The normal buzz of we're-mostly-listening-but-not-entirely stopped dead during Xiaofeng Jin's presentation on Internet activity and communities in China. For 20 minutes, it felt more like a law school lecture, everyone typing away furiously. That's how hungry we all were for info on what China's 123 million Internet users are doing. The session was live-blogged really well by Josh Ledgard. Note how his first entry after she started begins with "Wow." That was the feeling the whole time. We need to know more about how the other half lives. Got me wondering about real-time SMS that translates Chinese to English and back. Imagine an instant cross-cultural chatspace of people under 25 reacting to North Korea's reported nuclear test. What would we say to each other? It was also remarkable to hear Xiaofeng and Satya Prabhakar talk about online community behavior in both China and India and get confirmation that the dynamics…

At the Online Community Summit in Sonoma, Bill Schreiner of AOL just said there are reportedly 6,000 YouTube videos of people just lighting their farts. "Talk about the long tail ...," he comments.

When we lost our sense of security, I was sad. When we lost our standing as a leader on human rights, I was bitter. When we began dismantling the Constitution, I was angry. But without our sense of humor, we are absolutely and completely fucked, my friends. So the pathetic self-important Morlocks who detained passenger Ryan Bird for a message of protest on his toiletries bag should be sued, reprimanded and made an example of. This wisecracking genius wrote "Kip Hawley is an idiot" on the see-thru bag that held his toothbrush. Hawley is the head of the TSA. They detained this guy for 30 minutes until, according to CNN, they determined he was "not a threat." Maybe I'm just exhausted, but I think this is almost (okay not quite, but almost) as chilling as the disembowelment of habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions that happened last night in the…