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> This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. --Boundary_(ID_pXvT9DnZ8+Q4C5FK29YB4Q) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Globe and Mail, Monday, July 31/06 "Social Studies" miscellany column is always on the last page of the first/main section of the Globe and Mail on week days, and often it is the first thing I check out when I pick up my delivered Globe. Below I have selected a couple of astonomical items, plus a strange item about being reared by wolves and lions, from the July 31 edition. JW SOCIAL STUDIES A DAILY MISCELLANY OF INFORMATION BY MICHAEL KESTERTON Trainers' corner Fernando Peralta, 27, was reared with seven wolves and two lions in a wild animal reserve near Madrid, says Britain's Independent newspaper. "When I was born, my mother had nine cubs in the house," he says. Currently, his "best friend" is an 18-month-old Iberian wolf, Richi, who will allow no other human to approach. When the 30 kg. animal misbehaves, Mr. Peralta bites him, as a wolf would. He also insists on feeding Richi himself, with dried meat. "If I stopped doing that and put the meat on a plate, he'd soon start marking his territory and wouldn't let me get near him." While researching a book about a school for exotic-animal trainers, author Amy Sutherland realized the experts' techniques could be applied to her husband, Scott. "The central lesson I learned," she writes in The New York Times, "is that I should reward behaviour I like and ignore behaviour I don't. . . . I adopted the trainers' motto: 'It's never the animal's fault.' " After two years of applying the training principles, she adds, "my marriage is far smoother, my husband much easier to love." What's up in Pluto, U.S.A. Next month, delegates to the International Astronomical Union are expected to add at least one new planet to the solar system, writes Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times of London. The new body, provisionally named Xena, has a greater diameter than Pluto -- which some contend is too small to be a planet itself. "Pluto was accepted as the ninth planet only because Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered it in 1930, misjudged its size, claiming that it was larger than Earth. Its actual mass is 400 times less. By the time the mistake had been corrected, Pluto had entered the textbooks as the only planet to have been discovered by an American. Any attempt to question its status since then has been fiercely opposed by American scientists. Professor Brian Marsden, a Briton who directs the minor planet centre at the Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., says U.S. astronomers threatened to throw him into a hotel swimming pool after a 1980 conference where he called for Pluto to be reclassified as an asteroid." How high the moon? Thanks to 21st century techniques, University of California scientists know the distance between Earth and the moon to the width of a paperclip, says the San Diego Union-Tribune. Their laser-ranging has revealed that the moon is spiralling away from the Earth at a rate of about 1.5 inches a year, because of ocean tides on Earth. Also, the moon probably has a liquid core. Thought du jour "Men are the only animals who devote themselves assiduously to making one another unhappy." -- H. L. Mencken MKesterton@globeandmail.com --Boundary_(ID_pXvT9DnZ8+Q4C5FK29YB4Q) Content-type: text/html; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>astonomical notes etc. from July 31 Globe and Mail</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> Globe and Mail, Monday, July 31/06<BR> <BR> "Social Studies" miscellany column is always on the last page of the first/main section of the Globe and Mail on week days, and often it is the first thing I check out when I pick up my delivered Globe. Below I have selected a couple of astonomical items, plus a strange item about being reared by wolves and lions, from the July 31 edition. JW<BR> <BR> <H2>SOCIAL STUDIES<BR> </H2><H3>A DAILY MISCELLANY OF INFORMATION BY MICHAEL KESTERTON<BR> </H3><BR> <B>Trainers' corner</B> <BR> <BR> Fernando Peralta, 27, was reared with seven wolves and two lions in a wild animal reserve near Madrid, says Britain's Independent newspaper. "When I was born, my mother had nine cubs in the house," he says. <BR> <BR> Currently, his "best friend" is an 18-month-old Iberian wolf, Richi, who will allow no other human to approach. When the 30 kg. animal misbehaves, Mr. Peralta bites him, as a wolf would. He also insists on feeding Richi himself, with dried meat. "If I stopped doing that and put the meat on a plate, he'd soon start marking his territory and wouldn't let me get near him." <BR> <BR> While researching a book about a school for exotic-animal trainers, author Amy Sutherland realized the experts' techniques could be applied to her husband, Scott. "The central lesson I learned," she writes in The New York Times, "is that I should reward behaviour I like and ignore behaviour I don't. . . . I adopted the trainers' motto: 'It's never the animal's fault.' " After two years of applying the training principles, she adds, "my marriage is far smoother, my husband much easier to love." <BR> <BR> <B>What's up in</B> <B>Pluto, U.S.A.</B> <BR> <BR> Next month, delegates to the International Astronomical Union are expected to add at least one new planet to the solar system, writes Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times of London. <BR> <BR> The new body, provisionally named Xena, has a greater diameter than Pluto -- which some contend is too small to be a planet itself. <BR> <BR> "Pluto was accepted as the ninth planet only because Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered it in 1930, misjudged its size, claiming that it was larger than Earth. Its actual mass is 400 times less. By the time the mistake had been corrected, Pluto had entered the textbooks as the only planet to have been discovered by an American. Any attempt to question its status since then has been fiercely opposed by American scientists. Professor Brian Marsden, a Briton who directs the minor planet centre at the Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., says U.S. astronomers threatened to throw him into a hotel swimming pool after a 1980 conference where he called for Pluto to be reclassified as an asteroid." <BR> <BR> <B>How high the moon?</B> <BR> <BR> Thanks to 21st century techniques, University of California scientists know the distance between Earth and the moon to the width of a paperclip, says the San Diego Union-Tribune. Their laser-ranging has revealed that the moon is spiralling away from the Earth at a rate of about 1.5 inches a year, because of ocean tides on Earth. Also, the moon probably has a liquid core. <BR> <BR> <B>Thought du jour</B> <BR> <BR> "Men are the only animals who devote themselves assiduously to making one another unhappy." <BR> <BR> -- H. L. Mencken <BR> <BR> <I>MKesterton@globeandmail.com<BR> </I><BR> </BODY> </HTML> --Boundary_(ID_pXvT9DnZ8+Q4C5FK29YB4Q)--
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