Filmmaker Ralph Leighton says, "This was the highlight of my recent trip to Vladivostok, Russia, where the film GENGHIS BLUES won the Governor's Prize at the Pacific Meridian Film Festival. It features Tuvan throat-singer ONDAR and the voice of [Nobel laureate and physicist] Richard Feynman. I hope you enjoy it." Back TUVA Future: Ondar in Vladivostok. If you're wondering what the hell Tuva has to do with Feynman, check this out. (Thanks, George Dyson!)

vlad and friend boris presents 'Song for Sarah' for mrs. Palin. (via @andrewbaron)

Richard Metzger says:

From October 8 to November 1, New York's fab Deitch Projects art gallery host my beloved friend Kembra Pfahler's latest show of "butt prints"! The exhibit coincides with the Deitch-published artist monograph "Beautalism" which documents Pfahler's recent work.

Sit-Ins at Deitch Projects

Hugh from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "By popular demand, we have made our NSA logo parody available on a t-shirt! It's only available with a membership donation of $65 or more -- money that will be put to work in the fight against illegal spying." EFF's New NSA Spying Shirts (Thanks, Hugh!)

Typically, to dial out from an office line you hit 9 first. BB's saint of author services at Federated Media, Mugs Buckley, tells me that's changing for a very interesting reason. Mugs writes:

FM used an 8 and the other office I'm in just changed their system to a 7 due to the San Mateo police department getting all upset (and I don't blame them) about how many false calls there are to their system.

If you've heard similar stories, please share them in the comments!

Ron Howard, Andy Grffith, and Henry Winkler revived some old characters in a pro-Obama "call to action." It's funny, cute, sentimental, and incredibly awkward and horrifying all at once.
Ron Howard's Call To Action (Thanks, Joel Johnson!)

The carved animal figure above may be the oldest child's toy in Britain. Archaeologists from the University of Bristol found it last month near Stonhehnge and think it's at least 2,000 years old. They dug it out of a young child's grave. There is some debate about whether the toy is a pig or hedgehog.

The Bronze Age figurine was likely made as a toy or in memory of the baby being stillborn or dying in infancy, archaeologist (Joshua Pollard) said...

Evidence of toys during this period in British history is "extremely scant," Pollard said.

"In fact, it's very rare to find any kind of representational art in British prehistory—almost to the extent where you get the impression there's a bit of a taboo on making images of animals or people."

"Britain's Oldest Toy Found Buried With Stonehenge Baby?"

Joel Johnson spent several days living with the T-Mobile G1, the first Google Android phone. His review, posted to BB Gadgets, is a deep critique of the product but it also contains a thoughtful meditation on gadget reviews in general. From his post:

Products are not simply loved or hated, but appreciated over time on a scale which terminates with perfection at one extreme, failure to operate at the other. That scale can be broken down in any number of metrics, all of which are useless: what matters to the owner of a product is not where a reviewer, a single sample, has chosen to mark his opinion at an arbitrary point in time on the scale, but in what direction that point is heading. (And to a lesser and murkier degree, for how long that trend will continue.)

What's lost in the review — the direction of love — is critical. Like romantic love, a slide towards increasing love helps us overlook flaws, remember only the best aspects of our products' features, and gives the relationship between a product and its owner time to flourish and grow. Hidden delights will show themselves after a time, reinforcing the relationship, even as unaddressed incompatibilities might, after a measure, begin to tilt affection towards declination.

"A few days with the T-Mobile G1, the first Google Android phone"

In more virtual crime news, a Tokyo woman was jailed for "murdering" her ex-husband. Well, kinda. The 43-year-old logged in to the man's Maple Story account and killed his avatar. From the AP:

She has not yet been formally charged. If convicted, she could face up to five years in prison or a fine up to $5,000...

When bad deeds lead to criminal charges, prosecutors have found a real-world activity to cite — as in this case, in which the woman was charged with inappropriate computer access.

Woman jailed after 'killing' virtual husband

Previously on BB:
• Teens convicted of virtual theft

Two Danish Dutch teenagers were convicted of virtually roughing up a classmate in the multiplayer online game RuneScape and stealing some virtual goods from him. From the Associated Press:

"These virtual goods are goods (under Dutch law), so this is theft," the court said on Tuesday in a summary of its ruling...

The 15-year-old was sentenced to 200 hours service, and the 14-year-old to 160 hours.

"Teens convicted of virtual theft"

Jens Almström realized that the screw inside his bicycle bell was the same size as the screw on his tripod. So now his bike bell is easily converted into a camera mount! He posted a simple HOWTO about it. Bicycam (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

A couple weeks ago, my colleagues at Institute for the Future launched Superstruct, an alternate reality game set in the year 2019. In the game world, 2019 is a pretty intense time to be a human. Our species could be wiped out in just 23 years by a variety of superthreats, like disease, food shortages, environmental devastation, and power struggles (er, unbelievable as that may sound). Superstruct is an opportunity to imagine how we might solve global problems, if we can solve them. The game will be played for another month and you can join any time. From the Superstruct FAQ:

Q: What does "superstruct" mean?
Su`per`struct´ v. t. 1.To build over or upon another structure; to erect upon a foundation. Superstructing is what humans do. We build new structures on old structures. We build media on top of language and communication networks. We build communities on top of family structures. We build corporations on top of platforms for manufacturing, marketing, and distribution. Superstructing has allowed us to survive in the past and it will help us survive the super-threats...

Q: How do I play Superstruct?
A: Superstruct is played on forums, blogs, videos, wikis, and other familiar online spaces. We show you the world as it might look in 2019. You show us what it's like to live there. Bring what you know and who you know, and we'll all figure out how to make 2019 a world we want to live in.

Superstruct

Brad Robideau of NPR says:

The practice of short selling has been blamed for the collapse of several major companies’ shares during the financial crisis. What is short selling? In this video, “Getting naked in short selling,” Marketplace senior editor Paddy Hirsch is back at the whiteboard to explain the complexities of the markets.

All of the videos can be accessed at www.marketplace.org and are part of "Fallout: America's Financial Crisis," Marketplace's comprehensive coverage of the current financial crisis.

Getting naked in short selling

Dale says: "A silly decision in NYC to fine a librarian for saying nice things about his daughter's illustrations for a book, a manga edition of Macbeth."

For 39 years as an educator, Robert Grandt has been promoting other people’s books. So this year, when his daughter helped create a graphic novel of Macbeth of which he was mighty proud, Mr. Grandt could not resist bragging a little in the newsletter he distributes as librarian at Brooklyn Technical High School.

“Best New Book: Grandt, Eve, Shakespeare’s Macbeth — The Manga Edition,” he wrote under the heading Grandt’s Picks. graphic novelMr. Grandt’s daughter Eve did the artwork for the graphic novel “Shakespeare’s Macbeth: The Manga Edition.”

He also placed a few copies of the book at a library display table, and posted a sign: “Best Book Ever Written.” If someone was interested, they got a book free.

But one person’s parental pride is another panel’s ethical transgression.

On Monday, the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board announced it had settled a case it had brought against Mr. Grandt for promoting his daughter’s work. He agreed to pay a $500 fine and admit in a three-page stipulation that he had violated the city ethics code.

Librarian fined $500 for saying nice things about his daughter's book

Today on Boing Boing tv, a music video about life and death in the New Depression: Mom and Pop Killer, by Bay Area "intelligent hip-hop" artist The Grouch. (a special thanks to director Isaac Klotz.)

I WAS RECENTLY CORRECTED BY THE INTERNET regarding a very embarrassing misstatement regarding GNOMES.

YOU PERHAPS remember this remarkable book. In the early eighties it marked the height of the ILLUSTRATED FANTASY COFFEE TABLE BOOK CRAZE that we all remember, and even enjoyed its own animated special and series.

UNLIKE FROUD AND LEE'S "Faeries," "Gnomes" was not just an album of annotated illustrations, it was an ENTIRE FAKE ENCYCLOPEDIA of gnomic life and culture, explaining in great, unnecessary detail the way they built their homes, pitched their woo, and cured their ailments.

YOU MAY THUS APPRECIATE its attraction to me. Like the best books, it is unclear exactly who it was meant to reach. I may attest that children enjoy it, but it is very, ridiculously sophisticated and remarkably, bizarrely, europeanly frank about the gnome's physical and sexual lives. And while there is some discussion now on the internet about exactly how much Gnome nudity is in the book, I will settle the argument now: THERE IS ENOUGH.

HOWEVER, I was wrong. The authors, Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet, are not in any way Norwegian, as I claimed in a recent interview, but DUTCH.

I REGRET THE ERROR.

Bruce Schneier writes:

Kip Hawley, head of the TSA, has responded to my airport security penetration testing, published in The Atlantic.

Unfortunately, there's not really anything to his response. It's obvious he doesn't want to admit that they've been checking ID's all this time to no purpose whatsoever, so he just emits vague generalities like a frightened squid filling the water with ink. Yes, some of the stunts in article are silly (who cares if people fly with Hezbollah T-shirts?) so that gives him an opportunity to minimize the real issues.

I picked up 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: A Pop-Up Book yesterday after being poleaxed by it in a bookstore window. Paper engineer Sam Ita has created a magnificent, giggle-inducing, gorgeous adaptation of the classic Jules Verne tale, retelling the story with a series of gigantic, page-bursting pop-up effects that push the limits of paper technology. The story is retold using charming Tin Tin-esque comics-panels, and there's just enough verbiage there to glue together the vast and hypnotic paper-effects.

At 8 months, my daughter Poesy has just started to turn pages on books, and she was completely mesmerised by this one, slowly turning the page, then closing it, then opening it again, visibly delighted by the clever ways that the paper unfolded -- and unfolded -- and unfolded. Each scene has lots of little easter eggs and secondary scenes in it too, little grace notes that turn this from a merely great book to a world-class piece of paper-fetish. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: A Pop-Up Book

I love this student design-project: a wardrobe made out of a pile of suitcases:

Now showing as part of Dutch Design Week, the graduate show at Design Academy Eindhoven includes Maarten De Ceulaer’s A Pile of Suitcases. Designer de Ceulaer graduated in 2008, and already his Pile of Suitcases is garnering lots of attention.

While the project seems simple enough—a wardrobe made from a grouping of suitcases—it evinces de Ceulaer’s peculiar philosophy of combining the poetic with the practical: “I try to base my designs on a strong, simple and pure concept… to question what I see around me, and translate that in an object. I think poetry, humour and communication of ideas are very important aspects of my designs, but at the same time I want to make useful and functional objects with that way of thinking.” A Pile of Suitcases wardrobe comes with “well-measured compartments” and “steel profiles [that] keep the pile firmly together.” In its construction, the piece responds to the very real needs of its user.

A Pile of Suitcases (via Cribcandy)

You know those new, super-secure, RFID-enabled passports the US is issuing to its citizens? They're manufactured and assembled offshore, in sometimes-unstable regions, the blanks are shipped around using unsecured couriers, and they're sold to US citizens at an 85 percent profit. I feel safer already.

Each new e-passport contains a small computer chip inside the back cover that contains the passport number along with the photo and other personal data of the holder. The data is secured and is transmitted through a tiny wire antenna when it is scanned electronically at border entry points and compared to the actual traveler carrying it.

According to interviews and documents, GPO managers rejected limiting the contracts to U.S.-made computer chip makers and instead sought suppliers from several countries, including Israel, Germany and the Netherlands.

Mr. Somerset, the GPO spokesman, said foreign suppliers were picked because "no domestic company produced those parts" when the e-passport production began a few years ago.

After the computer chips are inserted into the back cover of the passports in Europe, the blank covers are shipped to a factory in Ayutthaya, Thailand, north of Bangkok, to be fitted with a wire Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, antenna. The blank passports eventually are transported to Washington for final binding, according to the documents and interviews.

Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security (via Beyond the Beyond)

Modern Fred's scans of vintage Japanese movie-monster posters include some spectacular pieces, none moreso than the anatomical cutaways of Godzilla, Gamera and co. I always wondered about their skeletal structure! Kaiju Eiga (via Geisha Asobi)

The 2008 election campaign considered as a conversation around a D&D table. This is pure nerdy political hilarity. The Kucinich bits? Priceless.

OBAMA: "My friends, I am a totally unoriginal grizzled character class stereotype. I should lead the party because I have more testicular damage than that one."

MCCAIN: Yeah, well, you pal around with dark elves.

OBAMA: OH NO YOU DIDN'T.

MCCAIN: Whatever, so's your mom.

OBAMA: So's your FACE.

MCCAIN: So's your Mom's face!

HILARY: WTF you guys. Why am I playing the cleric?

MCCAIN: Hilary, we've been over this.

HILARY: No, dude. I am so sick of being the girlfriend healer. Seriously, I can't even use a sword. Fuck this noise.

KUCINICH: IM A BARD

OBAMA: That's nice.

KUCINICH: MY FAMILIAR IS A PURPLE SNOW LEOPARD

MCCAIN: Oh, Jesus. Here we go.

KUCINICH: DID I MENTION MY WIFE IS A TOTALLY BANGIN DRYAD WITH 20 CHARISMA

HILARY: C'mon you guys, I've been playing this shit since Gygax was in eighth grade. Why can't I be the party leader with the magic sword for once?

Adventuring Party Politics: The Campaign is Getting Ugly (via Making Light)

(Image: My players Saturday morning, an Attribution-only Creative Commons licensed photo from Benimoto's Flickr stream)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's posted a nifty Instructable video demonstrating the technique for spotting the secret spy-codes that many color laser-printers and copiers embed in their output. These dots were long-rumoured, but it wasn't until EFF discovered them that their existence was verified and their code was cracked. EFF's working on Freedom of Information Act requests to uncover which government agencies requested these dots, and what they do with them, but in the meantime, you can use the techniques in this video to spy on your friends and neighbours, just like the Feds! Yellow Dots of Mystery: Is Your Printer Spying on You? (via Make)

See also:
* Seeing Yellow: call your printer's manufacturer and ask why they spy on you
* EFF cracks hidden snitch codes in color laser prints
* Do forensic printer marks slow down printers?

I'm pretty chuffed to learn that Metaplace, a games startup that I'm an advisor to -- closed a new round of financing today, netting $6.7 million from their existing VCs and Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Metaplace was started by Raph Koster, who created Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, with the idea of democratizing the creation of virtual worlds and games inside them.

Instead of gigantic, elaborate virtual worlds, like Warcraft and its competitors, Metaplace allows users to create modest, personal virtual worlds the way you'd put together a MySpace page, using a toolkit that unpacks into a series of ever-more-powerful tools that allow greater and greater customization. Users can then link up their Metaplaces, stringing together their worlds to make bigger, more complex ones.

There's an invite-only beta, and Raph's promised to update his blog whenever new invites are made available. Raph's one of my favorite people in the world, and he's a profound thinker about games (see his book A Theory of Fun [free PDF] for more). I'm really excited to see Metaplace thriving, even in the current crummy economy. METAPLACE LANDS $6.7 MILLION IN FUNDING