While it's probable that research into cures for various cancers will come into world wide use (though given the way pharmaceutical companies like to patent everything from genes to molecules, who knows) I prefer helping out charities who are doing things on an international scale. At this stage the RFL in SL is still for the benefit of the American Cancer Society. I am unable to find anything relating to international sharing or distribution of the money raised to I'm assuming it will all go to ACS. Nothing I've seen on any official SLRFL activity or group mentions an international effort or contribution.
This year's RFL has thankfully not been quite so in your face. Unfortunately the guilt tripping has reared it's head in a couple of places but some people seem unwilling or unable to understand that not everyone shares their fanaticism.
Cancer is a problem. I have several relatives who have been diagnosed with it and I've had friends lose parents to it, but I find it surprising that there are people treating this as the most important charity in the world. I'm happy to donate my lindens, when I have them, but a barrage of spam and guilt is more likely to have me ignore you completely regardless of how worthy your cause is.
I'm sure my comments may put a few noses out of joint, but it wouldn't be RFL without a little drama.
One thing about the actual Relay itself is that it brings out some excellent ideas in theme builds. This year we have inspirations from Willie Wonka, to Troy to things that sail and fly, here's my selection from the 2008 builds for RFL. Hopefully the sim crashes will be resolved by the time of the actual Relay. Not holding my breath though.
The City of Troy
Passionate Redheads theme park build
An Alice in Wonderland build by Oakie Doakies
SL M*A*S*H*
A King Arthur inspired build
Carusoe's Island. Built by Friday
The Green Lantern Core [sic]
Giant Snail Racing
Frozen Peas' giant garden. They should be wary of the giant snails down the road.
This was called "ACT Sailing Venice Elven". I'm not sure I see the connection but who knows.
The secret machine that powers Caledon
A lovely glass gazebo on the Caledon build
A wider view of the Caledon sim
Fairy Tales group. The St. George's Dragon Annual Picnic & Knight Roast
Hansel & Gretal's Bakery
Rapunzel's Wig Shop.
Beauty's Mattress Mart.
There were some great ideas in this section. The Chinny Chin Inn and the Huff & Puff housing Co-op, and Lil' Red's clothing boutique were among others.
The Adventures of Mark Twain.
The Survivor's group. I'll admit I don't understand the imagery of the wagon on the cloud but it was a nice build
Designers for a Cure group's rather cute looking build
The HELP & Planning Committee Camp's African themed build
VBA's picnic build
More of the picnic
The extremely purple Wonka Factory. Purple was obviously the colour of choice this year.
New Babbage's Railway Station
Chester goes out for a bite in the Sailing For Life build
Some of the fishermen at Sailing For Life
Steelhead in miniature. Good for Godzilla AVs
With the giant Castle Wulfenbach flying overhead
Royal Bretons' wonderful recreation of Isaac Mendez's Studio from the TV series Heroes.
The military encampment of Roma Pro Vita
Relay's Flying Aces. Complete with blimp tour of the sims.
Hogwart's Castle. This build is actually for auction.
The Avilion build
Radio Radio's Mysterious courtyard. This leads you to...
Sky Dalek! Let's see this turn up the next time someone plays Doctoring the Tardis. To give you an idea of scale the black splodge on the landing deck is me.
Flash! Aaaa aahhhh!
Dr.
Ming's Throne Room.
This is a good build in that it also includes sound samples from the movie. The heavy drumbeat should help propel relay lappers through the section.
6 comments:
Some truly lovely builds, indeed. As usual, the grid's builders have outdone themselves.
And hee! SL MASH!
I'm impressed with the builds! I do want to nip over and see Caledon's and Steelhead's builds, lag permitting of course. Bravo to the builders!!!
Thanks for the links Lunar, though they seem to confirm my point of view. There's nothing on those links mentioning the Second Life Relay for Life. As I said at the start Nothing I've seen on any official SLRFL activity or group mentions an international effort or contribution. The issue I raised is with the way RFL is being handled in SL, not how it's being handled in RL.
However since you linked to it:
"The American Cancer Society licenses International Relay For Life to international cancer organizations". So RFL is a franchise, not an international effort. A query to the RFL website confirmed that all money raised by that country's RFL fund-raising stays in that country. Even locally here, it goes a step further with funds being retained by the individual state rather than going to the national body of the Australian Cancer Council.
You seem to have missed my point, yet again. It is not the inclusion of the word "American" that I'm writing about, it's the lack of any word resembling "international".
I've never doubted the SL RFL is being directed towards the ACS, so I'm not sure what your point is there. However there are people involved with the fundraising from all over the world and I would have liked to see some recognition of the Internationalness of it: especially for something lasting 6 months.
But if you can point me to an example of where this may have happened in SL I'm happy to be corrected. In the 6 months worth of notices from Caledon and the recent months of notices from Steelhead I think I've seen it referred to once and that was back in early March.
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