Second Life and 9/11 Truth

A few months ago i was doing the daily news crawl when i noticed a fascinating article announcing that Reuters was opening a news bureau in a 'virtual world' called Second Life (SL), and in doing so would become the 1st international news organization to establish a virtual presence there.

Being a videogame addict and all-around tech enthusiast, i decided to check it out. And after 60 days in-world, all i can say is H0LY CR@P. There's no simple way to describe SL, but it's a virtual wonderland, completely shaped & driven by the imaginations of its residents.

First there’s your ‘avatar’, the digital representation of your virtual self. You’re given pretty much granular control over every aspect of your appearance, from skintone to forehead slope to shoesize to eyelash length. Clothing is straightforward, and since a recent update there are several pre-fab avatars from which to choose, n00b uniforms. But then you notice (or don't) that there are 'templates' available on the internets - not only for clothes, but for skin as well. So anyone who knows Photoshop can essentially build themselves any item of clothing, any 'tattoo', anything you can paint onto a 3d mannequin.

"That sounds great," i hear you asking, "but WTF does any of this have to do with 9/11?"

Well that's where it gets interesting, because not only do you get total control over your avatar, but there's an in-world 3d modeler which is rudimentary (if you're used to Maya or Lightwave) but incredibly powerful (full physics w/ gravity, particles, collision detection, etc.), and is 100% free to use. Not only modeling, but scripting on top of that (using a proprietary language similar to C++), so the objects you build can be animated, and more importantly can interact with anyone who clicks on them, or for that matter anyone who gets close enough to trigger a proximity event.

You can build ANYTHING, from a spork to a skyscraper, add textures, bump-mapping, light sources, etc. and then save it to your personal inventory.

So i started messing around with it, and so far i've built a crude replica of the WTC complex, and a slightly less-crude model of the Pentagon. The idea is this: it's one thing to talk about the impractability of the official version of events, e.g. the pancake collapse theory, and another to show frame-by-frame evidence of individual windows blowing out, in what seems a synchronized, deliberate sequence of events.

It's still another to create an interactive, 3D replica of the Twin Towers, or WTC7, or the Pentagon, or a Boeing 757. Especially when that model can then be imbued with scripts to animate it in time & space, or 'hot-spots' which, when clicked, can pop-up a notecard full of facts about a particular item or event.

Interactive 3d visualization could help to make the obvious plain. It’s such a simple thing to show, in accurate scale, the before & after of the various scenes, complete with the unanswered questions regarding each - and the level of complexity which can be achieved is mind-blowing, the ‘camera controls’ feature allows users to pan 360 degrees around an object, or to zoom in on the tiniest detail.

Anyhoo, that’s my plan at the moment. Rather than bore (or confuse) you with further details, let me invite you to see for yourself. Second Life accounts are free, all you need do is choose a name (whatever you want for the first name, and then one of a hundred pre-determined surnames) and download the client. Once you’re in-world, feel free to contact me (do a ‘people search’ for Skeptosis Link and then send me an instant message), and feel free to join the group i’ve created, ‘9/11 TRUTH’.*

The registered user-base of Second Life has literally doubled every 60 days for the past six months. Nearly $1,000,000(USD) of real-world commerce takes place in-world every single day. If SL is truly the shape of things to come on the web, then a foothold has already been established for 9/11 Truth. Throughout the coming year, i hope to acquire enough virtual real estate to setup fully detailed and info-packed replicas of UA175, AA11, AA77, and UA93, the World Trade Center complex, the Pentagon, even an abandoned strip mine near Shanksville, PA.

I invite you all to join me.

* UPDATE - 06/15/07
as of this date my group '9/11 TRUTH' has been disbanded. i made the mistake of leaving enrollment open to the public. this attracted a crowd of unknown entities, 'people' whose motives were indiscernable and whose participation was non-existent. if any of you folks out in the Real World are still interested (and don't worry, it's painfully obvious that you aren't) there is a new group. IM me for details.