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11/13/2023 (#22 this year)
It is supposed to1 snow this week. I’m not sure if it actually will, but the weather forecast
says snow. What do you think? Will it snow? If it does, will it stick2? Do you like snow?
I love snow. I try to make a snowman with my daughter every year, but the snow weget here is not the best snow for making a snowman. It is very dry, which is great forskiing, but you need wet, sticky snow to make a snowman. What about you? Do you
make a snowman? My friend makes an igloo3 every year as well. He freezes water into
blocks and then he sticks the blocks together. I am always a bit scared to get inside it,
but he says that it is very safe. Would you try?
10 differences

Cat Facial Expressions
Do you like cats? They are so cute. Do you have a cat? I have a cat. I
don’t think he is very clever. He stares6 at me a lot and I don’t know what heis thinking. He’s probably thinking, “Wow! This guy is not very clever! He neverfeeds me when I want food!” Apparently7, we can understand what our cats
are thinking if we pay more attention to their faces. We use a lot of facial
expressions to communicate. You probably know when your mother is angry
just by looking at her face. We have 43 muscles in our faces that we can movein different combinations to make over 10,000 expressions. Dogs have 27
muscles and can make a few hundred facial expressions. Up until recently,
many people thought that cats couldn’t make many expressions. However,researchers filmed a group of cats and discovered that they made 276different facial expressions. The difference between their expressions and ours
is that they also used their ears, whiskers, and pupils8 as well. The researchers
were surprised because cats are not very social animals. They tend to9 hunt on
their own, not in packs10 like dogs and early humans did. Facial expressions arevery useful for social animals, but non-social animals don’t need them. This
study shows that cats are more social than we thought.

Last week’s answer

Something you didn’t know about cats:
1. Cats have lived with humans for 12,000 years.
2. There are more than 100 different species of domestic cat.
3. Cats have fewer taste buds4 than humans and dogs. We have 9,000, dogs have 1,700,and cats have 473. They can’t taste sweet.
4. Cats can feel with their whiskers5. They also have whiskers on their legs.
5. Cats are nearsighted. They can’t see things closer than about 30 cm. (Me too!).
However, they can see much better than we can in the dark.
6. The biggest domestic cat is the Maine Coon. They grow up to a meter long and they
can weigh 9 kg!

1.supposed to～するはず 2.stick 積もる 3.igloo かまくら 4.taste bud 味覚芽 5.whisker
ひげ 6.stare じっと見る 7.apparently～らしい 8.pupil 瞳孔 9.tend to～する傾向がある 10.pack 群れ

0World record
I’ve written about chilis and spicy food before, but there is a new chili on the block1!
Have you ever heard of the Carolina Reaper? Until last month, it was the spiciest chili onEarth. Spiciness is measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU). The Caroline Reaper is 2.2
million SHU. For comparison2, a green pepper has 0 SHU. A jalapeno pepper has 10,000
SHU. Tabasco sauce has 50,000 SHU. A habanero pepper has 350,000 SHU. That means
the Caroline Reaper is 44 times spicier than Tabasco sauce. Do you want to try theCaroline Reaper? Maybe? Well, you should try this new chili. It is called Chili Pepper X
and it has 2.7 million SHU!! That is insane3. It was grown by Ed Currie who runs a peppercompany. He was also the person who created the Carolina Reaper. He grows the spicypeppers by cross breeding4 them to increase the amount of capsaicin5 they contain. I
think that pepper would kill me.

One thing we can do to help the environment#8 Buy things that are close to their expiration dateThis is a solution that I do, but my wife really doesn’t like. When I go
shopping, I try to buy the thing that is closest to its expiration date6. Thisis easy to do, because the shop workers usually put it at the front of theshelf. My wife doesn’t like it when I do that. She always reaches to theback of the shelf and takes the product that is the farthest away from its
expiration date. She says that we won’t eat the food straight away, so weneed to get food that is “safe”. I don’t do that because of two reasons. The
first reason is that if the store cannot sell the item by the date on thepackage, they have to throw it away. That adds to waste. The food iswasted, but also the time people have put into the product, and all of thewater, and every other resource7 that has gone into growing it, making it,and getting it to the supermarket. My second reason is because nothing
happens when a product8 goes past its expiration date. They are just aguideline. The shop is saying, “if you eat this food before this date, it willprobably be at its best. If you eat it after this date, it will be fine, but it
might lose a little of its taste.” There is no danger in eating foods a shortwhile after their
expiration date.
Thesupermarkets are
just trying toprotect
themselves. So, I
always buy theproduct that isclosest to its
expiration date.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The
1new….on the block 新し～が出てきた 2.for comparisson 比べるために 3.insane ばmost certain way to succeed is to try just one かげた 4.cross breed 異種交配 5.capsaicin カブサイチン 6.expiration date 賞味期限
7.resource 資源 8.product 品物
more time. – Thomas Edison