Blogs, more blogs

We're going to kick off this early-morning/late-night edition with an introduction to a few blogs/websites I'll be getting better acquainted with in the coming months:

• China Law Blog
• NY Times' Olympics blog: Rings
• China Radio International, which has a "Learn Chinese" page that I'll find indispensable.
• Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN Japan/China Bureau Chief, current media professor in Hong Kong
  

The blogroll has been expanding, but the overall quality hasn't gone down; quite the contrary, actually. Check out MacKinnon's About page as an example: all those links are worth spending some time with.

This just reinforces my belief that this blog needs to go a different direction. Alas... maybe later.

Rounding out some links:

• Via BBC, the Chinese claim the quake has cost Chinese companies $9.5 billion (66 billion RMB), though an international firm puts the figure closer to $20 billion. That's a big discrepancy.
• Meanwhile, the international community has chipped in more than $860 million to date.
• CN News: an excellent read about possible causes of Western-Chinese misunderstanding.
• Danwei: Chinese newspapers were printed in black and white yesterday.