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If you think flight delays in the U.S. are bad, try China.

A new report from travel industry monitor FlightStats says China is the world's worst when it comes to delays at major airports.

FlightStats compiled statistics from June for the report, determining that eight of the world's worst airports for flight delays were in China. Beijing and Shanghai topped the list, although New York's LaGuardia had the highest number of flight cancellations.

The BBC quotes China Daily as saying some industry experts blame China's high volume of air traffic as the cause of the high number of delays.

The report looked at "on-time performance of scheduled passenger flights" as well as "top performing airports based on their reported departure performance." FlightStats said a flight arriving or departing within 15 minutes of its scheduled time was considered "on time."

In North America, Honolulu ranked No. 1 for on-time departures, with 86 percent of its flights taking off as scheduled, while Vancouver's airport ranked a close second.

I hope we've heard the last of people saying, "This would never be a scandal in Europe." They usually mean "sex scandal," and by now I think Americans are entitled to boast that we've become as blase about politicians with their pants down — or, in the case of Anthony Weiner, pec-flexing with his shirt off — as Europeans like to think they are.

Mr. Weiner is now running for mayor of New York. This week Eliot Spitzer, the former governor who resigned following a scandal, announced that he'll run for New York City comptroller.

One of his opponents on the ballot, by the way, is the madam of the "escort service" of which the governor was once a customer. I'll bet Martha Raddatz and Jim Lehrer would arm-wrestle to moderate that candidates' debate!

In recent years a whole string of briefly-disgraced politicians of both parties have run and won following the kind of scandals that were once presumed to leave an American politician so shattered they'd have to become lobbyists.

When the story of President Clinton's involvement with a White House intern broke in the 1990s, I had a sandwich someplace one night — some people might call it a bar — and heard a happy cacophony of accents, gossiping.

They were British, French, and Italian reporters chirruping, "You Americans are such Puritans. This would never be a story in our country," after which I wanted to ask, "Then what brought you all the way over here?"

President Clinton was acquitted at his impeachment trial; he still soars near the top of those Most Admired Person in America polls.

But we may not be blase in the European manner. A lot of the American politicians who have run for office following sex scandals say that enduring such public disgrace has deepened their character. As Mr. Spitzer told the Morning Joe show this week, "You go through that pain, you change."

So Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's former prime minister, is unapologetic about what are called his "bunga-bunga" parties. But American politicians stray and say that it builds character.

If any group is entitled to complain that they've been maligned by the press blaring about such scandals, it's not politicians. It's Puritans.

This week Edmund S. Morgan, the distinguished historian of early America, died at the age of 97. In The Puritan Dilemma and other books, Mr. Morgan, in the words of the Washington Post, "showed that the Puritans had a healthy interest in sex, despite their reputation for dour rectitude."

I guess you don't become Founding Fathers by "dour rectitude" alone. It turns out that not even the Puritans were such Puritans.

Americans will get the same ham slabs and bacon slices they have enjoyed for generations, even after Smithfield Foods becomes a Chinese subsidiary, Smithfield CEO Larry Pope told Congress on Wednesday.

"It will be the same old Smithfield, only better," Pope said at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing.

But several senators weren't buying the bacon-will-be-unbroken story once Hong Kong-based Shuanghui International Holdings owns Smithfield.

I post regularly here at 13.7 about animal cognition, crediting a variety of animals — including some of our daily companions — with the ability to think. So I'd forgive anyone for wondering if my headline today is of the straw-man (or straw-dog) category.

Do dogs think? Of course they do!

Doing a radio interview recently, though, I was reminded that some dog owners are still convinced that dogs don't think, but instead act on instinct and live tethered to the present, in a moment-to-moment way.

That's what my debate partner, Globe and Mail columnist Sarah Hampson, declared when we participated in an episode of the CBC radio program Tooth and Claw. Our primary task was to engage with one question: Do we love some animals too much? Hampson took the "yes" side and I the "no" position.

Along the way, as we delved into animal thinking and emotion, Hampson said this (though it was cut from the segment that aired):

I would take issue with Barbara's point that [dogs] are thinking animals. This is where I sort of agree with Cesar Millan [the Dog Whisperer]. He actually talks about how they are an instinctual animal and what we love about them is their instinctual way of being. In other words they react to things that are right in front of them. And I think we all love that about animals. But I find it worrisome when we start saying that they are "thinking." I just think that they are "being" and that is partly what we love about them. That they don't think as much as we do.