[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[rfmcdonald]

I've a non-trivial backlog, I fear. Look forward to seeing this feature for the next two days!

• 80 Beats notes radical forms of human genetic engineering, like the creation of fetuses with three parents (treansferring a chromosome from one parent to replace another) seems safe.


• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton has a photograph of a crow, uncannily smart bird that it is, grasping a stick. Construction material or tool? Who says you need a neocortex?


• blogTO reviews the great Toronto fire of 1904.


• Centauri Dreams discusses new astronomical theories which may allow space telescopes to detect vegetation on exoplanets.


• Eastern Approaches considers the escalating tensions between Poland and Lithuania, related to the latter nation's Polish minority and their contested histories.


• Maximos62 notes how traditional and substantially legal migration from Papua New Guinea to Australia's Torres Islands are complicating tuberculosis-control measures there.


• At the Power and the Money, Noel Maurer points out that the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba in the early 1960s really did represent a seachange in the Soviet-American strategic balance.


• Slap Upside the Head notes that a transgendered teacher fired from Alberta's Roman Catholic school board has rejected a proposed settlement forcing the teacher to say nothing about the settlement.


• Torontoist examines the Toronto Standard, a mid-19th century newspaper that was strongly conservative and Protestant.