The Chinese Baidu encyclopedia = Dictatorpedia + Piratepedia

I know I can find virtually everything forged in China. I know Wikipedia is blocked by Beijing. I was still surprised when I found Baidu encyclopedia, a Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia run by Chinese search engine giant Baidu started on April 20, 2006.

It would be great if it were a real wiki. However, it is not operated with a wikimedia-like system. All the edits will eventually be censored. There is no information on the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protect.

Because the new entries are listed on the home page, I found a new title “香港民主派” (The opposition, pro-democracy camp in Hong Kong) in the list. Interestingly, after clicking on this title, my connection to Baidu's server stopped. More suspiciously, then Baidu encyclopedia’s server rejected my requests for ~10 minutes while I can still access Baidu’s search engine site. I guess Baidu punishes anyone who is interested in democracy.

Some Baidu articles even ridiculously contain “维基百科，自由的百科全书 (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)”, and “中国大陆用户可能无法访问维基百科。若您能浏览无碍，请至状况回报 (Users from China may not be able to visit Wikipedia. If you can, please report to us––a statement on Chinese Wikipedia sites to help people getting around the Great Firewall of China)”. Obviously, Baidu does not bother piracy at all.

The failure of the 19th-century modernization movements in China was because the Chinese officials only wanted to copy European weaponry and military systems, but neglected their political systems and democracy. Too bad that the current Chinese government hasn’t learned the lesson. Soon they will pay the price of limiting knowledge accessibility to their own people, as well as discouraging creativity by encouraging intellectual piracy.

Red rain? Aliens? Or hoax?

Be careful you human people! An Indian physicist, Dr. Louis claimed red particles in the raindrops in a series of “red rain” in 2001 were alien microbes. I have heard it from minor media, but this time CNN is reporting it (see Mysterious red cells might be aliens). Dr. Louis already has a 2003 arXiv paper (NOT peer reviewed, probably rejected by Nature later) shows a complete “life cycle” of the alien “life form”. It could easily be the most important scientific discovery for this century (or this millennium). However, it is 2006 now. How come there has not been any other group reproducing the result after these years? Maybe

1. the entire scientific community is too reluctant to accept new things, or
2. the government is suppressing this information under an agreement with aliens, or
3. the whole thing is a hoax.

Anyway, I will look for gray rain and claim that I have found grey goos.

(Image credits and links to Popular Science: Is It Raining Aliens?).