[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Centauri Dreams links to a paper noting that the interiors of planets play a critical role in determining planetary habitability.


• Belle Waring writes at Crooked Timber about imaginative dream worlds, criticized by some as a sort of maladaptive daydreaming I don't buy that; I am interested in what she says about hers.


• D-Brief notes the very recent discovery of a small tyrannosaur.


• Dead Things considers the possibility that a new South African hominin, Australopithecus sediba, might actually be the ancestor of Homo sapiens.


• JSTOR Daily looks at how one negative side-effect of the renewable energy boom is the mass mining of rare earth elements.


• Erik Loomis writes at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the way in which not just history but history fandoms are gendered, the interests of women being neglected or downplayed.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen reports on how a new US-Chinese trade deal will not do much to deal with underlying issues.


• The New APPS Blog notes the great profits made by the gun industry in the United States and the great death toll, too, associated with the guns produced.


• The NYR Daily visits the Northern Ireland town of Carrickfergus, home to Louis MacNeice and made famous by violence as the whole province sits on the edge of something.


• Drew Rowsome takes a look at the queer horror film The Skin of The Teeth.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains what the technical limits of the Hubble Space Telescope are, and why it needs a replacement.


• Window on Eurasia notes changing patters of population change in the different regions of Russia.


• Arnold Zwicky shares some photos of notable public art in Switzerland, starting with The Caring Hand in his ancestral canton of Glarus.