Not just any woman in China can be an astronaut

When it comes to women in space, the Chinese have got it all figured out.

Their new Tiangong-1 space module has been specially designed for females, as the country's first woman astronaut will join the Shenzhou-9 manned spacecraft docking mission this week and live in the Tiangong for 13 days.


Despite the module being only 15 cubic meters inside, the female astronaut will have a separate toilet and bedroom that is soundproof to protect her privacy, Pang Zhihao, a researcher with the China Academy of Space Technology, said yesterday. How's that for luxury!

"She will also be able to take a sponge bath with a larger water supply than that of her male counterparts and even bring some specially made cosmetics into space," said Pang. Take that you smelly men.

Two women pilots from the Wuhan Flight Unit, including a backup, were picked for the mission. Either Liu Yang or Wang Yaping will become the nation's first woman in space, said Qi Faren, former chief designer of the Shenzhou spaceship series.

They were selected from 15 women who met the most stringent guidelines set by Chinese scientists.
1) They must be married
2) They must have given birth naturally
3) They must have no scars on their body
4) They must not exude any body odor.

Our good Dr Pang says a scar might open and start bleeding in space and the cramped conditions would intensify body odor. They have just thought of everything

And here is the kicker for all you married ladies who gave birth naturally - Xu Xianrong, a professor with the General Hospital of the PLA Air Force, said the female astronauts must be married and have given birth naturally because this ensures their body and mental condition are mature enough. And these folks are sending a rocket ship into space - makes you wonder!!!

Dr Pang said added that female astronauts tend to be more "keen and sensitive with better communication skills than their male counterparts." He added women were also good at dealing with relationships with their space partners, which would be an important issue on a long mission such as a trip to Mars.

An apple a day keeps the .......

As I sat down to breakfast this morning with my yogurt and apples I opened the Shanghai Daily News to read the following headline "Apples ripen in toxic bags". After choking and thinking twice about the next swallow, I read that the Shandong Provincial Agricultural Bureau is probing allegations that paper bags coated with pesticide are widely used to cover apples growing on trees in two major apple growing areas in east China - a region that supplies billions of kilograms of apples to cities all across China  and also accounts for over half of all the apples sold in Shanghai. That made me feel better - I have a 50/50 chance I'm eating an apple that was not coated with pesticides.

According to a bureau official surnamed Su it seems that young apples are covered in pesticide coated bags until they grow to full size. Local farmers  buy the pesticide-coated bags from unlicensed workshops to keep their apples from getting worms and to maintain a fresh shiny look.

These unlicensed manufacturers have so far refused to disclose the ingredients used in coating the interior of their bags however it is believed they contain highly toxic pesticides including asomate and tuzet and a mixture of thiram, ziram and urbacid - none of which I recognize but they all sound nasty. One manufacturer is quoted as saying a sack of pesticide costing 30 Yuan ($4.70 US) can coat 20,000 bags selling for 1,000 Yuan or $160.00 US.

An orchard owner says almost all orchards are using these bags because grocery stores and restaurants are demanding that all apples they sell have a perfect appearance.

So it looks like apples now join a long list of other goods that come off our shopping list or we start buying imported ones. So does An Apple A Day Keeps The Doctor Away? Im not so sure anymore.
 

It was only a matter of time

China yesterday called on foreign consulates to stop releasing their own air quality readings. I was wondering when this would happen given the wide variences in reporting that I blogged about a few weeks ago

The Government is now saying only they are authorized to monitor and publish air quality information and data. Here is the party line from Wu Xiaoqing, a vice environmental minister. He said "other sources may not be standardized or as rigorous as ours is". Now that's called Chutzpah!!

The US Embassy in Beijing and the US consulates in Shanghai and Guangzhou currently release PM2.5 readings on an hourly basis. PM2.5 particles are a risk to health because they are small enough to lodge deep in the lungs and even enter the bloodstream.

Later, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a press briefing: "Of course, if the foreign embassies want to collect air quality information for their own staff or diplomats, I think that is their own affair, but we believe that this type of information should not be released to the public." Of course it should not be released - why cause the public to be concerned about air quality when it is completely safe.

The sometimes sharp differences in air quality readings released by Chinese urban environmental watchdogs and those from the US consular authorities have stirred great debate among China's increasingly pollution-aware public. The US consular practice attracted public attention last year when Beijing was troubled by serious smog. The sharp variances in air quality reports released by the Beijing environmental watchdog and by the American Embassy spurred heated discussion.

The air quality yesterday in Shanghai reported by the government environmental authority was "good," similar to the "moderate" to "good" levels released by the US Consulate in the city. But there was controversy on May 14, for example, when the local government said the air quality in Shanghai was "good," while the US Consulate rated it "unhealthy for sensitive groups."

Wu said: "People may have noticed that the official PM2.5 readings released by Beijing and Shanghai watchdogs are basically the same as those released by some consular operations. However, the interpretations of air quality are sharply different.

As I said in a previous post the issue is how one interprets the air quality results. Wu said "It's because other countries use the air quality standards of their own country to evaluate air conditions here. That's obviously unreasonable." That's another Chutzpah quote worth noting. Yes of course it is unreasonable - in countries where clean air is a given why shouldn't the bar be set high. In developing countries with mass amounts of pollution in the air, you have to take that into account and set the bar lower - peoples health does not really enter into the equation.

Last night, the US air quality results were still available online and I hope they remain online - in the meantime I have to go and get my puffer :)