Alexander Stuart

    This story about the Chinese government's reaction to the encouraging news that this year's Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Chinese "dissident" Liu Xiaobo is from CNN . President Obama has called on China immediately to release Liu Xiaobo from prison.   China blanks Nobel Peace prize searches By Steven Jiang , CNN October 8, 2010 1:25 p.m. EDT Liu Xiaobo (photo credit: Reuters ) Beijing, China (CNN) -- With news media across the globe reacting to this year's Nobel Peace Prize announcement, authorities in the winner's homeland are racing to delete his name from all public domains. Type "Liu Xiaobo" -- or "Nobel Peace Prize," for that matter -- in search engines in China and hit return, you get a blaring error page. It's the same for the country's increasingly popular micro-blogging sites. "Nobel Prize" was the top-trending topic until the authorities acted to remove all mentions of the awa

       A friend sent me this. I loved Inception...but this is so funny! (Thanks, Claire:)

      If you want to relax for a moment and remind yourself that you are on a gently spinning globe floating through an infinity of space-time, try this...or drive your car very fast into the sea!

       ...if I were floating on the International Space Station. This panoramic view of the southwestern United States and Pacific Ocean, taken by an astronaut from the ISS (and courtesy of NASA ).  More details about the topography, photography and camera (Nikon D2Xs) can be found here.

       I just meditated and swam beneath the moon and stars, a truly wonderful start to the week. The impulse to swim at night always reminds me of Paul Bowles' magnificent novel, The Sheltering Sky - and in particular a passage where Kit finds herself, at night, looking into a garden at a wide pool, surrounded by graceful palm trunks: "She stood staring at the calm dark surface of the water; straightaway she found it impossible to know whether she had thought of bathing just before or just after seeing the pool..." Her swim becomes a revelation: "She stepped out into the moonlight and waded slowly toward the center of the pool. Its floor was slippery with clay; in the middle the water came to her waist. As she immersed herself completely, the thought came to her: 'I shall never be hysterical again.' That kind of tension, that degree of caring about herself, she felt she would never attain them any more in her life." From Paul Bowles' The