Well, today is John Howard’s birthday. For those outside Australia, he is our esteemed Prime Minister. To celebrate, here is a picture that I found taped to the coffee machine of the cafe I frequent at Uni. Happy 68th John! Enjoy it… it will be your last as PM.

Found an online version at Dave’s Planet, original artist unknown.

For the lastest on John Howard’s birthday, check out this article from The Age, celebrating and musing over what is left of Little Johnnie’s career.

Finally, and most importantly, ensure that your enrolement details are upto date here.

Was sitting at home on Saturday night, enjoying a repeat of Iron Chef. Theme ingredient: Swallow’s Nest. I hear you ask WHAT? Which is exactly what I did. Very quickly worked out it was a delicacy in Chinese cooking, and by god… EXPENSIVE. Only to be served when the Emperer shows up. (In case you’re wondering, if the friends pop over, then you should serve sea cucumbers. Who knew?). Now, the chefs did their thing with US$24,000 worth of Swallow’s Nest. Broke the budget for the show apparently. We got to the end of the show somewhat intrigued. What is Swallow’s Nest?

Swallows or swifts make nests by regurgitating gelatinous substances, or the saliva. The nests are called swallow’s nest. It is also referred to as bird’s nest. Swallow is the bird Collocalia fuciphaga (Edible-nest Swiftlet), belonging to the Apodidae family and many other birds of the same breed. Swallow’s nest consumption has been known by the Chinese for thousands of years, and people especially those riches love it and consider it as one of the most precious tonic food they can have. As a food and a tonic, it is said to be highly nourishing, containing with elements which can stimulate cell and epidermal growth. If the swallow’s nest is taken regularly, so the tradition says, the skin will be glowing and delicate. Swollow’s nest is also good for the eyes. It is beneficial to the elderly and those who have just recovered from illness.

Yes, that’s right. It is bird spit. Scrapped from inside caves straight to a plate near you! Having eaten snails amongst other things, I can appreciate that some may find this a delicacy. (That said, I baulked at the goat on Friday night… didn’t seem right). Indeed, it is known in foodie circles as the “Caviar of the East”. The thing that shocked me is the fact that Swallow’s Nest is essentially flavourless. Upwards of US$2000 per/kg for something that is tasteless and flavourless. Surely, they were having a lend. No! For over US$100 for a bowl of soup, my god, that would want to be the best soup you’ve ever had.

For more on Swallow’s Nest, check out its Wikipedia page here.

Internet censorship. It is a very topical issue to say the least. The attempts of the Chinese government, amongst others, to control what its citizens can view on the internet is well known (in the west anyway). My attempt to discover the amount of censorship on the Net in Cuba failed miserably… mainly because of the queue… be damned if I was going to spend my holiday standing in line, especially with Mojito’s to be drunk and cigars to be smoked!

Now, BEEZHOUSE.com has been a victim of censorship in the past. One of those large corporation type filtering sytems. In retrospect, may have been down to the fact that Oz had just posted about a guy who got busted fucking a goat. Then again, perhaps not! As you can see below, BEEZHOUSE.com is currently blocked at the moment in China. Without being in China, there is no way to know for sure, as sites “may [be] report[ed] as being ‘blocked’, while there are only technical reasons for their unavailability”. As our ClusterMap shows, we have been getting a number of readers over the last few months from China. However, as the BBC found out, “techincal problems” is widely regarded as euphemism for censorship.

I tried accessing the BBC News website but to no avail. A government official told me there must be what he called “a technical problem”. In truth, those “technical problems” are afflicting more and more information sites in China, for example the open source encyclopaedia Wikipedia, perhaps because it has fallen foul of the government’s recent declaration that news and information in today’s China should only be what it calls “healthy” and “in the public interest”.

The filtering systems used by the Chinese government are becoming more sophisticated, more refined and more extensive every year, involving an increasing number of local as well as foreign parties in their system. Both Reporters Sans Frontiers and Human Rights Watch maintain that Chinese censorship is some of the most elaborate and comprehensive in the world. Western companies have been accussed of aiding the Chinese government in its censorship. Only last month, Yahoo shareholders rejected plans for the company to adopt a policy that opposes censorship on the internet. Yahoo has been criticized by human rights groups since 2005 for its role in turning over some political dissidents’ e-mails. The materials were used to prosecute and imprison them. Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have all been accussed of “carrying out censorship for the Chinese government”.

Want to find out if your website is being blocked in China? Then check out this site, The Great Firewall of China, which provides real time testing of websites to see if they are blocked in China. The aim of the site is to make the censorship system transparent and keep open the discussion on censorship in order to prevent it becoming the norm across the Net.

Read more about Chinese censorship at the BBC website, here, here or here. Also of interest, NoLuv4Google.

Came across this one via Om ter saaist. Can’t quite remember how or why, since I don’t speak Dutch (or quite possiblely, Danish). Anyway, it’s not English… so I’ve got no idea what’s going on!

Random key words: Mao, Falungong, Tianammen Square, Human Rights, Organ Harvesting, Yao Ming, Yi Jianlian (over-rated).