There are some (many?) things I simply can't get my head round. One of these is Second Life in spite of having been involved in the publication of Graham Pond and Paul Carr's excellent Unofficial Tourists' Guide to Second Life (where I reckon the apostrophe is in the wrong, or at least less correct, place). So, rather than mislead you I asked our resident expert, Jo Scott aka Joanna wombat, to update us on developments in this weird world.

'Since last November, one large green wasteland floating somewhere on the outskirts of Second Life has been transformed into the multi-island archipelago of Second Nature. Second Nature is our flagship island, and over the last few months, has become home to a wide variety of scientists. We have decided that Second Life is so experimental that we can't possibly know what scientists will actually find useful, so the best thing is to let them find out for themselves. The upshot is, any scientist with an idea for a project in Second Life is welcome to come to us and experiment on our island. The result is an island full of interactive and developing exhibits, from full scale city modelling, to a ride through a giant cell to a scientific art exhibition. To see all of these, do come and visit Second Nature.

In the meantime, we have been experimenting with meetings. Following the SciFoo unconference, several attendees led by Jean-Claude Bradley have been holding regular SciFoo Lives On sessions in Second Life: a topic is chosen by wiki and anyway, attendee or not, may come and present on, or simply discuss the topic, just like a SciFoo session. Not to be left behind, we have organised a weekly series of events. The format is simple: a scientist comes to our island, gives a short talk about his work, and then takes questions from the audience. The first was given by Dr Phil Holliger on how to evolve polymerases to repair ancient DNA, and that was followed last week by Professor Graham Martin on cormorant vision. Both were really well attended and the feedback has been really postive, so we're definitely going to keep doing them, and one day, we may even learn how to work the slide projector properly! The next talk is this Thursday, featuring Professor Philip Gibbard from Cambridge University, talking about how massive floods cut Britain off from the mainland with the creation of the English Channel. All talks are free and no specialist knowledge is required, so please do come along. Any questions, IM Joanna Wombat...'

On the subject of social networks and cyberworlds, I have just been sent a copy of The Bookaholics' Guide to Book Blogs (apostrophe also in wrong place in my opinion) compiled by Rebecca Gillieron and Catheryn Kilgarriff, published by Marion Boyars, which is owned and run by the Catheryn. This blog has a very small mention but it is much more to do with genuinely bookish rather than corporate-ish blogs.

The link with social networks is that I used to work with Catheryn's dad, Arthus Boyars. He is, according to Wikipedia a poet, but I always viewed him as the advertisement sales manager of Early Music magazine for whose profitability I was responsible at one point - and thank God for Arthur and his ad revenue in those difficult days.

And in parallel, Marion Boyars old business partner was John Calder and together they ran Calder and Boyars for a decade. Calder became a stalwart defender of retail price maintenance and on one occasion personally challenged in court the decision by various publishers in the Uk to abandon it. He summonsed me to the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand as a witness. I was first on after the lawyers had spent an hour talking their very special language. I was pretty nervous. There was this grand old man of the book trade with lawyers and judges all around waiting to demolish me by clever argumentation and cross-examination. The opening exchange ran something like:

'Mr Charkin, in your affidavit you describe yourself as a publisher.Where did you go to uiversity? Trinity, Cambridge. What did you study? Natural Sciences. There you are, m'lud, the man claims to be a publisher but he studied science.'

Unspoken but clear meaning...I rest my case! Fortunately the judge didn't quite see it that simply.

I suppose the Catheryn, Arthur, Marion, John Calder, net book agreement is my idea of a social network.