I spent a couple hours at a downtown Minneapolis Panera Bread today sitting outside enjoying the afternoon weather while drinking a lemonade and catching up on a few emails between meetings. At one point, I checked up on a few of my favorite RSS feeds in Bloglines, including The Superficial for my daily dose of celebrity dirt so I can speak with authority on "important" issues like the latest on Brit & Kevin, Nick & Jessica, Angelina & Brad, and - of course - Paris Hilton.

But to my surprise, I was denied my celebrity gossip by Panera's content filter:

Doesn't Panera understand that I need to know what's Paris is up to at Cannes? What if Brad and Angelina baby pictures were posted and I didn't know because of Panera's filter?

I think this is the first content filter I've knowingly encountered in the 13 years I've been on the web. With all the news about major search engines blocking web sites in China that they found unacceptable, I figured The Superficial must be banned, right? Um, no:

And there is no shortage of Paris Hilton on Google Images China:

So I can keep up on celebrity gossip from China, but not from Panera Bread in the middle of Minneapolis. Does blocking popular celebrity gossip web sites lead us down a slippery slope to government suppression of dissenting opinions? Will I pick a different WiFi hot spot the next time I find myself in need of some food and Internet in downtown Minneapolis? Only time will tell.