It could be Frankie.

Brazil's Guilherme Marcondes shows the big studios how to make animation interesting. <I>Tyger</I> mixes puppetry, illustration, photography, and CGI together to create something that Neil Gaiman describes as "like something I dreamed as a boy." When you start channelling Gaiman's dreams, you're in serious territory.

Ted Berger is working on wetware can reconstruct lost thoughts. Well, that's the eventual goal.

It's almost a shame. There's room for only one.

Because it has just been too long since I posted anything about Harry Beck's iconic <A HREF="http://www.clarksbury.com/cdl/maps/tube38.jpg">London Tube Map</A> and I gets all itchy when that happens.

"Imagine that your only contact with 'English' as a subject was through classes in school. Suppose that those classes, from elementary school right through to high school, amounted to nothing more than reading dictionaries, getting drilled in spelling and formal grammatical construction, and memorizing vast vocabulary lists&mdash;you <I>never</I> read a novel, nor a poem; never had contact with anything beyond the pedantic complexity of English spelling and formal grammar, and precise definitions for an endless array of words."

This 10-minute F. Lyle Goldman/Max Fleischer cartoon about how talking pictures work is full of interest for us audiophiles. Vintage technology, vacuum tubes, and Western Electric Research Project humor&mdash;what's not to love?