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“Don’t worry,” they said, “the size of a truck,” they said…
An asteroid is on its way to Earth, but don’t worry – the end is here Not here. The asteroid, named 2023 BU, is about the size of a van and is expected to miss our planet during Thursday’s flyby. However, according to a NASA scientist, it will be “one of the closest approaches of a known […]
Confirmed: We’re all here thanks to asteroids
Since the Hayabusa2 returned with the sample from the Ryugu asteroid in December 2020, several important discoveries have been made – most notably analyzes confirming the presence of substances thought to be the building blocks of life on the asteroid, such as liquid water and organics fabrics. https://newsbeezer.com/germanyeng/ryugu-asteroid-helps-unravel-the-origin-of-life-on-earth/ Hayabusa-2 took several years to land on […]
Turn off the lights, and you’ll be seeing stars!
A new study that analyzes data from more than 50,000 amateur stargazers finds that artificial lighting is making the night sky about 10% brighter each year. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/twinkle-twinkle-fading-stars-hiding-brighter-skies-rcna66692 Each spring in my Current Events and Global Issues class, I have students read about environmental issues. Pollution is obviously related. But they almost never guess the “seven […]
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Tag Archives: haafu
Ten Years of Taking Leave
Looking back, it’s amazing to me now that I dared to even apply for a year of paternity leave while living in a foreign country. But I’ve never regretted the decision. As I told an audience of university students and … Continue reading
The Joy of Reading
We were eager to have books readily available for our kids…and not just available, but in a location where the kids could choose the books they wanted, when they wanted. So we arranged for the cubbyhole built into the staircase in the living room, and we had two small bookcases put into the kids’ play room.
It was up to us to provide the materials… Continue reading
On the Pond
This past Sunday, my wife, daughter, and I joined in an outdoor barbecue at a prefectural park originally built for a Japanese emperor. Sounds impressive, I guess…Taisho Tenno wasn’t a particularly long-lived emperor by modern standards, and was in poor … Continue reading
Taking Leave 