[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Architectuul talks about the remarkable and distinctive housing estates of south London, like Alexandra Road, currently under pressure from developers and unsympathetic governments.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at Bennu, set to be visited by the OSIRIS-REx probe.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about meeting people you've met online via social networks, making friends even. Myself, I've done this all the time: Why not use these networks to their fullest in a fragmented vast world?


• Centauri Dreams celebrates the now-completed mission of the exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope.


• D-Brief looks at the distinctive seasons of Triton, and the still-open questions surrounding Neptune's largest moon.


• At JSTOR Daily, Nancy Bilyeau writes about the import of the famous Gunpowder Plot of 1605, something often underplayed despite its potential for huge change and its connection to wider conflicts.


• Language Hat notes the name of God in the Hebrew tradition, Yahweh. Where did it come from?


• Language Log shares an interesting idea for helping to preserve marginalized languages: Why not throw a language party celebrating the language?


• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the question of what historical general or military leader would do best leading the armies of the living dead.


• The NYR Daily looks at the problems with Erdogan's big investments in public infrastructure in Turkey, starting with the new Istanbul airport.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the possibility of life in the very early universe. Earth-like life could have started within a billion years of the Big Bang; Earth life might even have begun earlier, for that matter.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shows a map of Europe identifying which countries are the more chauvinistic in the continent.


• Window on Eurasia notes the strength of the relatively recent division between Tatars and Bashkirs, two closely related people with separate identities grown strong in the Soviet era.