GD20080221

=02/21/2008=



Today I finally found the search function, and it was good. I started out searching for some good reggae music and I found The Happy Zion Reggae Club & Scuba Diving (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Patagonia/237/65/27). No one was there, but there was a dance floor and some good reggae (NOT DANCE HALL) music playing, so I looked around for a while. The standard shopping area was there complete with the standard sex stuff for sale. Strangely enough, there were sex ball near the dance floor, almost directly in front of a picture of the iconic Bob Marley. He would have been so proud.

The scuba diving was much ado about nothing, but the fish were pretty. The underwater design in 2L is really cool but drastically underused. I would like to see more done with it.

Near the Reggae Club was Violet Voltaire EGL Jewelry & Accessories (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Peronaut/72/217/37)- which had absolutely nothing to do with Voltaire. I did, however, find my first Nine Inch Nails related content on 2L after many futile efforts. I had to post a picture of the cool architecture here, too.



I figured I should stop playing around and actually find something political to talk about - this being a political science course - so I teleported over to the unofficial Barack Obama headquarters (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Silicon%20Island/52/225/38), which, like most areas of second life, was pretty much empty as far as other avatars were concerned. There was a lot of useful stuff here and I was intrigued at the way these Obama fans used the space.

Among the useful items I found here were links to sites where unregistered voters could get registered. There were copies of Obama's speeches. There were links to his website. Everything was designed in a manner so that there was a logical flow of information, from introduction to the candidate, to his stances of issues, to a donation box and the link to a voter registration site. I was pretty impressed.



There was Obama clothing you could flaunt around Second Life - and there was also a quote from a speech which ties into why an Obama-Second Life connection might actually be a useful political tool for his campaign.



Next stop was a shop selling political t-shirts for some of the candidates (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jeon/39/115/79), including some obsolete ones - and it even pandered to the apathetic non-voter that makes up 40-80% of the American electorate depending on the election year. This spot had a sign keeping track of its best sellers - which were Obama for the Democrats and Ron Paul for the Republicans.



I decided to also check out the unofficial headquarters of the other candidate in the race, Hillary Clinton (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Platon/133/112/25). Though the architecture of the space was a lot more detailed, it was also less useful. It included a donation box but little in the way of information - there was, howver, a lot of razzle-dazzle including a dance floor and snuggle-balls (not sex-balls, however).



I found it interesting that Hillary's headquarters use Macs for their computers (as seen in the pictures) yet Obama's location seems to use PCs. I decided not to cover the GOP candidate(s) so I had something to talk about next week - it will be fun to see if I can find some 2Lers who want to talk about the latest McCain scandal.



Almost adjacent to Hillary Headquarters was Plush Zeta (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Plush%20Zeta/48/133/22), a place that had lots of avatars stacked up in it. I flew there instead of teleporting to find, to my complete lack of surprise, that it was a red light district mostly occupied by bots/camping avatars. I'll post a SFW pic and move on.



Moving right on I searched for and found a political forum (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Alice/26/86/60), which also ended up being the headquarters for [|http://www.slexplorer.org]- which looks like a very useful site. I will visit and use some of its links for future entries. No one was debating in the political forum, it appears that their next scheduled debate is for March 1st (read the sign in the picture).



I searched for Fight Club and the most popular return was Tugafighters-Arts Open Space (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Portugal/5/135/452). When I teleported there it appeared to be a store, until I realized there were people in body armor advancing on me and firing. I was asked to leave as I was not in character and it appeared to be a RP area. I think there should be a Second Life Fight Club. In fact, I think there should be a Second Life Project Mayhem (or at least a cacophony society)



My next teleport took me to the Star Trek Museum complex (http://slurl.com/secondlife/TovaDok%20II/77/209/24), AKA NERD PARADISE. This place was really cool, whoever made it clearly put a lot of work into it. There were detailed schematics and information on the fictional 'science' which is used in the series and movies. This was a repository of all things Trek, a place designed to store information and cultural elements. As I walked the corridors, I wondered what Paramount might think of this creation which clearly made use of their copyrighted material.



You could view demonstrations on a video screen. There was a complete mock-up of the original Star Trek Enterprise. Great music also played in this area. There was a whole museum dedicated to the different fictional cultures portrayed in Star Trek. I ran around for a while pretending I was Shatner.



Also of interest were freebies including uniforms and communicator badges. Pretty Uber. Hopefully I'll get better content for my next entry, but I had a lot of fun today on Second Life.



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