Researching death: some reflections on life

Some macrosociological reflections on "Second Life"

Contrasting with various "virtual communities", Second Life is a genuine "virtual society" with the potential to provide a universal framework of interoperability between unlimited masses of individual as well as collective actors. By mirroring (end even amplifying) the acentrism and individualism of contemporary society, it is characterized by precarious member motivation, conservative convent...

Reflections on Researching the Rugged Fitness Landscape

The success of an informing system depends upon achieving a fit between multiple entities: the sender, the client, the delivery system, and the task to be performed. Conceptually, the effectiveness of such informing can be modeled as a fitness landscape—a function that maps the characteristics of the system into a scalar fitness value. The assumed shape of that landscape plays a major role in d...

Some macrosociological reflections on " Second Life " Hans Geser

Contrasting with various "virtual communities", Second Life is a genuine "virtual society" with the potential to provide a universal framework of interoperability between unlimited masses of individual as well as collective actors. By mirroring (end even amplifying) the acentrism and individualism of contemporary society, it is characterized by precarious member motivation, conservative convent...

Reflections on War and Death

Reflections on death in childhood.

Reflections on death in childhood SIR,-During a regional survey of childhood asthma deaths I recently interviewed the parents of 24 children who had died from this cause. These deaths were all unexpected, most parents having been led to believe that asthma could not be fatal. For me, like Mother Frances Dominica (10 January, p 108), the experience confirmed that parents never really get over th...