Let us be frank. Frank will do anything for sexual pleasure. So will Harry, Dilbert, and Freddie. Yes, and perhaps even Mao.
I have come to this revolutionary conclusion thanks to a story that will undoubtedly go down in legend--if it didn't already start there.
You see, a number of reports from across the world are suggesting that the Web in China is being stressed to distraction by Chinese men searching for a very particular sexual distraction indeed--Chako Paul City.
Should Chako Paul be less familiar to you than, say, Chaka Khan, might I tell you that legend has it that Chako Paul City is in Sweden. And it is populated mainly by lesbians.
Well, when I say "is," I really mean "isn't."
However, the male population of China has allegedly got it into its collective hollow head, and perhaps its collective nether regions, that there is, indeed, a Swedish city with 25,000 women and no men. This knowledge seemingly has encouraged them to search madly for ways of espying this singular place.
According to The Australian newspaper, which, might I say, is a rather serious publication, Chinese Internet providers are being swamped to paralysis by the sheer volume of men choking for a taste of Chako Paul.
The rumor is that Chako Paul City was created in 1820 in the deepest, darkest, and most uncut woods of northern Sweden. The founder is said to have been a widow who loathed men more, perhaps, than she must have loathed sunshine.
The city is said to be guarded by two blond women, who keep men from scaling the ramparts of its medieval castle.
This all sounds like ten tons of bunkum to me (especially as most Swedish women are, well, brunettes), but not, allegedly, to men who crave the fantasy of 25,000 blond women frolicking in the woods.
Claes Bertilsen of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions seems to think that anyone who has been inclined to swallow this tale might have been smoking rather wacko tobacco.
He told the Swedish news organization, the Local: "At 25,000 residents, the town would be one of the largest in northern Sweden, and I find it hard to believe that you could keep something like that a secret for more than 150 years."
I find it hard to believe that anyone might think you could guard a city of 25,000 with just two blond women--who may, according to this rampant rumor from the ramparts, turn out to be lesbians.
You see, the Local quotes the Chinese news service Harbin News as declaring that many of Chako Paul's inhabitants turned to homosexuality "because they could not suppress their sexual needs."
There is also the quite colorful suggestion that most of the inhabitants are employed in forestry (no, never) and that many have, according to the Xinhua news agency, a "thick waist belt full of woodworking equipment."
I am not sure how many more days that Chinese Internet providers can cope with their male population's enthusiasm for these Swedish logger lesbians.
If indeed they are truly struggling with the phenomenon at all.
However, just in case, I can only hope that the women of China slap the men of China firmly about the ears and solar plexus before the world's most important nation grinds to an undignified and unwarranted digital halt.
Could it have been a commenter?
Xu Lai, a well-known Chinese science journalist and blogger was stabbed while speaking at a book reading in Beijing.
Apparently, he was answering questions when two men dragged him into a restroom and knifed him. Thankfully, his injuries do not appear to be life-threatening.
No one really knows whether he was attacked because of something he wrote- his site is known as Pro-State in Flames- or because someone simply didn't like him. Of course, these things are not mutually exclusive.
He is known for what some describe as a biting and sarcastic style of writing. Which, naturally, is reason enough for him to get stabbed.
It is really quite wrong to go around offending people. And the world's bloggers should cut it out and focus on what it truly important. Family entertainment.
Did you lose a lot of money in the markets over the last two weeks? Do you fear you will lose even more before the bell tolls today?
Please don't worry. Some scientists will soon be able to help you.
Yes, very soon, you will realize that these awful things never happened. You will realize you lost no money. You will realize there was no need for a bailout. You will realize that tomorrow truly is a new day and that yesterday was almost as new as tomorrow.
Whatever people tell you about the future--whether it be investing in it or merely hoping for it--it seems clear that the more scientists learn about the mind, the happier and, hopefully, the richer, we will all be.
Thankfully, some very clever neurobiologists have made what could be one of the most joy-enhancing discoveries ever, one that has great implications for our future. Via the past.
Put simply, they believe they are close to finding a way to remove all the bad memories from your brain.
All the memories that debilitate you in your daily life for one reason or another: the defeat by your archrivals at croquet, the rejection by the beautiful, intoxicated woman at your sister's wedding, and, of course, the failure to sell your Washington Mutual shares six months ago. Just imagine if none of these things had ever happened--at least in your mind.
"While memories are great teachers and obviously crucial for survival and adaptation, selectively removing incapacitating memories, such as traumatic war memories or an unwanted fear, could help many people live better lives," Joe Tsien, a neurobiologist at the Brain and Behavior Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine told the Daily Telegraph.
At the moment, Tsien and his collaborators at Shanghai's East China Normal University (Normal? What do they mean, exactly, by Normal?) have only messed with a mouse's memories.
This part's not quite for the squeamish. As I understand it, they gave the mouse an electric shock. Then, using a calcium enzyme called CamKII, they successfully removed the sizzling memory. They believe they didn't damage any of the little animal's brain cells, but one supposes mice to be not the most communicative of creatures.
It all sounds like something Naomi Campbell and PETA might get upset about. Still, the scientists are proclaiming that their work is a great success.
But here's the part that affects my innards: it appears that these fine neuroscientific boffins have a very strong idea of what sort of memories they are prepared to remove and which ones they might just refuse to touch.
While one might persuade them to remove the memory of a Webvan investment, other areas may be off-limits to their revolutionary enzymes.
Hark these words of Tsien: "If one got a bad relationship with another person, hoping to have a pill to erase the memory of that person or relationship is not the solution."
Who are you to play Morgan Freeman with my memories, Tsien? I can think of several people in my past whom I would very much like to forget. Two of them were called Suzy. And only one turned out to be a woman.
If I come to you with an honest plea to remove the mental anguish of their presence from my inner cortex, you would deny me this on the basis of what? Your own moral judgment? Your own experiences with girls? Your meaningful relationship with Dr. Phil?
We are entering a dangerous period for the world and for our inner selves. So many drink to forget, yet the effect is only temporary.
However, Tsien and his fellow brains have the talent and the power to, one day soon (they admit it may still take a few years), remove the painful parts of our past. Even our most recent past.
Surely, in this case, we are best positioned to decide which memories hurt us most.
Selling Yahoo shares anyone?
I am sure that you were fearing censorship at these Beijing Olympics.
No, not censorship by the Chinese.
Censorship by those folks at NBC who would prefer you to watch what they want you to watch and, most specifically, when they want you to watch it.
Well, here I am live on a Friday night, freely watching NBCOlympics.com, and witnessing the quite glorious sight of a Chinese cyclist trying to mend his bike.
It looks to me as if his back wheel has suffered a case of the bends.
Looking beneath the screen, I see that his name is Zhang and he is in 135th place. Who knew there would be that many riders in this, um, race over some sort of distance along misty roads that resemble London at six o'clock in the morning (except that there are no drunks visible)?
Here's what is strange about NBC's online coverage: I have no idea what I am watching. Yes, I have clicked on the commentary, which takes the form of a live blog stream--except that the writer is endearingly honest about his predicament.
This is how he has just spoken to me in writing: "The first time up the major climb of the finish circuit has substantially damaged the peloton, but we are still waiting on names and time gaps."
So this commentator is telling me he has no idea who is winning, no idea who is second, no idea who is third, and no idea of the time differences between the riders.
The Beijing Olympic mascots. One from the right, The Tibetan antelope. Really.
(Credit: CC Tama Leaver)If this commentary had appeared on NBC TV, the commentator in question would have been removed from his post quicker than persons of color and Mongolians have been asked to be removed from the bars of Beijing by the authorities. This commentator would have been sent to televisual Siberia.
There is a wonderfully eerie quality to the live online footage of this Olympic Some Sort of Cycle Race Along Roads.
The picture quality is quite spectacular. The mist is so real it could not possibly have been photoshopped in there by the Chinese authorities to provide some extra menacing ambience. This makes YouTube seem like student video. (Which I know some would contend it is.)
Meanwhile, the NBC livestream commentary is now telling me this: "Apologies for the data stream in the play-by-play window. We are trying to remedy the situation."
They cannot get a handle on the data. They are out of control. We have a situation here, people.
The riders, however, ride on. To the muted shouts of spectators who bang thunder sticks against the roadside barriers, as if they were praying for Kobe Bryant to miss another free throw.
Ah, NBC has heard my pleas and an overlay has appeared to tell me that we are watching a men's road race. The overlay, however, only stays on for a few seconds. Then it disappears again. So now I must rely on the official NBC Olympic online commentary. Here is the latest:
"The leading pursuit has shed some riders as they press towards the finish line 4'11" down on Patricio Almonacid."
No, I don't think they are four feet, eleven inches down. I think those are minutes and seconds. But all I can hear is the silence of a few rubber tires passing through a tunnel.
No voice is there to lead me through my bewilderment. No words of wisdom help to create excitement. Just the vague whistle of a spoke in the wildnerness. This is the live NBC Olympics.com experience.
Wait, wait.
The scrolling commentary has political news: "Iran, USA detente at the head of the main peloton as Iran's climber Hussein Askari takes a flyer and is joined by (we think) USA's Jason McCartney."
We think? We think? This might be a U.S. assault on Iran. And all they can say is "We think"?
I continue to ponder these words, watch the struggling bottom of the Iranian cyclist, and listen to the echoing nothingness that accompanies these besottingly shiver-making live images. It is as if NBC has hired John Carpenter to direct their online Olympic coverage.
And I can barely wait to see what he will do with the Romania versus Kazakhstan women's handball game.
I am tired, however. This has been live, uncensored (by NBCTV) online footage from the Olympics. I am comforted to know that I will slide beneath my comforter still a free man.
Free from the tyranny of NBC TV and happy in the otherworldly bosom of NBCOlympics.com.
Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.
The more you tell people they can't do something, the more they'll try to do it.
It's the same with drugs. It's the same with turning your cell phone off at the movies. And it's the same with censorship.
There are many journalists lifting their laptop lids in horror at discovering that the Chinese government is now dancing the censorship two-step.
After all, the journalists wail, the Chinese, when they were bidding for the games, promised open Internet access. They promised it would be 80 degrees and sunny every day, too.
However the Internet, just like the commenters on this very site, has a robust constitution.
So perhaps it's worth considering how this supposed censorship will actually work.
According to those who are already busy carving their protests in digital stone, any sites with the dreaded word "Tibet" in their URL will be blocked. Same goes for the subversive propagandists at Amnesty International.
Yet what is to stop Jonathan Jockstrap, intrepid journalist employed by the Western Significant Times, from e-mailing his close friend in, say, some sickeningly uncensored Western country?
Jockstrap asks the friend to access one of the banned sites, copy and paste any relevant information to his e-mail, and send it right along with his best wishes.
Jockstrap will then have circumvented the ban and be able to report on anything he chooses.
Will the Chinese be upset? Well, only after they have read the malevolent (to them) Jockstrap column.
That's because they will surely not be willing to censor every personal e-mail (and phone call, for that matter). Could they possibly have employed enough censors? Would they possibly risk the ridicule this might bring? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But they surely cannot entirely stop communication between journalists and their editors and friends outside of China.
It's so easy to blame the Chinese (although I have to say they did themselves no favors by having their own neurotic Secret Service people running alongside the Olympic Torch and barging into conscientiously acquiescent objectors in San Francisco, for example).
But it will be relatively simple for the Western journalists to see if their own personal e-mails and other communications are being tampered with. (Phone call between journalist and editor: "You sent me a naked picture of your new boyfriend? What naked picture?")
And it will be relatively simple for the Western press to publish anything that the supposedly banned sites are saying about the games, the Chinese government, the dubious powers of Chinese medicine, or the real age of some of the Chinese competitors.
The real question is whether they will want to. The real question is whether there will be a lot of athletic spiking going on in newsrooms around the world.
The likelihood is that if we don't read anything that even borders on the controversial from the world's free press, it might not be the Chinese who will be the censors.
It might equally be the politically sensitive, revenue-reverential folks back home.
Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.
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