There has recently been a bit of a brouhaha over the so-called “rare earth metals,” China’s control of them, and fears that they may restrict supplies to the rest of the world.  Before I get to what I really want to talk about, I want to say that the name “rare earth metal” is a terrible one.  These minerals are only rare in comparison to other ( Read more... )

Today I came across an article in Popular Mechanics*.  The gist of the article is that we should switch from using uranium to power our current nuclear reactors to using thorium.  Thorium is several times more common than uranium (and thus cheaper to mine for), produces 200 times as much energy, yields waste products that can be fed back into the ( Read more... )

Martin, one of the Brave Bungee Jumping Companions, told me an awesome story yesterday, so awesome that I have to pass it on to all of you.  If any of you want to get insight into modern China, listen up!

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We Americans have no idea what we truly want from our politicians. Oh, we THINK we know. We SAY what we want all the time. But we don’t know. We never have, and we probably never will ( Read more... )

Today during our lunch break, my colleague Matt and I decided to complain about the Chinese language.  We touched on the usual problem: 50,000 characters, oft-vague tones, euphemistic expressions, and the like.  At this point I was frothing with rage (which was a bit awkward since we were surrounded by the other teachers and various students).  I ( Read more... )

Bill Bergen is a name that none but the oldest or nerdiest of baseball fans will recognize. He was a turn-of-the-century ballplayer, playing catcher from 1901-1911 for Cincinnati and Brooklyn. In fact, he might have been forgotten altogether, if not for one simple fact: he was the worst hitter in baseball history. Now, of course, the worst ( Read more... )

I had some extra time at the end of one of my classes, so I decided to go over large numbers with the kids. They know 1-100 fairly well, but beyond that, nothing. I started with 1000, and moved up from there. Each step up the ladder prompted gasps and laughs from the kids. When I got to a million, I felt iIneeded to give them some perspective ( Read more... )

I’ve debuted a new method for keeping the kids engaged, and I must say it has been a smashing success.  Let me set the stage.  A young, idealistic American arrives in China to teach what he thinks will be insanely well-behaved little boys and girls.  He is told during orientation that any minor discipline problems that he has can be solved by ( Read more... )