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A celebration of the riches of the web.

Web Monitor wonders why the US is in the loop about something after the UK, what Hootie and the Blowfish mean to college stereotypes and if the debate about a new free economy will ever end. Share bits of the internet that interest you to Web Monitor by sending your links via the comment box.

• Web Monitor was wondering why US reviewers were suddenly getting in the loop about In The Loop, the British satire which was released in the UK's cinemas back in April. Reviews have been popping up all over the place. It all made sense, when we learnt the film wasn't released until the 24th July in the US. So Web Monitor was intrigued what the American reviewers would think of such a damning criticism of US politics. It seems they were impressed.
NPR and :

"The movie is crammed with characters and details, the actors playing it straight but at farcical speeds, leaping back and forth from the minutiae of protocol to problems with their teeth to one-night stands to leaking documents or plugging leaks."

Also from NPR the film treads the thin line between tragedy and comedy whilst imitating life:

"You laugh -- and laugh -- because the alternative would be to weep for us all."

Lisa Schwarzbaum in it compares favourably to the West Wing:

"The chattering smarty-pants who ran the U.S. government on The West Wing are slow talkers compared with the motormouthed and hilariously imperfect power elite in the brainy British comedy In the Loop."

In the Loop a:

"Stinging Strangelovean satire... This is insult comedy of the highest order."

another rave review, saying:

" ...it's achingly, wrenchingly, dizzyingly funny, with a bleak, bitter sense of humor that makes each laugh feel like the people behind In the Loop are not so much tickling your funny bone as they are going at it with an ice pick."

Web Monitor couldn't find a critical US view. If you find one, send it via the comment box.

• "God, Mom, Hamilton is so Hootie & the Blowfish."
No, Web Monitor doesn't know what that means either. Kathleen Kingsbury was told this whilst researching her . It's all to do with amusingly specific stereotypes of US colleges invading the internet as American students prepare to go to university at the end of August. Stereotypes say that Oberlin is all hippies, Miami students never stop partying, Chicago students are boring, Georgetown is like so catholic, SMU is all millionaires... The list goes on and on and on. There are so many stereotypes to bust, that .
The is the place for students, parents and employers to decide whether they are nerds or party animals based on their college choice.

The stereotypes have even been studied - Yale history professor for the university's alumni magazine that Yale has the stereotype of attracting gay students, possibly down to its reputation for "being an exceptionally hospitable and exciting place to be gay" and in turn ex-Yale students went on to influence debate on gay marriage and gay rights.

But this all still leaves Web Monitor wondering what was meant by the Hootie and the Blowfish comment. If you find a fan site which may enlighten Web Monitor as to the typical Hootie and the Blowfish fan, send the link via the comments box.

• The debate about a free future burns on. Web Monitor is tracking discussions on the idea put forward by Chris Anderson's book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. The debate was fired up by this is impossible. Web Monitor has already flagged up on the question of if you started to have to pay for websites, which ones would you cough up for. And yesterday Web Monitor noted the Snarkmarket blog has been looking at what the prospect of "free" would mean to people working in the liberal arts, specifically eventually creative types will do fun jobs for free. Now . Doctorow disagrees with Gladwell's reasoning but agrees with the conclusion - free is impossible - when considering future costs in combatting piracy, when it's so cheap for members of the public to copy material:

"Gladwell's criticisms ring hollow to me, blending a hand-wringing grievance about 'theft' of information with special pleading for Gladwell and his fellow journalists.
Which is not to say that Free is perfect. Indeed, I think it has exactly the same problem as The Long Tail, namely, an unwillingness to consider the wider implications of a world centred on a commodity that can be infinitely reproduced at no marginal cost."

• Yale University's more wolves for Scotland. It lays out the argument that wolves would be bad for red deer but good for Scottish ecology because, as Science Now reports, red deer have been a little bit greedy, "grazing the hillsides bare". It's all come about after the success of wolves being reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the north-western United States in the 1990s. William Ripple, a professor of forest ecosystems and society at Oregon State University in Corvallis said the benefits were far-reaching:

" ...there was an unforeseen bonus: Not only did the elk population go down, but there have been "major ecological effects... The elk now steer clear of areas where they perceive risk from wolves, leading to the regrowth of aspens, willows, cottonwood trees, and berry-producing shrubs."

• Self-certified recovering prankster Dom Joly hasn't pranked for about five years, so comes a bit out of the blue. He talks philosophers - his favourite being bugs bunny - with his Keep it Real sentiment, followed by Derek Smalls in Spinal Tap with his slogan 'have a good time all the time'. Joly's own philosophy is more laid back:

"I'm a totally impractical person. Basically my whole philosophy is kind of laziness, it's kind of anything I have to do some hard work for I just don't really do. I can change a light bulb and that's about it."

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