Wonderful

Nearly a millennium ago sky-watchers recorded a new star so bright it was visible in daylight for weeks, and Hubble has now traced how far its remnant, the Crab Nebula, has expanded since — a thousand-year-old explosion still visibly unfolding

In July 1054, court astronomers in China recorded a new "guest star" near Tianguan, the star we now call Zeta Tauri.

Hubble Space Telescope mosaic image of the Crab Nebula. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University).

 

Sobering

Halloween decorations carry haunting message of forced labor

The letter came in a box of Halloween decorations purchased at Kmart, but for a year Julie Keith never knew. It gathered dust in her storage, a haunting plea for help hidden among artificial skeletons, tombstones and spider webs.

If legitimate, this letter is from a forced labour facility in China. It breaks the heart to think of someone being 're-educated' through such labour for disagreeing with the party line. And it is disturbing that K-Mart sold something that may have been produced by such a place.

"We're in no position to confirm the veracity or origin of this," said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. "I think it is fair to say the conditions described in the letter certainly conform to what we know about conditions in re-education through labor camps."

China's re-education through labor is a system of punishment that allows for detention without trial. Various reports allege followers of the banned spiritual group, Falun Gong, are sent to the reform camps – claims supported in the letter – but the facts are difficult to confirm.

Masanjia labor camp is located in the industrialized capital of the Liaoning Province in northeast China. A Google search of the camp yields pages of grim results.

"If this thing is the real deal, that's somebody saying please help me, please know about me, please react," Richardson said. "That's our job."

I went to K-Mart for the first time in years the other day. All the clothing I looked at was made in countries like China, Vietnam, and Thailand. It makes me wonder what conditions those workers have as well.

How very sad

Bodies found after landslide buries Chinese school

The bodies of 18 children have been found after a landslide buried elementary school students and a villager in southwest China, state media said Friday. Rescuers found the bodies as they scoured through rubble at a village after the landslide struck the school and two houses in Yunnan province, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

One person is still missing, CCTV reported.

The students were studying Thursday during a public holiday to make up for classes disrupted by recent earthquakes.

Since then, another body has been found, according to:

Death toll rises to 19 in SW China landslide

My thoughts are with the families of those lost.

Interesting

China's Great Leap Forward: One man's quiet crusade to remember the disaster

Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward campaign aimed to launch China into a Communist utopia. It ended in famine that killed tens of millions – a disaster that Beijing is still reluctant to acknowledge.

Yang Jisheng did not see his father die.

He was away at boarding school in April 1959 when his father, a peasant farmer, succumbed to starvation – one of the early victims of the three-year Great Famine that killed tens of millions of Chinese country folk.

But Mr. Yang has never forgotten how his neighbors resorted to eating grass, roots, and bark before many of them, too, died. And for 20 years, since he retired from his job as a reporter for the state-run news agency Xinhua, he has dedicated himself to exploring the full dimensions and real causes of the catastrophe that claimed his father’s life.

His quiet crusade has found a few echoes in mainland China, where the government still seeks to stamp out any evocation of the largely manmade famine. Yang’s meticulously researched history of the event, “Tombstone,” was published in Chinese in Hong Kong three years ago, and an English translation of the book is due out in America next October.

But Yang fears that “it will be 10 years before we can publish it here officially, and more likely 20 years,” though a number of pirate editions have circulated under the censors’ noses.

There's a Chinese word for what I once was

Tongqi--a woman who marries a gay man

Attitudes towards homosexuality: Gay marriage gone wrong

Bizarre, backward, and wrong

In China, English teaching is a whites-only club

Take, for example, Mike Lee and Will Evans, students from the U.S. and Canada, respectively, who applied to be English teachers through the New Development School, a teacher-placement agency in Beijing. Being fluent speakers of English, both believed they would make competitive candidates.

What they didn’t know is that recruiters would not be evaluating them just on their English fluency or academic credentials. Instead, they were judged primarily on physical appearance.

“We want him [pointing to Evans], but we don’t want you [to Lee],” the recruiter told them, as the two stood side by side at the front counter of the school. “Unfortunately, parents of our students don’t really want someone Asian to be teaching.”

Lee, who is Korean-American, was rejected from the school despite having previous experience teaching English as a second language (ESL). Evans, a white Canadian, was hired on the spot.

“I was shocked – back home this wouldn’t be acceptable,” Lee told NBC News. “I’ve never been discriminated (against) in that way.”

Then there's this:

A post by Vogue on a popular online forum and classifieds site, The Beijinger, explicitly spells out the phenomenon:

“In Beijing this is the general pecking order in terms of a company's recruitment (by Chinese managers):
1. White Americans/Canadians
2. White British
3. White Australians/New Zealanders and South Africans
4. European Nonnatives/Black Americans/Black British
5. American Asians/Black Aussies (Australians) and Kiwis (New Zealanders)/Filipinos/Africans”

The discrimination comes, Evans said, because Chinese parents simply do not believe a non-white person can possibly be a native speaker. Thus, this logic continues, hiring a white person is the simplest and easiest way to ensure that the teacher is truly fluent.

:) Don't know the veracity, but it's a nice story

Man Carves Wife a 6,000 Stair Path in Mountain

A weird love story has come out of China recently and managed to touch the world. It is a story of a man and an older woman who ran off to live and love each other in peace for over half century.

Over 50 years ago, Liu, was a 19 years-old boy, fell in love with a 29 year-old widowed mother named Xu. At the time, it was unacceptable and immoral for a young man to love an older woman.

To avoid the market gossips, the couple decided to elope and lived in a cave in Jiangjin County in Southern ChongQing area.

Snopes lists its status as true or false as 'undetermined'--as of 2008. It's sweet, regardless of whether it is fiction or not, although I must admit, I'd like to know which it is. :)

More power to her--saving 1,200 cats from being eaten and skinned

And you think your Thanksgiving leftovers lingered in the fridge too long

Chinese archaeologists unearth 2,400-year-old 'soup'

Chinese archaeologists have unearthed what they believe is a 2,400-year-old pot of soup, state media report.

The liquid and bones were in a sealed bronze cooking vessel dug up near the ancient capital of Xian - home to the country's famed terracotta warriors.

Tests are being carried out to identify the ingredients. An odourless liquid, believed to be wine, was also found.

Suspicous

Jailed China tainted milk activist 'drops appeal'

Mr Zhao was jailed for two-and-a-half years for organising a parents' support group and campaigning for compensation.

He vowed to appeal when he was sentenced earlier this month.

But lawyers working for Mr Zhao told the BBC Chinese service they were blocked from visiting him on Monday to discuss his case.

Instead they were given a note, apparently from Mr Zhao, saying he no longer needed their services.

One lawyer, Li Fangping, told the BBC he could not tell if Mr Zhao wrote the message voluntarily because he was not allowed to see him in person.

His wife gave the lawyers a note telling them they were fired. But the question is whether the government got to the family.

I am so glad I do not live in China. But so many on the planet do, and they deserve a true justice system. Mr Zhao should not even be in gaol right now.

Barbaric and deviant

--both for those in the video and those fetishists who would pay to watch for sexual pleasure.

Chinese rabbit-crushing video condemned

In one widely-circulated video, a group of young women, smiling and giggling, cuddle and play with small rabbits and then crush them to death.

A woman places a rabbit on a table in one scene, covers it with a glass plate, then sits on it until the animal dies.

In another, a woman crushes a young rabbit with her stiletto shoes.

Sick.

I would be so claustrophobic

Of course, I'm paying 10 times as much for 35 times the space. But at at least I can breathe.
China's rise creates a moment of introspection, too

Huang Rixin, a spritely 78-year-old former engineer turned Beijing landlord, has made a name for himself in recent months producing cage-like, 21.5-square-foot living spaces dubbed “capsule apartments” for the capital’s burgeoning class of jobless and underemployed college graduates.

Taking Japan’s famous capsule hotels for inspiration, Huang has improved on previous iterations of his pod houses by doubling the size of the rooms and including more shelf space. Huang views his pods, with rent of about $51 a month, as a cost-effective way to house the estimated 3 million recent university graduates seeking employment or earning less than the average starting salary of approximately $400 a month.

Exciting

China unearths 114 new Terracotta Warriors

Archaeologists in China have unearthed 114 new terracotta warriors at the vast Qin dynasty tomb complex in Xian province, state media reports.

The statues, many of which were found in pieces, were brightly coloured and lying alongside pots, weapons and other items, said China Daily.

Research teams also found evidence of burn marks on the clay, proof that the pit had at some point been set on fire.

More than 8,000 of the statues, made in 221BC, have already been unearthed.

Crazy that your life can go upside down for a murder you didn't commit

‘Murdered’ man reappears after 10 years: Questions raised about how police extracted confession from alleged killer

The imprisoned Zhao's brother told the local Dahe Newspaper that police had forced him to drink chili water and set off fireworks over his head to force the confession.

The imprisoned Zhao narrowly escaped being executed for the crime. His sentence was commuted from a death penalty with two years' reprieve.

While in prison, his wife left him for another man and three of his four children were given to other families for adoption, the China Daily said.

Remembering

For those who died, may they rest in peace. For those whose lives were changed forever, we have not forgotten. For those who cannot read about or watch such images, may you someday have freedom.



And for the Tank Man, wherever you may be, know that you inspired millions.

Strange

Cat in China grows a pair of wings: Feline was born normal but developed appendages at age 1, family says

Well, at least something that looks like wings, although the cat cannot fly, of course. The strange thing is another case has been documented, also in China. Some think it has to do with chemicals ingested by the mother, which given the recent problems China has in its exports, I really worry about its environment. Anyway, there's a picture for you to judge for yourself.

Are the Chinese trying to kill us?

YKWIA is convinced this is the case. Lead paint in toys, tainted pet food--now drywall imported from China is implicated in emissions that sicken people and corrode copper pipes and tarnish silverware. The drywall may have been put into hundreds of thousands of homes during the building boom, including some built during the Katrina recovery.

See AP IMPACT: Chinese drywall poses potential risks for a complete rundown on the situation. Does the Chinese government manage any oversight in manufacturing? You have to wonder given the various fiascos in Chinese imports.

Thanks to YKWIA letting me know about this.

A bright spot in the aftermath

With China quake toll rising, an unexpected rescue

CHENGDU, China: As the death toll in the earthquake last week in southwestern China continued to rise - exceeding 40,000, with tens of thousands still missing - the state media reported Tuesday that 129 students and 10 teachers had been rescued in an isolated town in Sichuan Province.

'One World, One Dream, Free Tibet '08'

So said a banner hung on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco by some enterprising protesters. Meanwhile, in France, the Olympic torch was extinguished three times on its journey due to protesters.

Beijing should never have been awarded the Summer '08 Olympics--not with China's human rights violations and its stranglehold on Tibet. Now the International Olympic Committee is seeing a preview of the protests against the Olympics, whose founding principles of promoting peace do not mesh with holding the games in an oppressive country.

Protests Halt Torch Relay in Paris

I was a little late getting in tonight

because I helped jump a neighbour's car. Unfortunately it sounds like the starter, not the battery (the car just clicked), so that sort of sucks for them. But it was nice to help someone out, and they weren't even serial killers. :)

On to the news.

It seems to me that either Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) is in serious denial or he really believes he can snow constituents. Let's see--caught by police in a sting to stop sex in men's bathrooms at the Minneapolis airport, then keeping the whole thing to himself--not even getting a lawyer--and pleading guilty and receiving probation, then saying he's not guilty and not gay. Hmmm...I know from intimate sources of my youth just what goes on in men's rooms. I also know from my sociology studies (see, I'm using one of my majors!) that the majority of men who frequent the restrooms do not in acutality identify themselves as gay. There's a reason the CDC and others studying AIDS list it as MSM (men who have sex with men) rather than homosexual. Plus, all this is on top of a local newspaper's investigations of his sexuality given his attitudes towards gay rights. And for pete's sake, in the future, get a room.

Only in San Francisco would they have an 'Astrowizard' explaining the lunar eclipse. :) [Video from SF Gate; requires Quicktime]

I'm interested to see how this plays out in the courts:
Yahoo!: we did not assist torture in China

I think Yahoo! has the stronger case, because 1) when it operates in another country it is subject to that country's laws, 2) users of these sorts of companies are warned in their privacy statements that privacy ends when court-ordered, 3) the dissidents knew at the time that they used the e-mail that they were violating Chinese law and were subject to such a court order, and 4) the plaintiffs are foreign nationals attempting to sue under US court against a US company for actions taking place in a foreign jurisdiction. Now, that doesn't always protect you. Think of American countries sued for profiting from the slave labour of the Holocaust in Europe, for example.

I'm not saying I agree with the laws of China; I don't. Nor would I have handed over the files myself. But, legally speaking, I think Yahoo! has a better footing. It will be interesting to see what the courts decide.