Who Knew?

Via the Times of London:

Broadband connections across [China] are pulsing with rumours of "earthquake omens" involving toads or butterflies - all allegedly ignored by the authorities. Some even talk of a vast pre-Olympic conspiracy.

One blogger from Shandong province, in eastern China, wrote that more than a month ago, he went to his local earthquake resesarch [sic] centre several times to report that his animals had been disturbed and restless.

But, he wrote: "They not only ridiculed me, they accused me of making up stories."

Yes, the Times has the scoop - there are kinda crazy people on the Internets in China, too.

Truth is, when you have a billion people trying to deal with a truly epic tragedy like this earthquake, you're going to have some nuts. A better attempt to filter out the respected, widely read voices from the chaff (like "one blogger from Shandong") would go a long way to putting ideas like that in proper perspective.

Sadly, the Chinese-Internet-conspiracy-theories story will probably be one of the dominant strains of comment to come out of this. Watch for more stories along this line in the next few weeks. Then keep in mind what a paranoid, bitter, angry bunch Americans or Brits would look like if judged by the quality of their more, er, eccentric bloggers.