Take on the Beijing "fog"

I got a message today from a friend in China saying the "fog" was particularly bad the last few days, which tells you all you need to know about how much the people really are told and allowed to know.

I haven't been to China in about five months and I can't say I miss it but when the smog is as bad as it's been the last few days, you kind of wish you were there to see. Transport in parts of the country has stopped all together with the amount of pollutants in the air reaching some kind of critical mass. I get that every once in a while, the air is clean but the more you go to China, the more you realize that blue skies are the exception and never the rule. And they wonder why everybody looks like they have smoked two packs of unfiltered Pall Mall's while working in a coal mine and sleeping with Large Marge.