Jump to Comments The U.S. censors a woman’s nipples on television; the U.A.E. blocks website they don’t like with a nice little message; Wikipedia was blocked when I was in China (and the site just timed out as if it didn’t exist).

I thought I had seen all of the censoring games until I arrived in Thailand. As I flipped through TV channels the other day I saw a fuzzy blur on the screen. A bit confused I focused in on it. Turns out that the woman in the show was smoking a cigarette and they had blurred out that part of her hand.

It’s just as stupid as censoring a woman’s nipples in the U.S. I could see the smoke pouring out of the top of the blur, and her hand motions, so I knew what it was. If you’re going to show 95% of it then show the rest and not make it a big deal. When you hide something you empower the mystery and imply what’s behind the censorship is bad. Don’t censor these things and they become normal - and normal doesn’t get a second thought. On the other hand, I guess the “censor guys” need something to do.