Held Hostage + Other Topics

RM sends an article from this weekend's NYT. The lede is as follows, and the rest of the article is a fun enough read (as far as kidnapping stories go...). Makes me want to move to China:

AS an American journalist based in China, I knew there was a good chance that at some point I’d be detained for pursuing a story. I just never thought I’d be held hostage by a toy factory.

That’s what happened last Monday, when for nine hours I was held, along with a translator and a photographer, by the suppliers of the popular Thomas & Friends toy rail sets.

“You’ve intruded on our property,” one factory boss shouted at me. “Tell me, what exactly is the purpose of this visit?” When I answered that I had come to meet the maker of a toy that had recently been recalled in the United States because it contained lead paint, he suggested I was really a commercial spy intent on stealing the secrets to the factory’s toy manufacturing process.

“How do I know you’re really from The New York Times?” he said. “Anyone can fake a name card."

And an unrelated note on publishing. Yes, I am maintaining two blogs. No, you don't have to regularly check both. Just this one. If you are reading. Here is what I have written about recently on the other blog:

• A brief post on moves by social-networking platforms Facebook and LinkedIn to open up to developer communities.
• A glance at environmental initiatives being speared by China and Google, respectively.
• A response to an article sent over by RM, exploring how city living can be more environemtnally inefficient than rural living.
• A query into whether the incentives that drive entrepreneurial solutions to technology problems are really well aligned to the looming global environmental and energy concerns.