"What about China?"

After hopping onto the internet and going over my daily dose of economic blogs, I came across Krugman's blog for today. I was excited because it was titled "Economist humor," which is oh-so-close to the name of my own dear blog, and I was already dreaming that maybe -- just maybe -- for some reason he had stumbled across my little patch of cyberspace and linked to something that I had said.

Boy, was I wrong.

No, he had simply linked to another humorous post involving economics: Freakonomics. I can't blame Krugman for linking to Wolfers' post. I found myself ROFLing. Okay, not quite, but I just wanted to write ROFL...

While most of you will not find this even remotely funny (just guessin' here, folks), I think many of you can appreciate response #20 by "Virginia:"

Twenty years ago I heard a story of a friend who was an economics grad student at the London School of Economics. The prof asked some impossibly hard question. My friend was stumped. He had to do something, so he said, “What about China?” The professor said, “Ah, China!” and treated my friend like a genius for the rest of the semester. Since then I always imagine–though can’t remember ever having done–trying out, “What about China?” whenever I’m in a tricky situation.

Hysterical. And the scary part is that the friend said that TWENTY YEARS AGO.