Salmiakki

Personally I love the stuff - anyway, how many different types of salmiakki (and in English, though is there really a good translation?) are there? Leave it to the contributors to The Daily WTF to solve that one:

Souvenir Potpourri: Salmiak Attack

and the obligatory blog about experiences of eating salmiakki...

The Romance of Flying...

"Ladies and Gentlemen, you make now unfasten your seatbelts, smoke and move about as you wish. We shall be serving cocktails, lunch and afternoon tea...."

Not quite Ryanair or United Airlines ... anyway, enjoy a time when flying was a pleasure and the flight was longer than check-in and security...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9pN591cF1Y

Nazi Nuclear Bomb Project Uranium Found

From The Register:

Lost Nazi nuke-project uranium found in Dutch scrapyard:
Atomic CSI team fingerprints 1940s 'Joachimsthal' metals

By Lewis Page Posted in Physics, 19th February 2010 13:37 GMT

EU nuke boffins say that mysterious bits of uranium found last year in a Dutch scrapyard originated in the Nazi nuclear-weapons programme of the 1940s.

Forensic nuke scientists at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) traced the two pieces of metal - described as a cube and a plate - back to their exact origins and dates. Apparently both came from ores extracted at the "Joachimsthal" mine in what is now the Czech Republic, though the two are from different production batches.

Privacy

How the hell this particular school failed not to understand the implications of what they were doing is completely incomprehensible to me...read on:

School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home

A class action filing has been made on behalf of 1800 children and their families. It is already known that some teachers and possibly other staff already have images of the children at home in their possession. I wonder how many of those could (and will) be classed as child pornography? Who else saw these photographs? How many photographs were taken and of what? The invasion of privacy is utterly without precidence here.

Here are the list of complaints:

• Electronic Communications Privacy Act - interception of communications
• Computer Fraud and Abuse Act - exceeding authorized access
• Stored Communication Act - more unauthorized access
• Civil Rights Act - Invasion of Privacy
• 4th Amendment - Invasion of Privacy
• Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act - wiretapping
• Pennsylvania common law (1) - Invasion of Privacy

(1) footnote reads: "Should discovery disclose that the Defendants are in possession of images constituting child pornography [...] Plaintiffs will amend this Complaint to assert a cause of action thereunder."

Slashdot - as ever - has an interesting discussion.

Flight 666 videos

OK, so its a Boeing, but at least it was a 757 - anyway, a nice shot of the aircraft and Captain Dickinson at the helm...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzEQ440YjUE

Pluto

Latest pictures of Pluto from Discovery News and National Geographic:

 

and not long to wait before New Horizons gets there too.

Language death...

This is incredibly sad, from the BBC; basically an way of thinking has been lost...

Last speaker of ancient language of Bo dies in India 

By Alastair Lawson
BBC News

Boa Sr remained the last Bo speaker for at least 30 years

The last speaker of an ancient language in India's Andaman Islands has died at the age of about 85, a leading linguist has told the BBC.

Professor Anvita Abbi said that the death of Boa Sr was highly significant because one of the world's oldest languages - Bo - had come to an end.

 

Satans Rørmokarë

Possibly the greatest band ever....  Tampere YO-Talo 25 January 2010:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLkX3Dr6CU8&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDiGhd0u26o&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75pnaY3c9H0&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyX1m9tHYQ4&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueNeShozeaU&feature=related

and our entry on the wall of fame and a link to more pictures of us and The Trophy!

NB: We had everything --- including a stage diver....no names!

Videography by Sergey Boldyrev