This is a friendly note to keep on searching the internets for interesting and original blogs that will keep your mind off of the grind and wind of exams coming up, not to mention family time. Here’s a sprouting one with both meaty commentary and a few surprises to keep you up to date in the visual arts world: http://www.theredcircle.com.

You might even be able to convince yourself that it is part of your cultural education. There may be hundreds more that are similar, however, there are only a few that are worth the time you could be using to study Finite.

For anyone keeping up on the topic of internet censorship, this probably came as no surprise. A while ago, the Chinese Communist Party mandated that any computer sold within the Mainland as of July 1 come with pre-installed censorship software that the Chinese Communist Party says would protect youth from “harmful” websites. What they say they mean is “pornography”, what they really mean are websites that may be politically sensitive, anything from the advocation of Taiwanese sepratism to pages on, for example, the Congressional Executive Committee on China, a United States government think-tank (which was blocked when I tried to access it in Beijing). The CCP has since backed down, at least a little. More recent news reported that installation of the software is now voluntary, but it will be pre-packaged on computers. It’s still a troubling possibility; autocratic governments sometimes define rather fluidly what “voluntary” really means, but it’s at least better than we originally thought. It does bring up a good question, though: What’s the responsibility of corporations to comply with political directives?

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To anyone who’s visited Economist.com lately, this will come as no surprise. But to those who haven’t seen it before, would you care to guess the controversial, divisive issue that currently holds the honor of being the 3rd most commented story on the entire website at the moment?

IMPORTS to China plunged in January, signalling that demand is shrinking alarmingly: they fell by 43.1% compared with a year earlier, worse than forecast and double the decline in December. But China’s trade surplus, at $39.1 billion, is one of the biggest on record because a huge tumble in exports of 17.5 was dwarfed by falling imports. A recovery in Chinese exports is unlikely as the world slides deeper into an economic slump but imports may well pick up—China has resumed importing iron ore after running down stocks in recent months. China’s economy could also get a boost from a big government stimulus package.

That’s the entire story– essentially a verbal explanation of a graph released by the Chinese government, without any real editorial content. And last time I checked, when it was roughly 200 comments, it didn’t come close to matching the scale of historic, earlier posts, most of them around the time of the Olympics regarding media freedom or the Communist Party.

The comment board might as well, though, be like every other story out there. Comments on the China Daily (at least before they’re moderated out) usually take the same route– someone makes a comment about the imminent fall of Western society and China’s simultaneous rise, someone else counters that the Chinese government is evil and corrupt, and then they go at it for 20 pages.

I suppose you can attribute a good deal of the vitriol between commentators in the West and China to the fact that they’re commentators; being confrontational and unreasonable is part of their nature (people watching Youtube can’t even get along). But it’s also a disappointing fact of the ideological divide that seperates us. I’ll be frank and state that it is my wish that China become a more open Government, and I say that having spent a substantial amount of time living over here, with a fair amount of cultural and linguistic fluency. It was my assumption in first coming here that closed governments, which disallowed media freedom, would lose their grip when the light of truth was shined inside their borders. Public reaction to that light, however, has been anything but favorable.

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This isn’t the first time Facebook has felt obligated to quell rivalry. The creators of Harvard-based “ConnectU” were among the first to attack Facebook’s creator, Mark Zuckerberg, for simply taking their idea and running with it to make millions.

Now, the German networking site “studiVZ” has earned itself a lawsuit from Facebook for “copying … entire portions of the site’s design.” Whether these accusations are well-founded, or the iconic blue-and-white chunk of cyberspace is just defending its own monopolistic dominion, we’ll have to wait and see.

Normally I hate it when the New York Times makes up a trend and tries to convince you that it has seized society through flimsy statistics and generalizations made from a few personal observations. I’ve seen 2 of those this week: one about the immodest sexiness of bride’s dresses (this probably only happens among millionaires in NYC), which I find utterly and totally unconvincing, and another about an eco-pious housewifery sweeping the nation’s mothers (but only appears to happen among millionaires in California…see the trend?)

Today, however, there is a really interesting AND convincing piece about the popularity of blogging and internet-savvy behavior among teenage girls, versus the popularity of such activity among teenage boys.

The article accounts for the phenomenon through sociological evidence that may explain why young women blog more than their male peers. As explained by a gender studies prof at U of I, “Girls are trained to make stories about themselves,” and therefore take to the emotional-confessional format the blog invites.

If this trend is true, I wonder what it means for the future of the Internet. Of course, these teenagers are blogging about daily life, and making websites about pop culture. Will this trend translate into blogging about politics? Will these girl-bloggers turn into culture critics, journalists, writers? Or will they just use the blog like I once used my pink fluffy diary, and cast aside the blog/diary’s potential for story-telling introspection as soon as a driver’s license enters the picture, allowing for freedom from house and computer?

I can only think this trend is positive, unless, as the gender studies professor remarked, blogging and the other internet behavior popular among girls will signal a ‘feminization’ of their activity to the larger society. Feminization is a type of ghettoization, in that whatever is marked the domain of the feminine, men stay away, and the societal value of the feminized thing drops in a major way. Examples of feminized professions: nursing, teaching (not college teaching), and to some extent, social work. Next up, blogging?

My sister makes fun of me because all I listen to in my car is talk radio and classical music.  That’s actually not true. I also listen to country.

In my most recent IDS column, I poked fun at the stereotypes regarding art and politics.  I pointed out that usually, it’s liberals that are more artistic than conservatives.  And I think that’s generally the case.  I definitely don’t get in to a lot of what’s called “modern” art, and I don’t understand the value of thing that are overly abstract or mundane (for example, a wheel hanging from the ceiling is not “art;” it’s a wheel hanging from the ceiling.)

But, believe it or not, I do have some sense of culture. I mean, what’s the point of being a greedy capitalist if you can’t spend your money enjoying the good things in life?�   So it’s not that I hate all art, I just want it to be good. And I like it to generally “make sense,” according to my own very subjective standards.

 All that being said, I want to tell you about my new favorite website.

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…and not just because it’s awful. It turns out that you can check out of Facebook any time you like, but you can never leave.

One of the unspoken privacy controversies about Facebook, aside from the well-covered feed business and the whole marketing deal, is that Facebook keeps your profile. Forever. And ever. On their servers, Facebook never eliminates your information, leaving a ghost profile and still making it possible for someone to contact you through e-mail long after your profile has officially been deleted.

It just underscores that in the digital age, when we provide information, it’s impossible to get the toothpaste back in the tube. Everything we give will be taken and kept, and yet, we continue along our way, oblivious to the trail we leave behind.

 “Always anonymous, always juicy.”

 Freedom of speech, or an unhindered way to attack and libel others?  How (if at all) should universities respond to this?

From Inside Higher Ed:

On JuicyCampus.com, anyone can post to campus-specific boards with the guarantee that their identities will be protected and their messages left uncensored. At some colleges, the site has caught on — particularly among campus Greeks. The result is often a barrage of shout-outs, accusations, open threads (”Hottest Frat Boy!?!!”) and often, personal attacks, assertions about women’s sexual history and even death threats. In the site’s FAQ, the creators note: “Facts can be untrue. Opinions can be stupid, or ignorant, or mean-spirited, but they can’t be untrue. And we believe everyone is entitled to their opinion.”

Officially, the rules forbid defamation and posting copyrighted material, but the line tends to be blurry, and tracking down IP addresses for potential legal action is tricky business.

Go check out the website, and let us know what you think. Just don’t say anything bad about me while you’re there.