Gong Xi Fa Cai

Kung Hei Fat Choy for the Cantonese speakers, and for Vietnamese, happy Tet!

Let us hail in the Year of the Dog with longevity, prosperity, peace and happiness, and hope that we have rid ourselves of all ghosts and evil spirits.


On another note, I was out partying last night in Chapel Hill until 7am, sorry I didn't have time to get in touch with most of the people here. It makes me a little sad that I haven't made any friends up in Richmond as great as you all or the other friends I hung out with this weekend, but things can always change.

Happy Lunar New Year

What's wrong with our country?

The 50 Most Loathsome Americans. Amusing stuff, here's a preview:

5. Tom Delay

Charges: A politician so horrible, his prior career as an exterminator constitutes fratricide. Smiled for his mug shot like it was a campaign poster. Asked three young Katrina evacuees, “Now tell me the truth, boys, is this kind of fun?” One of an elite handful of white Americans still engaged in the time-honored tradition of screwing over Indians. Responding to a request he extinguish his cigar in a restaurant in accordance with federal regulations, Delay replied, “I AM the federal government.” Claimed that there was “no fat left to cut” from the federal budget to offset New Orleans reconstruction costs. So arrogant in abuse of power that he doesn’t even take time to construct plausible lies.

Exhibit A: Explaining his failure to enlist during Vietnam: “So many minority youths had volunteered…that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself.”

Sentence: Bashed to death with hammer.

censorship

Microsoft is now shutting down blogs (written in Chinese) on its Microsoft Network (MSN) blogging service that are critical of the Chinese government. This isn't the first time that Microsoft's compliance to China's policies has been in the news. If this is the first time you've heard of this, here's a quick rundown: in the past few years, the complicity of Microsoft and other US companies like Google, Yahoo!, and Cisco with the Chinese Communist Party in helping them to construct the "Great Firewall of China" has made possible the censorship of Internet sites and searches related to 'freedom', 'human rights', or 'democracy' within China.

What's worrying about this latest incident is that the censorship is 'global' and not limited to within China. The sites MSN now censors are being taken down from their servers and not merely firewalled by the Chinese government. For example, had I originally created 'An Unnamed Syposium' on MSN and one of us published the words "Tibetian Independence" or "Falun Dong", our blog would shortly thereafter be deleted off MSN's server because of their compliance to China's wishes; (this is also assuming we knew and were blogging in Chinese).

It's not illegal for Microsoft or any other private company to censor a blog that they operate; however this censorship, though limited to Chinese blogs, still seems to reek of evilness... or maybe it doesn't? Do you believe that Microsoft and other American companies' complicity in China's political censorship is wrong?

What's in a name?

Lisen to this story about the 1898 Race Riot in Wilmington, NC.

So it's one thing that this is the only overthrow of an elected government in US history. It's another thing that White people did it at a time and place when Blacks were prosperous and influential. What do you make of one of the words used to describe the actions of the riot instigators -- "terrorist"? Fair/unfair? Weird? Appropriate?