So here's a thing, right.  I love New Scientist, probably because I want be a great physicist, only I can calculate my way out of a paper bag, let alone imagine how to calculate the size and shape of the universe...I can do Big and Round, but somehow I don't see that getting me into The Royal Society.  So I was taken this week to see that New Scientist has picked up the challenge of, over the next 3 editions, explaining the meaning and value in Second Life.  You will have to read the magazine to get the full piece but suffice to say that in article one, I have taken out that it is a place for true self expression.  Am I wrong to feel that this must be a contradictory message?  How can true self expression take place through the amorphisation of a person not only from the real to the virtual, but from the actual to the pre-designed Avatar?  Don't get me wrong here; I see that over self express as the content, the context is education in the widest sense.  It is fantastic to see what self help groups are forming in this virtual world to allow people to come to terms with many challenges they face...only does facing them in a virtual context allow them to face them in a real context too?

Next week will be a belter...New Scientist is going to wrestle with darker side of Second Life where human creativity reaches new highs or lows dependent on your stand point.  I would so like to quote from someone who attended one our seminars. He described so eloquently the characters who appear after the "witching hour" that make him pack up his virtual kit back and hot foot it in his bespoke Adidas trainers to the virtual Nissan showrooms for a moment of safety, just before he lashes out another dollar on a virtual Nissan Micra...but I can't.  Frankly it was too rude even for me.  Still David, if you think that abnormally tall Northern Europeans with a sense of humour failure due to the foot-long latex appendage strapped to their forehead are scary, come and spend an evening in a Twickenham curry house with members of the Alpha course just a table away.

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