[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait observes that a team may have discovered the elusive neutron star produced by Supernova 1987A, hidden behind a cloud of dust.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber shares a photo he made via the time-consuming 19th century wet-plate collodion method.
• Drew Ex Machina’s Andrew LePage looks at the Apollo 12 visit to the Surveyor 3 site to, among other things, see what it might suggest about future space archeology.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the story of rural poverty facing a family in Waverly, Ohio, observing how it is a systemic issue.
• George Dvorsky at Gizmodo looks at how Mars’ Jezero crater seems to have had a past relatively friendly to life, good for the next NASA rover.
• Joe. My. God. reports on the latest ignorance displayed by Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter, this time regarding HIV.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how Climategate was used to undermine popular opinion on climate change.
• Language Hat links to an article explaining why so many works of classical literature were lost, among other things not making it onto school curricula.
• Language Log shares a photo of a Muji eraser with an odd English label.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests Pete Buttigieg faces a campaign-limiting ceiling to his support among Democrats.
• The LRB Blog argues that Macron’s blocking of EU membership possibilities for the western Balkans is a terrible mistake.
• The Map Room Blog shares a map depicting regional variations in Canada towards anthropogenic climate change. Despite data issues, the overall trend of oil-producing regions being skeptical is clear.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper examining the slowing pace of labour mobility in the US, suggesting that home attachment is a key factor.
• Frederic Wehrey at the NYR Daily tells the story of Knud Holmboe, a Danish journalist who came to learn about the Arab world working against Italy in Libya.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why thermodynamics does not explain our perception of time.
• Understanding Society’s Dan Little looks at Electronic Health Records and how they can lead to medical mistakes.
• Whatever’s John Scalzi shares a remarkable photo of the night sky he took using the astrophotography mode on his Pixel 4 phone.
• Window on Eurasia shares an opinion that the Intermarium countries, between Germany and Russia, can no longer count on the US and need to organize in their self-defense.
• Arnold Zwicky shares a photo of his handsome late partner Jacques Transue, taken as a college student.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Anthro{dendum} features an essay examining trauma and resiliency as encountered in ethnographic fieldwork.
• Architectuul highlights a new project seeking to promote historic churches built in the United Kingdom in the 20th century.
• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait examines Ahuna Mons, a muddy and icy volcano on Ceres, and looks at the nebula Westerhout 40.
• Centauri Dreams notes the recent mass release of data from a SETI project, and notes the discovery of two vaguely Earth-like worlds orbiting the very dim Teegarden’s Star, just 12 light-years away.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes that having universities as a safe space for trans people does not infringe upon academic freedom.
• The Crux looks at the phenomenon of microsleep.
• D-Brief notes evidence that the Milky Way Galaxy was warped a billion years ago by a collision with dark matter-heavy dwarf galaxy Antlia 2, and notes a robotic fish powered by a blood analogue.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that India plans on building its own space station.
• Earther notes the recording of the song of the endangered North Pacific right whale.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the role of emotional labour in leisure activities.
• Far Outliers looks at how Japan prepared for the Battle of the Leyte Gulf in 1944.
• Gizmodo looks at astronomers’ analysis of B14-65666, an ancient galactic collision thirteen billion light-years away, and notes that the European Space Agency has a planned comet interception mission.
• io9 notes how the plan for Star Trek in the near future is to not only have more Star Trek, but to have many different kinds of Star Trek for different audiences.
• Joe. My. God. notes the observation of Pete Buttigieg that the US has probably already had a gay president.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the many ways in which the rhetoric of Celtic identity has been used, and notes that the archerfish uses water ejected from its eyes to hunt.
• Language Hat looks at why Chinese is such a hard language to learn for second-language learners, and looks at the Suso monastery in Spain, which played a key role in the coalescence of the Spanish language.
• Language Log looks at the complexities of katakana.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the death of deposed Egypt president Mohammed Morsi looks like a slow-motion assassination, and notes collapse of industrial jobs in the Ohio town of Lordstown, as indicative of broader trends.
• The LRB Blog looks at the death of Mohamed Morsi.
• The Map Rom Blog shares a new British Antarctic Survey map of Greenland and the European Arctic.
• Marginal Revolution notes how non-religious people are becoming much more common in the Middle East, and makes the point that the laying of cable for the transatlantic telegraph is noteworthy technologically.
• Noah Smith at Noahpionion takes the idea of the Middle East going through its own version of the Thirty Years War seriously. What does this imply?
• The NYR Daily takes a look at a Lebanon balanced somehow on the edge, and looks at the concentration camp system of the United States.
• The Planetary Society Blog explains what people should expect from LightSail 2, noting that the LightSail 2 has launched.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw points readers to his stories on Australian spy Harry Freame.
• Rocky Planet explains, in the year of the Apollo 50th anniversary, why the Moon matters.
• Drew Rowsome reviews, and praises, South African film Kanarie, a gay romp in the apartheid era.
• The Russian Demographics Blog links to a paper examining the relationship between childcare and fertility in Belgium, and looks at the nature of statistical data from Turkmenistan.
• The Strange Maps Blog shares a map highlighting different famous people in the United States.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why different galaxies have different amounts of dark matter, and shares proof that the Apollo moon landings actually did happen.
• Towleroad notes the new evidence that poppers, in fact, are not addictive.
• Window on Eurasia warns about the parlous state of the Volga River.
• Arnold Zwicky takes an extended look at the mid-20th century gay poet Frank O’Hara.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at Westerlund-1, a massive star cluster with many bright stars in our galaxy.
• Centauri Dreams notes a finding that giant planets like Jupiter are less likely to be found around Sun-like stars.
• D-Brief notes how, in a time of climate change, birds migrated between Canada and the equator.
• Bruce Dorminey lists five overlooked facts about the Apollo 11 mission.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that the US House of Representatives has approved the creation of a US Space Corps analogous to the Marines.
• JSTOR Daily considers tactics to cure groupthink.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, looking at the experience of Hong Kong, observes how closely economic freedoms depend on political freedom and legitimacy.
• Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society Blog explains his rationale for calculating that the Apollo project, in 2019 dollars, cost more than $US 700 billion.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the star R136a1, a star in the 30 Doradus cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud that is the most massive star known to exist.
• Window on Eurasia notes how Circassians in Syria find it very difficult to seek refuge in their ancestral lands in the North Caucasus.
• Arnold Zwicky looks, in occasionally NSFW detail, at the importance of June the 16th for him as a date.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait considers the question of where, exactly, the dwarf galaxy Segue-1 came from.
• Centauri Dreams considers the import of sodium chloride for the water oceans of Europa, and for what they might hold.
• D-Brief wonders if dark matter punched a hole in the Milky Way Galaxy.
• JSTOR Daily warns that the increasing number of satellites in orbit of Earth might hinder our appreciation of the night sky.
• The LRB Blog looks at the complications of democracy and politics in Mauritania.
• Marginal Revolution wonders about the nature of an apparently very decentralized city of Haifa.
• Corey S. Powell at Out There notes that, while our knowledge of the Big Bang is certainly imperfect, the odds of it being wrong are quite, quite low.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at the Hayabusa 2 exploration of asteroid Ryugu.
• Vintage Space examines how Apollo astronauts successfully navigated their way to the Moon.
• Window on Eurasia looks at press discussion in Russia around the decriminalization of soft drugs like marijuana.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at a comic depicting a “mememobile.”

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Architectuul notes the recent death of I.M. Pei.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes what, exactly, rubble-pile asteroids are.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about definitions of home.
• Centauri Dreams considers white dwarf planets.
• The Crux notes how ultra-processed foods are liked closely to weight gain.
• D-Brief observes that a thin layer of insulating ice might be saving the subsurface oceans of Pluto from freezing out.
• Bruce Dorminey notes the critical role played by Apollo 10 in getting NASA ready for the Moon landings.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes the American government’s expectation that China will seek to set up its own global network of military bases.
• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina reports on the Soviet Union’s Venera 5 and 6 missions to Venus.
• Far Outliers looks at the visit of U.S. Grant to Japan and China.
• Gizmodo notes a recent analysis of Neanderthal teeth suggesting that they split with Homo sapiens at a date substantially earlier than commonly believed.
• io9 notes the sheer scale of the Jonathan Hickman reboots for the X-Men comics of Marvel.
• Joe. My. God. shares the argument of Ted Cruz that people should stop making fun of his “space pirate” suggestion.I am inclined to think Cruz more right than not, actually.
• JSTOR Daily notes the wave of anti-black violence that hit the United States in 1919, often driven by returned veterans.
• Language Hat shares a recognizable complaint, written in ancient Akkadian, of bad customers.
• Language Log shares a report of a village in Brittany seeking people to decipher a mysterious etching.
• This Scott Lemieux report at Lawyers, Guns and Money about how British conservatives received Ben Shapiro is a must-read summary.
• Benjamin Markovits at the LRB Blog shares the reasons why he left his immigrant-heavy basketball team in Germany.
• Marginal Revolution looks at one effort in Brazil to separate people from their street gangs.
• The NYR Daily looks at how ISIS, deprived of its proto-state, has managed to thrive as a decentralized network.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw tells of his experiences and perceptions of his native region of New England, in southeastern Australia.
• The Planetary Society Blog notes how the Chang’e 4 rover may have found lunar mantle on the surface of the Moon.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes that while Argentine president Mauricio Macri is polling badly, his opponents are not polling well.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of things to do in see in the Peru capital of Lima.
• The Signal examines how the Library of Congress engages in photodocumentation.
• Van Waffle at the Speed River Journal explains how he is helping native insects by planting native plants in his garden.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes how scientific illiteracy should never be seen as cool.
• Towleroad notes the questions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as to why Truvada costs so much in the United States.
• Window on Eurasia notes how family structures in the North Caucasus are at once modernizing and becoming more conservative.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes how the distribution of US carriers and their fleets at present does not support the idea of a planned impending war with Iran.
• Arnold Zwicky examines the tent caterpillar of California.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomy Phil Plait notes that the location of the Apollo 12 Ascent Module on the Moon may have been found.
• Kieran Healy writes about how he uses scripts to produce animated graphics illustrating charging patterns of baby names over the 20th century in the United States.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how Japan has been cleaning up Tohoku after the Fukushima disaster.
• Language Hat looks at an upcoming book project taking a look at how different languages written in the Arabic script interact with each other.
• Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money, looking at “The Bells”, makes the case that this episode’s solution to the issues of Daenerys was probably the best one that could be devised within Game of Thrones’ self-imposed limitations.
• The NYR Daily looks at the trial in Israeli military courts of Palestinian activist Issa Amro.
• Jason C. Davis notes at the Planetary Society Blog that the Lightsail 2 spacecraft is scheduled for a June launch.
• Peter Rukavina reacts, with eventual cool printings, to the Fluxus movement in mid-20th century art.
• Strange Company shares the story of pioneering Edwardian parachustist Dolly Shepherd.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society shares his 1970s proposal for a Marxist philosophy of the social sciences.
• Window on Eurasia notes that the GULAG system was a net loss for the Soviet economy, costly and employing workers at low productivity levels. (Bringing it back would be a mistake, then.)
• Arnold Zwicky shares some wonderful photos of some remarkable lilies.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Centauri Dreams notes the discovery of rocky debris indicative of destroyed planets in orbit of the white dwarf SDSS J122859.93+104032.9, 400 light-years away.
• JSTOR Daily shows how the Columbine massacre led to a resurgence of evangelical Christianity in the US.
• Language Log notes an example of digraphia, two scripts, in use in Taiwan.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money identifies the presidential run of Howard Schultz in ways unflattering to him yet accurate.
• The LRB Blog takes a look at the current, unsettling, stage of artificial intelligence research.
• At the NYR Daily, Boyd Tonkin writes about an exhibition of the works of Van Gogh at the Tate Britain highlighting his ties with England and with his Europeanness.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel reports on the ultimate fate of the Earth, a cinder orbiting a black dwarf.
• Strange Company tells the strange, sad story of 19th century California writer Yda Hillis Addis.
• At Vintage Space, Amy Shira Teitel explains why the Apollo missions made use of a dangerous pure-oxygen environment.
• Window on Eurasia notes how, 41 years ago, protests in Georgia forced the Soviet Union to let the Georgian republic keep Georgian as its official language.
• Arnold Zwicky starts with peeps and goes on to look at dragons.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about the importance of seeing the world from new angles.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber suggests that, worldwide, coal is becoming increasingly closely associated with corruption.
• D-Brief looks at a study drawing on Twitter that suggests people will quickly get used to changing weather in the era of climate change.
• Jonathan Wynn at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about a family trip during which he spent time listening to sociology-related podcasts.
• Far Outliers notes the life-determining intensity of exam time for young people in Calcutta.
• io9 notes that, finally, the classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Once More, With Feeling” is being released on vinyl.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how medieval Europe regulated the sex trade.
• Language Hat looks at how anthropologists have stopped using “hominid” and started using “hominin”, and why.
• Language Log considers the difficulty of talking about “Sinophone” given the unrepresented linguistic diversity included in the umbrella of “Chinese”.
• Marginal Revolution suggests there are conflicts between NIMBYism and supporting open immigration policies.
• At Out There, Corey S. Powell interviews astronomer Slava Turyshev about the possibility not only of interstellar travel but of exploiting the Solar Gravity Lens, 550 AU away.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 9 mission.
• Towleroad notes that Marvel Comics is planning to make its lead character in the Eternals gay.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society examines how the human body and its physical capacities are represented in sociology.
• Window on Eurasia notes the growth of the Volga Tatar population of Moscow, something hidden by the high degree of assimilation of many of its members.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes, in connection to Huawei, the broad powers allotted to the British government under existing security and communications laws.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at anteaters and antedaters.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Anthrodendum reviews the book Fistula Politics, the latest from the field of medical anthropology.
• Architectuul takes a look at post-war architecture in Germany, a country where the devastation of the war left clean slates for ambitious new designers and architects.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at newly discovered Kuiper Belt object 2008 VG 18.
• Laura Agustín at Border Thinking takes a look at the figure of the migrant sex worker.
• Centauri Dreams features an essay by Al Jackson celebrating the Apollo 8 moon mission.
• D-Brief notes how physicists manufactured a quark soup in a collider to study the early universe.
• Dangerous Minds shares some photos of a young David Bowie.
• Angelique Harris at the Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at what the social sciences have to say about sexuality and dating among millennial Americans.
• Gizmodo notes the odd apparent smoothness of Ultima Thule, target of a very close flyby by New Horizons on New Year’s Day.
• Hornet Stories notes the censorship-challenging art by Slava Mogutin available from the Tom of Finland store.
• Imageo shares orbital imagery of the eruption of Anak Krakatau in Indonesia, trigger of a devastating volcanic tsunami.
• Nick Stewart at The Island Review writes beautifully about his experience crossing the Irish Sea on a ferry, from Liverpool to Belfast.
• Lyman Stone at In A State of Migration shares the story, with photos, of his recent whirlwind trip to Vietnam.
• JSTOR Daily considers whether or not fan fiction might be a useful tool to promote student literacy.
• Language Hat notes a contentious reconstruction of the sound system of obscure but fascinating Tocharian, an extinct Indo-European language from modern XInjiang.
• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the irreversible damage being caused by the Trump Administration to the United States’ foreign policy.
• Marginal Revolution notes a paper suggesting users of Facebook would need a payment of at least one thousand dollars to abandon Facebook.
• Lisa Nandy at the NYR Daily argues that the citizens of the United Kingdom need desperately to engage with Brexit, to take back control, in order to escape catastrophic consequences from ill-thought policies.
• Marc Rayman at the Planetary Society Blog celebrates the life and achievements of the Dawn probe.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes that so many Venezuelans are fleeing their country because food is literally unavailable, what with a collapsing agricultural sector.
• The Russian Demographics Blog breaks down polling of nostalgia for the Soviet Union among Russians.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that simply finding oxygen in the atmosphere of an exoplanet is not by itself proof of life.
• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy reports on how the United States is making progress towards ending exclusionary zoning.
• Whatever’s John Scalzi shares an interview with the lawyer of Santa Claus.
• Window on Eurasia reports on a fascinating paper, examining how some Russian immigrants in Germany use Udmurt as a family language.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the lives of two notable members of the Swiss diaspora in Paris’ Montmartre.

[LINK] “Humans vs. Robots: Who Should Dominate Space Exploration?”

Adam Mann’s Wired Science article outlines the ongoing dispute between proponents of space exploration who favour manned missions and proponents of space exploration who favour robotic ones. In truth, I agree with James Garvin, quoted at the end of this excerpt, who points out that manned and unmanned missions are symbiotic, and I myself expect that as the technology necessary to support manned space travel beyond Earth’s orbit advances (and becomes less expensive!) the mix of missions will shift towards manned ones.

A manned mission to Mars would almost certainly be more productive than a robotic mission, but at what cost? The robotic missions at least help outline the likely conditions and questions at affordable cost. Robotic missions are also much more durable–robotic probes have visited the planets of the outer solar system generations before any manned mission is likely to reach Europa or Titan or Neptune.

One note: if space probes suddenly became more autonomous, able to respond to their environment in a flexible way not far removed from the way that an actual astronaut would respond, manned space exploration could become less of a priority. What need would there be of it?

“In what was really only a few days on the lunar surface, the Apollo astronauts produced a tremendous scientific legacy,” said planetary scientist Ian Crawford of Birkbeck College in London, author of a paper in the April issue of Astronomy and Geophysics. “Robotic exploration of the moon and Mars pales in comparison.”

[. . .]

In terms of sheer scientific output, manned exploration of outer space has a good track record. More than 2,000 papers have been published over the last four decades using data collected during the manned Apollo missions, and the rate of new papers is still rising. In comparison, the Soviet robotic Luna explorers and NASA’s Mars Exploration rover program — Mars Pathfinder, Spirit, and Opportunity — have each generated around 400 publications.

[. . .]

“I strongly disagree with his conclusions,” wrote engineer Adrian Stoica, who supervises the Advanced Robotic Controls group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an email to Wired. He notes that Crawford’s paper seems to focus on cost in terms of scientific output achieved.

The Apollo program was incredibly expensive — about $175 billion in today’s money — though it was not solely a scientific mission. It was mainly a geopolitical stunt during the Cold War to show American technological superiority over Russia, with science piggybacking on the ride.

The total amount spent on science over the Apollo missions, Crawford estimates, comes to about $2.09 billion in today’s dollars, making it comparable to or even cheaper than the recent $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory.

But contrasting manned lunar missions with robotic Mars missions is not the right way to go, wrote Stoica. A better analysis would use the potential cost of a manned Mars mission, which NASA estimates to be at least hundreds of billions of dollars.

Crawford counters that cost is not the biggest impetus behind his analysis. Instead, he wanted to bring attention to the sheer efficiency and legacy that the Apollo program achieved during its short time. If space exploration continues to focus on sending robots to other planets, “we will learn less about the solar system in the next 100 years than we will if we engage in an ambitious program of human exploration,” he said.

Of course, humans and robots each have their own advantages for exploration of outer space.

“There isn’t a battle between robots and humans — that’s comparing apples and oranges,” said James Garvin, chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “We send the robots as our pathfinders and scouts, and they open the frontiers so that we can decide where and when to send the people.”