This links to a story about the internet situation in Xinjiang, the huge northwestern province in China where there has been fighting that left about 200 dead in July.  Since then the internet has been shut down there.  Although on the page it says there are (0) comments, there are a lot of comments there if you click on comments.  It is an interesting time and situation which affects the rest of China and should be a question for the world at large when our so-called innocent social networking becomes a tool of darkness and terrorism.  It does make me rethink how important those online tools are in the bigger picture, though one would think that the government would be able to track the situation very readily following electronic footprints. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Feb. 14 08 I awoke at 4:00 a.m. today worrying about things like 'did I catch the flu from my colleague' who was sitting across from me at lunch, blowing her nose and sneezing practically on top of the food, and was my phone account in the states compromised because they sent me a notice of a 'security' update and did I initiate it? This comes on top of someone stealing my identity in the states to open credit and trying to run up bills in my name...OK I just called to check up on it and that's ok; apparently this company sent out the notice to all of their customers regarding security, and my account is OK, THANK GOD! So what do you do in a developing country to stave off a virus? I am being proactive here, eating oranges, eating pistachios and drinking green tea. By the way did you know that you can eliminate most of the caffeine of tea by steeping the leaves for 30 seconds and pouring off that liquid, then adding the water for your tea? I do th...
Read more

Construction Progess & How to deal with NOISE

Image
I managed to make peace with the ambient noise coming from the three massive construction projects going on adjacent to my building. Luckily, the way my apartment is situated, I was able to start sleeping in the bedroom that faces into my building complex instead of the one on the outside facing the road. Secondly, putting the air conditioner on during the night, while not my first choice, definitely masks the noise. Another option that I use sometimes is to put on the background sound of a running brook. It also covers the noise. China is an extremely noisy place. I also keep earplugs in my bag at all times. They are useful while shopping in Carrefour or if I am on the metro. It seems that checking for high decibel noises in public places is not a consideration here. In fact, there is some kind of odd mentality that the louder the sounds while shopping, the more people will buy. That just makes me shop faster and leave quicker, glad to have plugged my ears. Even with earplugs, it...
Read more