Ecunumics ixplaned Oz style. “For Europeans of Smith’s generation, the ‘speculative bubble’ was a defining disaster of history. This was their Gallipoli in a financial sense.” — PJ O Rourke, “Cure to the global crisis is worse than the disease“, The Australian , April 21, 2008.

Deer Mistah ORork,

We wood like to thanc youse 4 eggsplaining the south see bubble like in wayz we dum orstrlalians ken understand. coz like we never new wat it was about till peeple kompared it 2 somethink we new about we’z having never red about anythink beyond our borders or outsyde ower own histery.

Wez just thrilled to have our nashon-defining slorter kompared to a finanshal krash, thatz so ryte. Yu r so smart its a wunder yur side has bean so totully defeeted and rejected by thuh peeple. Wot morons thay must be.

Next time wez wunt ecunumics ixplaned, yure thuh first ex-doap hed National Lampoon editur weyull think uv.

— Gyy Runndel

Facebook pirates! Pirates have taken over the Australia Council for the Arts’ Facebook page: “Ahhh me landlubbers we have your ship!”

Comments for this group, a selection:

  • Oh no! Not the pirates!
  • Dress up wi’ yer best frilly seafarin’ hearty shirt an’ swashbuckler hat if ye me a mate. If a lass then yer best wench costume. keep t’ th’ code an’ start talkin’ like a buccanneer.
  • WOW Pirates! – Show me your parrot:-)
  • Pity there wasn’t a pirate in sight when John Howard came into power and nearly all funds for towards art production went out the window.
  • Hi all, just to let you all know we’re working with Facebook to get the page fixed and back in action.
  • Ha ha ha, ok we bow before you, pirates, you are the greatest, now can you get lost and leave us be.
  • Get lost pirates!! Stop wasting our time and your time, surely you have better things you can achieve in this world…

— Nicholas Pickard

Online site and New York Times take out Pulitzer prizes. The Columbia University journalism school today awarded a Pulitzer prize to a fact-checking website run by the St Petersburg Times and gave five to the New York Times. The awards, announced Monday afternoon in New York, are the first time an online publication has been awarded American journalism’s most prestigious accolade. The Pulitzer committee recognised PolitiFact.com‘s work “separating rhetoric from truth to enlighten voters” during the presidential campaign, awarding it the prize in national reporting. — Guardian

Senator John Kerry to hold hearings on newspaper industry. Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., will hold hearings in Washington, D.C., next week to review the economic problems facing the newspaper industry, The Boston Globe reported Monday. The hearings will be at the Senate Commerce Committee, and are set to begin April 30. They come at a time when numerous newspapers are in bankruptcy protection or seeking cost-savings, including the Globe which has threatened to close or sell if certain union concessions are not made. — Editor and Publisher

Everything I know about marketing I learned from Susan Boyle. Or, the seven habits of highly effective frumpy Scottish singers. What can we learn from viral-video sensation Susan Boyle? For one thing, you can make being a frump a good thing. Simon Dumenco lays out how you too can glean insight from a 47-year-old woman who lives with her cat, Pebbles, and, oh yeah, sings. — Advertising Age

Schweppes handing out hairy man-bibs. Any adults who are in the market for a creepy new bib (for themselves, not their offspring) should look no further than Cadbury Schweppes’ Man Bib, which somehow promotes the company’s Solo brand of soft drinks in Australia.

It claims to work as an actual bib, but the model is wearing it under his shirt, which defeats the purpose entirely. But hey, it could have been a codpiece. — AdFreak

Making a game of the news. As traditional news media struggles to find a new method and business model for dissemination over the internet, some are suggesting that news-related games could be an avenue worth pursuing. Rather than using such games solely as entertainment, journalists could make some of their reports more educative and interactive, allowing readers to choose which threads of a story they would like to follow. Georgia Tech is currently running a research blog to better understand how games and journalism can interact. — Slashdot

Non-union staff cut at Sun-Times. Sun-Times Media Group Inc. cut about 140 jobs companywide last week as it tries to trim costs during its bankruptcy reorganization. The cuts, which affected both managers and non-managers, amounted to about 10% of the company’s non-union staff, according to a Sun-Times spokeswoman. The company is in talks with representatives of its unions, including the Chicago Newspaper Guild, to win concessions from them, she said. About 928 of the company’s 2,322 workers are union members, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing last week. — Chicago Business