Today is my last day at the Social Science Research Council. It has been an honor working for the past year and a half for such an august and important institution, which for more than 80 years has facilitated social science engagement with all manner of important public policy issues — from social security to…
Month: November 2007
Gotham Girls roller derby action: sex, violence, and good clean fun
After hearing my friends crow about how awesome Gotham Girls roller derby is to watch, I finally got a chance to catch a couple of matches last night up at Hunter College. Roller derby, a 50s era past-time that paired the excitement of sport and titillation of watching women battle it out, has been having…
Second Life Insider merges into Massively MMO News Site: a gamble worth the risk?
For those of you who avidly follow the various developments, scandals and achievements in Second Life, the web publication the Second Life Insider has been one of your regular sources for news (alongside other news sources like New World Notes, the Metaverse Messenger, and Reuters.) So you were probably as surprised as I was to…
Why social dancing is like improv (thanks, Stephen Cobert!)
I have known from conversations with improvisers like Frankyboy and others that there was some implicit connection between improv and social dancing. But I never really got it until yesterday when I read, of all things, a 2006 commencement speech given by Stephen Cobert at Knox College: When I was starting out in Chicago, doing…
“IRL” documentary explores geeky, fetid underbelly of online communities
As the moderator for the past eight years of the swing dance online community at Yehoodi.com, I’m always interested in studies and explorations of other online community sites. Stephanie Tuszynski wrote and directed a new documentary that examines one particular online community surrounding the uber-geeky show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer": "IRL (In Real Life)" is…
“Bloodspell” feature length machinima showing and discussion in London November 22
The London Metropolitan University is hosting a viewing of the feature length machinima movie "Bloodspell" followed by a discussion of some of the issues raised by machinima on November 22. The event description doesn’t go into what the specific discussion topics will be, but since "Bloodspell" is a Creative Commons licensed work, I’m sure intellectual…
Second Life as an unproven seedbed for real world innovation
Electrolux Innovation Awards The latest issue of the MIT Press journal Innovations has a couple of interesting articles about innovation and virtual worlds. I just finished reading Philip Evans excellent essay "A Silicon Silicon Valley? Virtual Innovation and Virtual Geography." He describes a number of the unique aspects of Second Life that make it a…
16 BILLION pixel image of “The Last Supper” viewable online
Ok, this is incredibly cool. The Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities has partnered with the firm HAL9000 (wasn’t that the computer in "2001"?) to provide on the interwebs a ridiculously high resolution image of Da Vinci’s "Last Supper." For incredibly fragile and faded works of art like this, providing high-resolution images online is…