Metafilter user Aeschenkarnos posted this hilarious and brilliant review of "Outside" (AKA the real world), treating life as though it were a highly entertaining massively multiplayer game:

In terms of the traditional target age content metrics, Outside is remarkably high in sex, violence and challenges to traditional values, despite the strong child-focussed marketing it receives. Many would go so far as to say that for a child to develop the ability to cope with Outside is essential, as long as the harm incurred is not too debilitating. Children injured playing Outside are usually comforted by parents, and soon encouraged to go Outside again; this leads to the conclusion that somehow Outside has escaped any and all of the usual moralizing that surrounds the videogaming industry. One might say that Outside gets a free pass from the Jack Thompsons of this world...

Other players choose to focus on accumulation of personal abilities, the variety of which greatly exceeds the capacity of any individual to accumulate; again, the game requires players to engage in years of grinding to achieve any notable standard with a skill or ability. Players are issued abilities and characteristics largely at random, and it is entirely possible for a player to be nerfed beyond any reasonable expectation of being able to play the game, or to be buffed to the point where anything he or she does is markedly easier. Unfortunately over time, player abilities tend to degrade, unless significant effort is made to keep skills up. This reviewer cannot emphasise this enough: Outside requires a huge time investment to build up player abilities, exceeding any other massively multiplayer game on the market by some three orders of magnitude.

Players are encouraged to focus on social interaction, which can be engaged in in a variety of ways. In fact it's extraordinarily difficult to solo anything whatsoever in Outside, apart from basic skill and knowledge accumulation quests. One of the major forms of social interaction in the game is based largely around the addition of new players to Outside, and is both complex and, in comparison to the storyline-driven romance quests of, say, Baldur's Gate or Mass Effect, they are immensely difficult. Dedicated players of Outside, however, report that the romance quests are among the most rewarding the game has to offer.

Link (via Kottke)

We just received permission from the publicity handler for George Lucas to air this *!*!*!*exclusive*!*!*!* interview with the Star Wars creator about his new self-help audiobook and line of aromatherapy bath salts and sugar scrubs, "The Boba Fett Mystique."

This product is co-branded by notoriously cocooned celebrity author JD Salinger. Behold, our power of videobloggage is mighty! It's a special calendar day.

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion and exclusive online discounts.

Passengers on an Air New Zealand flight from Fiji found themselves being fumigated yesterday, after the crew discovered the aircraft's biosecurity clearance had expired:

A bio-security certificate prevents an airline from having to fumigate an aircraft every time it returns here. The spraying left the man with a sore throat and caused a baby to gag and vomit.

The construction engineer said the MAF officers took about five minutes to fumigate the plane before leaving the passengers to sit in "a thick fog" as they sealed the door shut behind them.

Link, and here's a related story about an asthmatic passenger who thought she was going to die. (thanks, David Carroll)

"[S]tarting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars." Link. (thanks, Sam Coniglio)

* Ed. Note: I suppose I should remind the humor-impaired of the calendrical significance behind this important announcement.

Oh, alright, I made up the hippie-hating part, but they do exhibit "cannibalistic" behavior, and they are quite large. Mexican fisherman call them "red devils."

Here in the US, we call them Humboldt Squids, and here's a short video about an ongoing invasion, from QUEST, a science show produced by San Francisco's PBS affiliate station.

A mysterious sea creature up to 7 feet long, with 10 arms, a sharp beak and a ravenous appetite, has invaded ocean waters off Northern California. Packs of fierce Humboldt Squid attack nearly everything they see, from fish to scuba divers. Marine biologists are working to discover why they've headed north from their traditional homes off South America.

Link (thanks Lauren)

Zimbabwe democracy and human rights advocacy group Sokwanele created this Google maps hack to visualize first-hand news reports of election-related human rights violations in the embattled Southern African nation. (more at this cheesebikini post. Thanks, Sean savage)

Update: Sean clarifies:

It's important to note, however, that this service doesn't illustrate *first-hand* violence reports, as you state in the boingboing post... It shows incidents reported in the media. As the map site stipulates:

"The breaches shown on this map represent a small sample of those gathered during our Zimbabwe Election Watch (ZEW) project, which set out to monitor the Zimbabwean government's compliance with the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections.

The breaches identified under ZEW are based on information derived from media sources. It is very important that the map is viewed with this in mind.

Zimbabwe has a highly restricted media environment, and fuel shortages make remote rural areas inaccessible to journalists who do manage to circumvent the legislation and report regardless. This means that urban areas have a greater representation on the map. Blank areas on the map do not indicate 'uneventful' areas; they are more likely to represent stories we are unable to tell and incidents that have not been reported.

The map aims to give an impression of the scale and range of challenges facing Zimbabweans as we head towards the March 29th elections. Even though this is based on a small sample of information we have logged since July 2007, it clearly shows that conditions in the country are not conducive for a free and fair democractic elections."

Cecile Dubuis wrote a master's dissertation for University College London titled "Libraries & The Occult." I've only read bits of it, but the challenge she identifies is that occult books are, by their nature, anomalous and hard to categorize, much like the phenomena discussed in their pages. As a result, they are often unsearchable in the context of traditional library classification systems. From the dissertation:

The occult seems to be one of the least considered subjects when it comes to classification. This can often result in materials being divided among other subjects such as philosophy, psychology and religion. This can make it difficult to find occult materials. In such cases, a further difficulty can arise for the user; that of asking for help in locating “occult books”. …reactions may not always be negative or judgemental but it does depend somewhat on the beliefs and opinions of the library staff concerned. Particularly those who eschew the subject from a standpoint of little or no personal knowledge...

This subject is ambiguous and marginal in virtually all ways: socially, intellectually, academically, religiously, scientifically, and conceptually. It does not fit in the rational world but this is also what makes it so fascinating and interesting. The imbalance between the amount of interest in the field and the stock within the library system is a result of such dilemmas.

Link (via Further: Strange Attractor & Beyond)

Sidewalk Psychiatry is a series of stencils sprayed onto pavement that ask introspective questions. From artist Candy Chang's statement:

While doing some habitual walking and thinking one morning, Candy thought it would be nice to have some help along the way. Pedestrians in the city often find themselves walking in deep thought. A routine trip can prompt reflections on everything from future goals to last night’s dinner conversation. As people sacrifice personal time for hectic schedules, these casual occasions for reflection become all the more important.

Link

Last week, I posted that a team of New Zealand researchers found a slew of interesting species in Antarctic waters. Some of the animals they discovered in the Ross Sea may be entirely new to science. National Geographic has posted a slideshow of the beautiful creatures. Seen here, an Antarctic octopus collected 3,280 feet down. Link

Previously on BB:
• Giant creatures in Antarctic sea Link
• The Deep: The Extraordinary Creates of the Abyss Link

Dan Proops creates oil paintings inspired by digital technology and culture. He has a new show opening next month at London's Empire Gallery. The Creative Review Blog has a fascinating interview with Proops and more samples of his work. (Seen above, "76% Complete" and "The Girl with a Pearl Earring Censored." From the interview:

I believe the influence of Cubist philosophy on the graphic user interface (ie operating systems like Windows’ XP/Vista) has never been properly looked at. In my work I seek to set strong arguments for the connections between the many “viewpoints” set up in cubist paintings and the way PC and Mac operating systems set up multiple “windows” to allow the computer user to see and use and assimilate information.

It cannot be overlooked that the theories and ideas set up by the cubist mentality of setting up objects and environments and viewing them from different vantages from within the same space has created the intellectual set of possibilities allowing the design and concept for the “Windows” interface to evolve.

Link to CR Blog, Link to Dan Proops site

We've featured the hauntingly beautiful sculptural art of Jessica Joslin before. A new book that features her work, Strange Nature, has just been released.

The creatures that make up Jessica Joslin's world are specimens of unknown species, captured from the collision of myth and science. They are constructed and formed through an intricate fusion of bone, brass, antique hardware and other delicate fragments. This finely wrought craftsmanship is displayed with exquisite full-color photography throughout. Jessica Joslin: Strange Nature is an opportunity to enter this artist's eccentric and wonderful world.

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Marco the Monkey sculpture by Jessica Joslin
• Turning a departed pet into a cool work of art

This was one of my favorite talks at Ted. It's only four minutes long.

Siegfried Woldhek knows faces -- he's drawn more than 1,100 of them. Using sophisticated image analysis and his own skills as an artist, he's come up with a fascinating discovery about Leonardo Da Vinci.

Leonardo Da Vinci's life and work is well known -- but his own face is not. Woldhek used some thoughtful image-analysis techniques to find what he believes is the true face of Leonardo. Here, he walks viewers through exactly how he did it.

Link

Two physicists are publishing what sounds like a bizarre scientific paper that they claim explains poltergeists. The researchers--Pierro Brovetto, formerly of the Institute Fisica Superiore, and his colleague Vera Maxia--hypothesize that female neuronal changes at puberty can cause quantum mechanical disturbances. The paper will be published in the science journal NeuroQuantology. From New Scientist:

Brovetto and Maxia believe that the extra fluctuations triggered by the pubescent brain would substantially enhance the presence of the virtual particles surrounding the person. This could slowly increase the pressure of air around them, moving objects and even sending them hurtling across the room...

We contacted Brian Josephson, a Nobel laureate physicist who is on the editorial board of Neuroquantology.

"This looks distinctly flaky to me," Josephson commented.

Link to New Scientist, Link to NeuroQuantology abstract

Today on Boing Boing tv, a conversation with Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Global Voices, about videoblogging culture in the North African nation of Tunisia.

Despite intense restrictions on freedom of speech there, and extreme risks for critics of the political status quo, bloggers there are finding innovative uses for video online, as a method of cultural commentary and activism. Using tools like Tor and SipPhone to ensure anonymity, they have proven themselves to be several steps ahead of their US counterparts -- as evidenced by a story Zuckerman shares about an Apple ad remix.

Link to Boing Boing tv post, with discussion, related links, and downloadable video.

Related previous Boing Boing posts:

Tunisia jails, reportedly tortures popular blogger and online journo

Liveblogging WSIS in Tunisia, continued.

Liveblogging WSIS in Tunisia, continued.

Report: Journalists, others at WSIS attacked by authorities

BoB award noms for world "freedom of expression" blogs

I have a Google Alert set up for "Donna Blue" because I'm interested in news about the CIA / cocaine jet crash from October 2007.

Today, I received a "Donna Blue" Google Alert linking to this NSFW, but funny Flickr photo from a FRIDA (Feminist Response in Disability Activism) Sex and Disability Town Hall event. Link

This lovely 21.5 foot squid is now hanging around Paris's Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. The creature has been plastinated, meaning its fluids have been replaced with a polymer. (It's the same process Gunther von Hagens used for the Body Worlds exhibitions.) The squid was donated by the country of New Zealand. From the BBC News:

A pink pigment was added to make it look as close as possible to the living creature...

The usual way of preserving life forms - by pickling them in a jar - would, the museum said, have been demeaning, and out of the question.

Link to BBC News, Link to museum page

I love books about pranks, scams, bar bets, and cons. Not because I want to cheat people, but because scams and cons are a fascinating way to look at human nature. Sucker bets reveal our natural tendencies to be gullible, greedy, sympathetic, friendly, and suspicious.

A few books in this genre that I especially like are The Big Con by David Maurer, Pranks by Re/Search, How to Play in Traffic by Penn & Teller, The Big Book of Stuntology by Sam Bartlett, and Tricks with Your Head: Hilarious Magic Tricks and Stunts to Disgust and Delight by Mac King and Mark Levy.

The Modern Con Man -- How to Get Something for Nothing, is another book in the same genre. Written by "America's last sideshow entertainer," Todd Robbins, this book is filled with cheap sucker bets that, if used will win you either free drinks or a punch in the nose.

You'll learn how to:

• Almost always win at the game of Nim (where you dump 20 matchsticks on the bar, and take turns with another player by removing one, two, or three matches from the pile in the hopes of leaving the other player with the last match, making you the winner)

• Tie a knot into a necktie by holding each end of the tie in one hand and not letting go.

• Hold a lit match upside down for 20 seconds without getting burned,.

• Beat a sucker with lots of seemingly can't-lose card and coin tricks.

My 10-year-old daughter loved all the tricks I showed her. Most of these short cons are delightful for both the prankster and the mark, unless they involve large wagers. Perform them at your own risk. Link

German photographers Walter Schels and Beate Lakotta have a show of their extraordinary before-and-after-death photos opening on April 9 at the Wellcome Trust in London. The photos are marvellous and wrenching, the difference between flesh animated and the empty vessel gigantic and unmistakable, even when the before-death shot is of someone terribly ill. Life's marvellous and inexplicable.

Rita Schoffler, 62
First portrait: February 17 2004
Rita and her husband had divorced 17 years before she became terminally ill with cancer. But when she was given her death sentence, she realised what she wanted to do: she wanted to speak to him again. It had been so long, and it had been such an acrimonious divorce: she had denied him access to their child, and the wounds ran deep.

Second portrait: May 10 2004
When she called him and told him she was dying, he said he’d come straight over. It had been nearly 20 years since they’d exchanged a word, but he said he’d be there. “I shouldn’t have waited nearly so long to forgive and forget. I’m still fond of him despite everything.” For weeks, all she’d wanted to do was die. But, she said, “now I’d love to be able to participate in life one last time…”

Link

Watchpeanuts is a fantastic concept drawing from Evan of DeviantArt, a graphic answer to the age-old question, "What if Charles Schulz created the Watchmen?" Link (Thanks, James!)

Evan sez, "Scribd is going to let users mail in physical paper documents to be scanned and published to Scribd.com. Awesome way to find people who have saved old documents from the pre-MS Word/Google Docs days and want to find an easy way to share them online without the hassles of manually scanning and uploading. The project is 'Convert your paper to iPaper' and it's completely free of charge."

Holy crap that's awesome -- I have TONS of old hardcopy lying around I'd love to see online. Link (Thanks, Evan!)

"The National Data Center and Personal Privacy," an article published in the Atlantic in November, 1967, was eerily prescient in its predictions of the coming data-mining panopticon and the resulting loss of civil liberties. It was written by Arthur Miller, but not the guy who wrote The Crucible.

But such a Data Center poses a grave threat to individual freedom and privacy. With its insatiable appetite for information, its inability to forget anything that has been put into it, a central computer might become the heart of a government surveillance system that would lay bare our finances, our associations, or our mental and physical health to government inquisitors or even to casual observers. Computer technology is moving so rapidly that a sharp line between statistical and intelligence systems is bound to be obliterated. Even the most innocuous of centers could provide the “foot in the door” for the development of an individualized computer-based federal snooping system...

Any increase in the amount of recorded information is certain to increase the risk of errors in reporting and recording and indexing. Information distortion also will be caused by machine malfunctioning. Moreover, people working with the data in Washington or at a distance through remote terminals can misuse the information. As information accumulates, the contents of an individual’s computerized dossier will appear more and more impressive and will impart a heightened sense of reliability to the user, which, coupled with the myth of computer infallibility, will make it less likely that the user will try to verify the recorded data. This will be true despite the “softness” or “imprecision” of much of the data. Our success or failure in life ultimately may turn on what other people decide to put into our files and on the programmer’s ability, or inability, to evaluate, process, and interrelate information. The great bulk of the information likely to find its way into the center will be gathered and processed by relatively unskilled and unimaginative people who lack discrimination and sensitivity. Furthermore, a computerized file has a certain indelible quality — adversities cannot be overcome simply by the passage of time.

Link

Man, this seems like a hell of a good use for a kilohulahoop and a box of zip-ties:

last fall, mass studies architecture studio created a temporary installation for the 25th anniversary of storefront for art and architecture gallery in new york city. the installation was created from about a thousand hula-hoops zip-tied together to form a massive dome structure.

now, storefront for art and architecture gallery has teamed up with abitare magazine to bring a new version of the ring dome to milan for the salone del mobile. this new dome will use 1,500 hula-hoops and 12,000 zip-ties and will be installed in the galleria vittorio emanuele shopping arcade in central milan. the installation will feature a series of events including a 100-minute dialogue between hans ulrich obrist, pierre paulin and rem koolhaas as well as a day's worth of domino-interviews with 50 participants, starting with naoto fukasawa, gaetano pesce and oliviero toscani.

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

Hackers from the Chaos Computer Club lifted a fingerprint from German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble, printed it on plastic, and distributed it by the thousands with their magazine for anyone who wants to impersonate the Minister at a biometric checkpoint. Remember folks: short of amputation, a biometric identifier can't be revoked or changed.

Schauble is a big proponent of the use of fingerprints in passports but is not the CCC's only target. The group has called for help in obtaining the prints of other German officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The CCC's publication of the fingerprint coincides this week with the presentation of a security researcher who demonstrated a biometric keylogger that can capture digital fingerprints and other digital biometric data as its transmitted from a scanning device to the server where the information is processed. The hacker can then analyze and re-use the data to subvert biometric systems and gain entry to secured buildings.

Link

Flickr user Switthoft cast this metal Boba Fett Pez head and documented the process online.

I made this using the lost wax casting process with an organic burnout. The material is silicon bronze.

The original sleeve for the Pez broke, so I cannibalized parts from another dispenser: Simba from the Lion King.

Link

Artist Elizabeth LeCourt has produced a lovely line of art in the form of clothing made from detailed maps of the world (it's meant to be hung on the walls and not worn). Shown here: dresses based on maps of London and Paris. Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Korean artist Choi Jung Hyun made this viper sculpture out of keyboard keys for a gallery show -- it's meant to promote awareness of recycling. And snakes. Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)

This year marks the 45th anniversary of Disneyland's Enchanted Tiki Room, the birthplace of animatronics and one of my all-time favorite Disney attractions. Some of my earliest memories are of being dandled on my grandfather's knee at the Tiki Room while we sang and whistled together to the birds' songs and jokes.

Former Disney designer Kevin Kidney and Jodi have been commissioned to make a run of limited-edition items based on the Tiki Room for a special event at Disneyland on June 22 and the schwag is awesome -- every nerve in my body just stood on end and shouted "WANT!" (Oh, if only I still lived in LA!)

For years, I've harbored a fantasy of putting together a punk/alternative tribute disc for the Tiki Room, with the parrots voiced by Shane McGowan, Nina Hagen, Cheech Marin and Jean Reno, and the songs performed as follows: "In the Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Room," the Ramones; "Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing," Shonen Knife; "Hawai'ian War Chant," the Breeders; and "Heigh-Ho" by Tom Waits.

Yes, I know, many of these people are dead. But a fella can dream.

We’ve been waiting 5 years to make this item, and it’s finally happened. Rongo, the Tiki God of Agriculture, is at long last a beautiful green-glazed ceramic drinking vessel for your Tiki bar. His very unusual size and shape makes him an equally suitable fruit bowl, cereal bowl, or whatever-you-like-bowl. He’s even clutching his spool of kite string, just as he’s been doing at Disneyland for 45 years.

Link (Thanks, Dwiff!)

Bonnie sez, "Craftster Sammi Resendes from Geekcentralstation.blogspot.com recently created Star Wars Amigurumi dolls of Admiral Ackbar, Princess Leia, Yoda, Chewbacca and Han Solo. There's even a Slave Leia! Sammi talks here about Star Wars Amigurumi and how fans can get started making their own." Link (Thanks, Bonnie!)

Homeless people flock to London's Heathrow airport by the dozen, camouflaging themselves with Hawai'ian shirts and bum-bags and pretending to be stranded tourists so that they can sleep a warm night on an airport bench:

When TIME joined the outreach worker and police officers this week, the homeless people contacted included a man sleeping under his coat, another conspicuously hiding behind an open newspaper, and a woman clutching a duty free bag who insisted she was waiting for a flight, only to whisper when police were out of earshot: "I can't afford electricity; it's warm here; please, let me stay."

These men and women may seem to embody the English tradition of the plucky Dickensian Dodger, but it would be wrong to mistake their ingenuity for anything other than desperation, social workers say. Like those to whom the travel ads all around the airport appeal, Heathrow's homeless are also in search of escape: from debts, legal problems, family responsibilities. They often have mental health or substance abuse problems, and they often refuse help. During the day, some travel by public transport into London to beg, busk or take drugs, while others remain in the airport, sometimes scrounging food off sympathetic restaurant and cafe workers.

Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)