It's not even the Central party they'd be criticizing; many Chinese adore Grandpa Hu and Grandpa Wen. The local party officials are another thing altogether, especially in rural areas.

Interesting that we have (almost) the reverse attitude here in the states: Everyone hates Congress, but our own local representatives are just peachy.

Your argument is as idiotic as saying "watr" isn't wet, due to misspelling.

Yeah, sort of like saying that "Republicans" aren't in power, because they're misspelled "Democrats."

Hear Hear! While I've been pleasantly surprised with the progress of touch-screen keyboards over the last few years, the lack of a physical keyboard is (and will likely remain) a dealbreaker for me for a very simple reason: any screen area which is devoted to displaying keys is screen area that isn't devoted to displaying text, and I want to see as much text as possible when I write. So my phone is a little thicker as a result...so what?

Being well and truly debunked tends to have precious little effect on the persistence of a meme. That said, GWU law prof Daniel Solove did a fairly decent job with I've Got Nothing to Hide and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy.

Way to keep it weird. ;-)

As a native Texan (now living in Berkeley) I have to admit that my childhood conception of New England included every state north of Georgia.

If only ESP was a supported protocol... ;-)

These are all great features of Tree Style Tab, not to mention the ability to place the tabs on either the left or right-hand side of your screen as well as manually resize the pane if you want to see more/less of the page titles.

Hear Hear. We actually downgraded to our old DirecTV Tivo-branded RCA box from 2005 after trying and utterly hating 1) a Comcast Motorola DVR and 2) DirecTV's "latest and greatest." We got grandfathered in after Tivo and DirecTV parted ways in 2006 or thereabouts, so we don't have to pay a separate charge for Tivo's service. They've since come to their senses and are supposedly coming out with new co-branded hardware in 2010, but that sure feels like a long way off.

No, but it might help one to understand the history and development of certain highly influential normative behavioral frameworks (e.g. virtue ethics) which inform the ways in which actual people live their lives and thus affect the lives of others. For example, pride for Aristotle was a virtue to the extent that the ongoing achievement of excellence should justifiably make one feel proud, and he distinguished this from hubris, which is an unjustified feeling of pride which depends more on denigrating others than on developing one's own capacities. Add to this the Thomsian virtue of humility, and your post becomes a clear example of...well, you get the idea. I hope.

Only on TV and radio... and in magazines... and movies, and at ballgames, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written in the sky. But not in dreams, no sirree.

Ah, sweet recursivity.

In this economy, won't someone think of the Feel-Around theater employees?

So waitaminute...by Aiken's logic, wouldn't screen readers and other accessibility tools fall under this category as well? That's a losing battle if ever I've seen one...urm, heard one.