Light Cone. Via boingboing, I found a neat little website that generates RSS feeds (based on one's DOB) of stars which the news of one's birth could possibly be known. In other words, stars within (one's age)light-years of Earth. My list is parsed and posted on the About page.

Skywalk at Grand Canyon. Claimed to be the highest building from ground (measured vertically), the Grand Canyon Skywalk is a horse-shoe shaped glass bridge jutting out from the cliffs overlooking Grand Canyon. It would be held up 4,000 feet above the Colorado River (if you fall, it would take a full 15 seconds before you hit... possibly more taking in account of aerodynamical drag). It was announced in the middle of last year, and was supposed to be open to the public by the beginning of this year, but according to Taiwanese news media reports, it is now slated for completion by the end of this year. The farthest point of the bridge would be 21 meters (700ft) from the cliff. The bottom would be built with three-inch-thick glass panes, while the sides would be 5-foot high glass fences. The permitted number of people on the bridge would be 120, though the design document states that it should be able to handle up to 700 grown men with no problem. The design should stand an earthquake taking 8 on the Richter scale and withstand 100mph gusts from any of 8 different directions. To accommodate those who might chicken out at the last minute, they also have a cafe built right next to the cliff to give a taste of the view in relative safety.

Possible Roman descendents discovered in China. In north-western China, there's a small village called 者來寨 (Zhe Lai Zhai) in 甘肅 (Gan Su) province. The people who live there seems normal enough: they farm and raise live-stock, much like what you would expect of people living in the arid north west. What is surprising is that most of the residents of that small village have blue or gray eyes with golden or brown hair. Yet talking with them, one finds that they are perfectly fluent in the local 永昌 dialect, even though they definitely carry European features. Further more, according to the family registries, they have all been living in the same village for centuries and always classified as members of the Han ethnicity. Their existence has been causing a headache for archaelogists and historians.

According to recent articles in some Chinese news sources, it seems that at least one hypothesis has been put forward: that those people are descendents of Roman legionaires. The study was conducted by two Chinese scholars, 關亨 (Guan Hang) and 陳正義 (Chen Zheng Yi).

To begin with, Guan and Chen observed the daily lives of the villagers, and after a long period of observation, they found serveral oddities compared to typical Han-based cultures. The first is with regards to a particular Chinese-style pastry that they make. Whereas traditionally the Chinese make the buns in the shape similar to a western dinner-roll, the people of ZheLai makes them with a little protrustion shaped like the nose of a cow and only use them for honouring the dead ancesters. Furthermore, the researchers discovered an overall fascination with cattle in rituals and games among those people [here I raise a point not mentioned in the articles: the cattle is rather important among Indo-European cultures, especially those originating in Central Asia, i.e. Assyrians, Persians, Hittites, and possibly Hindus]. The second oddity is the burial rites. Whereas typical Han cultures bury the dead aligned North-Sough, the ZheLai people always bury the people with head toward the west. These discrepancies seems to suggest that the culture is heavily influenced by something other than the traditional Han culture.

Then, an archaelogical discovery was made, when they found a large number of tombs in the area dating back to the Han dynasty. From dating methods as well as observation of the shape and structure of the tombs, it is possible to conclude that those tombs were made during the Western Han dynasty. Furthermore, the remains found in those tombs all have their head pointing westerly. And the skeletal structure shows that those people are of larger build then typical Han Chinese, which almost certainly imply they were migrants. This seems to suggest a connection between the migrants from the Han dynasty and the people of ZheLai.

Next, a even larger discovery was made when they found the remains of an old city in ZheLai which dates back to the Western Han dynasty. The researchers then went and dug through historical records trying to locate a possible candidate for a city located around the present day village. It turns out that in the local records of a large nearby city, it was recorded that during the Han dynasty, a large city is erected in roughly the place of ZheLai village with the name 驪鮂 (Li Qio) to house the Li Qio soldiers who surrendered. [According to the Chinese dictionary Ci Hai (辭海), the name of the city is actually 驪靬 (pronounced Li2 Qian2), also written 犁靬; the names comes from that of the settlers, who are from the country 犁鞬 (Li2 Jian1), which is also known as Daqin, which was the ancient Chinese name for the Roman empire, which probably came from the fact that they are on the other end of the silk road and thus deserves a name equal to that of the Chinese empire of the time.] This suggests that those settlers are actually Roman in origin.

If we accept the hypothesis that the ZheLai people actually descended from the settlers of Li Qio/Li Qian, one question remains: how did they get there?

The scholars found passages in the records of Han dynasty (漢書) that states that in the 36 BCE Battle of ZhiZhi (致支城大戰) between the Xiongnu (匈奴) and the Han, the Chinese general 陳湯 (Chen Tang) records that the Xiongnu army sent out a troop that "looks different", who used a particular battle formation. The battle formation described is very likely the Testudo formation of Roman legions. It is possible that those settlers of Li Qio are the captives from this battle.

To solve the problem of how those Roman legionnaires started fighting for the Xiongnu, the researcher Guan made the following hypothesis: in 53 BCE Crassus lead a disastrous campaign against the Parthians (known as 安息 AnXi in Chinese). At the Battle of Carrhae, the Roman army was pretty much completely destroyed, with about 10,000 men captured. Guan's hypothesis is that some number of the Roman soldiers managed to break-through the Parthian defense on the East and fled in that direction, eventually coming to Xiongnu controlled territory and was either forced to fight or employed as mercenaries.

This last bit of the theory I find a bit incredible. From my personal readings I think that it is more likely that, in accordance to documentation, the Roman legionnaires captured by the Parthians were sent to guard Sogdia or Margiana. Sogdiana is an area on the Silk road that has made contact with the Han Chinese since the 2nd century BCE, so it would not be unlikely that that they came in contact with the Han sometime later. Historical records suggests that those soldiers sent to Margiana ended up pretty well off, and not suffering much from the captivity (see this). So rather than a beat-up crew running away from the Parthians as Guan hypothesized, I am more keen to believe in H.H. Dubs' theory from the 1957 book A Roman City in Ancient China that the settlers were Xiongnu mercenaries who engaged in that profession in free will and who were based in Margiana.