Absolutely bizarre story from Dana Milbank’s Washington Post:
“Ladies and gentlemen, in approximately 10 seconds, the Ed Markey avatar is going to gavel this hearing,” the flesh-and-blood Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) announced in the panel’s Rayburn hearing room. “There he is. He’s done it.”
Markey looked across the room at a jumbo computer screen showing his cartoonish avatar, named EdMarkey Alter. “My avatar actually looks like he’s been working out,” Markey noted approvingly, adding: “There are also several other avatars who have been invited to watch today’s hearing.”
Indeed there were: a goth character with feathered wings, a pink cat, a phantom with shimmering gray dreadlocks, a winged grasshopper, women in tube and bikini tops, and a naked man floating through the air. They were all “watching” the hearing from cyberspace via the virtual community Second Life — and the lawmakers were agog.
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) admired Markey’s avatar. “He looks like he is a bit younger, and he probably appreciates that, having come off a little basketball injury.”