[BLOG] Some Saturday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait explains the astounding brilliance of distant quasar J043947.08+163415.7, as bright as ten trillion suns.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly considers elements of her personal style. (It makes me wonder about revising my own, to be perhaps more flamboyant.)


• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber links to a Guardian article of his, imagining a democratic socialist Australia in 2050.


• The Dragon's Tales links to Project Lyra, a proposal for a rendezvous mission to 'Oumuamua.


• Far Outliers places the Three Gorges Dam construction, and the mass population displacements involved, in the context of a long Chinese history of like relocations.


• Gizmodo examines a paper suggesting, based in part on lunar impact rates, an increase in the numbers of asteroids colliding with Earth in the era 300 million years ago.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the watchers, the now-forgotten profession of women who would attend to the dying.


• The NYR Daily looks at the problems that women encounter in getting their medical concerns taken seriously.


• Towleroad writes about sex advisor Alexander Cheves.


• Window on Eurasia notes a report that the inhabitants of the Belarus village of Oslyanka, transferred from Russia in 1964, have no wish to be transferred back.


• Arnold Zwicky notes the publication of a study of the English auxiliary system begun by his late colleague Ivan Sag.