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''Babygate'' being the best sounding label I can come up with for this controversy. First, interesting posts from the Stryde Hax blog on ''Google hacking'' information about He Kexin. Essentially this involves using Google's advanced search features to target very specific kinds of information. His queries on Google.cn and Baidu lead him to ...

For those who are a bit weary of the whole idea of corporate pavilions, Media magazine has a witty review of the pavilions of all of the Olympic TOP sponsors. Each is helpfully compared to the Olympic athlete or icon that it most resembles. Two examples:China MobileSMS a vote on your favourite Olympic photograph and receive a set of stickers and ...

This New York Times article is a few days old, but I didn't have time to get to it when it first came out. Apparently some of the press conferences got a little scratchy as journalists got frustrated with BOCOG's oblique responses to any question not focusing on China's immense medal haul, and the IOCs equally vapid responses. In this case, the ...

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on efforts by the operators of China's gleaming, new Olympic sports facilities to sell the naming rights. According to the article, six multinationals are competing for naming rights to the National Stadium/Bird's Nest among various other ''partnerships'' on offer for the new facilities:Ben Sturner, ...

Now: China's gold medal team. Their talent is not to be doubted. Their ages...perhaps:   Then: The 1956 US national squad: Things sure have changed. And not just the fashions.  

Amended: Sorry--this wasn't meant to be published. It was a placeholder and a few notes for a possible full-length post. Apologies to all those who thought I'd got lazy and decided to move the tweet format into my regular blog posts. However, for posterity, here are those notes: Why child-singing-gate is a PR perfect stormAll the ...

As published by the Sydney Morning Herald. No link to a Chinese version, no citation of a source, and no way of confirming if these are genuine. But they look pretty credible and consistent with prior guidelines from the propaganda bureau. Nothing surprising or extra scandalous, at least from my perspective (your mileage may vary). But interesting ...

First go to the New York Times website and read David Brooks' column about collectivism and the opening ceremony:The world can be divided in many ways — rich and poor, democratic and authoritarian — but one of the most striking is the divide between the societies with an individualist mentality and the ones with a collectivist mentality. ...

Or so you would start to believe from the press reports over the last day. Some have dwelt upon the lip-synched singing of hyper-precious Lin Miaoke, the impossibly apple-cheeked munchkin girl who ''sang'' the laudatory and self-referentially titled ''I sing for my motherland'' without toppling over in shock at the thought of being watched live by ...

This probably counts as an abuse of blogging, but for posterity, here is the stream of 40-odd tweets I posted during last Friday's opening ceremony for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. I've flipped them back into chronological order and removed the extraneous material (and some typos):Well, here we go. Good luck, Beijing! 7:52pm Alright. Gotta ...