Flying penis buzzes Kremlin critic (+video)

Second Life pranks enters the real world

AERIAL ASSAULT: A photo of a flying phallus that disrupted a Russian opposition meeting.

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Former world chess champion turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov has been on the receiving end of an unconventional prank launched by his political foes - one that draws its inspiration from the virtual world of Second Life.

Kasparov was attending a weekend meeting of a coalition of opposition groups which had assembled in Moscow to launch a symbolic alternative parliament. As he was addressing the gathering of more than 500 delegates, he was buzzed by a remote-controlled flying phallus.

The device - which appeared to be a modified twin-rotor toy helicopter - caused a sudden commotion with security guards springing to attention.

A video shot at the event shows the modified chopper briefly evading capture before a man later identified as a security guard leaps from the stage and swats the device with a well-aimed left hook.

According to the Moscow Times website, the prank was staged by "a couple of pro-Kremlin Young Russia activists" who had launched a "plastic phallus on propellers".

The use of a flying penis as a tool of disruption is the same tactic used by cyber vandals - known as griefers - when they launched a high profile raid in the Second Life virtual world in late 2006.

In that incident, a group calling themselves Room 101 - a reference to the torture chamber in George Orwell's novel 1984 - disrupted a gathering by triggering a program code that generated a phalanx of virtual flying phalluses. [See story here].

Their target was Anshe Chung, the virtual persona of a woman called Ailin Graef, who a month had earlier declared herself to be Second Life's first real dollar millionaire.

As the self-replicating 3-D objects flew across the stage in a steady progression, Anshe Chung was forced to abandon the meeting.

Kasparov laughed off the Moscow incident remarking that the incident showed that his foes' arguments were "below the belt".

"I think we have to be thankful for the opposition's demonstration of the level of discourse we need to anticipate," the former chess champ reportedly quipped.

- Sydney Morning Herald