This page provides online resources
to assist users in carrying out web-based research on Indonesia and East Timor. Suggestions for additional links are always
welcome!
Edited by Elizabeth Coville (ecoville@gmail.com)
What's Up on the Web:
A fortnightly update on
items of special interest to researchers on Indonesia and East Timor and
accessible through links on this page.
# 8 - Summer searching
In the dog days of summer, waiting at a stoplight, I heard this NPR (National Public Radio)
story: "Orangutans try long-distance relationships"
Here is the entire thing:
Morning Edition, August 17, 2006: "More people are trying online dating. Now orangutans are
giving it a shot. Zookeepers in the Netherlands are hooking up Dutch and Indonesian orangutans
with Webcams. If things go well, they'll be able to have a romantic long distance dinner via a
button that allows them to give each other food. But alas, as is true for many couples, distance
may be a problem. Zookeepers say the couples will probably never meet because transporting
them is difficult."
Clearly, this was fodder for humor around the world. By the next day, the headlines had taken a
predictable turn like "Apes seek love online."
But the story raises important issues about conservation. Orangutans in the wild are at risk
of extinction. In fact, drawing attention to the plight of the remaining orangutans in Indonesia
was the purpose behind the story. Making it a Technology story rather than, say, a Nature story
may have given it more mileage. Here's the The Jakarta Post story entitled simply "Dutch
Zoo hopes to put orangutans in touch via Internet" which was published on August 15 in the
latest News section. (This version is Google's cached version, or you can get it by searching the
past editions by date.)
And, thanks to online searching, anyone can easily shift from funny headline mode to research
mode, using the old tricks of web searching. By narrowing down the language to English and
the date of publication to the most recent option, and by limiting file type to pdf and site
to .edu, for instance, you can find a reasonable (i.e., not too much) amount of serious
(i.e., scholarly) material.
Posted on August 24, 2006
@ 2000 Antara Kita. Southeast Asian Studies
Program, Yamada House, Ohio University, Athens, OH
45701-2979, USA.
This site was last updated on August 24, 2006