As an atheist, I’m well aware that our popularity ranks somewhere between Dick Cheney and herpes. Voters would almost certainly elect a transsexual murderer president, so long as he was a believer, over an atheist. I’d like very much to be able to put my weight behind an effective pro-atheist movement.

Bibles for porn isn’t it, for a few reasons. For one thing, it reinforces the image of atheists as a group of licentious libertines who would spike the school water supply with LSD given half a chance.  Hardcore Christians like to think that their morality derives entirely from faith, and that ergo those without faith somehow lack a morality. This idea is of course wrong, but handing out porn is hardly the way to disprove it.

The second thing I object to is the notion that the Bible is ‘smut’, as the program’s manifesto calls it. Hardly. The Bible is a book upon which the foundation of Western culture is based. For that reason alone, it has immense historical value. Rather than trading Bibles in for porn, atheists should actually sit and learn it. The world would be better off if people were to analyze ‘sacred’ texts critically rather than simply adopt their tenets wholesale.

Far more effective were the light and breezy ‘atheist bus’ campaign that made a slight stir in England last year.

But I do have one distinct fear- China does not look kindly upon social networking platforms. Should the Great Firewall rise up and smack down Buzz, there will be some dreadful collateral damage: Gmail. And yes, while a Gmail ban might spur China-based netizens to invest in VPN’s most people aren’t really prepared to do so. A gmail ban would rank far higher on a pain-in-the-ass-meter than the Facebook/Twitter blocks.

So while I like Buzz, part of me wants it to fail so that my precious Gmail account doesn’t get harmonized.

In practical terms Google’s possible departure from China would have little effect. For web searches in Chinese Google’s rival Baidu is better, anyway. Google’s YouTube doesn’t work here, but Youku and Tudou both do. For most every service Google provides there is a domestic equivalent in China.

Yet the symbolic importance of Google’s maneuver is significant. In particular, the idea that the spread of the internet will necessarily challenge the Communist Party’s iron grip on power in China has come under further question. To borrow a phrase from the popular Chinese blogger Han Han, the People’s Republic is in the process of creating the world’s largest local area network (LAN). Beijing’s efforts to manipulate the web are becoming more, not less, successful.

A second idea being challenged? That multi-national companies can operate with impunity in China. For years global firms have salivated over China’s 1.3 billion-strong population and eye-catching GDP figures, imagining that what sells in Peoria might, too, in Xi’an. Yet Beijing has shown that any attempt to tamper with its desire to suppress dissent will not be tolerated.

I agree with John that acquiring a virtual private network (VPN) will before long become de rigeur for China’s internet users. As I wrote over a year ago, I believe China’s efforts to censor the web will only stop once everyone finds a cheap and easy way to work around the firewall.

As for me, paying 50 US dollars a year for unfettered Internet access is a small price to pay for a sense of personal freedom as well as a middle finger raised to the worst excesses of the Chinese nanny state.

Yet for all of its flaws, Kunming’s roads seem oddly safe. I cycle on them without reluctance, even at night. Every so often, I have to slam on the breaks. Once or twice, I’ve bumped into pedestrians, vespas, or other small vehicles. In a city with such a large population crammed into a small area, these incidents are by no means unusual.

The very lack of rules on the roads in Kunming, in a way, explain why they’re so safe. Cars violate traffic rules all the time. Pedestrians jaywalk with impunity, bikes go against the grain of traffic, and everybody everywhere do what they’re not supposed to. Yet there’s one rule that everybody follows in China: try not to hit other people.

Keeping that rule in mind makes everyone drive reasonably slowly. The scenes I witness in northern California, cars zipping by at high speeds, don’t happen in China. In California, people follow the rules so assiduously that any deviation seems extraordinary and a cause for panic. In China, nobody drives well, and for that reason there’s a certain sense of security amidst the madness.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from MySpace notifying me what my ‘friends’ were up to. Evidently, they failed to delete my account properly and decided that, perhaps, after one year I might be persuaded to begin using their service again.

Needless to say, I was pretty peeved. I logged in and cancelled my account again, this time leaving a scathing note expressing my displeasure with their failure to adhere to my deletion request. Let’s hope this time they get the message.

I’m not a conspiratorial or paranoid fellow when it comes to technology, but more incidents like this might turn me into one.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

The Chinese government spends a lot of money, time, and energy managing the Internet, either employing teams to firewall sites (such as Wikipedia or BBC News) or people to write pro-government slogans on the country’s numerous bulletin board forums. While savvy Internet users can always find the right information if they look hard enough, the goal of the firewall is to make it sufficiently annoying so that nobody wants to bother.

I wonder if enough people use HotSpot Shield (or, like Fallows, commercial VPNs without advertisements) the Chinese government will eventually decide internet censorship isn’t worth it. In fact, technological advances give the government a perfect face-saving excuse; we didn’t stop censorship because it was wrong, but because it wasn’t working.

China likes to tout that it has the most Internet users in the world, and this is undoubtedly true. However, only a minute percentage of people I suspect are particularly bothered by censorship. Walk past any 网吧; virtually everyone there is busy playing games, not writing anti-government manifestos. Bulletin boards that discuss politics typically veer into frightening nationalism rather than pleas for liberalism. Even potential dissidents understand that were they to successfully post an impolitic blog post or remark online, they may face severe consequences.

In the end, technology will probably slay internet censorship. But it likely won’t make much of a difference.

Full disclosure: Sean and I were high school classmates in Atherton, California in the late 1990s. But forget all that- the site is well worth checking out.

Ah the vicissitudes of a government petrified of information€¦after a brief revival this past week, blogspot is YET AGAIN blocked in Beijing. This time joined by the popular workaround site anonymouse which has, until now it would seem, been a decent way to access blocked sites. Hopefully this is all temporary and somebody will get the nanny a cocktail and a neck massage.

But for the moment can I just address (again) the purple elephant sitting in the corner: societies that block information and are afraid of alternative viewpoints cannot be considered modern and developed€¦and no amount of high rise buildings, synchronized hand claps, Audi A6s, or Olympic games will make it so.

Sorry.

Amen. Blocking blog hosting software only scratches the surface of media censorship in China. I used to read the China Daily until its sycophancy became depressing, and while TV news broadcasts are good for Chinese listening comprehension they don’t convey much in the way of useful news. Chinese people brave enough to challenge official government policy on virtually any issue usually end up silenced if not incarcerated.

As Jeremiah writes, the booming economy and increasingly cosmopolitan nature of the country do not mask the fact that China remains a rigid, authoritarian dictatorship that is completely controlled by one unelected political party. Admission of this fact usually elicits feeble excuses, such as that China is somehow “different” and that Chinese people are somehow not ready for participatory democracy or a free press. Some go so far as to say that authoritarian systems “work better”, belying the fact that most dictatorships crumble under the weight of their own inefficiency. China’s impressive growth has been in spite of its government, not because of it.

Some months ago I read Sam Harris’ anti-religion cri de couer “The End of Faith”. Drawing on an impressive command of epistemology, Harris argues that some ideas are better than others regardless of context. For instance, he writes that religions that practice “honor killings” are inferior to those that do not, and that atheism (or scientific rationality) ranks higher than religious faith of any kind in the hierarchy of ideas.

Whether or not one agrees with Harris’ take, I do believe that his rejection of relativism can be extended into the political sphere. Societies that allow freedom of information, protect individual rights, and limit governmental power are inherently more humane and vibrant than those that do not. I do not mean to endorse a violent overthrow of the Chinese government, but am merely pointing out that despite its glowing facade, China remains, in many ways, a deeply backward country.

A caveat or two: I would totally oppose any effort from the United States, United Nations, or any other country to attack China in order to change its political system. China’s sovereignty ought to be respected, just like those in nations whose institutions we may find more admirable.

What’s notable is how easy the firewall is to evade- it isn’t as if men in black suits and sunglasses will appear at your front door if you mistakenly type “Taiwan independence” in your Google search bar. Most internet-savvy foreigners I know in China use proxy servers (available free on the internet) that renders the entire firewall completely moot. In effect, it simply isn’t difficult at all to find any information you want on the internet from within China.

Yet the simple hassle of circumventing the censors makes most people unwilling to go to the trouble. Fallows points out that Chinese cities are simply teeming with media and that most information that affects people’s lives is convenient to obtain.

Here’s a follow-up interview with Fallows for those who have read the article. The rest of the issue is excellent too-as always.

1. Wenlin

As I wrote, Wenlin is best suited for deepening one’s understanding of Chinese characters and how they function in the language. I use Wenlin if I encounter a character whose origins I’m unsure of, or am curious in which other words a certain character appears. Wenlin’s other main use is for translating paragraphs written in academic or vernacular Chinese, as its ability to render Chinese sentences in accurate English is unsurpassed.

2. Nciku

Nciku’s English to Chinese dictionary is far larger than Wenlin’s, often providing accurate translations of relatively obscure English terms. Nciku also includes useful example sentences in each of its entries (something Wenlin does only occasionally) which have the unintended effect of improving your grasp of Chinese grammar. Finally, Nciku’s writing function recognizes even badly-written characters, so whenever I scribble one with my mouse I always seem to find what I’m looking for.

3. Kingsoft

Unlike Wenlin or Nciku, Kingsoft does not require one to copy and paste Chinese or English terms into a separate interface. Quite simply, Kingsoft will translate any English word it finds on your computer into Chinese, and any Chinese character it finds into English. Note that I said character, not word. One of Kingsoft’s weaknesses is that it often fails to pick-up multi-character words, creating a good deal of confusion. Its lack of pinyin on English to Chinese can also be a hindrance if you don’t recognize the characters it gives you. Kingsoft is ideal though for IM conversations which value speed over accuracy.

4. Pleco

There are many hand-held dictionary devices, but in my experience Pleco is the best. Available mainly for Palm products, Pleco combines a huge dictionary with an easy-to-use interface, making word searches simple and fast. As a hand-held device, I have used Pleco mostly in class and in situations when I’m outside and am curious about a certain character I see on a sign or shopfront. A must-have for a Chinese student.

Here’s a situational guide for each device:

1. You’re reading a Chinese newspaper article on-line, but are having trouble with some of the more difficult characters: Wenlin
2. You’re understand a Chinese word but are not sure how to use it in a sentence: Nciku
3. You’re looking for a ready-made source of Chinese slang: Nciku
4. You’re chatting on QQ with your Chinese friend and don’t understand a few of the things she’s written: Kingsoft
5. The new software you’ve installed doesn’t come in English and you’re reluctant to press the wrong button: Kingsoft
6. You’re on the bus and are curious about an advertisement that keeps flashing on the screen: Pleco
7. You’ve seen a certain character before but are not sure what it is, or where else it appears: Wenlin
8. You’re reading a Chinese novel at home and can’t figure out a tricky phrase: Nciku.
9. You’ve gotten drunk and lost your Palm PDA, your internet connection expired because you’re too lazy to pay the bill, and you are too cheap to buy Kingsoft or Wenlin and too wimpy to download them off of a torrent: a good old-fashioned paper dictionary.