02 January 2003

Mafia parlour game goes mainstream in NY literary circles The meme spreads from sci-fi fan clubs to media types. By now, Mr. Lethem is a pretty good liar. "I’ve probably played Mafia over a hundred times," he said. Since his novel Motherless Brooklyn—the tale of a detective with Tourette’s syndrome mixed up with the Mafia in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn—was published by Doubleday in 1999, the bespectacled 38-year-old has attracted many dozens to the bluffing game, a kind of personality poker played with one’s own persona as both the hand and the bet. The gist: Among a party of 12 or more people, three are secretly "mafia," trying to turn everyone else against each other and survive a cutthroat whittling-down of the players, using whatever psychological tactics are necessary. "It’s shaped by personalities in fake conflict," observed Mr. Lethem. "It’s a lot like fiction." [via bboing] 3:51:10 PM     comments

New game: Referrer Risk "Let the visitors to your site bring you World Domination. Every visitor who clicks on the image on your site will conquer a piece of land (2° by 2°) for your domain name. All territory your site has conquered is in the same colour on the world map" - nice. [via boingboing no doubt] 3:49:17 PM     comments

Wired: Biometrics benched for Super Bowl We're stepping back from surveillance and concentrating more on controlling access," said Cristian Ivanescu, chief technology officer of Graphco Technologies. [...] It turns out that facial-scan technology works best when it's used to confirm whether people are who they say they are. Picking a crook out of a cast of thousands is a lot harder, and false alarms are more common. Related: The myth of airport biometrics: Although the biometric scanners at SFO actually work, they cost more than they were worth. 3:48:11 PM     comments