See why China has blocked social networking sites and take a look at our list of must-reads that will have you chatting at the lunch counter, over IM or wherever it is that people actually talk these days.
- China has blocked Twitter and other social networking sites the government thinks pose a threat ahead of the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square crackdown. June 4 marks the 20th anniversary of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square that resulted in hundreds of deaths at the hands of the government. YouTube, Flickr and Bing were all blocked. It is the country's first widespread censorship of social media.
- President Barack Obama has invited Iran to celebrate the Fourth of July. The State Department said its embassies may invite representatives of Iran to Independence Day celebrations complete with hot dogs, flags and apple pie. Diplomats from Iran have not formally been invited to American events since the embassy in Tehran was overtaken by protesters in 1979.
- Narcissism has reached predictable new lows. Meet the "twinjury." A British office worker was posting a tweet on his Twitter page using his BlackBerry while jogging when he slammed into a low-hanging branch. The twit fell to the pavement and left him with a black eye. The injury is the first of its kind in England and hopefully will be the last. Everywhere.
- A new series of government acronyms seem to pop up whenever there is a boost to federal spending. The bailout has created its own alphabet soup with a bevy of new acronyms -- TARP, RAT Board, LUST Trust and ARPA-E, for example -- partially designed to help brand the government spending plan. Some, like the RAT Board which helps find waste, fraud and abuse, can be self-mocking.
