Boingboing linked to a story of a New York Times reporter being held hostage in a Chinese toy factory. It illustrates the dysfunctional nature of Chinese authority. Basically, the almighty dollar trumps government authority.

It also reaffirms the story I’ve heard about Chinese police always doing their best to do absolutely nothing. Seems pretty consistent with my own observations of China.

The Beeb reports that prior to the March capture of 15 British Royal Navy sailors by the Iranian Navy, an Australian Navy boarding party repelled a similar attack:

The Australians, though, to quote one military source, “were having none of it”.

The BBC has been told the Australians re-boarded the vessel they had just searched, aimed their machine guns at the approaching Iranians and warned them to back off, using what was said to be “highly colourful language”.

Good to know that the Aussies don’t put up with that. Good on ya, mates!

Damn you, Blizzog! Do you know how many times I felt compelled to watch this today?

Kelly and I just watched Kinsey, a 2004 film starring Liam Neeson about the amazing work of Dr. Alfred Kinsey, the famed researcher of human sexuality. Dr. Kinsey’s groundbreaking work, known as the Kinsey Reports, gave science and society its first unblinking study of sexual behavior.
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Red Hat introduces its Command Center network monitoring appliance.

Hmm. Command Center …. Command Center … where have I heard that name before?

At any rate, I’m glad to see that some companies are attracted to this market.

Boy, it’s a good thing I didn’t get sick during my trip to China. Chinese hospitals were found to have given patients fake IVs.

That’s the thing I found with China: everyone around was trying to make a buck, usually at your expense. This seems to proceed with the blessing of the officials. I think these food and drug scandals are early tremors. The Big One – one where thousands of Chinese die due to unbridled greed and corrupt regulation – will strike any month now. Even so, I doubt the Chinese government has the will to actually protect its people from its own crooks. It will take a few very large riots before anything changes.

The big news today is that Google Has Acquired Jeff Turner and the company he works for, Feedburner. Jeff thus becomes the first Googleer in the family – one of the lucky few to work for Google from here in the Triangle. (Hey Jeff, is a Triangle Googleplex in the works? Hmm?)

Anyway, congrats to Jeff, Feedburner, and Google!

Florida Governor Charlie Crist made headlines when he recently began a trade visit to Jerusalem, including one with a small but significant typo.