Stuff We Like

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FRIDAY, 13 JUNE

Romeo and Juliet in reverse. She was 82. He was 95. They had dementia. They fell in love. And then they started having sex. This story deals with the treatment of the aged, dementia and consent, and tells a tragic love story. Awesome feature. -- Slate
The long-suffering ladies of prime-time TV. TV sure does love its female victims. Are you a As another television season comes to an end, Radar has scanned the airwaves for the most put-upon women on prime time in order to honor them with the Kelly Taylor (from Beverly Hills 90210) Memorial Victim Award. -- Radar
Strawberry Shortcake goes PC. If, like us, you remember with resentment when the PC brigade demanded that Cookie Monster record a song saying that "cookies are a sometimes food" you'll appreciate this story. Saccharine 80s character Strawberry Shortcake is getting a "fruit-forward" makeover. As part of a growing toy-industry trend (Care Bears are getting slimmed down; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be more pumped, less aggro), vintage brands are being reworked to appeal to the kids, while still playing on young parents' nostalgia. In the case of Shortcake (who's getting a new TV show and a computer-animated movie), the emphasis is less on sugar, more on fresh fruit. -- Jezebel
The Battle of the Blogs. If you're a keen reader of US political blogs, you'll know that MyDD and Daily Kos sit at the top of the liberal Netroots movement, which over the last five years has made astonishing strides in its campaign to transform the Democratic Party into a hard-fighting, proudly liberal, and, most importantly, victorious entity. But as things turn nasty, will the fallout taint the Dems? -- The New Republic

Have you found a gem of a story or a jawdropping quote on the web? Help your fellow Crikey readers sift the wheat from the internet chaff by sending the link to boss@crikey.com.au with the subject heading "Stuff We Like".

THURSDAY, 12 JUNE

Cop an Eiffel of this. Media Mook draws our attention to a UK doco called 'Strangelove: Married To The Eiffel Tower' about objectophilia sufferers, and asks “How many takes did the narrator have to do on phrases such as "It's a challenge to be truly intimate with a public structure. But where there's a will, there's a way."? (!!!) -- Media Mook
You throw like a Democrat. A Media Matters study of NYT columnist and Pulitzer winner Maureen O’Dowd's columns found she “repeatedly uses gender to mock Democrats”. She characterises Clinton as masculine, Obama and Edwards as feminine, while Hillary Clinton is domineering ("Mommie Dearest" and "Mistress Hillary"). Dowd also often compares Obama to a child, calling him "boy wonder" and "the Chicago kid." -- Media Bistro
Puppy versus robot. Bless the Wall Street Journal, they’ve shed the fustiness long enough to write a story about getting your puppy to co-habit peacefully with your Roomba (a trendy robot vacuum cleaner which looks like a little spaceship which scuttles around vaccuming your house and scaring your puppy). Yes, there’s video. -- WSJ
Inside the world’s first billion dollar home. Mr and Mrs Ambani wanted to build a custom home. But they’re not just any couple – he’s the 5^th richest man in the world. Plans have been drawn up for what will be the world's largest and most expensive home: a 27-story skyscraper in downtown Mumbai with a pricetag of nearly $2 billion cost nearing $2 billion. Pardon us while we boggle. -- Forbes (submitted by Jane F.)

Have you found a gem of a story or a jawdropping quote on the web? Help your fellow Crikey readers sift the wheat from the internet chaff by sending the link to boss@crikey.com.au with the subject heading "Stuff We Like".

WEDNESDAY, 11 JUNE

One Laptop Per Child meets Big Business. The big idea of giving PCs to poor children has been challenged by educators and business. Here, follow the misadventures of One Laptop per Child. -- Business Week
It's a bird, it's a plane - it's a hat? If you’re into fancy hair styling or hats (or animals) you should look at these photos of models whose hair has been styled into various animal shapes. Bizarre. -- Ohnotheydidn’t
Things younger than McCain. A self explanatory title, really. Apparently, the LP record, the lubricated condom and that humble American staple, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, are all younger than Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. -- Things younger than McCain
Dookkoon the Asian elephant. Ah, we do love Media Watch. This was our favourite subediting whoopsy in a long while. -- Media Watch

TUESDAY, 10 JUNE

Moyers on press freedom. The Democracy Now blog writes up broadcasting legend Bill Moyers speech to the National Conference for Media Reform, in which he said “Democracy only works when ordinary people claim it as their own.” They describe his sppech as “electrifying”. -- Democracy Now
Obama's secret message to al Qaeda. Barack Obama and wife Michelle have been subject to scrutiny because they shared a “victory fist pound”. Is it a secret signal to terrorists? People are really discussing this. That’s the scary thing. -- Politico
What the CIA learned from Get Smart. Maxwell Smart always "missed it by that much," but some of those dopey spy shows of the '60s were right on the money. -- Wired
Amazon puts the squeeze on publishers. A major battle has erupted between Amazon and the UK's biggest publisher in the most public fallout yet between the powerful online retailer and the book world. Amazon has removed several key Hachette Livre UK titles from sale on its British website in an effort to pressure the publisher to give it a greater percentage of its profits, according to Hachette's group chief executive. -- Sun Herald

FRIDAY, 6 JUNE

US economy hits brothels too. The legal brothels in Nevada have been hit by the economy and petrol prices, to the point that they’re starting to take advantage of the recent overturning of laws which had prevented them from advertising their services. -- Ad Age
Living down to stereotypes. The makers of the new massively multiplayer online game Age of Conan gave the game’s female characters breast reductions during a recent software patch. After a number of players complained, they’ve promised to return the boobs to their cartoonish proportions quick smart. Um, we thought Conan was supposed to be an MMO for adults, not 13 year olds. – Ad Week
The lazy toads at Telstra. I’ve just returned from the Telstra Shop after waiting 10 minutes for someone to serve us. Whilst waiting, I snapped these 4 lazy shop workers with a demo phone, emailed it to myself from the shop and hey presto - it’s up for the world to see. -- Amnesia
You don’t have to be a subeditor to love this. A “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks”. Thanks for submitting that, Irene! – Quotation Marks

THURSDAY, 5 JUNE

The Science of Sexy ads. Science Daily reports on a new study showing that men who watched sexy videos or handled lingerie sought immediate gratification—even when they were making decisions about money, soda, and candy. It’s a little depressing that there’s now research validating the ad industry’s use of bikini girls to sell, well, everything. But we loved Salon’s riposte: “Personally, I'm relieved that the age-old question: "Do some straight men do stupid things because of sex?" -- Salon
Dear Dr Jones. Back from yet another globetrotting adventure, Indiana Jones checks his mail and discovers that his bid for tenure has been denied. -- McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
Dancing bees. Honeybees can communicate with others from far-off continents by learning to interpret their dance moves, scientists have found. The world's nine species of honeybee separated about 30m years ago and have since developed their own diverse dances, which are used like languages. -- The Guardian
Re: The Rapture. If millions of Christians suddenly disappear from the face of the Earth as the opening act for Armageddon, we think most nonbelievers will be too busy freaking the hell out to check their email. But if they do log in, now they can be treated to some post-Rapture needling from their missing friends and loved ones, courtesy of web startup YouveBeenLeftBehind.com. -- Wired

WEDNESDAY, 4 JUNE

7 deadening reasons we are better off without Bill Clinton back in the Oval. A new, and controversial, Vanity Fair piece explores the nature of Bill Clinton's idiocy, or more precisely his "id," and we read it last night so you wouldn't have to actually labour over any of that elegant prose. (Key phrases: "repellent grandiosity," "cavernous narcissism," "Bubba Trouble.") -- Jezebel
Slumber parties go digital. There has long been a conceit that held that the Web was a men’s locker room, full of pornography, sports and gadgets, but the same demographic group that controls 83 percent of the spending in America is increasing its time spent on the Web. So in the last 18 months, venture capitalists and media companies have been cranking out the digital estrogen. -- NTY
Displace me. This elegant video site documents an action taken in 15 US cities to call for peace in northern Uganda, and help for its displaced people to return home. Watch the introduction video, which starts with stirring words from RFK. -- Invisible Children
Richard E. Grant in My Fair Lady. Just because we've loved him since Withnail and I, and because we can't wait to see him as Henry Higgins. Grant is preparing for the part with the help of his wife, a voice coach, and a singing teacher who has told him to "sing it full out as though you are doing Ethel Merman to the back of the stalls." -- SMH

TUESDAY, 3 JUNE

Yves Saint Laurent remembered: "Most designers are incredibly lucky if they can contribute one thing to fashion," Steele continues. "But he was like Picasso: He contributed to so many significant movements."-- USA Today
Yves Saint Laurent Part 2: During a career that ran from 1957 to 2002 he was largely responsible for changing the way modern women dress, putting them into pants both day and night, into peacoats and safari jackets, into “le smoking” (as the French call a man’s tuxedo jacket), and into leopard prints, trench coats and, for a time in the 1970s, peasant-inspired clothing in rich fabrics. -- NYT
China’s all seeing eye. Naomi Klein writes that with the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export. -- Rolling Stone
How to get on Oprah. She's the queen of commercial endorsement, launch pad for four dozen books on the top of The NYT bestseller list, fabled hawker-donor of Pontiacs and patron saint of everything from soft-rock sensation Josh Groban to Boudreaux's Butt Paste. Yet she doesn't do structured brand-integration deals or, technically, at least, live commercials. And her company, Harpo Productions, tightly controls advance and post-publicity about the praise that gets parceled out. -- Advertising Age

MONDAY, 2 JUNE

Greer on Henson. There is no hard and fast distinction between art and pornography. Very little pornography is art, but a good deal of art is pornographic. – The Age

How to get rich - and notorious. Bad-boy publishing mogul Felix Dennis shares his secrets - or does he? -- Business Week

The Billy Letters. In the late '90s, pop-culture historian Bill Geerhart had a little too much time on his hands and a surfeit of stamps. So, for his own entertainment, the then-unemployed thirtysomething launched a letter-writing campaign to some of the most powerful and infamous figures in the country, posing as a curious 10-year-old named Billy. --Radar

Attack of the Amusing Little Snack Cakes. Three-star pigs in a blanket, $55 mac ’n’ cheese with truffles, peanut butter and foie gras: When did eating in Manhattan become so demandingly witty? Observer

Have you found a gem of a story or a jawdropping quote on the web? Help your fellow Crikey readers sift the wheat from the internet chaff by sending the link to boss@crikey.com.au with the subject heading "Stuff We Like".

FRIDAY, 30 MAY

When presidential candidates dance. Slate takes a look at the bizarre American phenomenon of getting presidential candidates to dance for the cameras. The highlight are the the links to YouTube videos of Obama, Clinton and a pretty wooden looking McCain shaking their thangs. "If I were an advance staffer for a campaign, I’d get palpitations every time danceable music started playing." -- Slate
Presidential dancing Part 2. As a bonus here's a YouTube video of Dubya grooving out - complete with bongos. Unusually for YouTube, some of the user comments are actually funny (We particularly liked “Why is he fucking dancing? Thats the last thing this motherfucker should be doing”).
Rupert Murdoch on the death of newspapers. Interviewed by Walt Mossbert for the Wall Street Journal’s D6: All things digital conference, Rupe says newspapers around the world are down 10 - 30% in ad revenue. "They've made every economy they can in production, with computers and so on," says Murdoch. "Now they're going to have to reduce costs in journalism and things are going to deteriorate tremendously." WSJ [via Dan Warne]
Life, death and Twitter on the African Savannah. For veteran wildlife ranger Joseph Kimojino, the traditional tools of his trade -- binoculars, off-road jeep and a rifle -- have been supplemented by Twitter, Flickr and a blog. A ranger in Kenya's acclaimed Mara Triangle wildlife park, Kimojino is a member of the Masai tribe. He first learned how to click a computer mouse in November. Now he blogs about the Mara Triangle and posts wild animal photos on Flickr nearly every day. -- Wired

THURSDAY, 29 MAY

New Matilda on the Henson fracas. "In a long-overdue development, the Government is going to examine the issue of naked babies on TV ads. Finally, we might be able to get these lascivious images of nappy-clad harlots off our screens." Much needed satire, thank you guys. -- New Matilda
Cupcake of Whimsy. A construction manual for whimsical cupcakes - you have to see the photos to believe them. We particularly like the painting of Van Gogh's Starry Night - made of cupcakes. -- NYT
Incest! The Guardian does lowbrow. Ayesha's and Ikram's histories are entwined not only socially and culturally but biologically, too. Ayesha and Ikram are increasingly aware of the negative connotations surrounding cousin marriage. "I've worked in law firms across the country and when you tell people, well, you'd be surprised how prejudiced they can be." -- The Guardian
You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake - and that's good. Penelope Trunk tackles the myth of the 'misunderstood loner' and says you're reinventing the wheel if you think no-one else has problems like you. It's a take on career advice which careens from blogger Anna Gould (who was on the cover of the New York Times this week) to Anne Frank, Edith Wharton and photograher Sally Manne (who coincidentally was pilloried for her naked photos of her family - ring any bells?). -- Brazen Careerist

TUESDAY, 27 MAY

Germaine Greer on Posh - yes really. I have said very mean things about Victoria Beckham in my time, such as that she could neither dance nor sing and should give up her disastrous efforts at a solo career while she and David had some money left. I take none of them back. What I have lately come to realise is that what Victoria understands is clothes. She knows what to wear and she knows how to wear it. The revelation came in the form of an unforgettable pink dress. -- The Guardian
World's biggest self-portrait - drawn using GPS. Artist Erik Nordenankar says he has created the biggest drawing in the world. He gave transport company DHL a case and travel instructions for a 55-day, 100,000km journey through 62 countries, then traced the route using GPS. Check out his website which includes a reproduction of the resulting picture, and a video of how it was made. -- Erik Nordenaknar [via The Guardian]
Star Trek's Takei marries; journos spin gay Sulu headlines. In news and gossip math, the announcement of George Takei's wedding plans must've looked something like "B-List Sixties Geek Icon + Gay + Social Hot Button Topic = Win." There's just something perfect storm-ish about Takei's marrying boyfriend of 21 years Brad Altman for the jaded headline writers of the world, and under the jump, we celebrate the best, worst and strangest of the ones that have made it out there so far. -- IO9
Creepy Amish tourism. Each year, four million tourists visit the 20,000 Amish who live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and although the car rental agency had accidentally given me a new Mustang with GPS, satellite radio, and driver-side computerized lumbar support, I suspected that a several hundred-to-1 tourist-to-Amish-person ratio would ensure that the trip was uncomfortable. -- The Smart Set

MONDAY, 26 MAY

Humans weren’t designed to read? In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf explains how the human brain did not evolve to develop a written language. Instead, the culture evolved to develop one, and the brain had to adapt certain areas previously used for vision, object recognition, and abstract thought. -- The Smart Set

Photo Retouching for Children: Creepy, Gross, or Both? Someone (in jest) sent me a link to this horrible, horrible site that promises to take pictures of our cute, wholesome children and turn them into plastic, generic grotesques. -- Doodaddy

Turning children’s stories into art. New Jersey-based artist Dave Devries takes children’s drawings and re-renders them as amazing, surreal paintings of monsters and superheroes. If this doesn’t make you go squee, you have no heart. -- Lost at E Minor

Gay marriage – Ellen versus McCain. Ellen DeGeneras is getting married to longtime squeeze Portia di Rossi. Here’s a clip from her talk show where she tackled John McCain over his party’s stand against gay marriage. -- Mahalo

Have you found a gem of a story or a jawdropping quote on the web? Help your fellow Crikey readers sift the wheat from the internet chaff by sending the link to boss@crikey.com.au with the subject heading "Stuff We Like".

FRIDAY, 23 MAY

A few too many. Of the miseries regularly inflicted on humankind, some are so minor and yet, while they last, so painful that one wonders how, after all this time, a remedy cannot have been found. Is there any hope for the hungover? -- The New Yorker
What $300 can do. Fistula, a devastating condition related to childbirth, affects 2 million women worldwide. Almost eradicated in the US and Europe, the condition is still common in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Middle East. A solution is within reach. -- The Root
Citizen Journalism on YouTube. The largest video site in the world is throwing its weight behind the citizen journalism movement. It's new channel, Citizen News, will highlight the best of the citizen journalism that's taking place on YouTube, but its ultimate goal is to become a go-to news destination on the web. -- Trevor Cook
Best vids this week. Here's a bunch of links to while away your Friday. Jaw dropping animation - so original! Elephant painting - is it real or awesome CGI? Want to go to Mars? Here's a beautiful CGI tour through Mariner Valley, the biggest canyon in the solar system

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Stuff We Like