Reuters posted an article this morning called Beijing bathes in sunshine days before Games, that Matt Drudge carried. This is one of two Olympic-related headlines on Drudge–what an exciting thing. The other is about media restrictions in Beijing. more on this soon.

Experts attribute the “blue sky day” in Beijing to the anti-pollution measures that the city has taken, as well as to the fact that it rained in Beijing last night. Reuters’ Andrew Cawthore quotes one “enthused” student volunteer in Beijing; “You see, we have done it! You can even see the mountains.” The surprise inherent in the student’s reaction is a signifier of how bad it has been.

At the same time, The Guardian carried a story about Internet restrictions in China. Always in articles about Internet restricts in China, the argument is backed-up by the fact that it’s impossible to look up the spiritual movement Falun Gong from China. This is a conversation-stopper. O.K., it’s impossible to look up Falun Gong. There is a lot of really positive societal work that can be done without hitting directly on such a hot-button issue, and you can work your way up to the hot-button issues. I’m understanding that it’s very Western–and similar to the way I’m accustomed to operating–to jump directly to the root of a problem rather than working my way up to it. Falun Gong is a very media-attractive topic in the West. It plays into Western preconceptions about what the problems are in China. I think we should stay away from these sensitive topics, because they aren’t interesting to me. My adviser, Dan Perlman at Brandeis, has thoughts about why this is so and I have not pressed him to share them explicitly with me yet. What I can say is that we are focused elsewhere, and we’re really excited about being hopeful about the improvement work. Hope is a keyword here.

and we’ll hope for rain I guess.