Friday, December 21, 2007

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Traffic Crashes Chinese Anti-Corruption Website

From the Associated Press:
BEIJING -- A new Web site created by China's anti-corruption bureau crashed after barely a day because too many visitors tried to log on to register complaints, state media said Wednesday.

The National Bureau of Corruption Prevention was formed in September to tackle mounting corruption scandals involving government and Communist Party officials.

It set up a Web site Monday that allowed the public to leave comments about its work, but the strain of too many visitors brought down the site Tuesday, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

The site was back online Wednesday and had 16 pages comprising more than 250 comments, which ranged from complaints about the promotion of public officials to criticism about the Web site itself.
I'm too sleep-deprived to say anything very intelligible about this, except to comment that when a government opens itself up to take complaints, it had better follow through — but by following through, it also empowers citizens who see by their participation that they are able to change things.

Okay, that was knee-jerk profundity at best.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Al Gore in Bali



Here's some much needed inspiration from Al Gore. I'm finally starting to accept that he won't be President — because he's found something more important to do.