Among other important passages: "Insofar as newspapers have upheld a public-service vision, they have been engaged in cross-subsidy, using their profitable lines of business, such as the classifieds, to pay for news coverage that probably would have been hard to justify on a narrower view of return on investment."

"If anyone ever writes a dissertation on Needham not as a scholar of China but as a link between the intellectual concerns of the English and the Chinese (maybe Waley would fit here as well) this would be a good staring point."

"The 52-second video has been posted on several Web sites in China, and one major Chinese newspaper said the video had been sent directly from the Japanese auto company Mazda, which last month signed Phelps to an endorsement deal"

"Even before the flames had been extinguished early Tuesday, images of the burning hotel had been removed from the country's main Internet portals. By afternoon, the entire story had been buried. A directive sent out by propaganda officials left no room for error: 'No photos, no video clips, no in-depth reports,' read the memo, which instructed all media outlets to use only Xinhua's dispatches. 'The news should be put on news areas only and the comments posting areas should be closed.'"

The Open Society Institute and Asia Society will host an event with Open Society Fellows Rebecca MacKinnon and Evgeny Morozov that explores the changing landscape of Internet censorship. Special attention will be given to the techniques employed by governments to co-opt and steer online discussions in ideologically convenient directions.

"In her first trip abroad as President Barack Obama’s top diplomat, Clinton will spend a week going to Tokyo, Jakarta, Seoul and Beijing beginning Feb. 15." — Japan is first stop.

If the rural broadband stimulus passes, will people log on?

Chinese Wikipedia article on Grace Wang. Via Isaac Mao.

David Marx writes: … there was also the SoLa-Zoku (ソーラー族), which has an incredibly complicated derivation. Before the war, there was the Miihaa-zoku — superficial young women overly interested in popular trends and fads. To create a word for post-war women even more obsessed with pop culture than the Miihaa-zoku, the media indulged in a delicious pun: taking the two notes “So and La” on the “do-re-mi” scale that follow “me” and “fah” (ha, in Japanese.)

A person associated with the Internet Archive.

Heat map of travel time to a city of 50,000 or more. Sahara, Tibetan Plateau, Western Australia, Siberia, Northern Canada are a hike.

"Japanese officials should welcome efforts by the US to open new channels of communication with China, just as the US should welcome Japanese efforts to do the same. This idea that Japan loses just by the US government talking with China is a relic of the cold war that needs to be retired."

"I've proposed that as part of his China policy, the Obama administration should use the Internet to engage in conversation with the Chinese people, not just its leaders and elites. What do you think?" — Event streams Tuesday morning-early afternoon DC time.