[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul profiles architectural photographer Lorenzo Zandri, here.
• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes a new study suggesting red dwarf stars, by far the most common stars in the universe, have plenty of planets.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly shares 11 tips for interviewers, reminding me of what I did for anthropology fieldwork.
• Centauri Dreams notes how water ice ejected from Enceladus makes the inner moons of Saturn brilliant.
• The Crux looks at the increasingly complicated question of when the first humans reached North America.
• D-Brief notes a new discovery suggesting the hearts of humans, unlike the hearts of other closely related primates, evolved to require endurance activities to remain healthy.
• Dangerous Minds shares with its readers the overlooked 1969 satire Putney Swope.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that the WFIRST infrared telescope has passed its first design review.
• Gizmodo notes how drought in Spain has revealed the megalithic Dolmen of Guadalperal for the first time in six decades.
• io9 looks at the amazing Jonathan Hickman run on the X-Men so far, one that has established the mutants as eye-catching and deeply alien.
• Joe. My. God. notes that the Pentagon has admitted that 2017 UFO videos do, in fact, depict some unidentified objects in the air.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the origin of the equestrian horseback statue in ancient Rome.
• Language Log shares a bilingual English/German pun from Berlin.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money reflects on the legacy of Thomas Jefferson at Jefferson’s grave.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution looks at a new book arguing, contra Pinker perhaps, that the modern era is one of heightened violence.
• The New APPS Blog seeks to reconcile the philosophy of Hobbes with that of Foucault on biopower.
• Strange Company shares news clippings from 1970s Ohio about a pesky UFO.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why the idea of shooting garbage from Earth into the sun does not work.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps explains the appearance of Brasilia on a 1920s German map: It turns out the capital was nearly realized then.
• Towleroad notes that Pete Buttigieg has taken to avoiding reading LGBTQ media because he dislikes their criticism of his gayness.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at diners and changing menus and slavery.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Architectuul reports on its Forgotten Masterpieces campaign, aiming to promote overlooked and endangered works of 20th century architecture.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports on how the mass of the Milky Way Galaxy has just now been calculated at 1.54 trillion solar masses.
• blogTO reports that three thousand students at the University of Toronto apparently fund their education through sugar daddies.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about how she found a new tribe at a journalism conference.
• Centauri Dreams notes that black hole starship engines count as a detectable technosignature for SETI searches.
• John Holbo at Crooked Timber considers the emotionalism of Peterson and Shapiro versus facts in the light of Plato.
• The Crux notes how, before settling the Moon, we have to first develop the techniques necessary for mining the Moon.
• D-Brief notes the threats posed by humanity to the ecosystems of Antarctica.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a proposal before NASA to dispatch a smallsat probe to asteroid Pallas.
• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina takes a look at the first test flights, in the 1960s, of the reusable space plane the X-15.
• Far Outliers looks at the separation of Muslims from Hindus in Calcutta, and the subordination of the former to the latter.
• Gizmodo reports on an exciting new display of the Tyrannosaurus Rex at the American Museum of Natural History that features, finally, feathers.
• Keiran Healy crunches the numbers to notes how the hierarchy of academic institutions in the United States has scarcely changed over the previous century.
• Joe. My. God. notes that the 1971 marriage in Minnesota of Michael McConnell and Jack Baker has been officially recognized.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the overlooked radical politics of Frida Kahlo.
• Language Hat looks at the mysterious choice in names for the pre-Columbian Adena culture of North America. Why “Adena”?
• At Language Log, Victor Mair shares a post by a Chinese father who calls for a liberation of Chinese languages from their traditional script.
• Steve Attewell writes at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the history of the Marvel Universe’s Hellfire Club, memorably created by Chris Claremont.
• Marginal Revolution shares a paper supporting the thesis of Jared Diamond about the importance of the axes of continents in explaining biological and cultural diffusion.
• The New APPS Blog reports on the complicated trajectory from Marx to Foucault.
• Rachel Aspden writes at the NYR Daily about the political economy of safari tours.
• Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society Blog notes a fiscal year 2020 proposal before NASA for a sample return mission to Mars.
• The Russian Demographics Blog notes that the Global Data Lab has just had a paper published in Nature on their database of subnational entities’ rankings on the Human Development Index.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel argues that the new Trump budget for FY2020 would cause terrible damage to NASA.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that the Putin government’s policies are driving more rural-to-urban migration in Russia.
• Frances Woolley writes at Worthwhile Canad8ian Initiative about the relationship, under the Ford government of Ontario, of age limits for professors with tenure.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the lovely clematis.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Centauri Dreams considers the concept of the “Clarke exobelt”, a hypothetical ring of space stations in synchronous orbit of a planet that might be detectable across interstellar distances.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog considers the new American phenomenon of millennials moving back home with their parents.
• Far Outliers shares the second part of an an article summary on African and Japanese interactions in early modern Asia.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at “precisionism”, an art movement in the early 20th century United States that looked to the machine for inspiration.
• Language Hat shares a poem by the late great Ursula K Le Guin, “Dead Languages.”
• Lawyers, Guns and Money, looking at the anti-Uighur police state that China has established in Xinjiang, points out that there are many ways in which American hegemony can be followed by something worse.
• The LRB Blog looks at how many documents vital in understanding the history of Iraq have been removed from the country or destroyed altogether. How will Iraqis be able to understand their history without them?
• The New APPS Blog takes a look at a newly released Foucault lecture from 1978, “Analytic Philosophy of Politics”.
• The Planetary Society Blog reports from Mars, enveloped by a planet-wide dust storm that might endanger the intrepid rovers.
• Drew Rowsome takes a look at an exciting new film biography of Vivienne Westwood.
• Strange Company tells a story of a 19th century insurance fraud rooted in murder.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares an old tourist map of Maine noting how many placenames from around the world are in that state.
• Towleroad shares a lovely ad from Ireland’s Dublin Bus company featuring fathers picking up their gay children to take them to Pride. Wow.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Centauri Dreams considers, in the context of ‘Oumuamua, the import of shads and axis ratios. What does it suggest about the processes by which planetary systems form?
• The Dragon’s Tales notes a report suggesting that Russia is not at all likely to legalize bitcoins.
• At A Fistful of Euros, Alex Harrowell takes a look at Article 63, the German constitutional article that governs the selection of the Chancellor.
• The Frailest Thing quotes a passage from Jacques Ellul about the adaptation of humans to a mechanized world.
• Hornet Stories notes that out actor Russell Tovey is set to play the (also out) Ray in the Arrowverse, an anti-Nazi superhero from an alternate Earth.
• Language Hat tells the story of Lin Shu, an early 20th century translator of European fiction into Chinese whose works were remarkably influential.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money is amused by the story of a young university student who has used basic knowledge of Foucault to play with his family’s household rules.
• The LRB Blog notes the very awkward, and potentially fatal, position of the Rohingya, caught between Burma and Bangladesh.
• The Map Room Blog links to a talk recently given on fake maps, on maps used to lie and misrepresent and propagandize.
• The NYR Daily meditates on the precocity and the homoeroticism inherent in the Hart Crane poem “The Bridge.”
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that we can see, so far, only a surprisingly small fraction of the observable universe. (So far.)
• The Volokh Conspiracy celebrates the many defeats of Trump as he fights against sanctuary cities as a victory for federalism and against executive power.
• Window on Eurasia notes a poll suggesting that, after 2014, while Crimeans may feel less Ukrainian they do not necessarily feel more Russian.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look, linguistically, at an Ian Frazier phrase: “That is aliens for you.”

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly calls on journalists to stand up to Trump.
• Centauri Dreams looks at exocomets.
• Language Log shares an ad from the 1920s using the most vintage language imaginable.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money talks about globalization as a mechanism for concentrating wealth at the top of the elite.
• The LRB Blog talks about the ghosts of the Cold War in the contemporary world.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen argues that Germany has its own responsibility in transatlantic relations.
• The New APPS Blog looks at the importance of administrative law.
• The NYRB Daily celebrates John Berger.
• Savage Minds proposes a read-in of Michel Foucault in protest of Trump’s inauguration on the 20th.
• Towleroad reports on the latest statistics on the proportions of LGBT people in the United States.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the continuing depopulation of the Russian Far East and examines the shift to indigenous naming practices in Kyrgyzstan.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Cody Delistraty links to his article in The New Yorker on Julian Barnes.
• The Dragon’s Tales looks at exoplanet K2-22b, a disintegrating rocky world with a comet’s tail.
• Imageo points out we can’t be sure about the consequences of this coming El Nino.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money supports Paul Theroux’s arguments re: Southern deindustrialization.
• Marginal Revolution notes that African slave migrants to the Americas before 1800 may have outnumbered European migrants by four or even eight to one.
• The New APPS Blog examines Michel Foucault’s analysis of Iran.
• Torontoist maps the city’s homeless shelters.
• Towleroad notes how Chinese activists revealed h existence of electroshock for gay people.
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes the problems with courts ruling over issues of religious doctrine.
• Window on Eurasia suggests Russia is being left behind by the Pacific Century and notes the survival of terrorism in the North Caucasus.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes the discovery that the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy NGC 1365 is rotating at nearly the speed of light. What does it mean?
• BlogTO features vintage photos of Queen Street East.
• Crasstalk’s TS posts a followup to the spreading scandals besetting the Canadian Senate. Oh, but for a unicameral federal legislature!
• Daniel Drezner notes that despite a consensus among economists that financial austerity isn’t working, politicians remain attached to the idea.
• Eastern Approaches had a couple of posts recently touching on Germany’s relationship with its eastern neighbours, one noting a historic address to the Bavarian state parliament by the Czech prime minister expressing regret for the post-Second World War expulsion of the Sudeten Germans, the second observing Germany’s critical role in managing the European integration of the Balkans.
• Geocurrents’ Martin Lewis notes that well-governed Ghana still sees ethnic splits reproducing themselves in electoral politics.
• At the New APPS Blog, John Protevi finds fault with Foucault’s sympathetic treatment of a 19th century Frenchman charged with sexual irregularities. What of the man’s partner (or victim)?
• Joshua Foust frames Kazakhstan’s foreign policy initiatives in the context of an economically prosperous country trying to translate wealth to power.
• Towleroad features a map of New York City showing where different non-English geotagged tweets were made. Spanish predominates over other languages, unsurprisingly, although English tweets outnumbered non-English tweets by thirty to one.

[MUSIC] Foucault and The Wall

Do you know that I’ve never listened to The Wall?

It’s true. In fact, I’ve never listened to a complete Pink Floyd song. The closest I’ve come is the live performance of David Gilmour with Kate Bush on her “Running Up That Hill.”

I don’t know why this is the case, how I missed it. All I can say is that, somehow, I managed to miss out on the Pink Floyd socialization stage that every adolescent seems to go through. On a later Thursday, this will be blogged at length.

For a variety of reasons, this past week has been rather complicated, rather difficult, rather epochal. As those of you who may have followed the [MUSIC] tag may have observed, this is exactly the kind of thing that prompts me to look for appropriate music. And so, Wednesday night following (in part) John’s advice, I decided to fill my Pink Floyd gap and $C15.99 later, a nice used copy of The Wall sits on my CD player.

I’m looking forward to this. I’ve not listened to many concept albums, it’s true, never mind anything by Pink Floyd. Now I’ll get to hear the original version of that song that the Scissors Sisters covered! All on my lonesome, I’ll get to hear the South African schoolchild anthem that shook the apartheid regime! Et cetera.

Am I overthinking it, abstracting the music? Perhaps; perhaps not. I must be allowed to find it amusing that the Wikipedia article for “Another Brick in the Wall” refers the reader to the article on Discipline and Punish for further reading. Stay tuned.