The once "King-of-the-Hill" Conrad of the Gweilo Diaries has been in touch with me lately, but I didn't write about it because I wasn't sure he wanted me to. But now I see that another blogger has broken the story so I have no need to stay silent. Conrad's fine, and he says he may be popping up in the comments sometime soon. Sadly for all of us, he won't be blogging anymore.

It really doesn't feel the same without him. While he was consistently wrong about US politics, his manner of expresssing himself was inimitable and irreplaceble. Let's all hope that he reconsiders, no matter how misguided his political stance may have been.

Thanks to the reader who sent me this link -- I really appreciate it.

A very fine obituary.

Yes, I am afraid we are. How stupid can we be? How have we allowed ourselves to be so dumbed down?

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.

The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.

Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.

The First Amendment is what America stands on. And it sounds like these birdbrains don't even know it exists. Shocking.

If you're looking for the heated thread about the belly-button photo, I'll have to disappoint you. I removed it, not because I felt it was misogynistic or derisive of obese people. I just felt it wasn't "me" - when I scrolled by it on myhome page, I wasn't comfortable with it. I put it up under intense circumstances, and if I'd had more time to think about it, I probably wouldn't have posted it at all.(And Mark, do not take this as a victory and don't presume it means I now support the Marxist revolution.)

My immediate impulse is to be guardedly pleased with the seemingly good news of Iraq's first true elections. It seems to tell me that the majority of Iraqis do not want to see the insurgents win (otherwise, why would they vote?), and that they really do crave this important freedom to choose their leaders.

On the other hand, Iraq is such a mess that no matter who wins, it'll take a long time before we see any positive change. And, of course, the next government could take the country in an entirely unexpected direction and become another dictatorship. (Much stranger things have happened.)

Finally, I saw a clip (via Kos) from a 1967 NY Times article (unlinkable) that reminded me that one election does not a robust democracy make:

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote : Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.

Deja vu all over again, no? It's something to think about, though I honestly believe the political situation in Iraq is diferent enough from Vietnam in 1967 to offer at least a glimmer of hope. For one, the Iraqis are more urbane and better educated than was the average Vietnamese, and most Vietnamese adored our perceived enemy Ho Chi Minh; in Iraq, the insurgents are supported by a minority (although the US occupation is opposed by a majority). The only thing I can say with certainty is that things are incredibly dicey right now.

We'll see, right?

There've been a flurry of reports over the past six months claiming that Kim Jong-Il's regime is on the verge of collapse. None, however, is more convincing than this piece in the London Times.

We had already witnessed one sign that North Korea’s totalitarian system is dissolving, even as its leaders boast of owning nuclear weapons to deter their enemies.

“It’s just like the Berlin Wall,” Pastor Douglas Shin, a Christian activist, said by telephone from Seoul. “The slow-motion exodus is the beginning of the end.”

In interviews for this article over many months, western policymakers, Chinese experts, North Korean exiles and human rights activists built up a picture of a tightly knit clan leadership in Pyongyang that is on the verge of collapse.

Some of those interviewed believe the “Dear Leader”, Kim Jong-il, has already lost his personal authority to a clique of generals and party cadres. Without any public announcement, governments from Tokyo to Washington are preparing for a change of regime.

The death of Kim’s favourite mistress last summer, a security clampdown on foreign aid workers and a reported assassination attempt in Austria last November against the leader’s eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, have all heightened the sense of disintegration.

The Japanese intelligence agency, in an unclassified report issued on December 24, referred to “signs of instability” inside the political establishment and predicted a feud among the elite as they strive to seize power from Kim.

[...]

Analysts in Seoul say that in recent propaganda pictures the bouffant-haired dictator is wearing the same clothes as in photographs from two years ago, suggesting that they may have been taken then. Observers await Kim’s official birthday, February 16, to see if the state media accord him the usual fawning adulation.

According to exiles, North Korean agents in Beijing and Ulan Bator are frantically selling assets to raise cash — an important sign, says one activist, because “the secret police can always smell the crisis coming before anybody else”.

This sure sounds ominous, though many Koreaphiles have viewed such articles with extreme skepticism. I wonder, can so many insiders be completely wrong on this subject?

A recent thread generated a lot of comments about whether or not the Chinese people are ready to vote, another hot-button topic that always arouses emotions. Some pointed to the rural elections instituted around 1989 as a positive sign, while others said the rural Chinese are not ready to vote. There's a short but sweet must-read post about this very subject that hits several of the nails squarely on the head. Just go there.

Now, this is really amazing. (Be sure to read the captions under each photo.) Can you imagine a similar ad campaign on the Mainland? Or, come to think of it, in George W. Bush's America?

Those of you following this volatile topic must read an opinion piece in today's LA Times by Sam Crane, who teaches Chinese politics and philosophy at Williams College. It's very straightforward and reasonable, and I don't think the tortured arguments I've been reading from commenters on the topic can take away from the piece's essential truths.

I usually shy away from snipping entire articles, but this one is relatively brief and I'd like to have it here as a reference.

Democracy has transformed Taiwan, and the change demonstrates how political participation can shape national identity and international politics.

Fifteen years ago, it was easy to accept the idea that Taiwan was a part of China. Most people on the island defined themselves as Chinese, and their government was named and was acknowledged — though not diplomatically recognized by many countries — as the Republic of China. The official policy of the People's Republic of China demanded that Taiwan be viewed as a province of the mainland, and the United States vaguely accepted a "one China" principle.

Some things are not so straightforward anymore.

Mandarin discourse is still useful on the streets of Taipei, and the Chinese cuisine is the best anywhere. The National Palace Museum remains an extraordinary trove of Sinological art treasures.

National identity, however, is more than cultural practices and traditions. Linguistic and other affinities are not enough to classify Taiwan as "Chinese," just as the United States could hardly be considered part of a "British" empire anymore.

What matters for any national identity is politics. And Taiwan's domestic politics have long been detached from China's. Since 1895, a mainland government has ruled the island for only about four years, 1945-49. When the Nationalist Party lost the civil war in 1949 and fled to Taiwan, it maintained for many years that it was the government of all China, though it never was.

Since democratization began in Taiwan in 1986, the "return to the mainland" myth has further receded. Free and fair elections have turned people's attention inward.

The democratic political life shared by millions of Taiwanese is forging a common civic identity distinct from China's. This Taiwanese national identity is not merely an invention of those who want to publicly declare independence, something that Beijing's leaders say they will go to war to prevent. It is the natural evolution of democratic participation.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the notion of the "status quo." For mainland China and the U.S., it refers to the "one China" principle, a reflection of the politics of the 1970s — before democracy took root in Taiwan. For many Taiwanese, perhaps most, it has come to mean the situation that has actually prevailed since 1986, an empirical independence that allows them to rule themselves without Chinese control.

But the people of Taiwan are not unanimous in seeing themselves as wholly separate from China. Debates about national identity are a central feature of the island's boisterous democracy.

The momentum of nationhood, however, seems to have reached a point of no return. Taiwan is a democratic nation; China is not. It is difficult to foresee circumstances that would allow for real unification.

The dilemma for Taiwan is the contradiction between its democratic development and its geopolitical context. China's nationalist passions are real. For any mainland Chinese politician, President Hu Jintao included, to be seen as soft on Taiwan independence is to open oneself to charges of treason. Even if political liberalization were to emerge tomorrow, Chinese demagogues could argue that a separate Taiwan is a wound to the nation's pride. So Chinese leaders continue to threaten and isolate Taiwan.

If the Bush administration thinks the Taiwan question has faded, it is sorely mistaken. Taiwan is not really a part of China any longer. It has grown into a thriving and mature democracy where people join together in constructive self-government and see themselves as a nation like any other. The status quo has changed.

"Taiwan is not really part of China anymore." Those are strong words, but anyone with a rational mind and common sense can see that it's simply the truth, painful though it may be for many in China to accept. Trying to fuse the two back together again would go against nature, as Taiwan has evolved into an altogether different species.

Need one be a genius to spot the cynicism here?

China has contributed $1 million to help organize Sunday's election in Iraq, raising questions at home and abroad about how a country that supports balloting in another land can deny its citizens a chance to vote for their leaders.

As China gains a growing role on the global political and economic stage, it increasingly faces such twists of logic. So far, Chinese officials seem undeterred by the apparent contradiction.

"They behave as a normal power on the international scene, but keep a lid on everything at home at the same time, blocking websites and preventing free expression," said Jean-Philippe Beja, a China specialist at the Center for International Studies and Research in Paris. "Elections are all right in other countries, as long as they're not done at home. And it works. That's what's incredible. It's very cynical."

The article later gets to the heart of the matter, which is that China is proclaiming its love of free elections (in Iraq, anyway) to curry favor with the US and continue its repression in Xinjiang without criticism from Bush. Love of fredom and democracy scarcely enters the equation.

The article makes some other fine points, so pardon me for snipping a large portion for your reading pleasure:

Elections won't work in China because the masses aren't wealthy or well-educated enough to understand the issues, Chinese officials often argue. Elections are at odds with 5,000 years of Chinese history and, anyway, the country already has a democracy with socialist characteristics, they say.

It's becoming more difficult, however, to argue that the people lack the necessary income and education when the nation's performance is rising on both counts. Meanwhile, more impoverished Indonesia recently pulled off an impressive peaceful transfer of power; and India, with its lower literacy rate, remains the world's largest democracy.

"Two years ago I went to Cambodia, which is poorer than China, and watched a very good election," said Li Fan, director of the World and China Institute, a Beijing think tank focused on rural democracy. "It's a silly argument."

The idea that Chinese are precluded from voting by their history tends to buckle with a glance 100 miles across the Taiwan Strait. Beijing often cites Taiwan's bumpy electoral ride since 2000 to bolster its case, but the island's citizens chalk this up to inexperience, not some cultural predisposition to authoritarian rule.

"China is still under a Communist regime, so they focus on Taiwan's negatives for their propaganda," said Lin Wen-Cheng, a professor with Zhongshan University's Mainland Research Institute in Taipei. "Our democracy is not yet mature, but we're confident we'll overcome that. With Taiwan maturing as a democracy, they have no argument."

China's last refuge is often in the argument that it already is a democracy with socialist characteristics and that the Communist Party enjoys widespread support that makes elections unnecessary.

Even insiders acknowledge, however, that party corruption and arrogance are an enormous source of popular resentment. In addition, the system of one person, one vote is carefully restricted to sectors of the political process where no real decision-making power exists, namely villages and a few towns in the countryside and neighborhoods in the cities.

Critics say the real reason China lacks elections is that the Communist Party doesn't want to be voted out and, after decades of absolute rule, is distrustful of any process it can't control.

Critics say the Communist Party wants to hold onto power? Well, I'll be damned. But then, what do critics know? Obviously they don't watch CCTV. The CCP only wants to ban elections for the good of the people, who "aren't ready" to vote. How can we thank the CCP enough for their loving protection and magnanimous concern for its people's well being?

I've received emails from people who think I sell and distribute Peking duck, and from people who want to know Peking duck recipes, but this was the oddest one yet:

This is not a joke...I am looking for advice on how to treat a PET PEKIN DUCK who has a cough for the past month....any ideas???????? I have been searching but it seems hard to find.

Any duck veterinarians out there with any ideas?

Young junkies shoot up in the streets of Ruili

A few weeks ago, when I asked readers to suggest places to see in Yunnan someone suggested Ruili. I had never heard of it before, but this article told me all I need to know. This place is a living, breathing AIDS factory. Truly scary. (And no, it's not on my itinerary.)

While this irresponsible news analysis appears in the loathesome Washington Times, it's from UPI (which I didn't even realize was still in business) so I'm surprised it's so vitriolic.

Chinese President Hu Jintao signaled Friday that he remained determined to crack down on intellectual dissidents, a likely sign of considerably increased repression in the years to come.

[...]

The massive precautions [after Zhao's death] taken to prevent any rekindling of the popular democratic flame was far from being an isolated move. In a recent study for the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, Willy Wo-Lap Lam, one of the most respected observers of Chinese domestic politics, noted that Hu, originally widely expected to be a reformist, liberalizing leader, began very clearly to swing back toward doctrinaire Marxist-Leninism in line with Mao Zedong thought when he approved a lavish celebration of the 110th anniversary of Mao's birth a year ago.

This development, Lam wrote, "has been exacerbated since the new supremo (Hu) took over the post of Central Military Commission chairman from ex-president Jiang Zemin last September."

Lam also reported that top officials in the Chinese Communist Party and its Leading Group on Foreign Affairs had observed with alarm pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko's victory, on the wave of widespread popular protests, in Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" over the past two months. "The Hu leadership agreed with Moscow's assessment that Yushchenko's victory the second time around was due to heavy support from the Western alliance led by Washington," Lam wrote.

As a result, Lam continued, Hu's advisers now fear a domino effect may develop across Eurasia with former Soviet Central Asian republics in the Russian and Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan developing their own irresistible popular movements until eventually the destabilizing contagion of democracy, as Beijing leaders see it, re-infecting China itself.

Lam also cited a widely quoted editorial in the official People's Daily in early January warning that "hostile forces have not abandoned their conspiracy and tactics to Westernize China and to divide up the country." Now, Lam continued, the Chinese Communist Party's "leadership's fears about 'subversion' allegedly spearheaded by the U.S. have been translated into tough tactics against the nation's liberal academics, writers and journalists."

These moves fulfill a prediction we made in these columns more than two years ago on Nov. 16, 2002, that "if the 1990s proved to be China's equivalent of America and Germany's 1920s Jazz Age, there is the very real possibility that China's coming decade may parallel the rise of nationalist fascism in 1930s Germany."

Well, how's that for scare journalism? And it gets even worse (so read it all).

Remember, this newspaper is conservative Washington's bible, so I view it as a barometer of the Bushniks' viewpoints. We all know Bush doesn't want to make trouble for China, but he is under serious pressure from his beloved right-wing bible-thumping base, which still sees Red when they see China.

While I happen to think the writer makes some valid points, I also fear we're seeing a reactionary campaign against China, based on burning fears that the US will fall under the PRC's shadow (a fear that's pretty groundless, at least for the next 100 years). I want to see Hu pressured and tamed and liberalized. But articles like this only stir up fear and loathing and are unhealthy in every way.

Is Cheney an idiot, attending a formal ceremony honoring those murdered in Auschwitz, wearing a parka, hiking boots and a cheap knit ski cap embroidered with the words "Staff 101"? Answer: Yes.

This story is painfully funny and beautifully written by the WaPo's fashion writer Robin Givhan, who doesn't hold her punches: "The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower." Read the whole thing - really.

Via Atrios, where you have to go to see this picture of Cheney.

My favorite wingnut racist blogger Charles Johnson yesterday wrote a piece commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a place the very name of which has become synonymous with evil. Johnson's piece is well intended; it offers a sketchy, History 101-type description of the death camp, the kind of thing you can find on any number of Web sites. And that would have been fine, but he ruins it by coming to an appallingly wrong conclusion of what the lesson of Auschwitz should be:

If remembering Auschwitz should teach us anything, it is that we must all support Israel and the Jewish people against the vilification and the complicity we are witnessing, knowing where it inevitably leads.

Now wait a minute. I am a Jew and I support Israel (though not unconditionally). But this is absolutely NOT the key lesson of the Holocaust, not at all. Far more important is the lesson that men, even the most civilized and cultured, are capable of doing the most atrocious of things when barbarism is permitted to flourish and when the basic tenets of human decency are discarded and replaced by notions of superiority. Another key lesson is that racial stereotyping of ANY group, be it gypsies, Jews, gays or Slavs, can have dire consequences. And another key lesson is how urgent it is that we have stringent laws, check and balances to reign in those who would abuse their power, and those would see fit to torture and kill.

Yes, the plight of the Jews is a central part of this mosaic, but the lessons of Nazism aren't simply about making sure we all protect Jews. It's about making sure no group -- Jewish or otherwise -- ever again falls victim to the kinds of horrors the Jews faced in Auschwitz. It's about preventing man's basest instincts from overcoming his critical thinking.

How odd, that Johnson doesn't see the extreme irony here -- that his own site is the kind of breeding ground for hatred and racism that made Auschwitz possible. His embrace of torture, religious hatred and the notion that we can do whatever we want to those who belong to a specific religious group -- the road to Auschwitz got started from precisely this deviant mentality.

This is truly sleazy. You can write to the offender Joe Gannon and tell him what you think.

I want to urge readers to visit a now-antique thread about Taiwan, and find the comments that eswn of eastsouthwestnorth wrote there today. Very wise and thought-provoking.

Update: The story's out in the US now; here's a link.

A reader sends me this story from the unlinkable SCMP (and sorry about formatting issues; no time to fix):

Mourners for deposed leader Zhao rounded up, beaten: witnesses

Updated at 2.50pm:

China has detained dozens of people, some of whom have been severely
beaten, for trying to mark the death of former leader Zhao Ziyang, witnesses said on Thursday.

The allegations came as the government intensified security to prevent mourners attending Saturday's funeral in Beijing for Mr Zhao, the former Communist Party secretary general purged for opposing the 1989 military crackdown on the Tiananmen democracy movement. At least three people, including a woman in her 70s, were punched and manhandled by police officers outside the government offices which receive complaints in the Chinese capital, witnesses said.

They were among some 60 people who pinned white paper flowers to their clothes, a traditional Chinese symbol of mourning, said a bystander who took pictures of the beatings and posted them on overseas websites.

"A man from Henan province was beaten badly. His left eyeball looked like it was beaten out of its socket and he had a one inch cut to his right eye," said the man who requested anonymity.

"An elderly woman from Shandong province was beaten to a point where she couldn't move and a man from Hunan province was also beaten," he said.

Police shouted at the petitioners that Mr Zhao, who spent nearly 16 years under house arrest until his death last week, was a "political criminal," the witness said.

"They said: 'Why are you commemorating him? You're clearly opposing the government. But the petitioners said 'We think differently. We think he's a good person.'"

Also last week, an estimated 80 to 90 petitioners were rounded up near Mr Zhao's traditional courtyard home in Beijing for trying to get inside to pay respects and express condolences to his family, petitioners said.

"In our petitioners' hostel, all 10 people who went were detained and held from from 9am to 11pm," said Bai Shuhua, one of the 10.

"In the police station, they said 'You don't seek leaders who are
alive, but insist on seeking dead leaders. How can the dead help you?" Bai said.

One of the petitioners, Liu Hongbo, was punched twice as he yelled, "Zhao didn't do anything wrong," Bai said.

Mr Zhao, prime minister and head of the Communist Party for much of the 1980s, died on January 17 at the age of 85.

The authorities fear his death and funeral on Saturday will be a rallying point for dissidents, petitioners and people dissatisfied with the government.

For all the reform, there's still a price one must pay (like having your eye punched out) for expressing your political beliefs. No matter how much some of you don't like Zhao, do you see this as a good thing or a bad thing?

I know, there are good people and bad people in the CCP, and it may not be as black and white as it seems. But on second thought, the story above really does appear to be black and white. Does anyone find any gray?

Update, 6:10 p.m. MST.

The harmless, soft-spoken Peking Duck is being banned by this filtering system, apparently being employed by a US company in China to filter the Web sites its employees can visit:

The writer in China who brought this to my attention, whose identity I will leave anonymous, sent me the following email:

I recently changed the server that in the US to connect to the internet, and suddenly I couldn't get in to Peking Duck at all

I've had trouble reading your site before from one or two different servers that I've been using in the US but this is the first time that I have actually had a message saying that your site has been blocked. Usually I've just not been able to get through and have presumed that it was just a busy time or something. This would explain why I've had such trouble reading your site before.

I've had similar problems with Seelai because of the pornography on that site when I was using a server that I knew had a net nanny installed, but I've never seen an ISP block an advocacy groups site before, at least not an nAmerican ISP.

This company isn't my ISP and I'd never heard of them before, but whoever they are they wouldn't let me see Peking Duck from the computer in my apartment. If they are a blacklist provider, then they could potentially have supplied your website's name to hundreds of ISPs by now.

It is certainly not good news if liberal sites are being blocked by US companies, who knows how many other liberal blogs are blocked.

This is really creepy. I'm okay with the CCP trying to block my site (though they wouldn't bother, since it's in English), but US companies in China? I just don't get it....

UPDATE: The emailer who informed me of this wrote to correct a misimpression I had. This censorship occurred in the US, not in China, which makes it even creepier.

Mark hypothesizes that it might have been cause by my "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Kerry" banner, but I've had anti-Bush, pro-Kerry stuff on here for ages. I'm not convinced...

I saw this picture over at Poor Man and immediately thought the car must belong to Charles Johnson, proprietor of Little Green Cesspools. (It doesn't, Poor Man explains, but it sure wouldn't surprise me.) Click to enlarge.

I never blogged about last week's idiotic story about dangerous Chinese terrorists slipping into the US to set off a dirty bomb in Boston. Everything about it smelled right from the beginning, and I'm delighted to see the whole thing exposed as a hoax. It's a great example of our terrorism hysteria, where all you have to do is whisper the T-word and journalists will eat up whatever BS you try to sell them.

It's a big responsibility, being the PR manager, and I'm going to be out of action for at least another day or two working on our annual report (sheer torture). Guest posts will be considered, so tell me if you're interested. Thanks.

It seems we're going to be hearing more about Bush's drunk-driving episode from 30 years ago. No, not about his arrest long ago, but about his man Alberto Gonzales' helping him cover it up -- and lying about the story during his hearings last week. This is a major development in what we've all been led to believe would be a classic slam-dunk. And if anyone deserves a slam-dunk confirmation, it's "memo-man" Gonzales, right?

That's what I'm told. (It's in Chinese.)

[Via a good article on how Chinese in America are memorializing Zhao.)

Time to check up on the latest photos and stories from George Bush's excellent adventure in Iraq.

A few days ago I posted the famous picture of the Chinese baby crying in the bombed-out Shanghai railroad station.

There's another picture, perhaps just as powerful, of a child in a similarly tragic situation. I want to urge you to go take a look at that photo and its caption, and read carefully the few lines of text underneath, and don't miss the comments. It'll only take a few seconds, and it's more important than anything you'll find over here. Go there now.

Since I left Asia, I've failed to keep up with all the good stuff at this site, which used to be a daily read for me (at the time, it had a different name). I'll make it one of my 2005 resolutions to go there more often. For an intelligent, on-the-scene look at what's going on in China, it's one of the best sites out there.

Well, that ends that rather messy topic. If the new documents say it's a fact, it must be so -- especially if it's reported by Xinhua news.

China has published a vast collection of historical documents concerning Taiwan, giving abundant proof of Taiwan's close link with China's mainland.

The collection comprises 100 volumes, including a historical record of the Chinese central government's administration of Taiwan, pedigrees of clans of the mainland's Fujian Province and Taiwan and historical events in Taiwan, according to a symposium held here on the event Friday.

Taiwan residents are mostly descendants of mainland migrants, many from Fujian province.

"The collection provides indisputable historical record showing the inseparable historical and cultural links between Taiwan and the mainland," Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, said at the symposium."It profoundly reveals the 'China attributes' of Taiwan. It also constitutes a powerful retort against 'de-Sinolization' efforts of Taiwan authorities."

"We are opposed to 'Taiwan independence', but we love our Taiwan compatriots," said Wang Zaixi, deputy director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council. "The vast number of Taiwan compatriots wish for social stability, economic growth and peace across the Taiwan Straits. We'll continue to work unremittingly for peace across the Taiwan Straits."

Sounds like a plan. Now we don't have to argue any more. It's good to know they have the best interests of the Taiwanese people at heart.

The NY Times has an article on the best places in Taipei to shop, eat and have fun. It looks like a great piece, but never having been to Taipei (only Kaohsiung) I can't say if the many places it names are cool or not.

It's such a nice feeling to see Microsoft's Internet Explorer suffer the death by a thousand cuts it so richly deserves. Firefox is eating away Big Bill's market share, and if they think it'll be easy to win us back they don't know jack. Why on earth would anyone consider going back to a vendor who has no concern for them? (Except, of course, when their customers start to turn elsewhere.)

My friend's laptop is so crawling with spyware, everytime he tries to go to a business site a pop-up window tries to drag him to a different site offering a similar service. I told him after I installed Firefox I never had a spyware problem again. I can't understand why anyone's still using IE.

After a flood of near-hysterical hype last week, this is a relatively sensible article on the murky issue of how much bloggers should disclose to their readers. It's a good read.

Personally, I want to know whether Instapundit pays for all those digital cameras he drools over writes about or whether they're sent to him gratis with a tacit "understanding." (I strongly suspect the latter.) Should he disclose this? It's a serious question.

Update: This is a very cool post on this topic. Excellent information, and great comments, too.