Home-made bagels, and 24 hours in Canberra

We've been missing New York bagels. Melbourne has a lot of great food, but bagels are rare, and the ones we've had just haven't cut it. So we made some:

They worked. It takes some work to find high-gluten flour here, but Naomi did. We even did the boiling-bit, without too many burns.

On Thursday, Colin flew to Canberra to give a talk at Australia National University. As it turned out, another American was visiting Canberra around the same time. Here's his plane:

Canberra was filled with federal police in fluorescent coats, and had an (apparently unusual) Obama-related traffic jam which delayed Colin a few minutes getting to his hotel.

ANU has its own hotel:

Traffic jam aside, the hotel was easy to get to. The philosophy department, on the other hand, is hidden inside of a labyrinth. Getting through the labyrinth seems to be a test of visiting speakers. This is the entrance:

Inside are twisting hallways and spiral staircases. With luck and skill, one arrives here:

There are a ton of first-rate philosophers there, so it's well worth the expedition.

The talk itself seemed to go well. Colin at least wasn't laughed out of the room, and only one or two people nodded off. The questions from the faculty and grad students were excellent - sharp and insightful. The paper is going to be much better once Colin revises it in light of all the feedback.

We don't have pictures of any of that, though. It was a bit like being in a philosophical whirlwind.

The next morning, Colin walked around the campus a bit. Lots of space... and birds. Here are some birds:

And here's another bird:

Below is one more bird. You have to look closely - this is an Australian magpie. They make an otherwordly cooing sound, and are notorious for swooping at bikers. This one was hanging out on some chin-up bars that are carefully watched by a statue of Winston Churchill:

A short walk from campus is the artificial lake around which Canberra is built. Here is a view of Parliament House across the water.

On the side of the lake close to ANU is the National Museum of Australia. It's housed in a new, swoopy, modern building. One side:

Here's a sculpture on the other side of the building, seen over a pond at the center of the museum:

The museum is quite large. Colin only had time to see half of it.

Here are two of the more striking items in their collection. The first is a 3000 year-old mummified head of a Tasmanian Tiger (more accurately called a 'Thylacine,' since they used to live on the Australian continent as well as Tasmania). The last Thylacine died in 1936.

The second picture here is a painting from a section of the museum that focuses on the struggles of First Australians (often called 'Aborigines').
It almost feels inappropriate to just throw this in at the end of a blog post... but maybe it would be even more inappropriate not to mention anything about this at all.

For the historical background, see this.