[BLOG] Seven Christmas links

[rfmcdonald]

• Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look, at Christmas time, at the ice-filled Korolev Crater on Mars.


• Joe. My. God. shares his Christmas time favourite post, "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Lesbians".


• Language Log takes a look at the qi'lin of ancient Chinese myth. How closely is it related to the reindeer? What does linguistics have to say about the matter?


• Jamie Bradburn shares some excerpts from the Toronto Daily Mail of 1888, published as Christmas approached.


• Drew Rowsome shares some seasonal GIFs, some NSFW, suitable for the holidays.


• Window on Eurasia reports on how some in Russia want to protect the indigenous Father Frost against encroachment by Santa Claus.


• Arnold Zwicky--now on Twitter at @ArnoldZwicky--celebrates the 2018 Syfy film Santa Jaws.

Comments

[stoutfellow]

I'm currently reading "The Chinese Fairy Book", a 1921 compilation of stories. In one story, it describes the "kilin" as an "okapi-like legendary beast". This is an interesting word choice, since before European explorers finally found it, they referred to it as the "African unicorn", and the qi'lin is often called the "Chinese unicorn". (I would guess that okapi were on the translator's mind because it had so recently come into European cognizance.)