A Bit More Detail

Assorted Personal Notations, Essays, and Other Jottings

[BLOG] Some Monday links

  • Centauri Dreams’ Paul Gilster writes about Titan, first noting an apparent river valley flowing into the north-polar Ligeia Mare, the second reflecting on the possible subsurface oceans of that Saturnian moon.
  • At Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell reflects on the ignoble record of the Economist in relation to the Irish potato famine of the 1840s.
  • The Dragon’s Tales’ Will Baird notes research suggesting that trees in the Amazonian rain forest have survived temperature peaks akin to those likely to be produced by global warming.
  • GNXP’s Razib Khan links to a 1930 article projecting a total American population of 180 million by 1980, noting that long-range demographic projections are problematic.
  • Language Log’s Victor Mair notes the problems with maintaining character fluency in Sinitic cultures like China and Japan.
  • The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer observes that Ghana has been forced by a UN tribunal to return to Argentina a naval ship held at the request of Argentian’s debtors.
  • A Registan guest poster, Anvar Malikov, observes that the questions of Afghanistan will dominate policy-making in Uzbekistan.
  • Via Peter Rukavina, I’ve learned that peak electricity usage on Prince Edward Island amounts to 230 megawatts.
  • Understanding Society’s Paul Little notes the imprecision of the social sciences relative to the physical sciences. Is this really an enduring difference, though, or will the social sciences catch up?
  • Window on Eurasia takes note of growing regionalism in Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic.