This will hurt me...

I was having a fiddle on teh Internets the other evening, and I happened upon a website project that I thought that I would share with everyone. The project is Picture Australia and it is connected to the National Library of Australia . It has only been up for a little while, so I am sure that it will only get better. The point of the project is to Re-Picture Australia . This essentially means that the site itself allows ready access to public domain images from participants, ready for people to download, mash-up and reload with new meaning into Picture Australia via a Flickr group . I’ll quote from the media release to give you the general idea: The aim of the project is to encourage the creative use of the nation’s collections and attracting new audiences who play and work in the visual industries. We are encouraging image-makers to creatively reuse, reinterpret and ‘Re-Picture’. Picture curators from libraries, archives, galleries, and museums from around the country have provided ...

I have always had a keen interest in the history of the Soviet Union. My recent experience teaching politics to first year university students has taught me how is difficult to convey to anyone with little or no memory of the world pre-1990 the shadow cast by the Soviet presence. Now, there happened to have been the odd communist in my family, so I guess that the household I grew up in the shadow was felt in a little more sympathetic way than some. But despite the ready access to numerous books, pamphlets and propaganda pieces, the whole notion of the Soviet Union (or Eastern Europe more generally) was an utter mystery to me.   So of course, given my interest in history, the former-USSR still maintains a presence. Yet, unlike much modern history, the history of the Soviet Union has a beginning, middle and an end. Amplifying this, its end does not seem that long ago, even if we are nearing twenty years! To anyone with an eye for history, even its beginning was relatively recent.   What...

Stumbled across a blog that I'm currently enjoying very much, Steve Don't Eat It! Essentially, it amounts to some bloke named Steve who has decided to eat things that he is aware of, but would not normally try. He records his experience for us, the general public. I am currently up to Volume 7 ( Cuitlacoche , a black fungus that infects corn) and perversely enjoying his accounts very much. If you're into this sort of thing, well worth a look. And Steve, please keep eating it!