Web Monitor
16:20 UK time, Tuesday, 25 August 2009
A celebration of the riches of the web.
In Web Monitor today: the people who think we are spending too much energy on the whole and others who feel more needs to be spent on cakes. Share your favourite bits of the web by sending a link via the letters box to the right of this page.
• Discovering - a blog documenting the times when professionally made cakes go wrong led Web Monitor to reminisce about various other snack based blogs like Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down and . That got Web Monitor wondering and subsequently wandering around the web to answer the question - what happened to the word pimp? Word bloggers did not disappoint. in his blog that the word's meaning changed from someone who solicits customers for a prostitute to making something glamorous but Mayor is not happy about the situation:
"So how are we so casually, and so quickly using 'pimp'? it deserves no such redemption and there's no positive way to spin it, to use pimp as a synonym for ostentatious or extroversion is to incrementally sanitize the trade it represents and I refuse to use to do that."
the change back to the MTV show Pimp My Ride hosted by rapper Xzibit which also introduced a generation to diamond-studded, continuously-spinning, gold alloy wheels.
on the furore in 2008 over a misunderstanding of the word when referring to Chelsea Clinton calling Democratic convention superdelegates on her mother's behalf :
"MSNBC host David Shuster asked two guests: 'Doesn't it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?'"
The the starkest example of the new use:
"Much to my horrified amazement, I just ran across a Facebook page called Obama Is A Pimp.
The amazing thing is that the page is supportive of Barack Obama ...Pimps exploit, abuse, and degrade women. What kind of cultural perspective enables pimp to evolve into an inoffensive word?"
You can "pimp" this blog but you won't make any money - just send your favourite links to surprising places pimp pops up on the internet.
• In the unlikeliest partnership since baking and the rapper Xzibit (see above) is self-proclaimed premier clairvoyante to the stars Madame Arcati and wealth management website Spears. the senior editor of , Josh Spero, about where you can find moneyed people given the global recession:
"At the moment, Russia and the Middle East are heavily oil-dependent for wealth, which is a mixed blessing. As for implosion, it's already happened - most have been bailed out by the Kremlin. I'd look to China in the future - it can only go up."
• When someone leaves their old job it's always interesting to see if they spill the beans on what they really thought. with the departing chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission Jonathon Porritt in the website Public Service reveals he sees future energy choices very clearly:
"I'm pretty certain that, in terms of big-picture generation, the world will have to choose between nuclear on the one hand or coal plus CCS [carbon capture and storage] on the other. I don't like either technology, I think they are both ludicrously expensive and not the right way to go, but I would much rather have CCS and coal than nuclear."
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