Second Life as practice for real life?

Interesting article in the OC Register today. The article discusses how a researcher at UCI is using Second Life as a virtual “testing ground” for software that controls a rapid transit system. She is able to use Second Life to simulate something that will eventually be used in real life. I previously mentioned in this blog that Christians should be in Second Life as both a way to reach others who are there as well as for the experience of using virtual worlds for spreading the gospel. This story made wonder if it would also work the other way: can we use Second Life as a way to “test out” different methods of our work (marketing projects, youth activities, acts of charity, etc.) that can then translate back into the real world? I’m not sure, but there may be certain circumstances where this may be profitable.

Woot! for Christ

In my previous post, I related my recent purchase of a Roomba robot vaccuum cleaner.  I purchased the Roomba on woot.com, an amazing e-commerce web site that has a simple strategy: sell one compelling product a day.  Each day, the Woot home page is completely devoted to one particular product. Generally, the products fall into a hi-tech category, but they have sold just about everything there. My purchases include the aforementioned Roomba, an HD-TV USB stick for my Mac, headphones, and a bluetooth music transmitter. The site is worth going to every day just to read the write-ups about the products. Each day, the products are presented in a tongue-in-cheek manner that makes it a must read.  And of course, the prices are usually the best you’ll find anywhere, suggesting that Woot works with manufacturers to move products that aren’t selling well on the open market and/or are refurbished. They also solve one of the biggest problems that many e-business sites have: shipping costs. No matter what they sell, shipping is only $5.00.

Then there’s the “Bag O’ Crap”. Every few weeks, woot sells this as a way to move product that has not sold yet. Each bag can hold up to three items for $1 each, so for $3 plus $5 shipping, you can get three unknown products sent to your door. There are many who wait and wait for the bag o’ crap just so they can order them and see what they get. And sell on eBay the things they don’t like.

Finally, Woot! is effective because they’ve built a loyal community. For each product sold, they open a discussion board for users to write comments. This allows those considering a purchase to see what others think of that days “woot”.  I always review the messages to get an understanding of 1) is the Woot price good? and 2) is this a quality product? And maybe 3) to wonder at the amount of time some people have to post messages on a relatively obscure e-business site.

Woot is successful because every day you know exactly what you’ll get and because they always present their products in a unique and interesting way. I make it a habit to check woot.com just about every day to be sure I don’t miss out on “something good”. If the site offered 500 products, I wouldn’t bother. By offering one, I can easily check it out and make a decision.

Sometimes I wonder if we as Christians cannot learn something from Woot. As I research “effective Internet ministry”, I wonder if creating an Internet presence with complex menus, podcasts, and blogs actually makes the message harder to find. What if we could offer a site that gave users a simple message every day? Something that addressed the issues of the day in a manner that conveyed Christ’s love simply? Users would be compelled to come to the site daily to be inspired.

Are there any sites out there like that right now? Let me know…

And look: w00t has been made “word of the year” by Merriam-Webster. Of course, the Woot web site is not the first use of the term. You can look up the full history of the term here.

I am George Jetson

Did you used to watch The Jetsons as a kid? As a lover of sci-fi, it was one of my favorites. The visions of the future were somewhat idealistic, but in the sixties this was how Americans saw the future. And one of the best parts: a robot maid. Well, now I am part of that future: we now have a Roomba.

A Roomba is, quite simply, a robot vaccuum that scurries about the house and cleans your floors. It “learns” where the walls are and covers the floor several times, stopping and circling whenever it finds lots of dirt. When it’s done, it re-docks itself in it’s base station to re-charge. You can even schedule it to vaccuum during the middle of the night.

The results so far are mixed. The room we have it cleaning is a large “great room” with tile floors. This room gets quite messy every day, what with five (soon to be six, gulp!) kids.When it can complete its job, it does well, but several times it has gotten stuck on rugs with loose threads or turned up corners. However, it does entertain the kids (and scare the cat) quite well.

I am George Jetson!

The best band nobody’s heard of…

I got a chance to go see The Lost Dogs at King’s Harbor Church in Torrance last Thursday night. Who are the Lost Dogs? It has been explained better elsewhere, so go ahead and read about them here and here. I’ll wait…

To me, the Lost Dogs are one of the great bands of all times. They deserve to be headlining big, or at least medium-sized, venues. So why were there only fifty people or so at the concert last week? I’m not sure…the music is amazing and accessible, the lyrics are deep and insightful… Popular culture is a funny thing: we all know of artists, whether they be writers, musicians, or actors, who are extremely talented and deserve the accolades and yet struggle in obscurity, sometimes forever. I am going to do my part to get these guys noticed. I am not sure how, but maybe I can convince some fellow fans to put something together with me to get them noticed. For now, I will blog about them.

The concert was a lot of fun. After getting off to a late start, the band performed about four songs before Mike Roe leaned over to Terry and whispered “I have to get off the stage”. The band promptly left, except for Steve, sitting at his drums, not quite sure what was going on. After a minute, he slinked off and the audience was wondering what happened. Turns out that it was Mike’s turn to have the flu and he needed to get offstage to, uh, “center” himself. They came back after about 15 minutes and proceeded as if nothing had happened.

One of the highlights of the night was the Lost Dogs Christmas play. Staged like an old time radio drama, Terry read reviews of the play saying that it was “so bad it was good”. And sure enough, it was. The play was based on the story “The Gift of the Magi”, though this time it was Mike and Derry giving each other the gifts. Mike sold his best guitar to get Derry the guitar he wanted (which was worth less than the guitar Mike sold…) and Derry sold his hand to get Mike strings for his guitar. Yes, that’s right, Derry held up a bloody stump. The story deteriorated from there, but that was the point. Terry played himself, the pawn shop keeper, and the narrator. And Steve played Tiny Tim, constantly popping up and saying “God bless us, every one!” It was Lost Dogs zaniness at its best. We all took it very seriously, of course, because they all used barely noticeable British accents.

Set List:

1. Imagine That
2. Bullet Train
3. It All Depends (off the Eddies’ latest)
4. Devil’s Elbow
5. Rocky Mountain Mines
6. No Room for Us
7. If You Want To
8. Eleanor, It’s Raining Now

Break for Christmas Play (“so bad it’s good”)

1. Here Comes Santa Claus/Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
2. Song for the Day After Christmas
3. O Holy Night
4. Silent Night
5. Fruitcake from Hell
6. Blue Christmas
7. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Encore

1. That’s Where Jesus Is
2. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door

The Lost Dogs have to be seen live to be truly appreciated. Keep checking their web site to find out when they will tour in your area.

Should churches be in Second Life?

I have visited the topic of the virtual world Second Life before, and I am still planning on incorporating into my research on the use of Internet by the Church. One use of Second Life that I have been following particularly is that of the Anglican Church. According to the Church Advertising Network:

“The Anglican Cathedral on Epiphany Island was built to support the Anglican Group in Second Life, which was founded in November 2006 by Bill Sowers, who is a member of St David’s Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Kansas.“

The services are led by Mark Brown, who is licensed as Deacons Assistant by the Bishop of Wellington in New Zealand. You can see a video of their first service here. Mark also has written a good article on ministry using web 2.0 tools that complements much of what has been written in this blog.

The title “Should churches be in Second Life?” was prompted by the latest entry in Mark Brown’s blog. It seems that the web site Anglicans Online has taken issue with doing church in Second Life, comparing it to the phenomenon of televangelists in the US. They raise issues with how “real” Second Life experiences can be (also raised by me in response to LifeChurch’s SL presence). The overall tone of the article is that Second Life is at the very least not important and at the very most to be avoided altogether.

I disagree. As a church, we need to go where the people are – and there are people in Second Life. I demonstrated SL to my MIS class last week and someone asked me what I thought it would look like in several years. I said that I didn’t know whether SL would even be around in a few years, comparing it to the experience of old BBS services that were the precursor to today’s social networks. But something will be around in a few years, and the more we understand about how to be effective in Second Life now, the better we can minister in that new environment. Mark Brown, as you might expect, also disagrees; read his well thought response here.

Other Christian ministries have also begun using Second Life. Besides previously blogged about LifeChurch, the Church Advertising Network has created an online town modeled after “Bible Times”, where you can explore and find answers to questions about the Christian faith. Now that’s creative.

Three religious views on science

There is a very interesting piece in today’s Orange County Register by John Tierney regarding the different ways that the world views some of the cutting edge biotech going on today (stem cells, cloning, modified foods). Depending upon where you are in the world, different sorts of scientific research are allowed or restricted. I always knew that here in the US we had restrictions on research that destroyed embryos and on cloning. And I also understood that in other parts of the world they had different regulations. For example, in southern and eastern Asia there are little or no restrictions on this type of research. In much of Europe, there is opposition to genetically modified (GM) foods. But this article helps us understand why these distinctions exist.

According to Tierney, there are three basic religious viewpoints on biotechnology, as shown in the table below:

Viewpoint	Region	View of God	Effect on biotech
Eastern (Buddhist/Hindu)	Southern and Eastern Asia	none, multiple	All biotech research in tune with religion.
Judeo-Christian	North and South America	One God who gives a soul to every human being.	Research on humans (including embryos) is restricted. Research on animals and foods are accepted.
Post-Christian	Most of Europe	Mother Nature	Anything that would “hurt” nature is off-limits.

While these groupings are a bit of a generalization, it does give insight into how the world is dividing on these issues.  You can also see how this plays out on this map.

Tierney ends his piece with this insight:

It is by no means certain that this type of stem-cell research will ever yield treatments for diseases like Parkinson’s, but should that happen, it is hard to see how any Congress – or any law – could stop people from seeking cures.