[PHOTO] Blue into green, Dupont west of Dufferin

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams reports on how dataset mining of K2 data revealed 18 more Earth-sized planets.
• Crooked Timber speculates on how Clarence Thomas might rule on abortion given his public rulings.
• D-Brief observes that some corals in Hawaii appear to thrive in acidic waters. Is there hope yet for coral reefs?
• Karen Sternheimer writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about how sociology and history overlap, in their subjects and in their methods.
• Far Outliers examines how the last remnants of Soviet power faded quickly around the world in 1991.
• Gizmodo looks at how an image of a rare albino panda has just been captured.
• Joe. My. God. notes how Christian fundamentalists want to make the east of Washington State into a 51st state run by Biblical law.
• JSTOR Daily notes how trees can minimize algae blooms in nearby water systems.
• Victor Mair at Language Log takes issue with problematic pop psychology regarding bilingualism in Singapore.
• Lawyers, Guns, and Money takes issue with trying to minimize court decisions like (for instance) a hypothetical overthrow of Miranda v. Arizona. (Roe v. Wade is what they are concerned with.)
• The NYR Daily looks at the short storied life of avant-garde filmmaker Barbara Rubin.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why we can never learn everything about our universe.
• Towleroad notes that downloads of the relationship app Hinge have surged after Pete Buttigieg said he met his now-husband there.
• Window on Eurasia notes that Ukraine is seeking to have the Kerch Strait separating Crimea from adjacent Russia declared an international body of water.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at what famed gay writer John Rechy is doing these days.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy notes how, in galaxy 3XMM J150052.0+015452 1.8 billion light-years away, a black hole has been busily eating a star for a decade.
• Centauri Dreams considers how relativistic probes might conduct astronomy. How would their measurements be changed by these high speeds?
• The Crux reports on how scientists are trying to save the platypus in its native rivers of Australia.
• D-Brief reports on the quiet past of Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule.
• The Dragon’s Tales reports on UAV news from around the world.
• Joe. My. God. reports a statement by a Trump biography suggesting that the American president believes in not following laws because of his belief in his own “genetic superiority”.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the importance of the longleaf pine in the history of the United States.
• Language Hat considers, in the case of Australia, the benefits of reviving indigenous languages.
• Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money considers how the success of Israel in hosting Eurovision is a blow against the Netanyahu government.
• James Butler at the LRB Blog looks at the peculiar position of private schools in the UK, and their intersection with public life.
• Marginal Revolution looks at a paper analyzing two centuries of British writers noting that productivity was boosted for the least productive if they lived in London.
• The NYR Daily notes the end of famed French periodical Les temps modernes.
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog notes the expected crash of Chinese smallsat Longjiang-2 from its lunar orbit at the end of July.
• Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money notes how ex-president of Argentina Cristina Fernández, running for election this year, was lucky in having the economic crash occur after the end of her presidency.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains the different reasons behind the blues of the sky and the ocean.
• Window on Eurasia notes that three hundred thousand Russians have died of HIV/AIDS since the virus manifested on Soviet territory in the late 1980s, with more deaths to come thanks to mismanagement of the epidemic.

[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: Precambrian fossils, CO2 and trees, mountains, Uranus and Neptune, Mars

• Have fossils of the movements of ancient animals 2.1 billion years ago been found? CBC reports.
• Increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, it turns out, will not accelerate tree growth. CBC reports.
• Motherboard reports that vast “mountains” may exist, hidden deep inside the molten interior of the Earth.
• Universe Today reports on Hubble observations of the atmospheres of outer-system ice giants Uranus and Neptune.
• Universe Today reports on the startling assertion of Elon Musk that, in the foreseeable future, a round-trip ticket to Mars might cost only $US 100 thousand.

[PHOTO] Ice trees, Dupont Street west of Dovercourt Road

The winter Toronto has been having so far has seen quite a lot of snow–more, it has seen quite a lot of precipitation generally, slush and even rain–and the temperatures have been hovering just below freezing. When I got off the 161 Rogers Road bus last night at 11 o’clock, the trees were coated with ice, glittering under streetlights.

[NEWS] Five science links: redwood clones, rhea of Germany, Pescadero Basin, deep biosphere, climate

• Motherboard looks at how some ecological activists are cloning the stumps of dead redwoods to produce new trees.
• Rheas imported to the north German plains from South America are thriving, possibly even becoming indigenous. Well done! Deutsche Welle reports.
• Motherboard reports on the unique oceanic ecologies found in the upside-down lakes of the Pescadero Basin.
• The sheer mass of the deep biosphere underneath the Earth is immense, greater than that of humanity. Universe Today reports.
• The Conversation notes how we can use archeology to understand the impact of climate change.

[PHOTO] Blue on sky and in lights, Church and Maitland

[PHOTO] Red leaves by the bus stop, Dovercourt at Dupont

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams notes new findings suggesting that low metallicity in stars is linked to the formation of multi-planet systems, including systems with multiple small planets perhaps not unlike Earth.
• D-Brief notes that the potentially detectable S1 dark matter stream is heading past the Earth.
• Far Outliers reports on a visit of samurai to San Francisco in 1860.
• JSTOR Daily notes the wollemi pine of Australia, an ancient tree around in the era of the (non-avian) dinosaurs.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes yet another instance of the decidedly unimpressive leadership of Donald Trump in office.
• Lingua Franca looks at the emergence of an interesting linguistic tic in English, “regular” as in “like a regular William Safire”.
• Marginal Revolution looks at how government propaganda in Rwanda aimed to minimize ethnic tensions and the salience of ethnic identity seems to have actually worked.
• The NYR Daily looks how at the English nationalism that has inspired Brexit is indifferent to the loss of Northern Ireland.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shows how crop data from the United States and Europe can be transformed into abstract art.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that Russia is responding to the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s recognition of a Ukrainian church by trying to organize a Russian church in its territory of Turkey.
• Arnold Zwicky explores the word “teknonymy”, “the practice of referring to parents by the names of their children”.

[PHOTO] East on Maitland under yellow