More than 300 families of Fuzhenzhou village, Botou City, have signed a petition requesting the release of Wang Xiaodon, a Falun Gong practitioner. This is the first page of the petition. (Web Image) It was an unusually brave and selfless act for modern China: around 300 villagers signed their names to a petition, and stamped them with red wax, calling for the release of a fellow resident who had been persecuted for his beliefs by communist China’s security forces. The villagers were then themselves targeted, in what appeared to be an order coming down from Party Central to retaliate fiercely against anyone who dared to defend Falun Gong. Wang Xiaodong, a teacher and practitioner of Falun Gong who resides in Zhoutun Village, Hebei Province, was ... Continue reading →

Thor: wore me out. Photograph: Photo Credit: Zade Rosenthal/Zade Rosenthal When a monk takes a vow of silence, is he still allowed to post messages on the internet? Chances are God won't find out. Being ancient, God probably can't work computers. He holds the mouse gingerly, like it's made of fine china. Sometimes he accidentally minimises a window and can't get it back. LOL what a noob #GodFailThings change so rapidly these days it's easy to get left behind, no matter how powerful you are. Much online tittering occurred last Friday when King Charles II (played by Rebekah Brooks) told the Leveson inquiry that David Cameron used to sign off his text messages with the acronym LOL, in the mistaken belief that it stood for ... Continue reading →

Symphony No. 9 In D Minor, Op. 125 "Choral": IV. Presto - Allegro Assai - Choral Finale (Ode To Joy), a song by London Symphony Orchestra on Spotify. Don't have Spotify? Get it at Spotify.com - it's free! Continue reading →

The note arrived in a nearly empty box sent to TIME’s Beijing Bureau. All copies of TIME Magazine’s May 14, 2012 issue with a cover entitled The People’s Republic of Scandal had been “safeguarded by customs.” Apparently, some customs officer had been entrusted with counting each confiscated copy ; there were, the receipt noted, 62 seized magazines. At the bottom of the customs document, there were five categories (with boxes to be ticked next to them) that described the possible fate of the seized magazines: 1. To be returned to sender 2. To be taxed 3. To be inspected 4. To be declared 5. To be dealt with. Our 62 magazines fell into the last category. They were being “dealt with.” Like other foreign news ... Continue reading →

Chen Guangcheng, the brother of Chen Guangfu and seen here with his wife, is now in the US. Photograph: Andrew Burton/Reuters The brother of the Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has fled his family's captors in a second audacious escape from their tiny village in eastern China.Chen Guangfu arrived in Beijing early on Thursday morning after breaking out of Dongshigu, where relatives have been living under tight guard since his brother, who is blind, fled to the US embassy in Beijing last month, according to lawyers in the capital.Ding Xikui said Chen was seeking help for his son Kegui, who has been charged with voluntary manslaughter following a clash with local officials who broke into their home after learning of Chen Guangcheng's escape.Chen Guangcheng is now ... Continue reading →

The couple had been at an all-night karaoke session when they hit the woman while driving in the early hours of the morning in the wealthy eastern province of Zhejiang last month, the official China Daily said. But, worried about being arrested for drunk driving and causing the accident and believing she was no longer alive, they buried her near the side of the road, the report added. However, when police later found the woman's body they discovered she was still alive when she was buried, and had then suffocated to death, the paper said. The story has been widely discussed on China's popular Twitter-like service Weibo, where it has ignited uproar for what some called the immorality of modern Chinese society. "Such things show ... Continue reading →

Wordalizer is a “word cloud” generator written in JavaScript for InDesign CS4 and CS5 (Mac and Win). The current stable release (v. 1.25) is based on a new lexical parser that runs up to 100X faster than the previous beta! It also provides a number of improvements and new features: 6 source languages supported, a full word list editor, session-persistent settings, ability to rework from the active cloud, control of the minimum word length, “rarest words” option, 15 color shemes... “This script is cool, hot, and sick all at the same time. I love it.” — David Blatner, InDesignSecrets. Key features • InDesign CS4 and InDesign CS5 compatible, Mac OS and Windows platforms. • User interface: English (default) and French. (Wordalizer auto-detects your InDesign locale.) ... Continue reading →

It shows the five officials inspecting the area and seeming to float above the road and the grassy verge, in a laughably poor piece of photographic doctoring designed to show how the local government was hard at work. In response to the first incident, internet users quickly redoctored the photograph to show the same officials on the moon, at the 1998 World Cup final, and among dinosaurs. The officials in Hangzhou were quick to apologise for the photograph. "Due to unsuitable work processes, there were serious mistakes in the uploaded photograph," read a statement to the People's Daily website. "We sincerely accept the criticism of the internet masses," it added. Continue reading →