A Bit More Detail

Assorted Personal Notations, Essays, and Other Jottings

Posts Tagged ‘sam harris

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

  • Architectuul looks at the history of brutalism in late 20th century Turkey.
  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the evidence for the Milky Way Galaxy having seen a great period of starburst two billion years ago, and notes how crowded the Milky Way Galaxy is in the direction of Sagittarius.
  • Centauri Dreams considers if astrometry might start to become useful as a method for detecting planets, and considers what the New Horizons data, to Pluto and to Ultima Thule, will be known for.
  • Belle Waring at Crooked Timber considers if talk of forgiveness is, among other things, sound.
  • D-Brief considers the possibility that the differing natures of the faces of the Moon can be explained by an ancient dwarf planet impact, and shares images of dust-ringed galaxy NGC 4485.
  • Dead Things notes the discovery of fossil fungi one billion years old in Nunavut.
  • Far Outliers looks at how, over 1990, Russia became increasingly independent from the Soviet Union, and looks at the final day in office of Gorbachev.
  • Gizmodo notes the discovery of literally frozen oceans of water beneath the north polar region of Mars, and looks at an unusual supernova, J005311 ten thousand light-years away in Cassiopeia, product of a collision between two white dwarfs.
  • JSTOR Daily notes how the colour of navy blue is a direct consequence of slavery and militarism, and observes the historical influence, or lack thereof, of Chinese peasant agriculture on organic farming in the US.
  • Language Log considers a Chinese-language text from San Francisco combining elements of Mandarin and Cantonese.
  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the terrible environmental consequences of the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia, and Shakezula at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a look at how, and perhaps why, Sam Harris identifies milkshake-throwing at far-right people as a form of “mock assassination”.
  • The Map Room Blog shares a personal take on mapmaking on the Moon during the Apollo era.
  • Marginal Revolution observes a paper suggesting members of the Chinese communist party are more liberal than the general Chinese population. The blog also notes how Soviet quotas led to a senseless and useless mass slaughter of whales.
  • Russell Darnley writes about the complex and tense relationship between Indonesia and Australia, each with their own preoccupations.
  • Martin Filler writes at the NYR Daily about I.M. Pei as an architect specializing in an “establishment modernism”. The site also takes a look at Orientalism, as a phenomenon, as it exists in the post-9/11 era.
  • Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw reflects on the meaning of Australia’s New England.
  • The Planetary Society Blog notes how Hayabusa 2 is having problems recovering a marker from asteroid Ryugu.
  • Peter Rukavina reports on an outstanding Jane Siberry concert on the Island.
  • The Russian Demographics Blog shares a map of homophobia in Europe.
  • The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress makes use of wikidata.
  • The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle reports, with photos, from his latest walks this spring.
  • Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers what the Earth looked like when hominids emerged, and explains how amateur astronomers can capture remarkable images.
  • Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a controversial map depicting the shift away from CNN towards Fox News across the United States.
  • Daniel Little at Understanding Society examines the Boeing 737 MAX disaster as an organizational failure.
  • Window on Eurasia looks why Turkey is backing away from supporting the Circassians, and suggests that the use of the Russian Orthodox Church by the Russian state as a tool of its rule might hurt the church badly.
  • Arnold Zwicky takes apart, linguistically and otherwise, a comic playing on the trope of Lassie warning about something happening to Timmy. He also
    reports on a far-removed branch of the Zwicky family hailing from Belarus, as the Tsvikis.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

  • Bad Astronomy identifies the most distant globular cluster known to exist around the Milky Way Galaxy, PSO J174.0675-10.8774 some 470 thousand light-years away.
  • Centauri Dreams looks at the strange ring of the Kuiper Belt dwarf planet Haumea.
  • Crooked Timber looks at an ill-constructed biography of Eric Hobsbawm.
  • D-Brief notes an experiment that proves antimatter obeys the same laws of quantum mechanics as regular matter, at least insofar as the double-slit experiment is concerned.
  • Earther notes that life in Antarctica depends critically on the presence of penguin feces.
  • Imageo looks at awesome satellite imagery of spring storms in North America.
  • The Island Review interviews Irene de la Torre, a translator born on the Spanish island of Mallorca, about her experiences and thoughts on her insular experiences.
  • Joe. My. God. notes a new deal between Gilead Pharmaceuticals and the American government to make low-cost PrEP available to two hundred thousand people.
  • JSTOR Daily looks at the many ways in which The Great Gatsby reflects the norms of the Jazz Age.
  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money is rightly critical of the Sam Harris suggestion that white supremacism is not an ideology of special concern, being only a fringe belief.
  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution solicits questions for an upcoming interview with demographer of religion Eric Kaufmann.
  • Russell Darnley at Maximos62 shares cute video of otters frolicking on the Singapore River.
  • Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel asks when the universe became transparent to light.
  • Arnold Zwicky shares photos of his blooming flower gardens.