A Planet! A Planet Like Earth!

Scientists find most Earth-like planet yet

There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is learned about it. But as galaxies go, it's practically a neighbor. At only 120 trillion miles away, the red dwarf star that this planet circles is one of the 100 closest to Earth.

What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.

The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.

The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth, and gravity there would be 1.6 times as strong as Earth's. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 11/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.

Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.

However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.

Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.

The new planet seems just right -- or at least that's what scientists think.

Look out! It's a pregnant cow!

Pregnant cow runs riot across city

HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) -- A pregnant cow being chased by police and fire fighters caused 25,000 euros ($33,900) of damage on a three-hour rampage through the German city of Hanover.

Uschi escaped from a farm late on Monday and became increasingly violent as she encountered shocked drivers and pedestrians in the city.

Pursued by the farmer, television camera crews and 30 police and fire fighters, the Charolais cow lashed out at cars, benches, garden fences and whatever else got in her way during the 5-km chase, authorities said.

After more than three hours on the loose, Uschi was brought down by tranquilizer darts, without harming her unborn calf, fire services spokesman Martin Argendorf said on Tuesday.

"She probably won't remember any of it when she wakes up again. But the farmer will, because he's going to have to pay damages of about 25,000 euros," he said.

Poor cow. I hear that being pregnant makes you crazy. Or maybe the cow was just crazy anyway. Or maybe the poor gal was fine until a bunch of people started chasing her!

For Lisa Volkening

Arrrrr, maties -- Pyratecon hits New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- The costumed pirate wore a plumed hat and held a squat bottle labeled "rum" in his hand. Inside the bottle, dark liquid sloshed and fizzed.

"It's Coke. I didn't think rum would be appropriate at a school," said Capt. Arrrghdee (pronounced R.D., with "emphasis on the arrrrrrr"), otherwise known as Richard Reid of Deer Park, Texas.

He's among at least 750 people attending "Pyratecon," a New Orleans weekend of piratical dress-up and lore. The weekend gathering also includes good deeds, such as giving supplies to a school re-emerging from Hurricane Katrina.

Pirates are hot these days, thanks in part to Johnny Depp and "Pirates of the Caribbean." But pirates have had a place in popular culture at least since Captain Charles Johnson (or was it Daniel Defoe?) published "A General History of the Robberies and Murders Of the most Notorious Pyrates" in 1724.

Mark Heimann, a potter from Estacada, Oregon, said he began decorating wares with skull and crossbones motifs a year or two ago, and his earnings from "Quicksilver's Pirate Pots" now about equal the rest of his sales.

Pyratecon, billed as the first indoor pirate convention anywhere, is at least triple the size originally envisioned by lead organizer Rudy Arceo, a sheriff's deputy in New Orleans.

"We were trying to do a little conference, a couple hundred people. But the word spread throughout the country," through reenactment groups and pirate-themed Web sites, he said.

Whitney Fernandez, working a Barnes & Noble table at the meeting, estimated she had 90 pirate-themed books, CDs, DVDs and games to sell. The books ranged from a picture book titled "Pirate Girl" to a biography of Pierre and Jean Lafitte, who sold slaves from captured ships in the Barataria swamps near New Orleans.

George Choundas, a corporate attorney and former FBI agent in New York, said he used 20 films, 13 television episodes, an amusement park attraction and 41 books to glean the words and phrases he incorporated into his new book, "The Pirate Primer: Mastering the Language of Swashbucklers & Rogues."

His pronunciation guides, sometimes longer than the phrases themselves, lean heavily on the dialect popularized as pirate talk by Robert Newton, who played Long John Silver in the 1950s movie of Treasure Island and left "arrr" as part of his legacy.

Pyratecon participants are quick to say they have no sympathy with the real, modern pirates responsible for hundreds of attacks each year on ships around the world.

The focus here is on swashbucklers, who had some admirable traits, Goren said: They elected their captains and women and people of all colors could join them.

I have respect for pirates. As we all should.

Gun Control

After the terrible shooting at VA Tech, many people are starting to think that maybe the U.S. needs to enact tougher gun control laws. By “many people” I mostly mean people outside the United States since Americans at large, and American politicians especially, have shown no real interest in making guns less available to the general population. The fact that there is a mountain of evidence showing that “unsuitable people” (read: crazy and/or criminal) are acquiring weapons in large quantities, and inflicting serious damage with them, does not seem to trouble most people.

To be entirely honest, it doesn’t really trouble me. One of the main problems with the lax gun laws in America is the almost pathetic regulation of the gun industry. The guns that are produced and sold in the US are often of shoddy quality, likely to lock up on you when you try to shoot them at something, and then misfire when you aren’t trying to shoot anything at all. People are remarkably likely to be injured by their own guns, which really shouldn’t be the case. And that is the thing that has bothered me the most. I sort of assume that if a person is determined to get a gun, he or she will do so no matter what laws are in place.

However, there is a factor I did not take into consideration. It seems only fair that lame gun laws in the US should cause a high rate of gun-related crime and violence in our country, but it seems that our cavalier attitude towards gun safety has a very negative affect on the world at large, and this I cannot abide. Check out these statistics:

Mexican authorities reported that 80 percent of guns in the country came from the U.S., 50 percent of handguns seized by Canada's gun crime task force were also smuggled across the U.S. border and 30 percent of guns recovered by Japanese authorities originated in the U.S., the IANSA found. (http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/04/17/gun.epidemic/index.html)

For me, this information really changes things. As much as I savor the image of stupid-ass rednecks shooting themselves in the foot with weapons they are truly too incompetent to operate, allowing that sort of Darwinian approach to guns really isn’t fair to those countries trying to keep their citizens alive as best as they can. Poor Mexico! They send us their hardest working sons and daughters, and in exchange get crates of death-inflicting appliances. And how the hell did so many American-made guns make it to Japan?! Japan has very strict gun laws, but I guess the Yakuza has got to be using something.

Kittehs of Walla Walla

My Dad Sent Me This One

Walla Walla tries to get cat problem back in bag

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WALLA WALLA, Wash. -- Unfixed felines are banned from prowling outdoors here under a kitty curfew aimed at curbing the feral cat population.

The curfew, enacted last month by the City Council, applies to cats 4 months and older. It also prohibits leaving pet food outdoors overnight.

Violators can be fined up to $500, and three citations could lead to a larger fine or even jail time, City Attorney Tim Donaldson said. The city's animal control officer also can seize at-large cats, he said.

While not ideal, the new rules are "baby steps in the right direction when it comes to responsibly dealing with the problem," said Sara Archer, executive director of the Blue Mountain Humane Society.

Officials aren't sure of the exact number of feral cats in the Walla Walla area, but colonies of 60 to 70 in the city probably are not spayed or neutered, Donaldson told the Tri-City Herald.

Some other U.S. cities have enacted cat confinement rules, leash laws, or spay-and-neuter ordinances, according to the Cat Fanciers' Association, the world's largest registry of pedigreed cats.

California lawmakers also have considered a bill that would ban anyone from owning or possessing an unfixed dog or cat older than 4 months, unless the owner has a permit from a local government.

Archer said she hopes Walla Walla eventually will develop a program to trap, neuter, spay and possibly vaccinate feral cats.

Such a program, which she said has growing support nationwide, works because spayed or neutered feral cats will prevent unfixed cats from moving into their territory, Archer said.

That approach would quickly help reduce the number of roaming cats in Walla Walla, said Kate Sullivan, president of the nonprofit Save Wonderful Animals Team.

A similar program has worked across the state border in Milton-Freewater, Ore., said Lyla Lampson with Pets of Milton-Freewater.

The group started a sterilize-and-release program in Milton-Freewater in 2003, and it gets about 600 feral cats spayed and neutered each year, she said.

"Within a year, the police were already telling us that the nuisance calls for cats had much improved," Lampson said. "Now they say cats are not even on the radar screen."

Grrrrrrrrrr!!!

Somehow, I’m just not reaching people. Today in my first class, I had 4 students come up and tell me that their assignment shouldn’t count as plagiarized because they hadn’t copied the sentences. Instead, they had simply memorized them. You see, if you memorize something, then it is in your head, and you didn’t copy.

I tried to explain that the purpose of the assignment was to get practice writing in English, but I’m really not sure any of that got through. I just don’t know where the communication broke down. They would respond with things like, “this was a very good sentence, that’s why I wrote it,” and I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. I said something to the effect of, “I don’t care if it is a good sentence or not. It is more important to me that you write your own sentences,” but that seemed to leave them confused. I seem to be running counter some kind of current in Chinese education that is so deeply instilled in my students that they are having trouble comprehending the alternative.

What really made me angry was the way the students crept up on me with their scared, puppy-dog eyes trying to say, “please, teacher, I can’t fail this class!” I almost expected them to say, “My mommy will be so mad at me if I fail!” Honestly! These people are at least 24 years old, they are adults, they are responsible for their own lives and their own education and they should act the part!

You know, there are a lot of bad things about the U.S. We have high rates of alcoholism, child abuse, drug abuse, violence, organized crime, not organized crime, a sky-high murder rate and divorce rate, our prisons are packed, guns are easy to get, people get shot by accident, we don’t have universal health care, Medicare and Medicaid suck, social security doesn’t really provide any kind of security, etc. But I’ll see this for the good ol’ U.S. of A., our lifestyle may be violent, disorganized, unsafe, and without any social safety nets, but our adults act like fucking adults!

Sometimes I get the feeling Chinese people remain perma-children their whole lives. They live with their parents until the parents die, and with people popping out children at the age of 26 or younger, and life spans increasing, that means you could spend a solid sixty years under the aegis of your mummy. I’m not sure that’s the kind of environment that fosters independent thought and action – or individual responsibility.

Relationships

Sometimes I can’t decide which bothers me worse: seeing skeezy white men come to China to pick up “hot Asian chicks,” or listening to my foreigner friends say in hushed tones, “Well, I’d never date a Chinese person.” Both Shoshannah and Collin have made the latter statement to me. Shoshannah was more blunt about it. “I’m not in to the ‘yellow fever,’” she said, “I just don’t find Chinese guys hot.”
Just as a point of order, there are 1.3 billion people living in China. In the Chinese diaspora, there are probably several million more. That means that total world population of Chinese people, or people of Chinese decent, may be close 2 billion. How can anyone generalize over such an enormous population? Beyond the logical problems with her argument, is the underlying racism which I find offensive in the extreme. Why did she come to China if she has such a racist attitude toward Chinese people?
Collin bothers me somewhat more. I was having a chat with him in which he talked about how happy and comfortable he is being single. Then he said that he hasn’t met anyone here in China who he really wants to date.

“There are a billion people in this country!” I laughed, “You’ve got endless choices!”

“Ah, yes,” he said, his voice growing quieter, “But you see, I don’t want to date a Chinese person.”

Why not? I didn’t ask the question and I didn’t push the issue because it didn’t seem tactful at the time, but it bothered me. I can understand not being comfortable dating someone if they do not speak your language. Talking is an important part of dating, so if you can’t talk to someone very easily it would be hard to date. But there are plenty of people in China with excellent English, and they are easy to find since they are always hanging out with foreigners. And that’s not what Collin said. He implied it was a person’s nationality, not their language skills, that ruled them out as potential dates.
I wonder what it’s like on the other side? Are there Chinese people out there who specifically seek out foreigners to date because of the exotic appeal? Similarly are there people who are utterly repulsed by the idea of dating a waiguo ren? Oddly enough, neither of these ideas offend me at all. When it’s a skeezy white guy picking up young Chinese girls, it’s disgusting.
Also it makes sense to me that a Chinese person, who spent their entire lives in China, lived only among Chinese people, and entirely within a Chinese cultural milieu, would naturally desire a Chinese partner, and it would never occur to them to seek out a foreigner for romance. But if an American were to say to me, “I would never date anyone who wasn’t the same race as me,” I would say, “So you’re a bigot then?”
What does this double standard say about me? Is it a double standard? Is it wrong to assume that in a white/non-white relationship, the white person is being exploitative?

Grading Woes

Today I handed back my first assignments, which means the first group of plagiarizers was informed that they had been caught and were being punished accordingly. I got some weird excuses, but I generally always do.

First, someone told me that she didn’t think it was plagiarism if you copied from a book or other source, only if you copied off of a fellow student. I informed her that this was incorrect. Another student told me that she just thought it was a really good sentence. Actually, two students told me that the sentence they copied was just “really good” so that’s why they wrote it down. I tried to communicate that what was most important to me was that they did their own work, not that what they wrote was particularly good or interesting. I am not sure how much of that got through.

One of the students asked if she could make up the assignment, and I said no. Philosophically, I am not opposed to the idea of making up assignments, but logistically, it would be difficult to keep track of such things. Also, I feel that if a person failed the assignment on account of plagiarism and was allowed to make it up, then students who just made mistakes should be allowed to make it up, too. This would create a mountain of grading and papers from all sorts of sources, and over all it would make it very difficult for me to keep track of anything. So, this is something I am going to try to make clear in my syllabus next year: no copying, and no making up assignments. We’ll see how that goes.

Correspondents Hall of Fame

I have been blessed with friends and family who send Dylan and me letters and packages here in China. Here is an honor roll of all those who have made such wonderful use of the postal system:

#1 – The Brady Family

The Bradys have sent us more letters and packages than anyone else! Yay for Bradys!

#2 – The Wherland Family

Yes, my family has sent us a lot of stuff, too. Our most recent package from my parents included not one but two bags of M&Ms! I am hoping to get another package from them soon when my mother works out some trouble with one of my prescriptions.

#3 – Katie Innes

Way to go Katie! Along with 4 letters, Katie also sent me a totally awesome Halloween package, complete with candy corn! Everyone loves candy corn!!

#4 – Emily Schnipper and Lisa Volkening

Both of these lovely ladies have sent me three pieces of mail! Thank you Emily for the awesome Japanese stationary, and thank you Lisa for the totally cool postcards! Lisa also sent me a package that unfortunately never arrived. I really don’t understand the postal system in this part of the world.

#5 – Karen Young

My wonderful acupuncturist from Moscow has sent me two lovely letters that have given me much food for thought. Thank you Karen!

#6 – Mary Fellman, Michelle Mehlman, Amanda Culley, Robin Klavatsky and Peter Schaefer

Each one of these lovely individuals has sent me a letter here in China, which has brightened my day and made me feel closer to home. Thank you to all five of you awesome homies!