So I’m here in an ginormous internet cafe in Shanghai and have to call BS on those “pro-democracy” slash “anti-China” groupies. They’re mostly full of crap.
Two examples, both involving public TV.
In my hotel room I found a couple of English-speaking channels. One is Bloomberg and the other is CCTV #9.
I watched a lot of Bloomberg in Seoul and Kaohsiung and one of the day-time hosts is Bernard Lo. In one segment that was aired last night as well as today, he interviews Christopher Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong.
Guess what they talked about for 15 minutes? Every touchy political subject known to man, including that uber god, Mr. Democracy. To the horror of the hippie SDS, none of the words were bleeped out. Nor did a floating Big Brother insignia replace the image of Lo’s head. My door was not busted down and I have thus far gone unmolested by men in grey jumpsuits with red armbands.
And they also talked about every controversial topic relating to the Bush legacy. In fact, this was actually an entertaining interview because Rui would word things very strongly, like “will Bush be remembered as the worst president?” and better yet, he called out the hypocrisy or as he said “the double-sided nature” of non-proliferation policy the Bush administration has had towards Iran and how the administration ignores Israel’s nuclear stockpile altogether.
And while critical of Bush, Matthews is a bit of an establishment partisan, refusing to blame the neocon agenda for a slew of other quagmires. But that is neither here nor there as nothing was bleeped out or obviously censored. Though, maybe I’ll come home and find my TV rearranged in pieces on the ground.
Extra-credit for extra-horror
Sites not blocked at my current location:
LewRockwell.com
Antiwar.com
Mises.org
The English-version of Wikipedia
My webpage (obviously)
Facebook
Drudge
isoHunt
Google Reader
Youtube
All of the financial sites I listed on Wednesday
Earlier this spring I discussed the possibility of turning the moon into a black-body object — covering it with non-reflective, fully-absorbing solar panels.
The always interesting Technology Reviewrecently discussed “Black Silicon” a creation that absorbs nearly all light, both visible and infrared.
Here’s to hoping that further research won’t be stymied by economic conditions (… it will though).
Check out the new H+ magazine that just came out (pdf).
The piece that I probably liked the most is on page 16/17 (or page 9 in Acrobat), by Michael Anissimov. He discusses organisms that are extraodinarly long-lived, such as hydras, planarians, and turtles (which I’ve discussed before, see also this post).
If you read Slashdot or other geeks sites, most of the other stuff is not entirely new, although it is helpful to have it all consolidated in a single publication. The Stross interview is boring (I’ve criticized his ridiculous Economics 2.0 agitprop before) and Cory Doctrow’s interview is unsurprisingly horrendous. C’mon Cory, do some home work on economics — modern day mainstream models are called neoclassical, not Keynesian.
Overall I’m still bearish on concepts like mind-uploading, especially in today’s economic climate that will surely impair research and development in those areas.
Oh, and here is some anti-aging advice that didn’t make it into newsletter: eat like a caveman, workout like a caveman, and save a shit load of money to cryonically freeze yourself… like a caveman in a glacier.
I usually don’t link to random web 2.0 sites, but my older brother apparently started working at one earlier this year: Viewzi. And by proxy, that makes me famous.
