[BLOG] Some Saturday links

[rfmcdonald]

• BlogTO's Derek Flack shares pictures of Toronto in the 1970s.


• James Bow thinks, in response to discussion at Toronto city council, that the position of head of the TTC should be put up to a general election.


• Centauri Dreams notes the ESA's new PLATO planet-hunter telescope, positioned at the Earth-Sun L2 point, and features a guest post from J. N. Nielsen talking of the means by which life will be dispersed.


• City of Brass' Aziz Poonawalla is unsurprised by the recent finding that the NYPD's spying on Muslims was legal.


• Discover's D-Brief notes a very odd pulsar.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a paper wondering if the products of Europa's geysers--including signs of life?--could be sampled by spacecraft.


• Eastern Approaches notes Ukraine's agony.


• Geocurrents notes, in light of Spain's recent law granting Sephardic Jews the right to gain Spanish citizenship, the vexed question of what Sephardim are.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes a study chroniclingly state-by-state startling post-1979 increases in inequality in the US. (I fear a similar study from Canada.)


• Marginal Revolution notes that Ukraine will see the next big financial crisis.


• The Signal notes the exceptional fragility of the ageing rewritable CDs used to store WNYC's radio programs.


• Torontoist noted that Doug Ford won't be running in the next provincial election as a candidate.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little argues that narrative history should seek to explain underlying patterns to be useful.


• Window on Eurasia speculates that Kazakhstan could lead the integration of the Turkic world.