That's the title of Nicholas Kristof's op-ed piece in the New York Times today, about getting politically sensitive material past the 30,000 or so Internet censors in China. Kristof's point is that the enormous amount of blogging being done -- he estimates that 120 million Chinese are on the net -- will overwhelm the censors most of the time. Meanwhile, he blogs mischievously, and the worst that's happened so far is that avoidance characters sometimes get inserted in his Chinese text.
After two provocative postings that were untouched by the censors,
Kristof tries again:
[A sampling of other Language Log posts on taboo words and techniques for avoiding them:
Maybe better make that "freakingly brilliant" (1/25/2004)
The FCC and the S-word (1/25/2004)
Teaching the difference between right and wrong (1/25/2004)
The S-word and the F-word (6/12/2004)
Three vs. four askerisks at Boondocks (9/22/2004)
All's fair in love and redacted (12/21/2004)
Unredacted discussion (12/28/2004)
Twat v. Browning (1/19/2005)
Adios, FCC? (6/23/2005)
Disparaging trademarks and the lexicography of tools (7/16/2005)
Adverbial license (7/17/2005)
You taught me language, and my profit on't / is, I know how to curse (7/17/2005)
Curses! (7/20/2005)
No fuckin' winking at the Times (8/17/2005)
Call me... unpronounceable (9/6/2005)
Football's F-word (11/29/2005)
Standing up to linguistic terrorism (2/3/2006)
The N-word in the news again (3/17/2006)
Twonk! (3/30/2006)
"Thinking specifically about the F-word" (4/2/2006)
Everything is too appropriate these days (4/5/2006)
A brief history of "spaz" (4/13/2006)
Delete expletives (4/29/2006)
"What up, Nick--?" (5/31/2006)
Words that can't be printed the NYT (6/5/2006)
Goram motherfrakker! (6/7/2006)
Wh�tever (6/7/2006)
The history of typographical bleeping (6/10/2006)
The earliest typographically-bleeped F-word? (6/15/2006)
]