Just resting

Roast meat should always be allowed to rest before consumption. Humans, on the other hand, need to learn to be patient!

Eppur si muove - carn the lions!

or 500 000 selon les organisateurs, 20 selon la police

I've been doing my best to avoid the Ratzinger-Jugend, but the dark forces of bureaucracy are being as unhelpful as ever. Today's missive from the university administration, which usually delights in taking three weeks to open an envelope:

We have today been advised that the NSW Police felt it was too dangerous for a large number of pilgrims to travel from Victoria Park to St John’s along Parramatta Road or City Road. We are, therefore, allowing this event to cross through the University.

We are very sorry for the necessarily short notice but we anticipate that all disruption to normal movement across Campus will over by 5.00pm today and appreciate your patience and co-operation during this time.

Universities, in the opinion of this humble hippopotamus, should be places for learning and the development of critical thought - and questions of free expression aside, not for imposing fines for stating that the Earth is round or handing out contraceptives to randy young acolytes. Back in January, protests by staff and students at La Sapienza in Rome led the man who thought Galileo's treatment was "fair and just" to abandon his attempt to spread the Word to the Science faculty.

We must do things differently at the cloaca orbis terrarum, or perhaps the "necessarily short notice" had something to do with it.

Things humans do on the driest continent on Earth while pretending to write a thesis (I)

In support of the foregoing, or tautologous list of the indexed

Some notable writers with works on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (from the usual authoritative source, though the human claims they've simply ripped off his bibliography):
Joseph Addison
Dante Alighieri
Francis Bacon
Honoré de Balzac
Simone de Beauvoir
Cesare Beccaria
Jeremy Bentham
Henri Bergson
George Berkeley
Thomas Browne
Giordano Bruno
John Calvin
Giacomo Casanova
Auguste Comte
Nicolaus Copernicus
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Erasmus Darwin
Daniel Defoe
René Descartes
Denis Diderot
Alexandre Dumas, père
Alexandre Dumas, fils
Desiderius Erasmus
Johannes Scotus Eriugena
Gustave Flaubert
Anatole France
Frederick II of Prussia
Galileo Galilei (Eppur si muove!)
Edward Gibbon
André Gide
Vincenzo Gioberti
Graham Greene
Heinrich Heine
Thomas Hobbes
Victor Hugo
David Hume
Cornelius Jansen
Immanuel Kant
Adam F. Kollár
Saint Mary Faustina Kowalska
Nikos Kazantzakis
Johannes Kepler
Hughes Felicité Robert de Lamennais
Pierre Larousse
Gregorio Leti
John Locke
Martin Luther
Niccolò Machiavelli
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maimonides
Nicolas Malebranche
Jules Michelet
John Stuart Mill
John Milton
Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu
Blaise Pascal
François Rabelais
Ernest Renan
Samuel Richardson
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
George Sand
Jean-Paul Sartre
Baruch de Spinoza
Laurence Sterne
Emanuel Swedenborg
Jonathan Swift
Miguel de Unamuno
Maria Valtorta
Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde
Voltaire
Gerard Walschap
Émile Zola
Huldrych Zwingli

Protests so far not outlawed by the NSW government

or at very least reputed to have embarrassed the editors of the Vatican's index librorum prohibitorum [latina]

If there's still hope for Ingrid Betancourt...

VIVA FIDEL!

Nihil sub sole novum

Insert Cliché Bingo

Shamelessly ripped off another blog, which offers the wise words that "getting vox-popped is the foodie equivalent of getting happy slapped."
Who's for other forms of bingo? Corporate? Working families? Or should I stick to recommending websites of great public utlity for the Pulitzer prize for fiction?

Flora and Fauna

Things are settling down in the new château, hurrah! The location is convenient, the bedroom has a bookcase, the kitchen is positively luxurious and the bathroom is nearly fixed. The other occupants are emimently friendly -- warm and cuddly for the most part, and even the owl is a softie once you get to know her. There's even quite a decent garden, and I seem to have the treehouse all to myself for the time being.
Watch this space for political developments. I'll have this microstate on the road in no time now I have an address: proposals for diplomatic relations, joint declarations of war, suitable châtelaines for the human and further cooking experiments to be directed here.