Sunday, February 17, 2008

Science Rocks in SL


Wow. I am sooooo humbled by the science community in SL. Every time I turn around, they are doing something so entirely amazing, it makes me proud to know them.

These people are awe inspiring. If you think NOAA rocks...if you think ISM is the Bee's Knees...if the you think the Genome Project is the Cat's Meow....you MUST go see DrDoug Pernnell's (RL Doug Danforth, Ohio State) "The Tour of the Testis." Wow...how often do you get say, "I toured a Testis...TWICE!"

Dr.Doug did an INCREDIBLE job on this tour. While you sit in the little car thingy, you go through the exhibit and actually learn about the whole sperm production process. Now, before this tour, I could write what I know about all things sperm related on the head of a pin. At the end of the tour, I took the quiz, and OMG I learned something!!!! In fact, I learned all sorts of new facts about chromosomes and such.

You must, must, must got see this tour; it is up there with ISM, NOAA, Genome, and the rest.

But, if you get bored, pop over the amazingly new American Chemical Society Island being created by Hiro Sheridan (the amazing man behind the open source molecule rezzer) and Horace Moody (the amazing cat behind Open Notebook Science).

And, if you get bored with THAT, go on over to the SL Healthy wiki created by the lovely Perplexity Peccable, Prijian Toland and Skaidrite Norse. Once you are there, you can pop inworld to find real information about RL health! Health Info Island is simply an amazing resource.

If there were a competition between science and the humanities, science would win - hands down. While there are lots of people doing great stuff in literature and history, it isn't as much as we would like to see. For example, the folks at Seton Hall have done an amazing rendition of Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables. Bryan Carter has created a Harlem Renaissance Sim. There are a few places to study creative writing, journalism, and poetry. Literature Alive! creates about 89% of the literature content available on the grid.

As far as history goes, the only sims that are truly educational (and not commercial in scope and nature) are Caledon (which is not owned by an educator) and the new Land of Lincoln (created and run by the amazing Lorelei Junot). While places like the Renaissance Sim are lovely living history places, the focus isn't really on education; they are more focused on reeneacting. The Ren Sim is nice though, as they do try, more than other social sims, to be period correct and educational in various events. So, they are a true mix, where places like Paris and New York are completely commercial. You will find the buildings, but you will learn nothing about the culture or content.

Image Source

Special Thanks to Eloise Pasteur for helping me collect the SLurls for this post!!!

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