[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

Anand Pandian at anthro{dendum} considers Ursula K Le Guin from the perspective of an anthropology doing fieldwork in cultures very different from their own.

Anthropology.net notes the discovery, in India, of Levallois stone tools dating 385 thousand years, long before the entry of Homo sapiens into the area.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares video, assembled by an amateur astronomer, of the ongoing expansion of debris around the Crab Pulsar.

Centauri Dreams reports on the discovery of organic molecules in the Magellanic Clouds.

D-Brief describes the orca Wikie, who learned six words, while Language Log is skeptical of the idea that Wikie's ability demonstrates anything about the orca capacity for language.

Cody Delistraty links

Drew Ex Machina describes the politics and technology that went into the launch of Explorer 1, the United States' first satellite.

JSTOR Daily examines the question of why children and teens in the United States convicted of crimes can face such long periods of imprisonment in jail.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money argues that, sometimes, dialogue is not enough to reach one's opponents.

The LRB Blog considers the apocalyptic imagery tied up in the flooding of the Seine, in Paris.

The Planetary Society Blog celebrates the 14 years of operation of the Mars rover Opportunity, and the science that has come from it.

At Speed River Journal, Van Waffle celebrates the many things that we can learn from trees.