBokrug Elytis are stupefying places where civilization and the environment have degenerated seriously.

The Wastelands and the Junkyard depict people in a desolate place battling to survive through combat and salvage — a ruthless, savage place of stark beauty that is spectacular to behold.

I had to see it for myself

The scene is a broad desert with a long deep gash opened like an exaggerated brown wound — the Great Fissure — in the drab sandy landscape.

A modest residence at the bottom of the Great Fissure

It reminds me of Stars Wars Episode IV where the Jawas and their droids scour their desert homeworld of Tatooine in pitted and rusty sandcrawlers searching for discarded scrap and wayward mechanicals.

A 36.8 meters long sandcrawler was like a very large mobile home for the Jawas on the harsh deserts of Tatooine, an environment very rough on machines.

Water, like this small stream at the bottom of the Great Fissure, is more valuable than gold to residents of the Wasteland

One of the sand-scarred crawlers was the size of a building — several dozen meters high, according to George Lucas in 1976.

The scavenger vehicle towered above the ground like some monstrous prehistoric beast on multiple treads, themselves taller than a big man.

Home sweet home in the Wasteland desert

Its metal skin was pitted and battered from untold sandstorms, Lucas wrote. Inside, it not only had living space, but also a large maintenance hangar and shop area.

You’ll remember the scavenger species Jawas. They were relatively tiny, one-meter-tall humanoids wearing rough, hand-woven robes. Their faces were concealed in the dark folds of a cowl, from where you saw only their glowing yellow eyes. You may remember the Jawas captured R2D2 and C-3PO and took them away in a sandcrawler.

Another desert rat’s sweet home constructed from salvage

In a surprisingly similar scene, the Wasteland sim and the Great Fissure are very reminiscent of Tatooine.

They are a seemingly endless desert cooked by the intense energy of the SL sun. The Great Fissure itself, as well as the flat expanse of kilometers of shifting dunes punctuated by rocky mesas and arroyos, provide stark contrast to the glitz and glamor of distant sims elsewhere on the Second Life grid.

Livin’ high on the hog in the desert

Days are hot, hot, hot on top of the land — only a minuscule bit cooler down at the bottom of the Great Fissure — while the nights everywhere are frigid. The soil is parched and the air is dry.

A sandstorm virtually obliterates the desert scene

Even so, there’s abundant human life in this vast wasteland

Life here comes from human stock. If the residents aren’t human today, their ancestors were.

The numerous mutant humans living on the land were driven from pure human genes in various ways — by a quirk of evolution, an element of the harsh environment, or a relic of the past run amok.

A little color goes a long way in this dull environment where most hues are tans, grays, charcoals and blacks

There aren’t any aliens here, however. There are no supernatural, extraterrestrial, or purely mechanical beings. With one exception: NeoBokrug. You’ll see why in a moment.

Nobody has super powers

There are no telepaths, vampires, shape-shifters. Nobody fires off energy blasts.

A graveyard in the desert

On the other hand, some of the mutants have unusual traits, such as being faster, stronger or harder to kill.

People have been here for awhile

The land was settled 40 years ago, according to NeoBokrug, when a ragged band of wanderers gathered here to scavenge what they could from the wreckage strewn across the area.

Reconstructed red barn-like warehouse with crane

They knew next to nothing about pre-apocalyptic technology.

Then, one day, they discovered a machine they called the salvager. It took them years to figure out what they had.

In fact, just seven years ago, the scavengers began to understand what the salvagers could do.

Remnant of an ancient railroad right of away rests on the cracked desert floor

Human nature being what it is — and for that matter post-human nature as well — everybody wanted to control the powerful machines. People and tribes fought each other for dominance of the region through control of the salvagers, according to NeoBokrug.

In the midst of severe squabbling and fighting that damaged the machines, a strange mechanical man showed up, speaking a odd gibberish, and began to tend and care for the salvagers.

The wreckage of a jetliner remains half buried on the desert floor where it plummeted during the apocalypse

The mechanical man lashed out at people who fought near the machines and kept them at bay.

A tenuous peace returned to the desert as the ignorant barbaric people finally got the picture. No one individual or group would be allowed to claim the salvagers.

Here’s the twist: NeoBokrug is that mechanical caretaker of the salvagers.

Could this mysterious structure from salvaged junk be someone’s home?

A barter economy

Paper currency and coins are not in use in the Wasteland, although once in a while local notes of credit are exchanged.

Bartering is big in the desert. People trade goods and services to exist.

Useful raw materials are much more valuable than currency, according to NeoBokrug.

A bedroom in a salvaged structure

Recipes are important to the locals

In this salvaging society, recipes are a commodity in their own right and are carefully guarded.

Practical knowledge is power here in the desert so recipes often are traded for other recipes or other useful information.

NeoBokrug explains that most anyone might be able to put together a knife, but it takes considerably more time and effort to gather the parts and learn how to make many of the more complicated projects.

Some typical recipes

• nails and screws + CO2 cannister + roll of tape = airgun ammo
• pipe + nuts and bolts + knife blade = crowbill, a fighting pick that resembles the bill of a crow
• wood scraps + nails and screws + blade = machete
• nuts and bolts + wood scraps + chunk of plastic = pistol handle
• twine + pistol handle + pistol barrel = scavenger pistol
• wood scraps + rope + monstrous rattler fangs = the rattlesnake
• duct tape + chunk of plastic + knife blade = knife
• ammunition feed = gears + electrical parts + mechanical parts
• bullets = spent shells + gunpowder + iron scrap
• chunk of rubber = tire

You can see in these valued recipes the desperation in the lives of these post-apocalyptic desert denizens.

Sometimes, the main living area of a home is underground

There are shops even here in this remote hole

What SL resident doesn’t love to shop? Traversing this harsh place, a visitor finds shops even here.

They sell the kinds of specialized clothing, equipment and supplies needed for survival on the sand under the Sun.

A small shop supplies a few much-needed commodities

And then there’s Scavenger’s Rest, a gas station-turned-bar that is a neutral meeting area in the wastes. Alan Beckett runs it. They say he’s great if you need your machine worked on, too.

There are people extracting value from the odds and ends of scrap scavenged here, using them to manufacture a variety of tools and weapons and other odd implements specialized for this place.

Merchandise in the small shop includes a gun, helmet, flame gun, knife sword, belt, wristbands, fur vest, backpack, and respirator gas mask

There even are moisture farmers using micro-evaporators to suck what little vapor is suspended in the air to irrigate subsistence crops underground.

Ancient bomb shelters

We hear a lot of talk in the 21st Century about weapons of mass destruction. Fear of those is not new, however.

Despite the intervening catastrophe, this above-ground entrance to a pre-apocalyptic fallout shelter still displays its 1950s signs

The Cold War reached a crescendo in the 1950s and people were scared missiles would fly and bombs would drop.

When a nuclear explosion occurs, matter vaporized in the fireball becomes radioactive. It condenses into a cloud of dust and light sandy material that looks something like ground pumice.

Main room of the ancient fallout shelter today

Fallout is this highly radioactive material falling to Earth as a significant hazard.

During the Cold War, governments, businesses and individuals built what were called fallout shelters or bomb shelters as civil defense measures.

A private space at the rear inside the fallout shelter.

A fallout shelter was a place where people of the 1950s thought they could escape exposure to harmful fallout for some time while radioactivity outside decayed to a safer level. Usually underground rooms with concrete walls, people built them in their basements and backyards.

Fallout shelter bathroom

Hard-bitten scavengers

The hostile environment today is home to a colorful mix of hard-bitten scavengers extracting a lifestyle from the unforgiving geography, as well as transients visiting the world for god only knows what.

This junkyard cat and pirate ship suggest humor survived the apocalypse

I’m going back. And on my next visit, I’m going to look closer for other desert creatures — banthas, rontos, dewbacks, scurriers, womp rats, krayt dragons and eopies.

by Stone Semyorka

We do, if we want SL to have more than a quick 15 minutes of fame. We need to build a strong foundation under our virtual world.

We live in a new era. Second Life just entered our real lives in 2003. There hasn’t been a lot of time for historians to write about what went on here before we arrived.

Mythical dragon serpent at Morris welcome area commemorates ancient times before we arrived in our virtual world

The present has its roots in the past, and knowledge of our past is necessary for understanding the present. History helps us understand our foundation — how we reached the point where we are today.

This is the time to recover our history so those of us in-world at this time as well as our descendants will be aware of our social, literary, political, economic and scientific history, and of our people, machines, artifacts and systems.

Museum inside Stone’s Point Light commemorates the pirates who sailed near our sea coast

Knowledge of Second Life before 2003 will help explain our lives from a community-development standpoint: where we have been, what we have overcome, and what we individually and cooperatively have achieved, sometimes against daunting technical and social odds.

For many people, history is dull, dry, dreary. In fact, many imagine history is irrelevant to the present. However, the belief here is history is informative, stimulating,and encouraging to SL residents.

Scientists work inside Stone’s Harbor Bathysphere Research Station

Second Edition’s special new World History page, reporting accounts of individual courage and fortitude as they are discovered, is an exciting way of disseminating information about our world before 2003 . With that knowledge should come a familiarity, comfort and tolerance across the whole SL world.

The study of history is a living, vital activity. We can’t escape history. We’re all caught up in its effects. We live better, work more effectively and play with greater fun when we know something of the history that has produced the present moment.

Check it out. Learn about such diverse topics as:

• a bathysphere research station studying the history of undersea exploration in SL
• the most famous SL pirate of all, Cap’n Brody Redbeard and the wreck of his ship MDR
• spelunking over the decades in Second Life.

The ongoing report is called World History and is linked from the top of every page of this Second Edition blog or you can just click the link below…

Read about Second Life world history »

by Stone Semyorka

Second Life mimics Real Life. There’s no doubt about it.

Take grieving, for instance. In RL, it’s the process of feeling distress after a sorrowful loss of someone near to us, pets, employment, possessions or status. I’ve discovered it’s no different for residents of SL.

LailaLei Mathilde

I lost an SL friend last month when she retreated into RL, apparently never to return. This has been a time of sorrow and parting for me.

LailaLei Mathilde

As a friend of LailaLei Mathilde, I am moved to speak of joy and engagement — the joy of watching a fellow professional blossom, the joy of seeing a young writer grow day by day toward personal fulfillment, the joy of recognizing that she had found her unique voice.

Lai inspects polling and information stations at the Republican Party of SL Headquarters

A young writer’s main work is searching for her true vocation. I was fortunate to be Lai’s editorial companion and mentor during her search.

Much of journalism depends on luck, as every editor knows, and the day Lai decided that she wanted to write her Second Choices blog was one of the luckiest days in my career.

She entered journalism shyly, as if unsure she belonged there. On March 5, 2007, she introduced herself to us with the post Second Lives, Second Choices.

“This is my first post in my first blog,” she said. “I’m just getting the hang of things so bear with me.”

We did as she asked. We bore with her to the benefit of all of us who care about the symbiotic professions of journalism and politics. Her last post was June 3.

Lai challenged the use of commercial advertising in the aHead logo at Mike Gravel’s HQ in May

Lai was passionate about the rules of American politics. She was so indignant over the commercial advertising and sponsorship of a political campaign that she dragged this writer over to the Gravel HQ to see it.

She learned the craft by performing yeoman duties as she dug right into her ceaseless attempt to get RL people to come into SL. Just two days after her first post, she was trying to convince the famous blogger Wonkette to come in-world.

“I believe that Second Life is the next version of the Web,” Lai said. “I really do think it is the future.”

She quickly began to realize her talent and expand her skill by choosing topics she cared about and that she could help her readers care about.

Imagine the dedication involved in researching and posting some 90 blog entries in four months.

Lai made a rare trip outside of American politics to view the celebration of results of the first round of the French Presidential elections in April. The top vote-getters were Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal. Lai told us Sarkozy is referred to as Sarko because the French prefer nicknames for their public figures. Here she views a fireworks celebration by Sarko supporters.

Lai revealed herself as an intellectual in the tasks she chose for herself: making connections, ferreting out cloaked information, analyzing raw data, and drawing the lines between facts and ideas.

It became clear that her work was animated by a certain feeling, a sympathetic understanding of those she was writing about. Warmth, optimism and openness became important elements in her success.

There was a quiet place in Lai where she could reflect on her research and develop ideas for her blog. On the other hand, nervous energy was important in forming who she was as a journalist. She always was on the lookout for a new SL political story to dig into.

Lai sat in on a discussion of global warming at the John Edwards HQ

I am grateful for the good fortune that plopped me down near the center of her journalistic world. I like to think that there were two active journalists in our friendship, that each was the other’s main cheerleader and critic, and that the beneficiaries were our readers.

The dedicated subject of her blog was “the 2008 Presidential Campaign as it unfolds in Second Life.” That was the slogan that appealed to just about every politics watcher in SL. She had a tremendous readership, and thus a tremendous impact on events in our virtual political realm.

For her readers, Lai carefully defined the emerging issues. She wrote about campaign successes and failures, new HQ’s arriving and old HQ’s disappearing. She covered the exciting moments as well as the group tensions. Lai was especially careful when she blogged about the rise and fall of in-world politicians.

Second Choices Archives: March April May June July

Prior to its public opening, Lai inspected the new Hillary Clinton SL Campaign HQ during a media preview in April. The new HQ had to be erected at a different location after a former Clinton SL steering committee member deleted the previous site in a fit of pique.

Lai found her way inside SL’s networks of political power. She knew every Republican, Democrat and Independent in our virtual world by face and name. Whether genuine or disingenuous, they offered her friendship…and the information she needed to know.

Like the true professional she became, Lai retained an outsider’s skepticism as well as the perception that ordinary voters needed complete information treated sensitively.

The writer’s voice she developed was true to her personality. It was an amplified version of the way she ordinarily spoke.

In the world of SL politics, Lai’s posts were star attractions, partly because of her competence, but also because she sounded like no one else and spoke from a place where few other SL journalists worked.

As she wrote on through the spring, Lai grew from journalist to independent scholar and social historian. She loved archives, and grew to love them more and more as she taught them to speak to her, so that she could in turn speak to us.

She was the first and only political journalist in SL to take the time to pour over those seemingly impenetrable databanks of group statistics.

Metrics are measures used to indicate progress or achievement, and Second Choices readers held their breath each week for her story on which candidate was up and which was slipping in the latest statistics on Presidential candidate group participation. Her meticulous metrics reports took hours to compile.

Second Life blog metrics archive: January February March April May June

Courage, creativity and sense of purpose

The findings she articulated in her posts seem obvious now, but they weren’t obvious at all back then when she had the nerve and originality to report them in her blog. For instance, her third column — the March 6 piece on Wonkette I mentioned earlier — in which she came down hard on RL people who laugh at SL.

“But what is also disturbing is the fact that the folks over at Wonkette think this is funny,” she wrote.

Wonkette had called us “a million losers [who] spend all their time pretending to have a Second Life,” to which Lai replied, “…all of this makes me wonder if any of the staff at Wonkette have ever been into Second Life. In the four posts written on Second Life, none of the authors write that they’ve ever been…it seems to me that if we’re going to get around this image problem, we need to bring people like the folks at Wonkette in-world so they can see the Second Life that we see.”

Lai peeks inside the unofficial Barack Obama campaign HQ in Second Life in March.

Lai was a strong champion of Second Life as a place where innovative and useful work is done. That was one of her important contributions as a daily journalist.

Her ideas and approaches were borrowed by other writers across SL. No one changed the perception of politics in here as clearly and beneficially as Lai.

She had a sense of place, of politics, of history, as well as a love of literature, a feeling for words, a keen sense of humor, a born reporter’s need to know the social context. Lai brought these to her SL journalism in the service of understanding and search for truth.

Her boldness and vigor would have led to ever more important works that would have breathed fresh life into our world history.

If a budding journalist were to ask me how to mature in a promising, healthy way in our profession, my answer would be simple. Study the techniques of LailaLei Mathilde, her style, her vocabulary, her nose for news. In those you will find the heart of a serious journalist.