Web Monitor
16:22 UK time, Tuesday, 22 December 2009
A celebration of the riches of the web.
Today in Web Monitor: the pantomime explained, Santa's big fat lie, and more from the world of geek rap.
• Pantomime doesn't translate to the US, so offers an explanation to Americans:
"Pantomimes reflect a strange paradox of the British national character: that people can be at once so uptight and so gleefully, childishly uninhibited."
It focuses on the big US stars, such as Pamela Anderson and Henry Winkler who used to play the Fonz in Happy Days' and has been playing Captain Hook for four years in various theatres. Winkler explains to Lyall the first time he was asked to take part:
"They called me and said, 'Listen, it's a pantomime; you don't know what it is, and there's no way to explain it.'"
• Web Monitor has been spoiled for choice of late when it comes to stories about fat Santa causing obesity. But that a report by Australian epidemiologist Nathan Grills about the dangers of Father Christmas in the British Medical Journal was meant to be a joke. Picked up as a serious story with some even criticising Grills, Merryman caught up with article's writer:
"He's just bewildered - and a bit angry - that his Christmas mischief has gotten more publicity than he has ever received for his real job. When he's not beating up on mythical creatures, Grills spends his time in rural India, studying the transmission of HIV through the region; his expertise is in determining how charities can most effectively help victims of the disease."
• And we've had an update to previous geek rap posts. Colin Edwards from Exeter has contacted Web Monitor to put forward what he thinks is "possibly the only good use autotune has ever been put to. In John Boswell takes the words of scientists, adds a bit of autotune magic, as is the theme of 2009, and makes a song to marvel at the wonders of the universe.
Incidentally, that the aforementioned Keynes rap stems from a long line of economics raps, not quite comprehended by Dubner either.
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