Call it freedom

Interesting report on Morning Edition today. An NPR reporter, Rob Gifford, is travelling the countryside looking for signs of the "new" China beyond the cities. In today's episode, he finds that prostitution, on the one hand, and freedom of religion, on the other, have flourished with the collapse of the Communist stranglehold on culture and society. When he visited a roadside church, the fluent Chinese-speaking Brit was pressed into service to deliver a sermon. (You'll have to listen to the Real Audio to get the report, but there are several photos at that link, including one of Gifford preaching.)

New polls have Kerry leading by bare percentage points within the margin of error, the proverbial "statistical dead heat." (Try translating that phrase into Chinese.) Speaking of dead heat, it may be August, but I haven't seen the sun in a week, and it's about 63 degrees out here a mile from the ocean.