United Nations day
2023-10-28 21:00 - 22:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | SC East Meeting Spot
United Nations day
Today’s discussion is about the United Nations, what are your feelings regarding it, do you think it’s a good/bad idea? How can it be improved?

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Classical Concert
2023-10-29 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-11-05 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-11-12 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-11-19 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-11-26 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-12-03 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-12-10 07:00 - 08:00, 2023-12-17 07:00 - 08:00 | The Lighthouse Café

Mathematics Club
2023-11-02 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-11-09 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-11-16 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-11-30 16:00 - 17:00 | Maths Club

The New Climate We Live With
2023-11-04 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
The New Climate We Live With
Over the past several decades we have had predictions of global warming and climate change due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The underlying physics isn’t that difficult to understand. Greenhouse gases make the atmosphere more opaque to infrared radiation, resulting in the Earth radiating energy to space from a higher altitude in the troposphere, where it is colder. A colder temperature means less energy radiated to space, so more energy is absorbed by the Earth than it sheds to space.
Now, observations are catching up with the predictions: an increase in summer heat waves, more droughts or floods, wildfires and smoke from wildfires, thinning of west Antarctic ice sheets from warmer water beneath them, and stronger hurricanes that develop intensity in just 24 hours. June, July, August, and September all set records in global average temperature, even without a full El Niño. Underground aquifers across the United States are being irreversibly depleted. At the same time, The Economist reports an increasing global populist backlash against climate-change mitigation policies. In this talk, I will present more specifics.
A presentation by Dr. Keith Eric Grant

Anti-Bullying Week
2023-11-04 21:00 - 22:00 | SC East Meeting Spot
Anti-Bullying Week
In observation of anti-bullying week we invite you to come and share your experiences on the subject, were you bullied, were you a bully yourself?

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BB: Intellectual Property
2023-11-11 10:00 - 11:00 | The Lighthouse Café
The law recognizes rights in property created from the human mind. This is different from other types of property, such as real property (land) and personal property (things). Property from the mind is called intellectual property. It’s not necessarily intellectual, though. More often it is a product of human creativity and imagination. Matt Burr (Beragon Betts) is an attorney in the U.S. with over 30 years of experience in the practice of this area of law. Please join us to learn what rights the law recognizes and how to protect and enforce your rights.
Discussion led by Matt Burr

Celebrating Men
2023-11-11 21:00 - 22:00 | SC East Meeting Spot
Celebrating Men
We will be observing international men’s day by inviting you to join us and talk about men who inspire you and how they inspire you, whether they be loved ones, strangers, celebrities, or fictional!

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Human Migration – What it can tell us about our past and our future
2023-11-18 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
Human Migration – What it can tell us about our past and our future
Every migration tells a story. The migrations of people is the story of us, individually and collectively. Whether it was by choice or by force, migration is how we all have come to live where we life. It’s our global history and local present. In our rapidly changing world, many millions of people will migrate within our lifetimes. Maybe some of them will be us. Major migrations have been and will continue to be driven by environmental and societal (political and economic) events that disrupt people’s lives. The geography of where we find ourselves to be provides both challenges and opportunities for the future we can make.
Join Delia Lake and Meryl McBride for an exploration of past migrations and some future prospects. We’ll set the context for this very timely discussion. Bring your own stories, your thoughts, your concerns to this timely, important conversation.

World Television Day
2023-11-18 21:00 - 22:00 | SC East Meeting Spot
World Television Day
“Good evening… and welcome, to television” -Bruce Gyngell, launch of Television on Australia 1956.
In 1926 John Logie Baird transmitted a picture from one room to another. In 1927 he successfully sent a moving image along telephone wires from London to Glasgow, and the following year he achieved the first trans-atlantic television broadcast.
In honor of television day we will discuss the unthinkable effect television has had on generations of humans, the good, and the bad.
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A Brief History of Genetic Modification in Agriculture
2023-11-25 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
A Brief History of Genetic Modification in Agriculture
At some point, humans believed they could mold and manipulate their natural food supplies to suit their needs better. This domestication of plants changed the course of human history by helping enable brain development as well as structuring populations into larger cities. Many early civilizations thrived and some fell based on their agricultural output as most growth conditions heavily relied on the climate. Modification of plants generally relied on a crude form of artificial selection of picking each season’s best plants and replanting them. In modern times, the scale of food production to meet population needs has also required a dramatic change to our breeding to select for large-scale output as well as even shipping. In the late 20th century, a new method of plant modification via molecular biology dramatically changed how we can modify plants. And it came as no surprise that major yield gains have come about in those crops amenable to that modification. Although, along with that technology came those resistant to its usage. Modern computational power has also changed how breeding works. But, at the current pinnacle of plant biotech, we now have the ability to directly manipulate the genetic code of most plants via site-specific DNA cutters like CRISPR.
This presentation gives a historical overview of these changes to modern day.
Presentation by Stephen L. Gasior PhD

Do not try this at home!
2023-11-25 21:00 - 22:00 | Auditorium
Do not try this at home!
Join us for a multimedia livestream into Second Life of Chemistry demonstrations and explanations from Mike Shaw’s RL laboratory.

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Field trip: Celebrating nature
2023-12-02 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
Second Life can be a place of wonder in the hands of imaginative and skilled builders. When those hands belong to people from different parts of the world or different cultures, the sense of wonder can turn into awe and can be an education and even transformative experience.
The best way to explore Second Life is through immersion. That is why we set aside December and June for field trips. This month the theme is “International Second Life.” Each week will have a subtheme having to do with our relationship to nature, from celebrating nature with minimal intrusion to the ‘human jungle’ of urban living where nature is hard to find.
We invite you to join us on the following Saturdays at 10am SLT. Each week we will start in the Science Circle Amphitheater, teleport to three or four locations during the hour, spend about 10-15 minutes apiece exploring what is there, and then come back to share what we found!
If you find yourself unable to stay the whole hour, if you get lost, or if you hopefully find a place intriguing enough to go back, here is a list of sites we will visit today (subject to change):
2 December – Celebrating nature with minimal human intrusion:
Monarch butterfly experience – a gorgeous natural and educational site
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Pebble%20Isle/51/87/81
Joshua Tree – a stark desert landscape with its own type of beauty
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Exarcheia/128/126/23
Mount Campion Caves National Park – a 26-sim Linden-owned park with the tallest mountain and largest cave system in Second Life http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Spinach/209/105/265
Natthimmel – a realistic depiction of the Scandinavian tundra environment http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/NewMoon/119/199/22

Fieldtrip roulette
2023-12-02 21:00 - 22:00 | Science Circle region
DECEMBER FIELDTRIP ROULETTE
Every Saturday in December we will visit a random location picked from a pool of beautiful locations found by Jes and Chantal!
Round and round we go, where we’ll stop? Nobody knows…

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Mathematics Club
2023-12-07 16:00 - 17:00 | Maths Club
We will have a bit of discussion about the resources expended at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in the attack that started just before 8 AM local time on December 7, 1941. This will be an examination of the costs of starting a war in terms of human lives, equipment and munitions, energy, and collateral environmental damage.

Field trip: Living Near Nature
2023-12-09 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
Second Life can be a place of wonder in the hands of imaginative and skilled builders. When those hands belong to people from different parts of the world or different cultures, the sense of wonder can turn into awe and can be an education and even transformative experience.
The best way to explore Second Life is through immersion. That is why we set aside December and June for field trips. This month the theme is “International Second Life.” Each week will have a subtheme having to do with our relationship to nature, from celebrating nature with minimal intrusion to the ‘human jungle’ of urban living where nature is hard to find.
We invite you to join us on the following Saturdays at 10am SLT. Each week we will start in the Science Circle Amphitheater, teleport to three or four locations during the hour, spend about 10-15 minutes apiece exploring what is there, and then come back to share what we found!
If you find yourself unable to stay the whole hour, if you get lost, or if you hopefully find a place intriguing enough to go back, here is a list of sites we will visit today (subject to change):
9 December – Human settlements on the edge of nature:
Raizes do Brasil = a village on the edge of the Amazon forest
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Raizes%20do%20Brasil/204/148/23
Hanging Gardens = a rich person’s villa with nature tamed to suit
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Antiquorum/119/199/36
St Hild Binnancumb (Abbey of St. Hild) = secluded open fields and hills
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Binnancumb/71/150/44
Petite Provence d’Annisss = tranquil French seaside town
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Petite%20Provence/64/122/28

Fieldtrip roulette
2023-12-09 21:00 - 22:00, 2023-12-16 21:00 - 22:00 | The Science Circle region

Mathematics Club
2023-12-14 16:00 - 17:00 | Maths Club
We will celebrate the BIRTHDAY of Danish mathematician and astronomer, TYCHO BRACH and discuss his life including
– his founding with the help of his smart little sister, SOPHIE BRACH, of the URANIBORG OBSERVATORY on the island of VEN (named HVEN prior to 1959).
– the first custom-built observatory in modern Europe,
and the last to be built without a telescope as its primary instrument;
– Brach’s observations of the Supernova of 11 November 1572, and its significance
– some of Brach’s work with Johannes Kepler and Kepler’ Laws of Planetary Motion (from geometric order he perceived in massive amounts of astronomical data points between 1609-1616)

Astronomical sextant used by Tycho Brahe (1546- 1601)

Field trip: Rural Living
2023-12-16 10:00 - 11:00 | Auditorium
Second Life can be a place of wonder in the hands of imaginative and skilled builders. When those hands belong to people from different parts of the world or different cultures, the sense of wonder can turn into awe and can be an education and even transformative experience.
The best way to explore Second Life is through immersion. That is why we set aside December and June for field trips. This month the theme is “International Second Life.” Each week will have a subtheme having to do with our relationship to nature, from celebrating nature with minimal intrusion to the ‘human jungle’ of urban living where nature is hard to find.
We invite you to join us on the following Saturdays at 10am SLT. Each week we will start in the Science Circle Amphitheater, teleport to three or four locations during the hour, spend about 10-15 minutes apiece exploring what is there, and then come back to share what we found!
If you find yourself unable to stay the whole hour, if you get lost, or if you hopefully find a place intriguing enough to go back, here is a list of sites we will visit today (subject to change):
16 December – Rural Second Life: living on the land
Tonarino (Japan) = a faithful feel of a Japanese village in the hills near the sea
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/tonarino/150/135/25
Rustic California (Nature Collective) = living in the wilds of northern California
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Calland/166/87/22
Kuulua = living on the edge of a swamp http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Tilheyra/243/128/23
Kona Beach (Hawaii) = beach with underwater areas, waves, animals, etc.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Kona%20Beach/42/86/22

Mathematics Club
2023-12-21 16:00 - 17:00 | Maths Club
At 7:27 PM PST (Second Life time) is the moment of Winter Solstice with maximal tilt of the southern axis toward the sun for all on planet Earth.
Since this is the LONGEST, DARKEST NIGHT in the Northern hemisphere, we will discuss LIGHT: light as a transverse wave as described by Scottish physicist, Clerk Maxwell who was able to calculate the speed of propagation of his electromagnetic waves from field theory; SEARCH FOR the AETHER (as it was once called): the Michelson Morley experiment of 1887.
