talkingheads Since my post about Frank Sinatra's "Watertown" album almost... sort of... kind of... well, okay, came straight out and advocated downloading that out of print Frank-o-phile obscurity, this post will argue that sometimes the record industry does come up with some stuff worth buying... First off, it's bugged me for years --since the Napster days-- that the public is willing to put up with crappy sounding MP3 files! I simply do not get it! An MP3 is NOT a digital copy of exactly what's on the CD. Well, that's not quite true because it is a digital copy, it's just a poor sounding one, comparable to, say, a black and white Xerox of an oil painting. It ain't the same thing, not by a long shot. Compare a 128kbps MP3 file of just about any song to the version of the CD and you'll see what I mean. Maybe not on your computer speakers or on your iPod, but on a proper stereo system, even in the car, there's a huge difference. There's been a little-noticed effort on the part of the music industry to cater to audiophiles in recent years: SACD, DVD-A, and 5:1 surround remixes go quite some distance in stepping it up for those of us who like to kick back, relax and actually LISTEN to our music. But sadly, few seem to care or even to have noticed, although many major artists (The Rolling Stones, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, John Coltrane, The Kinks, Pink Floyd, Elton John, etc) have had substantial portions of their back catalogs reissued in these formats. These releases have largely fallen on deaf ears as no one seems to be buying them. "Dark Side of the Moon" aside, these steroid-pumped recordings tend to disappear quickly after they've been released....br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=29f880d8f362d130d00183c005bf8a2e" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=29f880d8f362d130d00183c005bf8a2e" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Lawrence Lessig's astute comments about the Keating Five scandal. It has surprised me that this, the tremor before this recent financial disaster, the Keating Five scandal, has not been at the center of this campaign before. But now, apparently in response to Palin's suggestion that the fact Obama knows Ayers is relevant to whether he should be president, the Obama campaign has released this very strong 15 minute documentary about the Keating scandal. For those not old enough to remember, here's the outline: 5 Senators, all of whom had received campaign funding from Charles Keating, intervene with regulators to get them to overlook criminal behavior by Keating, leading to the collapse of Lincoln Savings, leading to a $3.4 billion bill for Americans. The only one of those 5 Senators to receive both personal and political benefits from Keating: McCain. Fair? Totally relevant to the question whether the judgment of this candidate is the sort that's needed at this time. Totally relevant to the basic question whether his philosophy -- deregulate -- is what this sector needs at this time. Wise? Not sure. I'm not sure Americans distinguish between hard-hitting-and-fair criticism (which this is) and hard-hitting-and-unfair criticism (which Palin's is). One might worry that they're "burn[ing] down the house to roast the pig" but I assume they've reckoned that. But ugly? You bet. and then things got ugly...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=1cc99695b769bd607e52ce43d70fc4a9"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=1cc99695b769bd607e52ce43d70fc4a9"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=1cc99695b769bd607e52ce43d70fc4a9" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Rev Peter Mullen is chaplain to the London Stock Exchange (I don't know why a stock exchange needs a chaplain but I imagine there's lots of praying going on there right about now). He also has a blog (Google cache here), where he posts solutions to "problems" that would make the one-eye veil Saudi cleric proud: It is time that religious believers began to recommend specific utilitarian discouragements of homosexual practices after the style of warnings on cigarette packets: Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS. Rev Mullen now says the post is a "light-hearted joke." Gay men should be forced to have 'health warning' tattoos, says Stock Exchange chaplain...br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=27f39e5d9ef77fa5d30a4cafe5e6f85b" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=27f39e5d9ef77fa5d30a4cafe5e6f85b" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Tokyo Times reports that a man took off his clothes and jumped into the Imperial Palace moat to retrieve a bag, and ended up getting into a tragicomic tussle with the police. More photos and videos at the link. Tokyo Imperial Palace pandemonium...br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=8d99504647f9dcc501368d3444eb6578" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=8d99504647f9dcc501368d3444eb6578" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

My first post here at Boing Boing is going to be what got me into this mess in the first place. I read an interesting short essay about a little-known 1970 Frank Sinatra concept album called Watertown on a blog called Frankosonic and I sent it around to some rock snob pals of ncluding Mark and David. They must've been impressed because that's what snagged me this here fancy Boing Boing guest bloggership... Here's an excerpt: Upon first listen it's the story of a man who has been deserted by his wife and left to bring up their two kids alone. Pretty much every song is addressed directly to the absent partner and the simplistic style of lyric reads like a series of letters. As the story develops, the Father receives news that she is coming back to them, but ultimately he's left stranded at the Railway Station as it becomes apparent that she was never aboard the train and won't ever return. Admittedly I have listened to this album far too much and I started to think about the bits of the story that didn't add up. Firstly, she has not only abandoned him but also the two kids - I know this DOES happen but is not exactly common behaviour amongst women. Secondly, he mentions that her Mother still comes by to help with the children and along with other friends they encourage him to move on and find a new love. Surely any mother would concentrate on getting her wayward daughter back on track and try to orchestrate a reconciliation? But he's not ready to move on, he's not over her and he can't understand why nobody sees this. Lastly I just don't get why she would say that she is coming back and then just not turn up, breaking his heart a second time. Then it dawned on me... She's not coming back because she's dead. Well, I don't know about you, but after reading the above description of "Watertown" and its rather morbid seeming charms -- it sounds like The Chairman's "Berlin" to me -- I just had to hear this! -- Problem is, the CD is long out of print and although there are used import copies on Amazon for $104... oh wait a minute, there is no problem, you simply type in the words Sinatra Watertown Torrent (maybe FLAC for good measure?) into Google and well, you know the rest......br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=b3319bcaf72150637e7f9a21e0a936d0" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=b3319bcaf72150637e7f9a21e0a936d0" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

A new word is added to the English language every 98 minutes, says the Global Language Monitor, a descendant of yourDictionary.com. (Ironically, the group's "about" page has "dictionary" misspelled as "dictioanry" in one place.) According to the Global Language Monitor's best estimate, the millionth English word will be coined sometime next April. However, the Global Language Monitor is a bit looser with its acceptance of new words than most dictionaries. For example, unabridged dictionaries include about 600,000 words, compared to the 900,000 tracked thus far by the Global Language Monitor. From Smithsonian: "We went back to the Middle English and saw that the definition of a word was 'a thought spoken,'" said Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst at the Monitor, "which means if I say a word, and you understand me, it's a real word." Payack counts staycation, Facebook and Wikipedia as words. But he also follows some of the old rules. For example, words that are both noun and verb, such as "water" are counted only once. He doesn't count all the names there are for chemicals, because there are hundreds of thousands. Once the Monitor identifies a word, it tracks it over time, watching to see where the word appears. Based on that measurement, they decide if the word has "momentum," basically, whether it's becoming more popular or if it's a one-hit wonder of the linguistic world. At first glance, this seems a lot like a dictionary's system. "It's the same as the old [method], just recognizing the new reality," Payack said. The Monitor's method gives a lot more weight to online citations. The Million Word March...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=c27018404f2a66bbfd36c10ce84dbe55"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=c27018404f2a66bbfd36c10ce84dbe55"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=c27018404f2a66bbfd36c10ce84dbe55" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Today on Boing Boing tv: Toots and the Maytals are true reggae legends (more: Wikipedia, MySpace). Founder Toots Hibbert is credited with coining the word "reggae" in the band's 1968 single, "Do the Raggay." They've had more number one hit songs in Jamaica than any recording artist ever, and received a Grammy for Best Reggae Album of the Year in 2005. I joined BBtv's London-based music correspondent Russell Porter for a visit on the venerable Mister Toots' tour bus after an amazing set at Outside Lands, and we sat down with him for a conversation about the history of reggae, and what Toots thinks about contemporary hip-hop and dancehall -- and where his legacy leads. The generous vanity intro he did for BBtv is a thing of beauty, we can all die happy now Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with downloadable video and daily podcast subscription instructions. Sponsor Note: This episode, and other BBtv music features this month, are sponsored by the Crowdfire live music social media project. You can find images, video, and audio about the band featured in today's show at Crowdfire -- here's the search link for fan-uploads related to Broken Social Scene. Related Boing Boing tv episodes from Outside Lands: * Broken Social Scene: interview and live performance (music) * Galactic's "Modern New Orleans Funk" with Xeni and Russell (music) * Interview with Cold War Kids frontman Nathan Willett (music) * Andy Gould, rock band manager, dances on the labels' graves. * Primus: Xeni interviews Les and Ler (music) * Kaki King, guitar hero: performance, interview with Xeni (music) * BB Gadgets' Joel at Outside Lands: Crowdfire deconstructed * Carney at Outside Lands - a "Boing Boing tv Bus Session." (music) * Steel Pulse founder David Hinds at Outside Lands (music) * Boing Boing tv backstage at Outside Lands: (Xeni + Russell Porter) (Special thanks to Wayneco for the magic bus, to Michael Cacia, and to Virgin America for air travel.)...br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=74d7a6ec7ee8f147e6a93543684ddb03" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=74d7a6ec7ee8f147e6a93543684ddb03" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

MIT researchers are developing a novel power scavenging systes for small wireless sensors that monitor for forest fires. The sensors are powered by the trees themselves. Each sensor's battery is trickle charged with the electricity generated by the imbalance in pH between the tree and the soil. From the MIT News Office: A single tree doesn't generate a lot of power, but over time the "trickle charge" adds up, "just like a dripping faucet can fill a bucket over time," said Shuguang Zhang, one of the researchers on the project and the associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering (CBE). The system produces enough electricity to allow the temperature and humidity sensors to wirelessly transmit signals four times a day, or immediately if there's a fire. Each signal hops from one sensor to another, until it reaches an existing weather station that beams the data by satellite to a forestry command center in Boise, Idaho. Preventing forest fires with tree power...br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=c2b4ec6b4a103cf38f2c4a4e81ea2165" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=c2b4ec6b4a103cf38f2c4a4e81ea2165" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

My first post here at Boing Boing is going to be what got me into this mess in the first place. I read an interesting short essay about a little-known 1970 Frank Sinatra concept album called Watertown on a blog called Frankosonic and I sent it around to some rock snob pals of mine including Mark and David. They must've been impressed because that's what snagged me this here fancy Boing Boing guest bloggership... Here's an excerpt: Upon first listen it's the story of a man who has been deserted by his wife and left to bring up their two kids alone. Pretty much every song is addressed directly to the absent partner and the simplistic style of lyric reads like a series of letters. As the story develops, the Father receives news that she is coming back to them, but ultimately he's left stranded at the Railway Station as it becomes apparent that she was never aboard the train and won't ever return. Admittedly I have listened to this album far too much and I started to think about the bits of the story that didn't add up. Firstly, she has not only abandoned him but also the two kids - I know this DOES happen but is not exactly common behaviour amongst women. Secondly, he mentions that her Mother still comes by to help with the children and along with other friends they encourage him to move on and find a new love. Surely any mother would concentrate on getting her wayward daughter back on track and try to orchestrate a reconciliation? But he's not ready to move on, he's not over her and he can't understand why nobody sees this. Lastly I just don't get why she would say that she is coming back and then just not turn up, breaking his heart a second time. Then it dawned on me... She's not coming back because she's dead. Well, I don't know about you, but after reading the above description of "Watertown" and its rather morbid seeming charms -- it sounds like The Chairman's "Berlin" to me -- I just had to hear this! -- Problem is, the CD is long out of print and although there are used import copies on Amazon for $104... oh wait a minute, there is no problem, you simply type in the words Sinatra Watertown Torrent (maybe FLAC for good measure?) into Google and well, you know the rest......br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=07ad4d83466245f185f3c22bd6b0444d" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=07ad4d83466245f185f3c22bd6b0444d" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

I read an interesting short essay about a little-known 1970 Frank Sinatra concept album called lt;a href=" http://www.duckworthsquare.com/frankosonic/frankosonic/2006/09/frank-sinatra-watertown.html "gt;"Watertown"lt;/agt;on a blog called lt;a href=" http://www.duckworthsquare.com/frankosonic/frankosonic/ "gt;Frankosoniclt;/agt; and I sent it around to some lt;a href=" http://www.amazon.com/Rock-Snobs-Dictionary-Essential-Rockological/dp/0767918738/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?... Then it dawned on me... lt;emgt;She's not coming back because she's deadlt;/emgt;."lt;blockquotegt;lt;/blockquotegt; Well, I don't know about you, but after reading the above description of "Watertown" and its rather morbid seeming charms-- it sounds like The Chairman's "Berlin" to me-- lt;stronggt;lt;emgt;I just had to hear this! br style="clear: both;"/gt; a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=e999010bf92c0de1544c7425f51b19cc"gt;img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=e999010bf92c0de1544c7425f51b19cc"/gt;/agt; img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=e999010bf92c0de1544c7425f51b19cc" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/gt;

(Video: an intro that precedes the movies of Max Hardcore; no nudity or sexual acts in this embedded video above). A US District Court in Florida has sentenced "extreme shock porn" gonzo director and distributor Max Hardcore, aka Paul F. Little, to four years in prison over obscenity charges. Writing for Salon, Glenn Greenwald wrote that he believes the verdict is a blow to first amendment rights: “So, to recap, in the Land of the Free: if you’re an adult who produces a film using other consenting adults, for the entertainment of still other consenting adults, which merely depicts fictional acts of humiliation and degradation, the DOJ will prosecute you and send you to prison for years. The claim that no real pain was inflicted will be rejected; mere humiliation is enough to make you a criminal. But if government officials actually subject helpless detainees in their custody to extreme mental abuse, degradation, humiliation and even mock executions long considered “torture” in the entire civilized world, the DOJ will argue that they have acted with perfect legality and, just to be sure, Congress will hand them retroactive immunity for their conduct. That’s how we prioritize criminality and arrange our value system.” The hometown Tampa, FL paper where Little was convicted wrote about the case in a condemning tone: His pornographic persona, Max Hardcore, is all swagger and sadism – forcing women in his movies to do things that can't be described in a family newspaper. But in federal court today, as he faced a federal prison sentence, Paul F. Little trembled and begged a woman for mercy. "It just seems a very high price to pay, I think," Little told U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew, "and I ask you to understand how much I've suffered." Judge Sentences Porn Producer To 46 Months In Prison (Tampa Bay Online). Similar accounts published in Max Hardcore's home town paper, The Pasadena (CA) Star-News, and in this Tampa Bay paper. Why was Little, aka Hardcore, convicted in Florida, when the offending material was produced elsewhere and distributed in many places, even overseas? IANAL, but as I understand it: producers are subject to obscenity charges in any state the material can be downloaded when local standards deem the material to be obscene. The landmark Supreme Court case of Hustler Magazine v. Falwell is informative background reading. The most authoritative voice I have read on the Max Hardcore case is that of Susannah Breslin, whose work I've blogged here many times. If you read one piece on this story, read hers. Unlike most (perhaps all) of the voices you'll read on this topic, she's actually spent time on the kind of porn sets where "shock producers" like Hardcore preside, and she's watched more of his work than I could ever stomach. I can't speak for her, but I think the point of this powerful essay she's just published is this: the story is complicated. If we're going to talk about the big, abstract, meta issues -- and we should -- we owe it to the human beings involved to observe the human story, up close, with all the ugly details. Stories like this aren't easy or binary, and deserve complex, respectful treatment. We send reporters to Baghdad for in-depth reporting about the war; reporters covering this story would do well to understand this reality up close and personal, unromanticized. From Breslin's piece: Not infrequently, [Max Hardcore] scenes are fraught with pedophilia themes, beginning when he stumbles upon his subjects in playgrounds, where they sit alone, in pigtails, talking baby-talk, and sucking on lollipops. Mostly, the sex scenes end with his latest costar a mess and Hardcore triumphant. Even for the most jaded porn watcher, Little's ouevre is over the top. Watching Little's work is less like watching a porn movie than it is akin to witnessing a vivisection. On the screen, Hardcore bends over the female bodies before him, sometimes with speculum in hand, as if attempting to get at something within her at which he can never quite get, and so to which he is doomed to return, his methods more and more hardcore. In Porn Valley, Little is something of a pariah. The larger, more mainstream-oriented and consumer-friendly adult production companies like Vivid Video and Wicked Pictures pride themselves on turning out adult content that plays by the rules, thereby, they hope, protecting the industry from legal persecution. In contrast, Little and company, other producers believe, put the entire industry at risk by creating content more likely to be targeted in obscenity indictments. (See: The Cambria List.) In 2005, the Bush administration launched its so-called "War on Porn," forming the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, a Department of Justice outfit dedicated to pursuing obscenity prosecutions, and the FBI began recruiting for a "porn squad," otherwise known as the Adult Obscenity Squad, focused on "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography. In late 2005, federal agents raided Little's offices in Altadena, California, but it wasn't until early 2007 that his indictment was unsealed. As it turned out, OPTF Director Brent Ward had found getting US Attorneys to pursue obscenity prosecutions wasn't easy. Consequently, US Attorneys who preferred dedicating their resources to crimes other than obscenity in districts more likely to win the administration obscenity convictions were eliminated. Late last year, the OPTF's first trial began in Phoenix, Arizona, pitting the US government against a producer of bukkake videos, but the result was an embarrassment, the pornographer slipping out of the government's hands in the courtroom. When it came to Little, prosecutors were gunning for a win. Finally, three years after the OPTF was formed, the Feds got their man. To The Max (contains explicit language; reversecowgirl blog)...br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=a6cbff773034d1c54f1ae26f9630c0fc" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=a6cbff773034d1c54f1ae26f9630c0fc" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

One in four mammal species are at risk of extinction, according to a new study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The assessment was done by more than 1,700 experts from 130 countries over the last five years. Who's to blame? Humans, of course. The IUCN also updated its Red List of Threatened Species that now includes Tasmanian devils (above), parachute spiders, fishing cars, and a host of other beautiful beasties. From National Geographic: "Our results paint a bleak picture of the global status of mammals worldwide," the study authors wrote... Humans are mostly to blame, as habitat loss, pollution, and hunting continue to squeeze at-risk species. "Perversely, the species that humans show greatest affinity toward—the largest mammals such as primates, big cats, and whales—are significantly more likely to be threatened with extinction," Barney Long, a biologist at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C., said in an email. One in Four Mammals at Risk of Extinction, Parachute Spider, New Shrew on 2008 "Red List"...br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=385aea5f9ab5f265aa6160da58a35c52" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=385aea5f9ab5f265aa6160da58a35c52" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

An individual who suffers from cluster headaches thinks he may have finally found a treatment that works: psychedelic mushrooms. The man, who goes by the name Flash, found no relief at the doctor's office, read that in the 1960s LSD had been tested to relieve migraines. So he decided to eat some psilocybin mushrooms. From The Independent: He was thrilled to find that the "shadows" evaporated – and stayed away. He began taking a light, sub-hallucinogenic dose of 12 to 20 mushrooms approximately once every three months, and found that he remained symptom-free for nearly a year. "I started to tell people about it," he says, "but they thought I was mad..." A handful of CH sufferers thought there was truth in Flash's unorthodox solution. One man, Bob Wold, decided to start clusterbusters.com, a website devoted to campaigning for research and disseminating information about how to safely use hallucinogenics... Anecdotal reports of the clusterheads' use of hallucinogens attracted the interest of John Halpern of Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts. Spurred on by the suicide of a colleague who suffered from CH, Halpern and colleague Andrew Sewell interviewed 53 people who had self-medicated with the hallucinogen therapy. The survey results suggested that there was something to Flash's idea after all. The pair published their results in the respected journal Neurology, and Halpern has now submitted a protocol for a Phase-I clinical trial to the university's Institutional Review Board. Psilocybin to cure cluster headaches (via Further)...br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=cd959c1204cf6cb48bd7ff18ba82de48" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=cd959c1204cf6cb48bd7ff18ba82de48" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Just in time for the presidential debates tonight, from Lessig blog: Barack Obama has reaffirmed the position he took in the primaries and asked the Debate Commission to support "open debates." Here's the letter. Craig "Craigslist" Newmark explains that Lessig led the effort, and that "the idea is to make video footage available to everyone for commenting and reuse, a big deal." [Barack] wrote last year to the Chairman of my Party: "The Internet has enabled an extraordinary range of citizens to participate in the political dialogue around this election. Much of that participation will take the form of citizen generated content. We, as a Party, should do everything that we can to encourage this participation... I am a strong believer in the importance of copyright, especially in a digital age. But there is no reason that this particular class of content needs the protection. We have incentive enough to debate. The networks have incentive enough to broadcast those debates. Rather than restricting the product of those debates, we should instead make sure that our democracy and citizens have the chance to benefit from them in all the ways that technology makes possible." (via @cnewmark on Twitter)...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=778c64a23ca323323fbc303c222dbc35"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=778c64a23ca323323fbc303c222dbc35"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=778c64a23ca323323fbc303c222dbc35" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Last week on Boing Boing tv, we released a BBtv WORLD episode with a visit to Pendjari nature preserve in Benin (West Africa). I got close (a little too close) to a herd of beautiful elephants. Here's that post, and direct MP4 link here. When you watch that BBtv clip, pay attention to the bit right after the 1:34ish mark where the mommy elephant raises her trunk and gestures at us. I didn't know this, but that's a kind of greeting, it's the elephant initiating communication. Marilyn Terrell at National Geographic's Intelligent Travel blog (who did a post about our piece) explained that to me, and pointed me to this AMAZING video in East Africa with photographer Michael Nichols, embedded above. He talks about how he tries to capture the complexity and intelligence of these amazing beasts on film. And he "talks" back to the elephants by returning their trunk "gang signs" with his hand and arm, kind of simulating a trunk reply. Just watch it, you'll get it. It's great. Also see this feature article about Samburu elephants by David Quammen, and a photo gallery by Michael Nichols. Stunning stuff. Below, two males wrassle at the watering hole, photographed by Nichols for National Geographic. "Such physical contact can be subtly nuanced along a spectrum from bonding to roughhousing to real combat. Harmless scuffles among juveniles help inform later, more serious interactions by which adults settle their disputes."...br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=14843bdf50b3a9e822cc8b965d1742f5" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=14843bdf50b3a9e822cc8b965d1742f5" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Yat-chan and Fuku-chan are waiters at the Kaoru Otsuka sake house north of Tokyo. The two are monkeys. They bring hot towels and also serve drinks. From Reuters, where you can also see video: "Yat-chan first learned by just watching me working in the restaurant. It all started when one day I gave him a hot towel out of curiosity and he brought the towel to the customer," the 63-year-old owner of the tavern, Kaoru Otsuka, told Reuters... "We called out for more beer just then and it brought us some beer! It's amazing how it seems to understand human words," said 71-year-old retiree Miho Takikawa, who said she came to the tavern specifically to meet the monkeys. Monkey waiters...br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=8482270acb2e1effae5b6ccdf9698d4f" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=8482270acb2e1effae5b6ccdf9698d4f" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Our WIRED friend Melanie Cornwell gives us a heads up on the final two special events at the ongoing WIRED NextFest in Chicago this week. If you're in town, you gotta go! Melanie explains: [First, an] homage to "Inside the Actors Studio" called "Inside the Gamers Studio" with Chris Hardwick tackling the Lipton role in a live interview with Alex Seropian, founder of Bungie Studios and EP of Halo. This will be followed by our first ever Brain Bowl, in which super smart Chicago-area college students who play Quiz Bowl take on Wired editors, Chicago professors and other notables. We’ve been unofficially calling this event “Are you smarter than a Wired editor?” and when it comes to the students, the answer is surely “Yes!” As one of our editors noted, the students are still in the process of learning, while he spends a lot of his time forgetting. :-) Hardwick returns to his game show roots as host, it should be hilarious. WHERE: Chicago’s Millennium Park WHEN: Wednesday, October 8, 2008 Inside the Gamers Studio - 4:30-5:30pm Beer/Soft Drink Break – 5:30-6pm Brain Bowl – 6-8pm They're our final NextFest events and are free and open to the public. More info at wirednextfest.com. Check out Hardwick on G4 TV, and on his blog at nerdist.com, where there's more about this event. Above, a clip with Hardwick and robots at NextFest....br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=550ca71c90a6a3c56355991286bb21db" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=550ca71c90a6a3c56355991286bb21db" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

In this very cool science video series on YouTube, NASA astronauts on the International Space Station answer questions from on board the space station via YouTube. Astronaut Greg Chamitoff, who is currently 220 miles above Earth, is the guy answering questions from people on -- as he puts it -- "beautiful planet Earth." According to the description: "Post a video response to this video or visit nasa.gov/ask and submit a question there. Chamitoff's schedule will not allow him to answer many questions, but he will attempt to answer a few each week." This being YouTube, one of the first questions was about hallucinations. Stephan Hinz, 38, from Germany asks: I would like to know if you experience any kind of sensory dysfunctions or hallucinations, maybe like little flashes "seen" with closed eyes caused by high energy cosmic radiation? Now tell me that's not an awesome use of online video. (thanks, Mark Day!)...br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=649d1fb778791c616ea8a8df4f081d0d" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=649d1fb778791c616ea8a8df4f081d0d" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Fred from FreeCulture NYU sez, We've got less than one week to go before our huge Free Culture conference at UC Berkeley. We've compiled some fantastic panels and will also have all of our community's critical organizations exhibiting (EFF, Creative Commons, Public Library of Sceince, etc.) Professor Lessig will be talking on his forthcoming book, Remix, and we'vve also added a presentation from digital curator Richard Rinehart on the Open Museum. If you've ever been interested in learning more about the free culture movement and you can make it to the conference, you should not hesitate to register today. Remember, we're doing a pay-what-you-feel model and donations and so far it has worked incredibly well, with donations averaging around $25. Free Culture Conference 2008 (Thanks, Fred!)...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=92cad6c8cdee84caca9ffc30ad8e5e89"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=92cad6c8cdee84caca9ffc30ad8e5e89"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=92cad6c8cdee84caca9ffc30ad8e5e89" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Recently at Boing Boing Gadgets, we saw a promotional thumbdrive full of beer and a tasty motherboard cake. Breakfast is served! John saw Sega's inadvertant return to gaming "hardware"; a cutting board with an astronaut etched on it; a non-stop spinning top; and hankered for a USB desk lamp in the shape of a giant letter C. Joel discovered the art of ChindÅgu, or useful but embarrassing technology; found spaceship-like sculptures made of foam packing; and found an amazing portrait of the Madonna made of dice, and posed the question, "Could you make a better fake rock speaker than Klipsch?" We reviewed the Sorapot, a fancy teapot, the NZXT Avatar gaming mouse, Cloanto's Amiga Forever 2008 retrogaming set, and the last five years. Looks like Apple's new MacBooks are going to have Nvidia inside. It's such a shame that Mazda's wonderful concept car, the Kiyora, isn't likely to ever have you inside. Console yourself with some vodka kept in bottles the shape of a skull....br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=ab3df178b7b378bc2cd7bfd434612555" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=ab3df178b7b378bc2cd7bfd434612555" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

In honor of my dear friend Richard Metzger's stint as a BB guestblogger beginning today, I dug up this link to a Wired interview I did with Richard that was published exactly 10 years ago this month. Wow, time sure flies when we're having fun. From the interview, titled "Live From Bedlam": Wired: Information wants to be free, but does it want to be true? Metzger: All information is from questionable sources. In the marketplace of ideas, what value does falsehood have once it's exposed?... So what's behind the growing public fixation on the fringe? Ten years ago all of this would have been so marginal. As we become more technologically advanced, we move further away from anything real, any real ecstatic religious experiences or gnosis. People are freaking out because they see Jerry Springer's white-trash crack whores on TV and schoolkids ambushing classmates with Uzis. How much more fucked up can things get? It's apocalypse from now on. People realize that the line they've been sold, the American Dream, is over - they want, if not an explanation, then at least someone to blame... Can the "underground" survive in an age when it's co-opted almost instantly? The best thing that could possibly happen to the underground is that it becomes overground - to see kids picking up Noam Chomsky and hearing Jello Biafra instead of just Stephen King and Weezer. Richard Metzger: Live From Bedlam...