The Glorious Blog of the People
I have good news and bad news, though neither of them has much to do with biting vaginas.
The good news is that Luca Trevisan — complexity theorist extraordinaire, member of my thesis committee at Berkeley, occasional commenter on Shtetl-Optimized, world-renowned for his pronunciation of the word “pseudorandom” — has recently started a blog. Right now Luca is filing travel reports from Beijing, where apparently the food is excellent.
The bad news is that, according to Luca, Shtetl-Optimized has been blocked by the “Great Firewall of China”! Even though Luca congratulates me on my “accomplishment” of being censored in China — an accomplishment not shared by a certain unnamed competitor — this is actually a serious blow to me. See, I’ve long felt that the 1.3 billion citizens of the Middle Kingdom represent the single most promising growth market for the complexity/physics/Jewish-humor/biting-vagina weblog industry. (Oh, you think the Chinese can live without Jewish humor? You might as well say the Jews can live without mu shu and crunchy noodles!)
But what makes this ban by Beijing particularly unfortunate is that, just today, I was planning to blog about my contempt for the moronic pseudoscience of Falun Gong. But that’s only a taste of what I’ve been hoping to tackle in the weeks ahead — including the absurd pretensions of the Dalai Lama (what’s with that robe, dude?), the benefits of collectivized agriculture, the impudence of the Tiananmen Square traitors, and of course, my profound respect for the awesomest person ever:
If you ask me, Marx, Lenin, and Stalin might have paved the way, but Mao surpasses them all as the true voice of the proletariat. Down with capitalist-bourgeois idealism! Reunite Zhōngguó Táibĕi with the motherland!
And while I’m at it, here another experiment, this one aimed at increasing the number of comments on this post: biting vaginas biting vaginas biting vaginas biting vaginas biting vaginas
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Comment #1 March 29th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
I think even in China there are so many ways of reading your blocked weblog. Besides sophisticated appoaches, one can simply use an online feed reader like Google Reader, which of course works unless it’s blocked as well!
Comment #2 March 29th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
geez, I was hoping you were serious about Falun Gong …
Comment #3 March 29th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
geez, I was hoping you were serious about Falun Gong …
Well, it is crap, if that’s what you’re wondering…
Comment #4 March 29th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
I’m under the impression that the great firewall of china blocks most, if not all, of blogspot. Certainly my fairly innocuous cooking blog is blocked by it, and I can’t think of a better explanation for that.
Comment #5 March 29th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Err. Of course, your site isn’t actually on blogspot, but it uses the blogger software, so is probably similarly effected.
(Pardon me while I look sheepish)
Comment #6 March 30th, 2006 at 6:59 am
Scott, you ol’ capitalist running dog, you.
A quick glance at the unnamed “competitor’s” blog shows occasional political commentary, from which I take it that flippancy will get you banned in China quicker than politics.
Not entirely surprising – much of the history of the 20th century might be inferred from the mere fact that “Comedian!” is an insult in Germany.
Comment #7 March 30th, 2006 at 10:54 am
> much of the history of the 20th century might be inferred from the mere fact that “Comedian!” is an insult in Germany.
Much of the history of the 20th century might be inferred from the mere fact that people do not bother to check whether their ‘facts’ are actually true.
‘Komoediant’ is not an insult.
Comment #8 March 30th, 2006 at 11:17 am
My grandparerents were rather old-fashioned (they came from village) – and if they called somebody “a comediant” it was 100% derogatory – the meaning was “somebody who is acting up, pretending, who’s behaviour is not serious, who is not-trustworthy”
In the same vein, my grand-grandpa called commies “these lads” after they confiscated his shop and brewery.
Comment #9 March 30th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Being BANNED may get you MORE readers
who get their through some sort of high-tech
means than your non-banned competitors.
Being BANNED may also make you more famous.
I recall that Peter Winkler (probably best
known to readers of this blog as a combinatorist) is also a bridge player.
He devised a bridge bidding system that
allowed more secret sharing than most
and was legal. But the American Bridge
Society BANNED it. He says thats more of
an honor than people actually using it.
I also recall it being said that
censorship can inspire creativity—
not that Scott needs much inspiration
to be creative.
Bill Gasarch
Comment #10 March 30th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
Boy, are you ever out of touch with the current Party line.
“Long live the Cultural Revolution”?!
No wonder you got banned.
Comment #11 March 31st, 2006 at 4:56 pm
“Long live the Cultural Revolution!”..
Honestly, as a reader who is Chinese, I find this a bit repulsive …
Comment #12 March 31st, 2006 at 6:05 pm
Much of the history of the 20th century might be inferred from the mere fact that people do not bother to check whether their ‘facts’ are actually true.
Good point — however, while “Komoediant” is not an insult, “Komiker” can certainly be used as a word of contempt for somebody acting ridiculously foolish. And one could argue that this does reflect some of the Preussian stiffness.
Comment #13 April 1st, 2006 at 11:30 am
Honestly, as a reader who is Chinese, I find this a bit repulsive …
You’re right, sorry. It went over the line. I’ll delete it in the post.
Comment #14 April 4th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Have you guys seen this?