Blockages: The Tony Vlachos Story #Survivor
There are two things I like. The reality TV show Survivor and the reality social show Twitter. These are a few of my favorite things.
Survivor is a delight as a little microcosm of humanity. An animated diorama world of greed and bad behavior inside the magic box. What’s not to like?
Twitter, with its 140-character limit, is a short and sweet. In the right hands it can be art form. In the wrong hands? “I’m on the can” or “I’m drinking a smoothie.” Often in the very same tweet.
I’ve been religiously watching Survivor since day one when Richard Hatch won the inaugural season in Borneo. I never miss an episode.
Earlier this year, when Survivor Cagayan, the 28th season, was announced, I did something new. I used Twitter to interact with some contestants on the show. The worlds of Survivor and Twitter collided like chocolate in my peanut butter.
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The 49th State of Reality Awareness Part Two
Alaska. A land so vast that it turns out that it is big enough for the both of us. Our crack team of Discovery engineers has been hard at work calculating that 42 reality-based TV shows about this majestic and fascinating land just isn’t good enough. Not by a damn sight.
We’re gonna blow the lid off yet another story that needs to be told.
Thus, we are splittin’ a seam to unveil our latest bit of creative genius that fully explores every nook and cranny of America’s last frontier in a way the lower 48 has never quite seen before. Alaska State Poopers.
Like a Palin hoppin’ in a chopper fully-loaded for bear we are about to seriously unload, to pull back the lid as it were, on the brave men and women who patrol a wilderness so remote and vast it’s almost inconceivable someone built an outhouse there. Where there’s a will there’s a way. But someone’s still got to clean that shit up.
From tundra to toilet, when the job is just too dirty for anyone else, Alaska Sanitation Team (AST) stands vigilant and at the ready. Enough talk! Let’s plunge right in!
Pilot: S1E1 – “Watch Out For The Cornhole, Bud”
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You’ve got blockage
A year ago today I blogged about Google pulling out of China. Google had redirected google.cn to google.com.hk. I just verified that still holds true as of this morning.
Also being reported is that China has closed 130,000 internet cafes during the last six years in an attempt to control information available to its people.
China, prominently showcased as the site of the 2008 Olympics, initially stated that Internet access would not be censored at the Olympic Village press center. However, journalists that arrived at the press center found that sites containing politically sensitive matter were inaccessible and learned that the IOC had quietly agreed to “some of the limitations.”
According to Wikipedia, China’s internet censorship does not extend to Hong Kong:
The controls come about a year after Google removed its Chinese language Internet search engine from China and relocated it to Hong Kong, where Beijing has few controls.
Now Google and China are at it again. Yesterday Google accused China of “disrupting” Gmail service saying it was due to a “government blockage.”
Beijing has long had some of the world’s strictest Internet controls. But after pro-democracy demonstrations broke out in the Middle East in January, the Chinese government seems to have intensified effort to censor Web content and disrupt Web searches related to calls for similar protests in China.
China currently blocks other social media sites so prominently featured in pro-democracy demonstrations in other countries recently like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Both quotes are from The New York Times.
Meanwhile, China has intensified condemnation of Libyan air strikes and Libya’s top oil official in Tripoli said that oil contracts could be offered directly to China. Along with Russia, China abstained from a U.N. resolution calling for a ceasefire in Libya. India has also criticized the attacks on Libya.
As if that wasn’t enough, China recently was targeted in the crosshairs of none other than Sarah Palin:
I personally have huge military concerns about what is going on in China. What’s with the buildup? You don’t see a tangible outside threat . . . to that country. Is that just for a defensive posture? How can that be? Stockpiling ballistic missiles, submarines, new-age ultramodern fighter aircrafts. It certainly means America needs to be vigilant looking at what China is doing.
–Sarah Palin, speaking in India, March 19, 2011 (Source.)
The destinies of the United States and China seem to be converging in a variety of ways. The question is, how will that all play out? Will we ever so pro-democracy demonstrations in China like we’ve seen in Egypt and other countries? It sure seems unlikely but 2011 has been a strange year so far. Who knows?
Shouts from the Abyss 
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