Otto the Octopus, a resident of Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany, is bored because the aquarium's closed for the winter -- so he's making mischief. First he squirted an overhead light until it shorted out, and now he's taken to juggling the hermit crabs.

"Once we saw him juggling the hermit crabs in his tank, another time he threw stones against the glass damaging it. And from time to time he completely re-arranges his tank to make it suit his own taste better - much to the distress of his fellow tank inhabitants."

Otto the octopus wreaks havoc (Thanks, Marilyn!)

(Image: EUROPICS)

My fall class at ITP has been tracking the creation and distribution of video produced by people other than political professionals, and I wanted to share some of the things they found here. The story of 'Obama <3s teh internet <3s Obama' has been told many times; less well appreciated is the effective Republican/Conservative use of video.

There is a certain (inevitable/dangerous) triumphalism in the Democratic win, because losers always take better lessons from the battlefield than winners. (It's hard to remember now, but before the 2004 election, much the political conversation was around describing the dominance of the warbloggers.)

Looking at Republican uses of video that my students analyzed was quite instructive in this light, because a) those strategies weren't just weak mirrors of the Democratic camp, they were strong but different ones and b) these strategies are going to become much stronger in 2010 and then again in 2012. I'll point to a few of these examples while I'm guest blogging.

First up, and my vote for the single most affecting video of the election, is Dear Mr. Obama, above. I am an anti-Iraq-war Democrat, and it nevertheless brought tears to my eyes (and I don't cry easy -- will.i.am's Yes We Can left me fairly cold.) Watch it all the way through, or, if you can't, skip to the end before you close it.

This is a video made by people who knew exactly what they were doing. Stuff like the American flag draped just in frame looks hokey to the godless/ sodomite/ baby-killing wing of the Democratic party (my people), but is part of a "plain speaking and right thinking" package that clearly hit just right with the target audience. It was seen 13 million times in 3 months, which topped Obama Girl in absolute views, and I've got a Crush...on Obama was up a year and a half.

This is why this video is really really important: the simple message and Blair Witch production values (good enough to be effective, bad enough to seem unplanned) made this video like Democratic kryptonite. The video was largely circulated via homophilous forwarding along conservative channels. Despite the incredible viewership, I'm betting that the ratio of BoingBoing readers who have seen Obama Girl to those who've seen Dear Mr. Obama is at least 10:1. (When my students presented it to ~100 NYU students on election eve, something like 3 of them had seen it.)

The lovely non-partisan view of voting -- make your case to everyone, see what happens on election day -- masks the fact that there are really three different voter games being played in elections. The first is 'Mobilize the base' -- at ~50% voter participation, there's a lot of juice in just being able to get people who want you to win out to actually get to the polls. The second game is 'Swing the undecided.' There is, to a first approximation, no such thing as an 'independent' voter. People who don't make up their minds until late in an election are less political, less involved in the issues, and less likely to vote overall than partisans, so their minds have to be changed with something emotionally engaging. And the third game is 'Depress the turnout of your opponent' or, at the very least, to avoid enraging them to the point that they are willing to do something rash, like vote.

And in that regard, Dear Mr. Obama was a trifecta. For the base, a muscular but polite attack on the very issue that brought Obama into the spotlight. For the undecided, the emotional charge is much likelier to sway them than argumentation. And for the Dems -- nothing. The video might as well not have existed for all it was seen in Democratic circles. Since the video's sole speaker can't be criticized without making the criticizer look churlish at best, almost no Dems forwarded it, linked to it, talked about it.

For most of the life of the Republic, it was not just possible but imperative to say different things in different places -- what politician would tell auto workers and orange pickers the same thing! That old world had a stake driven through its heart by the Macaca Moment; every politician knows that anything they say to anyone, they say to everyone everywhere.

Now, the job of saying one thing to one group, and something different to another, falls to the supporters. The social solidarity of weblogs and mailing lists replaces the old world of media buys and Chamber of Commerce speeches, recreating through the echo chamber what was once the province of geography and cost. Dear Mr. Obama was music to Republican ears while being inert in Democratic hands; expect it to be a template for 2010.

As previously mentioned, today Offworld moved just a little closer to that long-stated goal of bringing in more influence from outside the games industry proper with its first new feature from Ignatz Award winning and Eisner nominated comic artist James Kochalka, who will be creating new monstrous Miis for the site which you can bring home to your own Wii.

We also saw that Rock Band is about to get a little bit country, made a plea for more developers to praise rather than scold their players, found new iPhone games based on bondage and argument-settling by music, and saw Sega racing classic Outrun re-made for Nintendo's Virtual Boy.

Finally, we saw a very Weezer Christmas coming to iPhone and a Sega Master System's circuits bent to create real-time guitar effects, got jealous over a fantastic scheme to bring freelance illustrator work into LittleBigPlanet, and got ready to take a ride on the Raptor Copter, a brilliant looking and literally-named new iPhone game.

Love the little adventure dudes on the ends of these teabags, custom designed for a posh cafe in Istanbul.

Activitea... (see what I did there)

A site about restoring an old Lombard Industries Centaur folding motor scooter to pristine condition.

Although I have never actually seen one before, I have been looking for a Lombard Industries Centaur folding motor scooter for about ten years. Designed for use by private pilots and boaters, this neat little unit will run 35mph using a Clinton engine, and folds up to a large suitcase-sized package that weighs about 50 lbs. This particular scooter was in a friend's garage - he had bought it from another TRAACA club member, but decided he didn't want to mess with it.

Lombard Industries Centaur folding motor scooter (Thanks, John K.!)

Anonymous says: "It's an old watch, asploded into a necklace. How was this not on BB already? Plus it costs close to a G, so all of the commentors will flip the hell out. Hooray!" Victorian Watch Cock Necklace

Craig Yoe says:

My new book that I edited and designed, The Best of Sexology collects the wackiest and most unintentionally funny articles from America's first sex magazine, Sexology, The Illustrated Magazine of Sex Science. "Homosexual Chickens", "Adolph Hitler's Sex Life", "Sex and Satan", "Twin Beds or Single?", "Sexual Tattooing", "When Midgets Marry" are just a few of the subjects covered...or should I say uncovered?

The publisher of "Sexology", started in 1933, was Hugo Gernsbach, who published the first pulps of science fiction (the term originated in his pubs) and the science fiction award The Hugo is named after him. Gernsback used his science fiction writers and artists (like Frank Paul) to produce Sexology. There's a peek at the book here and I'll be on Fix TV's Red Eye show Fri. nite/Sat. morn at 2:00 a.m. to talk about it.

The Best of Sexology: Kinky and Kooky Excerpts from America's First Sex Magazine

Seen here is a 2700-year-old stash of marijuana, found in a Gobi Desert grave near Turpan, China. Ethan Russo, a visiting professor at the Chinese Acadmy of Scineces, and his colleagues report the discovery in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany (abstract). From Discovery News:

The size of seeds mixed in with the leaves, along with their color and other characteristics, indicate the marijuana came from a cultivated strain. Before the burial, someone had carefully picked out all of the male plant parts, which are less psychoactive, so Russo and his team believe there is little doubt as to why the cannabis was grown.

What is in question, however, is how the marijuana was administered, since no pipes or other objects associated with smoking were found in the grave.

"Perhaps it was ingested orally," Russo said. "It might also have been fumigated, as the Scythian tribes to the north did subsequently."

Oldest Marijuana Stash Found (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

I was in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado last week. While taking a walk in the neighborhood with my family, we saw this unusual house. The stone cottage used to be in the center of the lot. The owners moved it to the front of the property and built a connected addition that nearly fills the lot.

UPDATE: I just remembered that I took a photo of a somewhat similar house about one block away. Click to make big.

Do you have a Nintendo Wii? Comic artist James Kochalka teamed up with Boing Boing Offworld to create a free series of Mii Monsters to customize games like Wii Sports and Wii Play. I'd love to see a slew of Kochalka's weirdos on the sidelines of Wii Sports. Seen here is Kzorx. Learn how to adopt the Monsters over at Boing Boing Offworld.
Introducing James Kochalka's Monster Mii

Meg sez, "I just found a copy of one of my favorite used-book finds ever, 1912's Hygiene for the Worker, on the Internet Archive. It's wonderful in so many ways. The illustrations are simultaneously delightful and creepy, the language is charmingly outdated, and the lessons in the book attempt to create a race of scrubbed-clean, milk-drinking super employees who spend their vacations at home 'laying up a greater store of health and energy than the young people who come back tired and weary from having too good a time at the mountains and other regular summer resorts.'"

Hair. Most boys and girls, ordinarily, do not value or pay sufficient attention to the little things that go to make up a good appearance.

Take the hair, for instance. If you want to make a good impression, don't apply for a position with your scalp and hair so unclean as to be offensive.

It has now become the rule, in certain large offices, to draw the line against the girls and young women whose hair is fantastically arranged in the extreme of style. Elaborate head dressings suggest to the employer a certain vanity, self-consciousness, and frivolity that render a girl unable to put her mind seriously upon her work.

Clothing. Here also should be mentioned the impro- priety of wearing, during business, clothing that seems suitable only for evening or home use. The type of waist known as the lingerie is one that the business girl should not wear in the office. It is neither sensible nor dignified. Nor is it an economy, for on account of its sheerness it requires greater care and expense in laundering ; hence, it is seldom washed as frequently as it should be. There is nothing more distasteful to the average business man than unclean finery.

Boys and girls both are inclined to run to extremes of style in their dress, usually preferring garments that are of the most up-to-date cut and shape to those of more modest appear- ance, which are generally found to be made better and of more enduring materials. This is equally true of hats and shoes. An employer will probably notice whether you are wearing elaborately cut and high-heeled shoes, run down, unbrushed, and with broken laces, or whether your feet are shod in sensible, well-fitting shoes, kept clean and neat.

Hygiene for the worker ([c1912]) (Thanks, Meg!)

A few years ago I held an event each year to raise money for the Child's Play Charity that puts videogames into the hands of kids staying at children's hospitals. We called it, in proper rock style, Fünde Razor. We're now in our fourth year, and thanks to help from friends in the industry — Kotaku, Game|Life, Rock Gamer, Gizmodo, not to mention tons of game and gadget manufacturers — we've raised thousands of dollars that we give over in its entirety to Child's Play. We've even moved beyond our original New York event to add a Denver and San Francisco event, all next Wednesday evening. (Location and times over on FundeRazor.com. [There's a similar event on Tuesday in Chicago.])

Prizes will vary a little bit from event to event (a lot of what we bring in are review items and such that all we bloggers have in our closets) but here's a partial list of what you can expect to win in the raffle or as door prizes at all three cities' events.

It really is a blast. If you make it to the NYC event, come tell me hi! And if you can't make it out to any of the nights (or even if you can), please consider donating to Child's Play anyway. They're amazing.

All the prizes that you could maybe possible win but if not you can still drink beer and play Rock Band [Offworld!]

---

Ed. Note: Boing Boing's current guestblogger Clay Shirky is the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. He teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, where he works on the overlap of social and technological networks.

---

One day, back when I was 17 and a Zep-head, my girlfriend popped a tape into the car dash, and this sound came out. It was my first time hearing the Violent Femmes, and their songs were everything that Led Zeppelin's had stopped being -- simple, direct, urgent, short. I was reminded of that moment when I came across Jeff "Bone" Smith's new comic RASL.

In the year of "Watchmen: The Movie", it's great to see something this simple. It's a cat-and-mouse story whose protagonist is an art thief with a getaway device that is part teleporter, part subtle knife, being pursued across various universes by a lizard-like human with a gun but not, so far, very good aim.

The back story would fit on an index card, there is about as much sub-plot as there is vermouth in a martini, and the graphic style looks like something you'd draw on a napkin, if you were really good at drawing on napkins. (The gun, for further old skool cred, even goes "Pow Pow Pow".)

It's a black and white rendering of a very 'shades of gray' world; by my count, every character but one is deeply morally compromised, and the one exception suffers because of it. It's also written and drawn by the same person, and an issue costs less than a Grande Frappuccino (there are three out so far; the next one is in Spring 09). In an era when creating a graphic novel can occupy a staff the size of a B1 bomber crew, its great to see a single person trying to tell a simple story well.

Smith's Site | RASL on Heavy Ink

Clay Shirky Boing Boing Guestblog posts:

* Video from the Presidential Campaign, Republican Division
* Jeff Smith's comic RASL
* Publish Without Perishing
* Here Comes Clay Shirky (The Changing of the Guestbloggers)

Inspired by the way razor clams dig into the seafloor sediment, MIT researchers have built a robotic anchor for autonomous water vehicles. About the size of a cigarette lighter, the prototype RoboClam imitates the way the real clam's "foot" works its way into the sand. Learn more at the MIT site and don't miss the video of a real razor clam in action. From MIT News:

"Our original goal was to develop a lightweight anchor that you could set then easily unset, something that's not possible with conventional devices," said Anette "Peko" Hosoi, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering whose collaborators on the work are Amos Winter, a graduate student in her lab, and engineers at Bluefin Robotics Corp.

Such devices could be useful, for example, as tethers for small robotic submarines that are routinely repositioned to monitor variables such as currents and temperature. Further, a device that can burrow into the seabed and be directed to a specific location could also be useful as a detonator for buried underwater mines.

RoboClam

In the last three years, we've adopted three stray cats. With that many cats in the house, the litter box is in almost constant use. If we don't stay on top of cleaning it, the smell gets overpowering. And even though we use an igloo-style litter box with a stair-step tunnel entrance, the cats have figured out a way to kick copious amounts of litter onto the floor. They seem to consider it a feline duty to scatter the filthy particles around.

I can't stand it any longer. I'm going to toilet train the cats, using the 9-step program outlined in this book, Kick Litter, by Perre DiCarlo.

The training method is so simple that it is explained in two pages. The rest of the book consists of photos of the author's cats and cutesy captions of what the cats "think" about the method. The book's cover jacket is an instructional poster you can remove and unfold, and contains everything you need to know to try this method.

I'll give it a try. If I'm successful, I'll shoot a video of my cats in action.

Kick Litter: Nine-Step Program for Recovering Litter Addicts

This photo of a tortoise was taken around 1900 on the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. The tortoise, named Jonathan, still lives there today. He may be the world's oldest living animal. From The Telegraph:

A spokesman for the island's tourist board said Jonathan is owned by the St Helena government and lives in the specially built plantation on the governor's land.

He said: "Jonathan is the sole survivor of three tortoises that arrived on St Helena Island in 1882.

"He was already mature when he arrived and was at least 50-years-old.

"Therefore his minimum age is 176-years-old. He is the oldest inhabitant on St Helena and is claimed to be the oldest living tortoise in the world.

"World's oldest living animal discovered after he is pictured in 1900 photograph"

UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner is a pioneer in the study of an emotion known as "elevation," characterized by a "a feeling of spreading, liquid warmth in the chest and a lump in the throat." (Not be confused with heartburn.) Triggering that emotion in the lab is challenging. His research group's latest approach though is to play their subjects Barack Obama's victory speech. (My IFTF colleague Jason Tester has dubbed the impact of Obama on people's brains "neurobama.") Slate has a great profile of "elevation" research, including the work of moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis. I also look forward to reading Keltner's forthcoming book on the subject of "elevation," titled Born To Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life (which is not an Obama biography). From Slate:

Elevation has always existed but has just moved out of the realm of philosophy and religion and been recognized as a distinct emotional state and a subject for psychological study. Psychology has long focused on what goes wrong, but in the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in "positive psychology"—what makes us feel good and why. University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who coined the term elevation, writes, "Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental 'reset button,' wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration...."

We come to elevation, Haidt writes, through observing others—their strength of character, virtue, or "moral beauty." Elevation evokes in us "a desire to become a better person, or to lead a better life."

"Obama in Your Heart" (Slate), Buy "Born To Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life" (Amazon), Buy "The Happiness Hypothesis" (Amazon)

I hope you are sitting down when you hit "play." Joi Ito, the host of today's special Boing Boing tv episode from Tokyo, explains what you're about to witness:

This year, the Digital Garage New Context Conference and Ellen Levy's Silicon Valley Connect worked together on a program for visitors from Silicon Valley to Tokyo. Silicon Valley Connect is a program that Ellen runs which brings executives and visionaries from Silicon Valley to various parts of the world. This year, we organized a group to visit Japan.

As part of the "cultural program" we decided to take a tour of Akihabara, the mecca of all things otaku, anime and electronic in Japan. I asked a very special friend, Danny Choo, son of the famous shoe designer Jimmy Choo, to lead the tour. I call Danny "The Prince of Akihabara". He is one of the world's experts on Japan's otaku culture and has one of the most popular English language websites about Japan.

One of his favorite things is to dress up as a storm trooper and spread his love and happiness in Akihabara. He is often accompanied by his side-kick Darth Vader, played by Hector Garcia who also has a super-popular blog about Japan. (Danny on CNN talking about this hobby of his.)

When I talked to Xeni Jardin about this, we decided that this might make a good Boing Boing TV episode... and I think we were right.

Thanks to everyone who participated and helped.

Participants from Silicon Valley included Ellen Levy (LinkedIn), Ken Glidewell, Loic Le Meur (Seesmic), Geraldine Le Meur (Le Web), bunnie Huang (Chumby), Jean-Marie Hullot (Fotonauts), Matt Flannery (Kiva), Julie Hanna Farris (SocialText) and Chamath Palihapitiya (Facebook).

Update: Danny "Prince of Akihabara" Choo has blogged his thoughts about the stormtroopin' hijinx on dannychoo.com. He has a wonderful photo gallery from the tour here.

Today in Defective By Design's 35 Days Against DRM campaign, the story of a loyal Prince fan who got kicked in the teeth by the DRM on the music Prince sold from his website: "Mike McCarty sends in his horror story of being a Prince fan, as a reminder of some of the tricks that have been pulled on music fans in this DRM age. Mike says, 'Luckily I only purchased one of MANY DRM-laden album from Prince's now defunct New Power Generation website, Xpectation. It came in the DRM-encumbered Windows Media format, but this was before I was ever aware of the horrors of DRM. Ironically, I EXPECTED the files to work pretty much forever, maybe not forever but at least a few good years. However, I guess the joke was on me as I misplaced the files on an external hard-drive a year or so ago and recently located them only to find out there's absolutely nothing I can do with them.'"

35 Days Against DRM -- Day 7: Prince: Friends without benefits. (Thanks, Peter!)

Stef sez, "During the BBC's flagship morning radio news show, The Today programme, there's a religious segment called 'Thought for the Day.' Its rotating presenters are multi-faith, but humanists, agnostics and atheists or followers of specialist faiths such as the Cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, are barred. Platitudes.org.uk provides a daily parody of the broadcast piece and the site explains itself, thusly:

The BBC's department of Religion & More Religion, recognises that only those who commune with their invisible magic friend can possibly have any morality. Atheists, agnostics, humanists and other amoral non-believers are therefore excluded from the pure and godly Platitude of the Day, broadcast Monday to Saturday at 07.45 (but obviously not Sundays). For your further edification and spiritual improvement, we therefore present these concise, bite-size summaries of the wisdom of their presenters.

Platitude of the Day (Thanks, Stef!)

Democracy Now! interviews Matthew Alexander, author of How to Break a Terrorist: The US Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq. Alexander is a former US military interrogator who deplores the use of torture in interrogation as ineffective at extracting intelligence -- and he argues that it's very effective at outraging potential enemies and turning them into murderous extremists.

Yeah, you know, torture, it’s so narrowly or broadly defined depending on who you’re talking to these days. I would say torture, to me, is just unethical behavior. And you can do things that are legal, within the rules, that are unethical. And so, I just know, me, by my gut feeling, based on the principles that I was raised on, you know, that my parents gave to me, that there’s things I’ll never do, because I know it feels wrong and it is wrong. And so, you know, others felt comfortable either pushing all the way up to the limits and doing things that were unethical, but were legal, or breaking the rules. I felt that was not something I was ever going to do and I wasn’t going to allow my team to do.

I think what’s more important at this point is we know that torture has cost us American lives. We know that it’s ineffective. And we know that it’s wrong, and it’s damaged our image. I think, you know, for me as a military officer, my job isn’t to identify broken wheels, it’s to fix them. And so, the approach that I took and that I talk about in the book is, how do we move forward? You know, we’re given this choice of either terrorist attacks or torture. But maybe there’s a third way. Maybe there’s a better way to do interrogations that has nothing to do with torture. And in the book, I describe the process of coming up with these new ways and how my team, together, we were able to come up with the new methods.

US Interrogator in Iraq Says Torture Policy Has Led to Deaths of Thousands of American Soldiers, How to Break a Terrorist: The US Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq on Amazon (Thanks, Denver Jewelry Guy!)

I am prone to fits of lust over really, really beautiful books, and no one gets me lustier faster than Sunday Press, publishers of the gigantic, marvellous "Little Nemo: Splendid Sundays" collections. These books collect the Sunday Little Nemo comics of Winsor McCay, a surrealist watercolor genius whose weekly strips were lush, gigantic paintings that took us through the dreamscape of Little Nemo, a charming and enigmatic boy living in turn-of-the-century America. And now there's a second volume: "Little Nemo in Slumberland, Many More Splendid Sundays."

I grew up seeing the Little Nemo strips reproduced in "large-format" hardcovers, typically 8.5x11, and I confess that I didn't really get what the fuss was about. The strips were small and smudgy, the type spidery and illegible. Then I saw the first Sunday Press collection, "So Many Splendid Sundays," and I experienced enlightenment. Publisher Peter Maresca has scanned, cleaned up and reproduced his favorite Nemo pages, at full size, 21" by 16", and at that size, Nemo is a completely different experience.

First of all, you can't read a book this big the way that you normally would. I couldn't read it at my desk chair -- even in my reading chair I barely fit (as you can see from these photos). The only way to really read these books is lying on your stomach on the carpet, the book open, chin propped on your hands, and you are, once again, 10 years old, reading the funnies on a lazy Sunday.
This second volume is every bit as charming and magic as the first. Mostly, of course, it's made of Nemo strips (120 of them!), but there are a handful of sweet little essays describing McCay's relationship to Coney Island (it was his muse) and to William Randolph Hearst, his publisher (and nemesis). There's also a Dinosaur Gertie flip book for you to cut and assemble, the perfect aperitif for your lazy Sunday with the funnies.

Little Nemo in Slumberland, Many More Splendid Sundays on Amazon, Little Nemo in Slumberland, Many More Splendid Sundays, Sunday Press publishing, Sample pages

Salim sez, "Studley was an 1800s organ and piano maker, as well as a carpenter and mason, who worked for the Smith Organ Co. He built this amazing tool-chest which packs in just about every device and instrument an organ tuner might need on location."' Studley Toolchest, ideal for the inventor or scientist (Thanks, Salim!)