Video of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan

The following is a repost from BoingBoing for those who might not have already read it:

Wow! From Coilhouse:
Helen Keller — inspiration to generations and inspiration for an entire genre of schoolyard humor — and her teacher and friend Anne Sullivan in a clip from 1930 in which they describe the way in which Helen learned how to speak … It’s a fascinating little clip which pays homage to a woman who, even beyond her amazing circumstances, was a radical socialist, suffragist, and supporter of birth control, who was friends with the likes of Mark Twain and who worked tirelessly to champion the rights of both the downtrodden and the physically disabled.
(Via Richard Metzger)

Make Youtube Audio Sound Better

The following tip comes from Derek Lane, who originally got it from The MIDI Magazine Users Group.

If you’re watching a youtube movie online, you can add &fmt=18 to the end of the URL in order to get high quality audio. Surprisingly, this higher quality audio is available on most things uploaded to the website. For example, visit this un-modified URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcjkkBtXgIc
With the following URL, after &fmt=18 has been added to the end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcjkkBtXgIc&fmt=18
That’s not the most dramatic example of youtube improvement, mostly because that song sucks, but it was the first URL I had handy (don’t ask). Okay, a better example: compare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvbK2YpSGrQ
to the better sounding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvbK2YpSGrQ&fmt=18

I have no idea why this works, or why it works. I can’t find anything on the webpage that links to the higher quality URL; maybe I missed something?