[BLOG] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• At Anthropology.net, Kamzib Kamrani looks at the Yamnaya horse culture of far eastern Europe and their connection to the spread of the Indo-Europeans.
  
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the predicted collision of China's Tiangong-1 space station. Where will it fall?


• James Bow notes a Kickstarter funding effort to revive classic Canadian science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.


• Centauri Dreams notes the impending retirement of the pioneering Kepler telescope, and what's being done in the time before this retirement.


• D-Brief notes how nanowires made of gold and titanium were used to restore the sight of blind mice.


• Russell Darnley takes a look at the indigenous people of Riau province, the Siak, who have been marginalized by (among other things) the Indonesian policy of transmigration.


• Dead Things reports on more evidence of Denisovan ancestry in East Asian populations, with the suggestion that the trace of Denisovan ancestry in East Asia came from a different Denisovan population than the stronger traces in Melanesia.


• Hornet Stories paints a compelling portrait of the West Texas oasis-like community of Marfa.


• JSTOR Daily notes how indigenous mythology about illness was used to solve a hantavirus outbreak in New Mexico in the 1990s.


• Language Log praises the technical style of a Google Translate translation of a text from German to English.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that, under the Shah, Iran was interested in building nuclear plants. Iranian nuclear aspirations go back a long way.


• The LRB Blog looks at the unsettling elements of the literary, and other, popularity of Jordan Peterson.


• Marginal Revolution notes the continuing existence of a glass ceiling even in relatively egalitarian Iceland.


• The NYR Daily looks at the unsettling elements behind the rise of Xi Jinping to unchecked power. Transitions from an oligarchy to one-man rule are never good for a country, never mind one as big as China.


• Drew Rowsome writes about Love, Cecil, a new film biography of photographer Cecil Beaton.


• Peter Rukavina celebrates the 25th anniversary of his move to Prince Edward Island. That province, my native one, is much the better for his having moved there. Congratulations!


• Window on Eurasia looks at a strange story of Russian speculation about Kazakh pan-Turkic irredentism for Orenburg that can be traced back to one of its own posts.


• At Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Frances Woolley takes the time to determine that Canadian university professors tend to be more left-wing than the general Canadian population, and to ask why this is the case.