A Bit More Detail

Assorted Personal Notations, Essays, and Other Jottings

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

  • Architectuul looks at some examples of endangered architecture in the world, in London and Pristina and elsewhere.
  • Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait examines a bizarre feature on the Moon’s Lacus Felicitatus.
  • The Big Picture shares photos exploring the experience of one American, Marie Cajuste, navigating the health care system as she sought cancer treatment.
  • Centauri Dreams looks at a new proposal for an interstellar craft making use of neutral particle beam-driven sails.
  • Ingrid Robeyns at Crooked Timber writes about the question of what individual responsibility people today should take for carbon emissions.
  • The Crux takes a look at what the earliest (surviving) texts say about the invention of writing.
  • D-Brief notes an interesting proposal to re-use Christmas trees after they are tossed out.
  • The Dragon’s Tales notes that India has approved funding for crewed spaceflight in 2022, in the Gaganyaan program.
  • Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina takes a look at the Apollo 8 mission.
  • Far Outliers looks at the experiences of British consuls in isolated Kashgar, in what is now Xinjiang.
  • L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing argues that it can take time to properly see things, that speed can undermine understanding.
  • JSTOR Daily notes how people with depression use language, opting to use absolute words more often than the norm.
  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how the Bolsonario government in Brazil has set to attacking indigenous people.
  • Marginal Revolution links to a paper arguing that Greek life in the colleges of the United States, the fraternity system, has a negative impact on the grades of participants.
  • George Hutchinson writes at the NYR Daily about how race, of subjects and of the other, complicates readings of Louisiana-born author Jean Toomey and his novel Cane, about life on sugar cane plantations in that state.
  • Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw reflects on his Christmas reading, including a new history of Scandinavia in the Viking age told from their perspective.
  • Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the Milky Way Galaxy in its formative years. What did it look like?
  • Strange Company highlights its top 10 posts over the past year.
  • Window on Eurasia wonders at reports the Uniate Catholics of Ukraine are seeking a closer alliance with the new Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
  • Arnold Zwicky reports on the nearly iconic and ubiquitous phalluses of Bhutan, as revealed by a trip by Anthony Bourdain.