House Dems Promote First 100 Hours

One of my AU colleagues has commented on the recent introduction of the U.S. House to Second Life. Unfortunately, he does so while perpetuating the myth of SL's population:

According to Second Life's Web site, since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown to be "inhabited" by a total of 2,367,475 people from around the globe. Social capital researchers go wild!

As long-time SL residents/users have pointed out again and again, the Linden Labs published numbers refer to the total number of registered SL accounts, including unverified and long-unused accounts.

One of Matt's areas of expertise is the impact of reporting on public perception of science. In this case, he's unfortunately helping perpetuate a myth because of his own reporting of an "official" falsehood.

No doubt, he'll "revise and extend" (to use Congress-speak) his remarks to correct this error. Let's just call it an unfortunate slip of the keyboard.

Sorry dude.