Sometimes choosing a mascot or cover of an album seems to be harder than it looks. Or people just do things without thinking.
See here two that generate quite some comments.

The mascot (“Haibiao”?) for the 2010 Shanghai International Exhibition is called by some “The Blue Condom”. Leave up to you to judge. Maybe it has something to do with the as usual frankness of China Daily and other newspapers here who claim that half of the 90,000 Beijing prostitutes still don’t insist on using a condom. So, does that mean we have prostitutes in Beijing? Really? And who did count them? I guess must be the whatever police, reason why we never see them helping traffic improve. Probably in Shanghai: case1: there are no prostitutes there, case 2: the Blue Condom promotion has been efficient.
As for that Band, well, some Chinese seem to be pretty upset about it, I mean the title, because nobody explains why there is something wrong with the content. Now, suddenly, the band’s type of music anyway is not “liked” by Chinese people. Seems who wrote that never went to a disco here.

Normally I am a big fan of Chappatte and his cartoons in the IHT. But I doubt he “saw” a dog being butchered on a Beijing street corner, ready for the kitchen. Being here since 1980 I have never seen anything like that in the city. One more typical example of media bias? Or should I buy a new pair of glasses? What I usually see is Chinese people walking and pampering their dogs on the streets. If he has a picture and details we could file a police complaint or pass it to the local media.

here the cartoon in the 28 October edition with the “dog ready for a dish”…
My letter “to the Editor” was not published, either not important or… because it was in the middle of the U.S. elections…

Sad news on this Thanksgiving day with the horrible attacks in Mumbai. Those terrorists are monsters, unfortunately for the moderate Muslims, most of those monsters do in in the name of their “faith”. For me, all vermin that should be exterminated without a second thought, now that would be a nice cleanup. Reading every day about them blowing up innocents, including children, maiming and throwing acid on girls who want to go to school, treating women and girls as non-people, etc. etc. A never-ending list of atrocities.
Being in China and reading this, again makes us think how well the Olympics went without any crazy people trying to blow spectators in a stadium or foreigners in a nightclub. Yes, security was sometimes a nuisance but just look what could have happened. Thumbs up for the security people. Sometimes it really feels well to be here without all kinds of weirdos with guns and more.
Our thoughts are with India and all the victims who have nothing to do with the absurd and crazy ideas of those extremists. They can keep their faith. In hell.