[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports suggestions the bizarre happenings at Boyajian’s Star could be explained by an evaporating exomoon.
• Centauri Dreams looks at how the crowdsourced evScope telescope is being used to support the Lucy mission to the Jupiter Trojans.
• The Crux explains the phenomenon of misophobia.
• D-Brief shares suggestions that an asteroid collision a half-billion years ago released clouds of dust that, reaching Earth, triggered the mid-Ordovician ice age.
• Dangerous Minds shares video of a perhaps underwhelming meeting of William Burroughs with Francis Bacon.
• io9 makes the case for more near-future space exploration movies like Ad Astra.
• Joe. My. God. notes a Trump retweeting of the lie that Ilham Omar celebrated on 9/11.
• JSTOR Daily notes how fire could destroy the stressed rainforest of the Amazon.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how few judges in the US have been impeached.
• The LRB Blog looks at how the already tenuous position of Haitians in the Bahamas has been worsened by Dorian.
• The Map Room Blog looks at the importance of the integrity of official maps in the era of Trump.
• Marginal Revolution looks at the political importance of marriage ceremonies in Lebanon and Gaza.
• Drew Rowsome interviews the Zakar Twins on the occasion of their new play Pray the Gay Away, playing in Toronto in October.
• The Russian Demographic Blog shares statistics on birthrates in the different provinces of the Russian Empire circa 1906.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel reports on the first experiment done on the photoelectric effect, revealing quantum mechanics.
• Window on Eurasia looks at growing anti-Chinese sentiments in Central Asia.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at “The Hurtful Dog”, a Cyanide and Happiness cartoon.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• At Beyond the Beyond, Bruce Sterling points towards the first step of the exact role that the famed underground tunnels of Gaza have on the political economy of that territory.
• Crooked Timber’s John Holbo argues that the legacies of coded racism used by many Republicans in the United States continues to make the party not credible among non-whites.
• At The Dragon’s Tales, Will Baird points to a new study arguing that stars richer in heavy elements than our own (elements like uranium) are likely to have planets that have more heavy elements than our Earth, meaning more geologically active planets on account of the additional energy.
• Eastern Approaches notes the ongoing deterioration of Serbian-Croatian relations.
• At False Steps, Paul Drye profiles the nearly successful Hermes spaceplane planned by the European Space Agency for the 1990s, undermined by technical challenges and the costs of German reunification.
• Far Outliers quotes J.H. Elliott on the Catalonial rebellion of 1640, coinciding at the time with rebellion against Spanish rule in Portugal.
• At Normblog, Norman Geras links to a tribunal set up by Iranian exiles to gather evidence about crimes committed by the Islamic Republic.
• Registan’s Casey Michel wonders if claims that Kazakhstan in 1992 turned down a proposal by Libya’s Gaddafi to keep its nuclear weapons are being publicized to distract from Kazakhstan’s authoritarian government.
• Steve Munro gives a positive review of a TTC-themed play.
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes Pat Robertson’s statement that young-earth creationism is not biblical. Robertson knows, I suspect, that linking any belief system to something incredible undermines the belief system.

[LINK] “Canada misses chance to help citizens flee Gaza”

The Toronto Star‘s Oakland Ross reports about the Canadian government’s apparent forgetfulness in regards to Canadian citizens in the Gaza Strip.

Thirty-nine Canadians, still stranded in war-wracked Gaza yesterday, could have safely departed the territory last Friday – if only Canadian diplomats had known it.

Early last Friday, more than 30 hours before the launch of a deadly Israeli ground offensive, more than 200 foreign nationals fled Gaza via the Erez border crossing, which had been opened by Israeli authorities for just that day and for just that purpose.

Had the Canadians shown up at the border on Friday, they likely would have been permitted to cross, said Maj. Peter Lerner, spokesperson for the Israeli agency that handle’s this country’s activities in the territory.

“We don’t like to be surprised,” he told the Star last night, “but I’m pretty certain we would have facilitated that.”

But it was only on Friday that Canadian diplomats first provided the Israelis with a list of names of Canadians who wanted to leave the territory, and no attempt was made to contact them that day, to tell them to get to the border right away, because it was open.

Meanwhile, beginning early Friday, 226 citizens of six other countries – Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United States – began crossing into Israel, where they were put onto buses and driven to neighbouring Jordan.

The embassies in Israel of each of these countries had all contacted Israeli authorities days beforehand in order to arrange the departures, submitting lists of the names of their nationals wanting to leave.

“Those embassies spoke to us,” said Lerner. “It’s a ritual that repeats itself every time there is an increase in tension in Gaza.”

As it happened, 20 Ukrainians not on their embassy’s list also showed up at Erez on Friday and were nonetheless permitted to cross, the same treatment the 39 Canadians likely would have received, if only someone had told them to get to the border.