I'm off for a bit (in Public Record)

Tomorrow morning, I leave for a couple weeks in China. I have no idea what the net connection will be like at the various hotels, so don't expect much.

Pray that I don't become a political prisoner :)

I had some friends that used to smuggle Bibles into China for a summer. They got detained and it was NOT a good experience. They went back the next day with another suitcase full. This was 20 years ago when it was far less tolerant. Tiannemann Square days for those that remember. Anyways good luck NS!

I've actually had a lot of difficulty in finding a real Roman Catholic church. They're all underground (in the railroad sense).

Yep. When the people came and picked up the Bibles they would separate them by books and then ride their bikes back to their villages some hundreds of miles away.

i wish you a good time there ns and dont forget to bring us back some presents

Ah, the wonders of ssh socks tunnels :)

BTW, this place is DIRTY! The air is almost chewable!

How does it taste?

So you have proper internet up until the power to your home PC goes out? Hope it's reliable... or that your girlfriend doesn't have a dark sense of humor. :)

was going to say take a mask to protect your lungs from the crap in the air over there.

I have a complete supply of N95 masks of various kinds. And they do work. But still. How can any first world nation have so much pollution?

Demi - gf is with me :)

And, I'm not using my own computer, I'm using a friend's.

China is still a developing country, and as such imposing ecological regulations is simply not cost effective and the CPC fully understands the need to maintain as high of a GDP growth as possible. Perhaps in the coming decades we'll see drastic change, though by then the damage may already have accumulated to an irreversible degree.

That's kinda like asking "How can one nation have so many people?". That many people, not living like Middle Ages serfs, takes rather a lot of electricity.

http://ecopolitology.org/2010/08/26/chinas-massive-coal-fired-power-plant-boom-visualized/

They already have a water problem, so making the plants need less water will make them both cough more carbon into the air and produce less power.

China's considered third-world, not first. There's a political aspect to the categories.

Hope you're having a blast. And hope you got your haggling skills down! How long are you going to be meandering around in China?

Clean air!! Clean water!!

(I'm back :)

Welcome back to freedom. 'Murica.