[PHOTO] Fourteen photos of Christmas lights, in Dovercourt Village and High Park North

[NEWS] Seven Christmas links: Bowie and Bing, horror, ghosts, holidays, xenophobia, Elf on the Shelf

• Dangerous Minds shares the story of the remarkable duet between Bing Crosby and David Bowie.


• Dangerous Minds looks at the 1980 horror film To All A Goodnight.


• Strange Company shares a strange story, of a ghostly choir reportedly heard in 1944, here.


• Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog writes about why she and her husband each take Christmas seriously.


• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the xenophobia behind the idea of a War on Christmas, going back to the anti-Semitism of Henry Ford.


• JSTOR Daily carries suggestions that the idea of the Grinch, from Dr. Seuss, has anti-Semitic origins.


• VICE makes the case for the creepiness of the Elf on the Shelf in the context of a surveillance society, here.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that Betelgeuse is very likely not on the verge of a supernova, here.


• Centauri Dreams looks at the mapping of asteroid Bennu.


• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber reposted, after the election, a 2013 essay looking at the changes in British society from the 1970s on.


• The Dragon's Tales shares a collection of links about the Precambrian Earth, here.


• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about fear in the context of natural disasters, here.


• Far Outliers reports on the problems of privateers versus regular naval units.


• Gizmodo looks at galaxy MAMBO-9, which formed a billion years after the Big Bang.


• io9 writes about the alternate history space race show For All Mankind.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the posters used in Ghana in the 1980s to help promote Hollywood movies.


• Language Hat links to a new book that examines obscenity and gender in 1920s Britain.


• Language Log looks at the terms used for the national language in Xinjiang.


• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with Jeff Jacoby's lack of sympathy towards people who suffer from growing inequality.


• Marginal Revolution suggests that urbanists should have an appreciation for Robert Moses.


• Sean Marshall writes, with photos, about his experiences riding a new Bolton bus.


• Caryl Philips at the NYR Daily writes about Rachmanism, a term wrongly applied to the idea of avaricious landlords like Peter Rachman, an immigrant who was a victim of the Profumo scandal.


• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper looking at the experience of aging among people without families.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why the empty space in an atom can never be removed.


• Strange Maps shares a festive map of London, a reindeer, biked by a cyclist.


• Window on Eurasia notes how Mongolia twice tried to become a Soviet republic.


• Arnold Zwicky considers different birds with names starting with x.