An organization that lets people with disabilities virtually climb mountains and hike trails shared top honors in a first-ever Second Life prize for in-world projects improving real-world lives.
Virtual Ability and Studio Wikitecture, which designs buildings in the virtual world launched by Linden Lab in 2003, were declared co-winners of what is to be an annual prize at Second Life.
The honor comes with US$10,000 each in prize money.
Virtual Ability helps people with disabilities use avatars to skydive, fish, mountain climb, hike and even fly in Second Life, the organization’s vice president David Ludwig says in a message posted online at virtualability.org.
“We also do a lot of dancing,” wrote Ludwig, whose animated character, or avatar, in Second Life goes by the name Pecos Kidd.
“It’s an amazing experience helping someone who will never walk again in real life to jump on a virtual trampoline,” he said.
Virtual Ability will use Linden prize money to work expand services in Second Life, group president Alice Krueger said.
“For many of us, Second Life is not a game — it is a second chance at life,” Krueger said.
Wikitecture uses collaboration and open-source technology for real and virtual world architecture and urban planning. Wikitecture’s projects in Second Life include creating a “tele-medicine facility” for a village in Nepal.
“During the past two quarters, I completed assignments for organizations in Alabama, Britain, Germany, and Canada — all within Second Life,” Wikitecture architect Jon Brouchoud of Wisconsin said.
“The total sum of those contracts is at least quadruple what we secured for residential work,” he said.
A Second Life committee declared the tie for first place on Thursday after sifting through 230 applications from around the world.
Contenders included a Let There Be Night science experiment that demonstrates the effect of pollution on the night sky and a Space Between These Trees charity focused on caring for the Earth and ending hunger.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS