rfmcdonald | Entries tagged with agriculture

NOW Toronto looks at the Pickering nuclear plant and its role in providing fuel for space travel.

In some places like California, traffic is so bad that airlines actually play a role for high-end commuters. CBC reports.

Goldfish released into the wild are a major issue for the environment in Québec, too. CTV News reports.

China's investments in Jamaica have good sides and bad sides. CBC reports.

A potato museum in Peru might help solve world hunger. The Guardian reports.

Is the Alberta-Saskatchewan alliance going to be a lasting one? Maclean's considers.

Is the fossil fuel industry collapsing? The Tyee makes the case.

Should Japan and Europe co-finance a EUrasia trade initiative to rival China's? Bloomberg argues.

Should websites receive protection as historically significant? VICE reports.

Food tourism in the Maritimes is a very good idea. Global News reports.

Atlantic Canada lobster exports to China thrive as New England gets hit by the trade war. CBC reports.

The Bloc Québécois experienced its revival by drawing on the same demographics as the provincial CAQ. Maclean's reports.

Population density is a factor that, in Canada, determines political issues, splitting urban and rural voters. The National Observer observes.

US border policies aimed against migration from Mexico have been harming businesses on the border with Canada. The National Post reports.

The warming of the ocean is changing the relationship of coastal communities with their seas. The Conversation looks.

Archival research in the digital age differs from what occurred in previous eras. The Conversation explains.

The Persian-language Wikipedia is an actively contested space. Open Democracy reports.

Vox notes how the US labour shortage has been driven partly by workers quitting the labour force, here.

Laurie Penny at WIRED has a stirring essay about hope, about the belief in some sort of future.

Anthropology.net notes a remarkably thorough genetic analysis of a piece of chewing gum 5700 years old that reveals volumes of data about the girl who chew it.

'Nathan Burgoine at Apostrophen writes an amazing review of Cats that actually does make me want to see it.

Bad Astronomy reports on galaxy NGC 6240, a galaxy produced by a collision with three supermassive black holes.

Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog writes about the mechanics of journalism.

Centauri Dreams argues that the question of whether humans will walk on exoplanets is ultimately distracting to the study of these worlds.

Crooked Timber shares a Sunday morning photo of Bristol.

The Dragon's Tales notes that India has a launch date of December 2021 for its first mission in its Gaganyaan crewed space program.

Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina looks at the Saturn C-1 rocket.

Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog considers if the vogue for minimalism meets the criteria to be considered a social movement.

Far Outliers ?notes how, in the War of 1812, some in New England considered the possibility of seceding from the Union.

Gizmodo looks at evidence of the last populations known of Homo erectus, on Java just over a hundred thousand years ago.

Mark Graham links to a new paper co-authored by him looking at how African workers deal with the gig economy.

io9 announces that the Michael Chabon novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is set to become a television series.

Joe. My. God. shares a report that Putin gave Trump anti-Ukrainian conspiracy theories.

JSTOR Daily considers what a world with an economy no longer structured around oil could look like.

Language Hat takes issue with the latest talk of the Icelandic language facing extinction.

Language Log shares a multilingual sign photographed in Philadelphia's Chinatown.

Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the document release revealing the futility of the war in Afghanistan.

The LRB Blog looks at class identity and mass movements and social democracy.

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution suggests that, even if the economy of China is larger than the United States, Chinese per capita poverty means China does not have the leading economy.

Diane Duane at Out of Ambit writes about how she is writing a gay sex scene.

Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reflects on "OK Boomer".

Roads and Kingdoms interviews Mexican chef Ruffo Ibarra.

Peter Rukavina shares his list of levees for New Year's Day 2020 on PEI.

The Russian Demographics Blog shares a map indicating fertility rates in the different regions of the European Union.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains how quantum physics are responsible for vast cosmic structures.

Charles Soule at Whatever explains his reasoning behind his new body-swap novel.

Window on Eurasia notes how the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Paris show the lack of meaningful pro-Russian sentiment there.

Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell talks about his lessons from working in the recent British election.

Arnold Zwicky looks at a syncretic, Jewish-Jedi, holiday poster.

Charlie Stross at Antipope shares an essay he recently presented on artificial intelligence and its challenges for us.

P. Kerim Friedman writes at {anthro}dendum about the birth of the tea ceremony in the Taiwan of the 1970s.

Anthropology net reports on a cave painting nearly 44 thousand years old in Indonesia depicting a hunting story.

Architectuul looks at some temporary community gardens in London.

Bad Astronomy reports on the weird history of asteroid Ryugu.

The Buzz talks about the most popular titles borrowed from the Toronto Public Library in 2019.

Caitlin Kelly talks at the Broadside Blog about her particular love of radio.

Centauri Dreams talks about the role of amateur astronomers in searching for exoplanets, starting with LHS 1140 b.

John Quiggin at Crooked Timber looks at what is behind the rhetoric of "virtue signalling".

Dangerous Minds shares concert performance from Nirvana filmed the night before the release of Nevermind.

Bruce Dorminey notes new evidence that, even before the Chixculub impact, the late Cretaceous Earth was staggering under environmental pressures.

Myron Strong at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about how people of African descent in the US deal with the legacies of slavery in higher education.

Far Outliers reports on the plans in 1945 for an invasion of Japan by the US.

L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing gathers together a collection of the author's best writings there.

Gizmodo notes the immensity of the supermassive black hole, some 40 billion solar masses, at the heart of galaxy Holm 15A 700 million light-years away.

Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res writes about the issue of how Wichita is to organize its civic politics.

io9 argues that the 2010s were a decade where the culture of the spoiler became key.

The Island Review points readers to the podcast Mother's Blood, Sister's Songs, an exploration of the links between Ireland and Iceland.

Joe. My. God. reports on the claim of the lawyer of the killer of a mob boss that the QAnon conspiracy inspired his actions. This strikes me as terribly dangerous.

JSTOR Daily looks at a study examining scholarly retractions.

Language Hat shares an amusing cartoon illustrating the relationships of the dialects of Arabic.

Language Log lists ten top new words in the Japanese language.

Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the dissipation of American diplomacy by Trump.

The LRB Blog looks at the many problems in Sparta, Greece, with accommodating refugees, for everyone concerned.

Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting the decline of the one-child policy in China has diminished child trafficking, among other crimes.

Sean Marshall, looking at transit in Brampton, argues that transit users need more protection from road traffic.

Russell Darnley shares excerpts from essays he wrote about the involvement of Australia in the Vietnam War.

Peter Watts talks about his recent visit to a con in Sofia, Bulgaria, and about the apocalypse, here.

The NYR Daily looks at the corporatization of the funeral industry, here.

Diane Duane writes, from her own personal history with Star Trek, about how one can be a writer who ends up writing for a media franchise.

Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections considers the job of tasting, and rating, different cuts of lamb.

The Planetary Society Blog looks at a nondescript observatory in the Mojave desert of California that maps the asteroids of the solar system.

Roads and Kingdoms interviews Eduardo Chavarin about, among other things, Tijuana.

Drew Rowsome loves the SpongeBob musical.

Peter Rukavina announces that Charlottetown has its first public fast charger for electric vehicles.

The Russian Demographics Blog considers the impact of space medicine, here.

The Signal reports on how the Library of Congress is making its internet archives more readily available, here.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers how the incredibly isolated galaxy MCG+01-02-015 will decay almost to nothing over almost uncountable eons.

Strange Company reports on the trial and execution of Christopher Slaughterford for murder. Was there even a crime?

Strange Maps shares a Coudenhove-Kalergi map imagining the division of the world into five superstates.

Understanding Society considers entertainment as a valuable thing, here.

Denis Colombi at Une heure de peine announces his new book, Où va l'argent des pauvres?

John Scalzi at Whatever looks at how some mailed bread triggered a security alert, here.

Window on Eurasia reports on the massive amount of remittances sent to Tajikistan by migrant workers, here.

Arnold Zwicky notes a bizarre no-penguins sign for sale on Amazon.

JSTOR Daily considers whether koalas are actually going extinct, here.

JSTOR Daily looks at the life and accomplishments of Alexander Von Humboldt, here.

JSTOR Daily looks at how a move to California doomed the Oneida Community, here.

JSTOR Daily considers how the genetically diverse wild relatives of current crops could help our agriculture, here.

JSTOR Daily looks at the devastating flood of Florence in 1966, here.

JSTOR Daily points out there is no template for emotional intelligence, here.

JSTOR Daily explores some remarkable lumpy pearls, here.

JSTOR Daily notes an 1870 scare over the future of men, here.

JSTOR Daily reports on the staging of war scenes for the 1945 documentary The Battle of San Pietro, here.

JSTOR Daily considers the bioethics of growing human brains in a petri dish, here.

CBC reports on suggestions that Kingston should plan for a population expected to grow significantly in coming decades, to not just expand but to have intensified development downtown.

The rental housing market for Kingston is very tight, not only because of large student populations. Global News reports.

Kingstonist reports on Queen's plans to build a large new student residence on Albert Street, here.

The Whig-Standard carries an account of the new Queen's principal being interrogated by Kingston city council over issues of friction between school and city, including costs for policing (and not only at Homecoming weekend).

This summer, farmers in the Kingston area saw poor crop production as a consequence of the weather. Global News reports.

Happily, the budget of the city of Kingston was made to accommodate costs for Murney, the police force's horse. Global News reports.

Weston Food's plant in Kingston has seen forty jobs cut. Global News reports.

Lake Ontario Park, in the west of the city, may be reopened to limited camping. The Whig-Standard reports.

Kingston hockey player Rebecca Thompson is now playing for the team of Queen's. Global News reports.

Queen's University is not alone in urging its exchange students in Hong Kong to evacuate. The Whig-Standard reports.

Yesterday, a plane crashed in the west of Kingston, killing all seven people aboard. CBC reports.

Chris Morris at Kingstonist has a long feature examining the Kingston Street Mission, interviewing outreach worker Marilyn McLean about her work with the homeless of the city.

Kingston-born street nurse Cathy Crowe talks about homelessness, in Kingston and across Canada. Global News reports.

The family of Royal Military College cadet Joe Grozelle, who disappeared from his campus and was later found dead two decades ago, wants his fate reinvestigated. Global News reports.

A hundred students at a Kingston public school are being taught how to skate, part of a pilot program. Global News reports.

Jamie Bradburn took a look at now-effaced Toronto cemetery Potter's Field, here.

Kingston, Ontario's Skeleton Park is a remarkable legacy. Global News reports.

CBC Saskatoon reports on the origins of Halloween in harvest events.

The Hong Kong protests took on a new tinge this Halloween. CBC reports.

The Vancouver tradition of Halloween fireworks may be dying out. The National Post reports.

Guardian Cities looks around the world, from Derry to West Hollywood, at local celebrations of Halloween.

Gizmodo shares an image of a ghostly collision of galaxies in deep space.

Dangerous Minds shared some album covers inspired by Halloween.

CBC looks at the very low rate of candy tampering in Canada over the past decade.

JSTOR Daily considers how the Great Pumpkin of Peanuts came to be so great.

Bad Astronomer notes the latest news on interstellar comet 2/Borisov.

The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly emphasizes how every writer does need an editor.

Centauri Dreams notes how the gas giant GJ 3512 b, half the mass of Jupiter orbiting a red dwarf star closely, is an oddly massive exoplanet.

Gina Schouten at Crooked Timber looks at inter-generational clashes on parenting styles.

D-Brief looks at the methods of agriculture that could conceivably sustain a populous human colony on Mars.

Bruce Dorminey argues that we on Earth need something like Starfleet Academy, to help us advance into space.

Colby King at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at how the socio-spatial perspective helps us understand the development of cities.

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io9 looks at Proxima, a contemporary spaceflight film starring Eva Green.

JSTOR Daily looks at how the intense relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia began in, and reflected, the era of Jim Crow.

Language Hat notes a report suggesting that multilingualism helps ward off dementia.

Language Log takes issue with the names of the mascots of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the emergence of a ninth woman complaining about being harassed by Al Franken.

Marginal Revolution links to a new paper arguing that the Washington Consensus worked.

The NYR Daily shares an Aubrey Nolan cartoon illustrating the evacuation of war children in the United Kingdom during the Second World War.

At Out of Ambit, Diane Duane shares a nice collection of links for digital mapmakers.

The Planetary Society Blog looks at how the European Space Agency supports the cause of planetary defense.

Roads and Kingdoms interviews Kenyan writer Kevin Mwachiro at length.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel reports on how a mysterious fast radio burst helped illuminate an equally mysterious galactic halo.

Strange Company reports on the mysterious and unsolved death in 1936 of Canadian student Thomas Moss in an Oxfordshire hayrick.

Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps notes how Mount Etna is a surpassingly rare decipoint.

Understanding Society considers the thought of Kojève, after Hegel, on freedom.

Window on Eurasia looks at the falling numbers of Russians, and of state support for Russian language and culture, in independent Central Asia.

Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at how individual consumer responses are much less effective than concerted collective action in triggering change.

Arnold Zwicky reports on some transgender fashion models.

Oh, why not a fashion show organized around the theme of Cheetos? VICE reports.

A farmer in the Gaspé peninsula is trying to retrieve all of his missing yaks. CBC Montreal has it.

A Newfoundland researcher and artist is examining the relationship of the island with Atlantic slavery. Global News reports.

Atlas Obscura takes a look at the alternative comics scene in the Middle East, centered on Lebanon.

Vanity Fair shares an account of how Netflix tried to sell itself, and its model, to Blockbuster and failed.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that mysterious Boyajian's Star has nearly two dozen identified analogues, like HD 139139.

James Bow reports from his con trip to Portland.

Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog notes the particular pleasure of having old friends, people with long baselines on us.

Centauri Dreams describes a proposed mission to interstellar comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov).

The Crux notes how feeding cows seaweed could sharply reduce their methane production.

D-Brief notes that comet C/2019 Q4 is decidedly red.

Bruce Dorminey notes a claim that water-rich exoplanet K2-18b might well have more water than Earth.

Gizmodo reports on a claim that Loki, biggest volcano on Io, is set to explode in a massive eruption.

io9 notes that Warner Brothers is planning a Funko Pop movie.

Joe. My. God. notes the claim of Donald Trump that he is ready for war with Iran.

JSTOR Daily looks at how people in early modern Europe thought they could treat wounds with magic.

Language Hat considers how "I tip my hat" might, translated, sound funny to a speaker of Canadian French.

Language Log considers how speakers of Korean, and other languages, can find word spacing a challenge.

Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the partisan politics of the US Supreme Court.

At the NYR Daily, Naomi Klein makes a case for the political and environmental necessity of a Green New Deal.

Peter Watts takes apart a recent argument proclaiming the existence of free will.

Peter Rukavina tells how travelling by rail or air from Prince Edward Island to points of the mainland can not only be terribly inconvenient, but environmentally worse than car travel. PEI does need better rail connections.

The Russian Demographics Blog examines how different countries in Europe will conduct their census in 2020.

Window on Eurasia shares the arguments of a geographer who makes the point that China has a larger effective territory than Russia (or Canada).

Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at a 1971 prediction by J.G. Ballard about demagoguery and guilt, something that now looks reasonably accurate.

Arnold Zwicky considers models of segregation of cartoon characters from normal ones in comics.

La Presse notes the restoration of the old Archambault sign to its location at Sainte-Catherine and Berri. (I am reminded of the Sam the Record Man sign in Toronto.)

HuffPostQuebec notes that some of the strings of balls from 18 nuances de gai are up for sale.

Expelling Hong Kong activists from the Montréal pride parade should not have been done. CBC Montreal reports.

Camillien-Houde Way, on Mount Royal, will become more difficult for cyclists with the removal of a traffic light. CTV reports.

Les Forges de Montréal, heritage to the city's blacksmithing tradition, has been saved. Global News reports.

Historian Desmond Morton, of McGill, has died. CBC Montreal reports.

The City of Montréal is trying to fight against food insecurity. CBC Montreal U>reports.

Craig Desson at CBC Montreal reports on the lasting legacy of Moshe Safdie and Habitat 67, and the replication of this prefabricated concrete model in rising Asia.

Actions of clients are the leading causes of delays on the Metro. CBC Montreal reports.

La Presse looks at the challenges facing changing Lachine-Est, here.

The small New Brunswick town of Hillsborough may lose its only grocery store. Global News reports.

Guardian Cities looks at the vexed question of how, or if, the Northern Ireland city of Derry should celebrate its political murals.

Guardian Cities notes that Paris will soon host a substantial rooftop farm.

Tom van Laer and Elif Izberk-Bilgin at The Conversation explain why reviews of facilities in holy cities, like Mecca, tend to be so inflated.

Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait looks at Abell 30, a star that has been reborn in the long process of dying.

Centauri Dreams uses the impending launch of LightSail 2 to discuss solar sails in science fiction.

John Quiggin at Crooked Timber, as part of a series of the fragility of globalization, considers if migration flows can be reversed. (He concludes it unlikely.)

The Crux considers if the record rain in the Midwest (Ontario, too, I would add) is a consequence of climate change.

D-Brief notes that the failure of people around the world to eat enough fruits and vegetables may be responsible for millions of premature dead.

Dangerous Minds introduces readers to gender-bending Italian music superstar Renato Zero.

Dead Things notes how genetic examinations have revealed the antiquity of many grapevines still used for wine.

Gizmodo notes that the ocean beneath the icy crust of Europa may contain simple salt.

io9 tries to determine the nature of the many twisted timelines of the X-Men movie universe of Fox.

JSTOR Daily observes that the Stonewall Riots were hardly the beginning of the gay rights movement in the US.

Language Log looks at the mixed scripts on a bookstore sign in Beijing.

Dave Brockington at Lawyers, Guns, and Money argues that Jeremy Corbyn has a very strong hold on his loyal followers, perhaps even to the point of irrationality.

Marginal Revolution observes that people who create public genetic profiles for themselves also undo privacy for their entire biological family.

Sean Marshall at Marshall's Musings shares a photo of a very high-numbered street address, 986039 Oxford-Perth Road in Punkeydoodle's Corners.

The NYR Daily examines the origins of the wealth of Lehman Brothers in the exploitation of slavery.

The Planetary Society Blog shares a panorama-style photo of the Apollo 11 Little West Crater on the Moon.

Drew Rowsome notes that classic documentary Paris Is Burning has gotten a makeover and is now playing at TIFF.

Peter Rukavina, writing from a trip to Halifax, notes the convenience of the Eduroam procedures allowing users of one Maritime university computer network to log onto another member university's network.

Dylan Reid at Spacing considers how municipal self-government might be best embedded in the constitution of Canada.

The Speed River Journal's Van Waffle pays tribute to the wildflower Speedwell, a name he remembers from Watership Down.

Strange Maps shares a crowdsourced map depicting which areas of Europe are best (and worst) for hitchhikers.

Window on Eurasia notes the distribution of native speakers of Russian, with Israel emerging as more Russophone than some post-Soviet states.

Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes the first time that an exoplanet, HR 8799e, has been directly observed using optical interferometry.

Centauri Dreams notes the possibility, demonstrated by the glimpsing of a circumplanetary disc around exoplanet PDS 70b, that we might be seeing a moon system in formation.

The Citizen Science Salon looks what observers in Antarctica are contributing to our wealth of scientific knowledge.

The Dragon's Tales shares links to articles looking at the latest findings on the Precambrian Earth.

The Frailest Thing's L.M. Sacasas writes about his ambivalent response to a Twitter that, by its popularity, undermines the open web.

Gizmodo notes that NASA is going to open up the International Space Station to tourists.

JSTOR Daily looks at how croquet, upon its introduction in the 19th century United States, was seen as scandalous for the way it allowed men and women to mix freely.

Shakezula at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the unaccountable fondness of at least two Maine Republican legislators for the Confederacy.

Marginal Revolution suggests that the economic success of Israel in recent decades is a triumph of neoliberalism.

Stephen Ellis at the NYR Daily writes about the gymnastics of Willem de Kooning.

Drew Rowsome profiles out comic Brendan D'Souza.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the still strange galaxy NGC 1052-DF2, apparently devoid of dark matter.

John Scalzi at Whatever shares his theory about a fixed quantity of flavor in strawberries of different sizes.

Window on Eurasia looks at a contentious plan for a territorial swap between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Matt Thompson at anthro{dendum} writes about the complex, often anthropological, satire in the comics of Charles Addams.

Architectuul looks at the photography of Roberto Conte.

Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes a new computer model suggesting a supernova can be triggered by throwing a white dwarf into close orbit of a black hole.

D-Brief notes how ammonia on the surface of Pluto hints at the existence of a subsurface ocean.

Bruce Dorminey notes how the bombardment of Earth by debris from a nearby supernova might have prompted early hominids to become bipedal.

The Dragon's Tales notes that NASA has awarded its first contract for its plans in lunar space.

Far Outliers notes the reactions, within and without the Soviet Union, to the 1991 Soviet coup attempt.

Matt Novak at Gizmodo's Paleofuture notes how, in 1995, Terry Pratchett predicted the rise of online Nazis.

io9 notes the impending physical release this summer of DVDs of the Deep Space Nine documentary What We Left Behind.

JSTOR Daily suggests some ways to start gardening in your apartment.

Victor Mair at Language Log claims that learning Literary Chinese is a uniquely difficult experience. Thoughts?

The NYR Daily features a wide-ranging interview with EU official Michel Barnier focused particularly, but not exclusively, on Brexit.

The Planetary Society Blog notes that an Internet vote has produced a majority in favour of naming outer system body 2007 OR10 Gonggang.

The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer considers the possibility that foreign investors in Mexico might be at risk, at least feel themselves at risk, from the government of AMLO.

The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress archives spreadsheets.

Van Waffle at the Speed River Journal looks at magenta spreen, a colourful green that he grows in his garden.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes how we on Earth are carelessly wasting irreplaceable helium.

Window on Eurasia refers to reports claiming that a third of the population of Turkmenistan has fled that Central Asian state. Could this be accurate?

CBC Montreal reports on how a downsizing Montréal-area convent recently put on a very large yard sale.

Will the staged construction of a tramway in Québec City lead to the partial completion of that project? CBC examines the issue.

The New Brunswick city of Saint John recently celebrated its Loyalist heritage. Global News reports.

The new community garden in Moncton sounds lovely. Global News reports.

CityLab notes the sad precedent of the privatization of an old Carnegie Library in Washington D.C. into an Apple Store.

CityLab considers if cycling can make inroads in pro-car Dallas.

Open Democracy examines the controversy surrounding the contested construction of an Orthodox church in Yekaterinburg.

The Conversation notes that ponds on farmers' fields in the Prairies can serve as useful carbon sinks.

Karen Filbee-Dexter at The Conversation notes that, with climate change, kelp forests in the Arctic Ocean are on the verge of great expansion.

Evan Gough at Universe Today notes that including a space telescope or two would make images of black holes that much sharper.

Phys.org notes a new study suggesting that there was a major burst of massive star formation in our galaxy three billion years ago.

Reddit's mapporn shares a map imagining what climate would look like on a world where land took the place of sea and vice versa.

Circumstellar habitable zones may be much narrower than previously hoped, Universe Today notes.

NOW Toronto notes changes in Ontario law that might expose endangered species like cormorants to hunting.

The world's glaciers have lost more than nine trillion tons of ice in the past century, Universe Today reports.

Politico Europe notes that Spain is at particular risk of desertification as climate change proceeds.

The Smithsonian Magazine notes that, as growing seasons extend thanks to global warming, so do allergy-causing pollen counts.

Wired notes that Apple is transforming itself into a luxury brand. Is this an unsustainable niche?

Wired examines how Google's human AI experts are trying to train artificial intelligences to do their work.

Universe Today notes that SpaceIL is planning to return to the Moon with a Beresheet 2 probe.

The New Yorker looks at the progress made towards the roboticization of agriculture, looking at strawberry harvesting in particular. Can it be done?

Stephen Buranyi writes at the NYR Daily about the impact of gene editing technologies on humanity. How will we manage them? Can we?

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait argues that the new American plan to put people on the Moon in 2024 is unlikely to succeed in that timeframe.

The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly considers whether or not women should travel alone, for safety reasons. (That choice is one I've not had to make myself, thanks to my male privilege; I'm very sorry others have to consider this.)

Centauri Dreams shares the thinking of Gregory Benford on Lurkers, self-replicating probes produced by another civilization not signaling their existence to Earth.

Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber argues that policy-making these days is often fundamentally ill-conceived, closing off possibilities for the future.

The Crux notes the remarkable powers of beet juice, as a tonic for athletes for instance.

D-Brief looks at the slot canyons of Titan, bearing similarities in structure and perhaps origin to like structures in Utah.

Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina, celebrating five years of blogging, links to his ten most popular posts.

Gizmodo notes the creation for a list of nearly two thousand nearby stars that the TESS planet-hunter might target for a search for Earth-like worlds.

Joe. My. God. notes that the Austrian president has confirmed the New Zealand shooter has made a financial donation to a far-right group in Austria.

JSTOR Daily looks at Inge Lehmann, the scientist who determined the nature of the inner core of the Earth.

Language Hat reports on a new scholarly publication, hundreds of pages long, gathering together the curses and profanities of the Middle East and North Africa.

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money does not seem impressed by the argument of Mike Lee that pronatalism is a good response to global warming.

The Map Room Blog notes the impressive maps of Priscilla Spencer, created for fantasy books.

Marginal Revolution links to a paper that examines the positions of Jews in the economies of eastern Europe, as a "rural service minority".

The Russian Demographics Blog links to a paper noting the ways in which increased human development has, and has not, led to convergence in family structures around the world.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains how, despite the expanding universe, we can still see very distant points.

Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps reports on the recent mistakes made by Google Maps in Japan.

Yorkshire Ranter Alexander Harrowell explains why the United Kingdom, after Brexit, does not automatically become a member of the European Economic Area.

Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the different factors, often unrecognized, going onto the formation of nonsense names, like those of the characters from Lilo and Stitch.

D-Brief notes a theory that human brains grew so large fueled by a diet of bone marrow.

Alligators provide scientists with invaluable models of how dinosaurs heard sound. D-Brief reports.

D-Brief examines pulsar PSR J0002+6216, a body ejected from its prior orbit so violently by its formative supernova that it is now escaping the Milky Way Galaxy.

D-Brief notes the remarkable glow emanating from the quasar in the Teacup Galaxy 1.1 billion light-years away.

D-Brief notes genetic evidence suggesting that Anatolian hunter-gatherers, far from being replaced by migrants, adopted agriculture on their own.

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[NEWS] Twenty news links
[BLOG] Some Monday links
[BLOG] Some Friday links
[URBAN NOTE] Ten JSTOR Daily links (@jstor_daily)
[URBAN NOTE] Fifteen Kingston, Ontario links (#kingstonon)
[NEWS] Ten Halloween links (#halloween)
[BLOG] Some Tuesday links
[NEWS] News from around the world: Cheetos fashion, Gaspé yaks, NL slavery, Lebanon comics, Netflix
[BLOG] Some Wednesday links
[URBAN NOTE] Ten Montréal links
[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, Hillsborough, Derry, Paris, Mecca
[BLOG] Some Thursday links
[BLOG] Some Sunday links
[BLOG] Some Friday links
[URBAN NOTE] Seven cities links: Montréal;, Québec City, Saint John, Moncton, D.C., Dallas, ...
[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: ponds, Arctic kelp, black holes, starbursts, inverted world
[NEWS] Five notes about fragile lifes: CHZs, endangered Ontario, glaciers, Spain, allergies
[NEWS] Five tech links: Apple, AI, Beresheet 2, agricultural robots, gene editing
[BLOG] Some Thursday links
[NEWS] Five D-Brief links: brains and marrow, dinosaurs, PSR J0002+6216, Teacup Galaxy, Anatolia

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A Bit More Detail

Assorted Personal Notations, Essays, and Other Jottings

Entries tagged with agriculture

[NEWS] Twenty news links

[BLOG] Some Monday links

[BLOG] Some Friday links

[URBAN NOTE] Ten JSTOR Daily links (@jstor_daily)

[URBAN NOTE] Fifteen Kingston, Ontario links (#kingstonon)

[NEWS] Ten Halloween links (#halloween)

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

[NEWS] News from around the world: Cheetos fashion, Gaspé yaks, NL slavery, Lebanon comics, Netflix

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[URBAN NOTE] Ten Montréal links

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, Hillsborough, Derry, Paris, Mecca

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

[BLOG] Some Friday links

[URBAN NOTE] Seven cities links: Montréal;, Québec City, Saint John, Moncton, D.C., Dallas, ...

[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: ponds, Arctic kelp, black holes, starbursts, inverted world

[NEWS] Five notes about fragile lifes: CHZs, endangered Ontario, glaciers, Spain, allergies

[NEWS] Five tech links: Apple, AI, Beresheet 2, agricultural robots, gene editing

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[NEWS] Five D-Brief links: brains and marrow, dinosaurs, PSR J0002+6216, Teacup Galaxy, Anatolia

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February 2021

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