³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

A celebration of the riches of the web.

Moon landings, hip-hop and Leishmaniasis disease have nothing in common, apart from their shared place on Web Monitor, where we bring together the most interesting bits of the internet. Recommend your favourite links by sending us a comment.

• Web Monitor has written before about rap not being just about fast cars and loose women anymore - it can be about , and now about the moon landing. The second man to walk on the moon, Buzz Aldrin, has revealed: "I have only two passions - space exploration and hip-hop." And teamed up with Snoop Dogg to . the "making of" video on Will Ferrell's comedy website as a spoof. Even so, Web Monitor is happy to report that Aldrin said in the film that he's stopping the Earth/moon rivalry, declaring: "I don't have any beef with the Earth walkers."

• Never mind Roman ruins, a sixties . They're reporting on a California state archaeologist who is insisting on preserving the left-overs from the commune, which include melted trainers, scorched fabric, broken plates, a tube of 40-year-old face cream and red plastic Monopoly hotels. E. Breck Parkman is convinced these artefacts will tell the story of the years between the Summer of Love and Woodstock, what Archaeology magazine says was a period of political turbulence, generational conflict, and cultural experimentation that shaped modern America. Cue the .

• Emma Watson who plays Hermione in the Harry Potter films has a few. Within a discussion on how she decides what to wear in the morning and why she's determined to go to university, the actress who's been famous for more than half her life said she wasn't impressed with how photographers treated her on her 18th birthday:

"The worst thing was that they laid down on the pavement and took pictures up my skirt. Now I'm going to wear cycling shorts whenever I get out of cars."

• is really something that would only ever happen on the blogosphere. Korean blogger Younghee Jung travels between London, Tokyo, Helsinki, Redwood City, Pittsburgh and Seoul collecting an original view of these different places public areas. From a "dog bar" to a poster reminding people it's illegal to dump pets, Younghee wonders whether we'll ever get the balance right when it comes to our relationships with our pets.

• Mike Oldfield told Mark Radcliffe on Radio 2 (one hour 28 minutes in) that his seminal album "Tubular Bells" wasn't going to feature the instrument and certainly wasn't going be named after it:

"As I went into the manor to start recording, they were taking a set of tubular bells out, which was being used by another musician... As an after-thought I thought "hang on a moment, they might be useful" so I asked them to leave them there for my week. They did prove very useful indeed. The title for the album didn't come about till a long time later.... He [Richard Branson] decided to call it Breakfast in Bed, which made me think 'no, anything but that', which led to Tubular Bells."

• TV presenter Ben Fogle was filming Extreme Dreams last year in the Peruvian jungle when he was bitten by a sand fly that transmitted a flesh-eating bug. he's campaigning for more research for what he calls neglected diseases like this one:

"We're trying to encourage governments and manufacturers of drugs to come up with new, more cost-effective means of treatment. In the future it might not just be people overseas affected by these neglected diseases. With current global warming it might not be long until we have tropical diseases on these shores and believe me, you don't want leishmaniasis."

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?