Occasional Tales

Let’s say stupid things. I’ve just been reading Meeting signals pressure on microblogs from the China Media Project. It’s about the new State Internet Information Office and its antics. This paragraph is classic Doublespeak At yesterday’s meeting, Wang Chen emphasized that “[we] must thoroughly apply a series of guiding spirits of the central Party in regards to internet construction, development and management, keeping to the guiding principle of ‘positive use, scientific development, management by rule of law and ensuring safety’ …” Wang said the government must “thoroughly give play to the positive role of microblogs in serving society, taking concrete steps to develop and manage [them], working together to preserve a healthy and orderly online communication order, serving the overall work of the government and the Party, and serving the masses.” Which is basically saying, “We must utterly control everything to the sub-atomic level as usual”. Don’t even get ...

Another victim falls to self-delusional paranoia. I was at school this afternoon when Linda told me that she’d been unable to access my WordPress blog ( Green Bamboo ) all day. I checked and yes, sure enough, without that little program to help me get past the big, bad wolf, WP had been blocked. I’m surprised that the service has been accessible for so long because in the past it’s been one of the victims. If blogspot has been buggered, then WP has probably also been buggered. What’s the deal this time? Well, it might be mainly because of the spat about a Mr D. Lama of Tibet trying to visit South Africa for his friend’s birthday only to be prevented from going for the most doubtful reasons. That’s top of my list, but I have also seen stories about the imperial government getting even more paranoid about social media. Although that might specifically refer to Weibo and other Twitter rip-offs, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nanny was skimming through the list of blog hosts and found ...

Or tock, tock, tock. My access to the real Internet has been a little intermittent so far. I’ve had some quite good runs, but also occasions when nothing is getting through. It probably depends on the amount of traffic; and even if only a small percentage of Internet users in the Empire are surfing on authorised sites outside the prison walls, a small percentage of them using the same service as me is still quite a lot of people. As a consequence, posts here may be few and far between both because there isn’t always something pointless to say and because I haven’t necessarily been able to access the site. Right now, having got access to blogspot for the first time today, I’ve now lost it again, and even if I get it back, it won’t last. There, it’s back. I should go while I still can. No, it’s gone, and I’m having no luck getting through. Back. No, damn, gone again. Bugger! Total wipe-out. And there it goes again. 23.09.11 The ending to yesterday’s entry was abrupt becaus...

Did you even miss me? Thanks to one of my colleagues, I now have access to the Internet again – the whole thing and not just some declawed cat. I’m now facing my old dilemma of what to do with this blog which has been so idle for so long. My WordPress blog remains my main blog with my LJ one in the wings. Apart from those two I have a couple of others for my more specialised interests, but they need not concern anyone apart from me. The first difference I note is that YouTube videos are appearing on websites where they have, until today, been missing. It’s not that I was a massive fan of YouTube, but it is a blasted sodding nuisance to miss out on the video part of some online article because of a bunch of mean-minded, miserable sods. In fact, I’ve started calling them joy vampires because they want to suck as much happiness as they possibly can out of everyone else’s lives. I see over on Language Log, Victor Mair has posted an entry about the use of the phrase “ hurt the ...