And in this week's New Yorker (yes, The New Yorker), he's willing to dish. Apparently, there's many a nudie classic that's been revealed to, ahem, reveal even more once it's been upgraded to HD. Where once there was but a dark shadow, now we're presented with bush (or at least more boobage). Where...no, actually, that's pretty much the end of the story. We're on the fence as to whether this is more an ad for the flagging Blu-Ray industry or for Mr. Skin himself (who makes the technical upgrade so you don't have to)—but in the meantime, we're just going to stick with our SD movies, and see if we can't unlock this secret nudity by squinting really, really hard.

· Mr. Skin (mrskin.com)
· Naked Truth (newyorker.com, subscription required)
· Thumbnail: Topless Eva Amurri, just because

Really, V Magazine has been so good to us, we'd really love to thank them properly. How will we do that? We're gonna ogle Natalia Vodianova. Please, feel free to help us!

· Natalia Vodianova shows some nip in a magazine about V's. Why not? (thesuperficial.com)

Will we still be boning when we're all plugged in to computers, Matrix-style, experiencing the world in a virtual way? Will our robot avatars be bumping uglies? And what about porn? H+ Magazine has assembled some of the leading minds in the radical tech community to get their thoughts on the issue. A few selections below:

Conventional sex will likely persist in a transhumanist future, but only as a small subset of a much larger space of pleasurable activities which have been deliberately engineered. The connection between certain activities and the sensation of pleasure lies entirely in our cognitive architecture, which we
will eventually manipulate at will. It's probably less complex than we think - many drugs can directly stimulate the pleasure center, and these are much simpler than brain-to-computer interfaces. - Michael Anissimov

Anything that has persisted for hundreds of millions of years clearly has high survival value. Transhumanism seeks to enhance the positive aspects of the human condition, so love and sex are unlikely to be abandoned. Differences? Yes. Sex for procreation will be separated from sex for pleasure. Polyamorism will be the norm. After all if "I" have uploaded, duplicated myself and exist as self-similar copies in cyberspaces co-existent with realspace, where does the "self" end and the "other" begin? - Extropia DaSilva

The experience of gaining pleasure via in some sense merging with another being... that will probably survive the Singularity, but will likely be customizable into various forms, which may end up bearing little resemblance to "sex" as we know it today... - Ben Goertzel.

The primary purpose of the Singularity will be seen, after the fact, to be Awesome Sex. There will be exponentially more sex, with exponentially more interfaces, and with exponentially more measures of pleasure. - Alex Lightman

Exosex, sex outside the biological body, would be simulated in virtuality, much like Second Life or Skype and other digital formats where sex is enhanced, extended, digitized, and synthetic. It would be more real than real - a hyper-real experience.

Endosex, sex within the body or form, would exist even if the posthuman is so-called disembodied or, better, a distributed collection of selves (multiselves) co-existing on multiple platforms, including biological personas, virtual avatar personas or other types of forms in different substrates and platforms. - Natasha Vita-More

So there you have it: sex will maybe, probably, definitely still exist; and will be exactly like nothing we've ever experienced before. Also, we'll be doing it all the time, with everyone. So, uh, win?

For the full article, check out h+'s digitial edition (link below).

· h+ Magazine Fall 2009 Digital Edition (hplusmagazine.com)
· Thumbnail star: Futuristic Sasha Grey (hustlercash.com)

"It's a real shame this tape leaked the way it did," Blatt told XBIZ. "I believe it was someone who wanted to get even with Rebecca. Releasing this tape with no ability to profit from it is the sign of a junkie."

· ‘Grey's Anatomy' Star Nude in Leaked Sex Tape (xbiz.com)

The list is a tad predictable, and leans heavily towards the played-a-politician-once picks (yes, Lisa Ann heads it up), but hey, we approve of bringing more porn to Blackbook, so we're not going to argue it.

But we would like to know: if you had to pick a pornstar to govern you, who would you like to see in office? on our end, we'd love to bow down to Belladonna: we've seen what she's done with her company...imagine what she could do with the country?

· Post-Stormy Daniels: 8 Pornstars Ready to Stuff the Political Void (blackbookmag.com)

Fine, upstanding news source that it is, London's Sun has decided to wage a debate about the subject in today's paper. On the pro side is noted feminist Germaine Greer, who no doubt offers the opinion that bodies are natural and nothing to be ashamed of. On the con side is...Keeley Hazell?

Yes, unless The Sun is outright tricking us, the Page 3 princess and owner of some of the world's best boobs now thinks that girls should keep their tops on while on the beach. We...we just don't know what to say. Keeley, how could betray us like this?

This kind of news calls for drastic action. Readers, what say you: should Keeley be stripped of her coveted Crush Object status? On the one hand, we value all the good times we shared, and memories we made; on the other...how can we laud someone who's against topless sunbathing?

This is going to take a good deal of deliberation, we'll tell you that.

· Is it a boob to go topless? (thesun.co.uk)
· Thumbnail: Keeley in more topless times (dailypoa.com)

Below, a preview clip from an interview with Sasha Grey. Looks good so far (CNBC's no Tyra Banks, that's for sure).

· Porn: Business of Pleasure (cnbc.com)

As the Times sees it, plots were big in the '70s, resurged in the '90s, and have completely fallen by the wayside in the modern era, as studios focus far more on all-sex releases that can be easily chopped up into scenes for online and VOD distribution.

They're sorta right, but they're also missing a very big part of the picture.

Let's get one thing out of the way: plot-driven porn movies (or features, as they're called in the industry) aren't going anywhere. For one thing, there are enough people who like them to make them worthwhile; for another, they're incredibly important PR and marketing tools. Digital Playground can screen "Pirates 2" at UCLA, but we'd wager that the administration would be far less friendly to a screening of "Filth Cums First 4." Or, better yet: New Sensations may primarily produce all sex fare like "Girls 'n Glasses" (cited by the NY Times), but "Scrubs - A XXX Parody" is what got them on "Jimmy Kimmel Live."

There's also the fact that—for the time being, at least—features are still worth buying on DVD; and as long as studios can still make a profit off DVDs, they'll be more than happy to sell them.

At the same time, however, there are many people who are buying their porn primarily for the sex (and let's face it: even those of us who like features are still in it primarily for the sex). And for those people, the DVD model isn't the most economical way of getting what they need: why pay for four hours of sex, when all you really want is that two minutes of Gianna Michaels humping her way to heaven? And it's these people who are driving the trend towards content that is, well, primarily sex—and, more importantly, can be cut up and repackaged without losing that certain something.

What we predict is that we'll end up seeing a split system: a smaller number of high budget, easily marketable features available on DVD for one section of the porn viewing public; and a larger number of sex-focused scenes, perhaps on DVD, but primarily online, for the rest.

And frankly, we think that could be for the best. Imagine if studios took their features really seriously, casting performers who could act as well as they fuck, crafting a movie with a plot that's actually worth watching, while allowing performers whose talents lie in a more prurient direction to simply focus on their fuck craft? You may say we're dreamers...but we think it could be a beautiful thing.

· Lights, Camera, Lots of Action. Forget the Script. (nytimes.com)
· Thumbnail: Gianna Michaels and Faye Reagan ponder the future of porn (nsgalleries.com)

The first issue—which arrives on a newswtand near you July 7, 2009—will have Joanna Angel on the cover, and Jessie Lee, MistiDawn, and Draven. Will this hot, hardcore, punk rock porn mag be enough to save print media? We can only hope. (It's certainly the best strategy we've seen so far.)

· Burning Angel (burningangel.com)

Alas, you'll have to buy the magazine if you actually want to read the piece; though a gallery of exclusive photos from Rolling Stone's shoot with Sasha is available online.

· Sasha Grey: The Dirtiest Girl in the World Poses for Rolling Stone (rollingstone.com)
· Sasha Grey, The Dirtiest Girl in the World: The Story Behind the Story (rollingstone.com)

The New York Times has a fascinating profile on AQTH, its owners, and its employees—and what it means to run a company devoted to alternative sexuality in a country that's extremely repressed. Most interesting are the interviews with the employees: while some are very aware of, and even titillated by, the products' intended purposes, others remain in the dark (case in point: a man who thinks that the sex swing he's manufacturing is a hammock).

View a short clip of the video here—for the full video, click over to the Times website.

· A Pakistani Underworld (nytimes.com, thanks AS!)

As an added bonus, the piece includes a photo gallery of each model holding a few poses, both while clothed and nude. Because in order to really understand these girls, we need to see them at work, right?

· NYC art-school models (newyork.timeout.com)

As with every year, the shots are more tease than T&A—but we'd still like to thank Allure for doing their part to fill the world with nude photos of these gorgeous women. Every little bit helps, you know (and they've certainly given us more than a little bit of sideboob).

· The Naked Truth (allure.com)

If we'd known that wishing worked out this well, well, we would have started wishing for a million dollars a whole lot sooner.

· Daisy Lowe in i-D March 2009 (thefashiontime.com, via Violet Blue (tinynibbles.com)

Well, lucky for all of us pervs, Randy Cohen—aka the man behind the New York Times Magazine's "Ethicist" column—has the answer. It seems you should call up the amateur pornstar in question, and (kindly, gently) alert him or her to your discovery... just be prepared for the possibility that your friend might actually be both the star and the distributor of the clip.

We can't tell you how great to feels to have that ethical dilemma resolved... now if we could just figure out what to do about that snafu where we "accidentally" cheated on our taxes.

· The Porn Identity (nytimes.com)
· Amateur pornstar via Porn's Greatest (pornsgreatest.com, via Ask Jolene)

We're pleased to announce that our very own Supreme Commandress appears on the cover of the April 2009 issue of Club Confidential (out now), which also includes a very steamy look inside Burning Angel, and some on the scene reporting from the set of the latest "Cum on my Tattoo" release (at least, that's what we're assuming "Splat My Tats!" refers to). Congratulations, Joanna—we can't believe they waited this long to feature you!

· Joanna Angel (joannaangel.com)
· Club International (clubinternational.com)