So there’s this professor here with a bad back. As in *really* bad. He lectures laying down on a mattress, and walks really slowly and stiffly. I always assumed it was a more or less temporary thing he was working through. Today I got to talking to him and discovered that he was nearly beaten to death by Chinese cops in ’89 for trying to cover the 3rd anniversary of the Tiannemen Square riots. It was a small piece he was preparing – 10 seconds of video for the evening news. And he was brutalized for being there with a camera.
No matter what my complaints about America are sometimes, I am grateful not to live in so many places in this world.