Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Casu marzu:
Casu marzu (also called casu modde, casu cundhÃdu, or in Italian formaggio marcio) is a cheese found in Sardinia, Italy, notable for being riddled with live insect larvae. Casu marzu means “rotten cheese” in Sardinian and is known colloquially as maggot cheese.
I think I might just pass on this one..
The Planetary Society has some amazing images & animations of Earth taken by planetary spacecraft.
My favourite at the moment has to be the image of Earth from the surface of Mars, taken by the Spirit rover in 2004 and the first image taken from the surface of an object beyond the moon.
Shades of the Total Perspective Vortex, for those HHGTTG fans out there.
Speaking of which, Paulo Ang has a rather wonderful Flash animation entitled “The Total Perspective Vortex” which makes powerful use of planetary and astronomical imagery alongside music and a liberal smattering of Hitch Hikers quotes.
From the decision, handed down on June 3rd 1995.
The common law of this country would perpetuate injustice if it were to continue to embrace the enlarged notion of terra nullius and to persist in characterizing the indigenous inhabitants of the Australian colonies as people too low in the scale of social organization to be acknowledged as possessing rights and interests in land. Moreover, to reject the theory that the Crown acquired absolute beneficial ownership of land is to bring the law into conformity with Australian history.
The dispossession of the indigenous inhabitants of Australia was not worked by a transfer of beneficial ownership when sovereignty was acquired by the Crown, but by the recurrent exercise of a paramount power to exclude the indigenous inhabitants from their traditional lands as colonial settlement expanded and land was granted to the colonists. Dispossession is attributable not to a failure of native title to survive the acquisition of sovereignty, but to its subsequent extinction by a paramount power.
There is a summary of the (very long) decision at Wikipedia and a news report on the anniversary at the ABC.
An ABC news report called “Climate report: record temperatures, not enough rain” says that:
The warmest May on record in the eastern states of the country will be the subject of a special climate statement to be released by the Bureau of Meteorology on Monday.
The eastern states of Australia have had temperatures about 2-3C above normal for the start of the year, and the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis (Dr David Jones) said:
“If you look at Victoria, for example, there has been almost no frost despite the fact here we are at the start of winter,” he said. “That’s really almost an unheard of phenomena.”
Whilst we have had some rain recently the fact that the ground is so dry just means it’s getting sucked straight in without making it to rivers, or reservoirs..
Linux.Conf.Au 2008, which will be held right here in Melbourne, has just (( I started writing this around 11am, now I get to post it about 9 hours later.. )) opened up its Call For Papers, some come on in!
The closing date of the CFP will be 20th July 2007.
They are also accepting proposals for mini-confs too.
The mini-conferences are dedicated conference streams for specific communities of interest. The linux.conf.au organisers provide the space, and leave the rest up to the organiser of each mini-conf. Mini-conf speakers and delegates need to register for the main conference to participate.
Go on, give those of us on the LCA 2008 papers committee something exciting to read!
