Here is a link to another , earlier LCROSS article that could be combined and/or cross referenced with this particular submission if any LCROSS stories are published later today...

Nobody likes having their ideas dismissed as dumb. It also annoys the hell out of me how dismissive people can be of the way others are treated. A person being told to do things under threat of physical detainment and imprisonment is pretty harsh. I find it highly offensive that anyone would condone threatening another person with such violence without a damned good reason.

Lock up the child molesters, murderers, and rapists. Punish thieves, and fraudsters. However, they are locking up farmers and flower peddlers, non-violent people, who do nothing but provide a product that they believe in, and their customers want. That I can't support and I am sickened that you or anyone else can.

If it doesn't piss you off, you are part of the problem.

-Steve

Hey, I just won a Nobel Peace Prize too! Says something about my "continued work to end the crisis in Sudan." Don't remember ever going to Sudan.

Then again, I didn't know they were packaging these things in cracker-jack boxes...

China may have a few "ooh aaah" projects, better cell phonse and more flat screen TVs, but after living here for 8 months, I don't agree with your conclusion. It isn't fair to cherry pick one or two examples, when they are unique and not characteristic of the average. You mentioned the maglev train. Well that is nice and fancy, but how many Chinese cities have even regular metro systems? Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Xiang Gang and Chongqing, IIRC. How many US cities have metro systems? New York, Boston, DC, Atlanta, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami. Possibly more I'm forgetting. So maybe the shiniest tech in Shanghai is impressive, but if you average it out with what the lack of technology in most places, I still think the US comes out ahead.

I'm living in China right now. I just asked my 23 year old Chinese girlfriend if most people know about the Tiananmen Square riots, and she said "everyone knows, but we don't know the details, like how many people were killed." From my (admittedly short) time living in China, my analysis of Chinese knowledge of their government's actions is this: I think Chinese hear the big stories, like how the Sichuan schools were poorly constructed. On the other hand, they don't hear about all the little things, like how the Chinese government recently gunned down five Uighur "terrorists", or how they sentenced someone who posted pictures of schools that fell in the earthquake to one year of forced labor without a trial, etc, etc.

Oh, and a lot of the ones I talk to know about proxies, but don't care enough--or are too lazy--to circumvent the firewall. I mean, if you'd never used Wikipedia, then Wikipedia being blocked isn't such a big deal, since you don't know what you're missing. (Wikipedia is just an example, as it has worked in China for a few months now I think.)