A Bit More Detail

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that Betelgeuse is very likely not on the verge of a supernova, here.


• Centauri Dreams looks at the mapping of asteroid Bennu.


• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber reposted, after the election, a 2013 essay looking at the changes in British society from the 1970s on.


• The Dragon's Tales shares a collection of links about the Precambrian Earth, here.


• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about fear in the context of natural disasters, here.


• Far Outliers reports on the problems of privateers versus regular naval units.


• Gizmodo looks at galaxy MAMBO-9, which formed a billion years after the Big Bang.


• io9 writes about the alternate history space race show For All Mankind.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the posters used in Ghana in the 1980s to help promote Hollywood movies.


• Language Hat links to a new book that examines obscenity and gender in 1920s Britain.


• Language Log looks at the terms used for the national language in Xinjiang.


• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with Jeff Jacoby's lack of sympathy towards people who suffer from growing inequality.


• Marginal Revolution suggests that urbanists should have an appreciation for Robert Moses.


• Sean Marshall writes, with photos, about his experiences riding a new Bolton bus.


• Caryl Philips at the NYR Daily writes about Rachmanism, a term wrongly applied to the idea of avaricious landlords like Peter Rachman, an immigrant who was a victim of the Profumo scandal.


• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper looking at the experience of aging among people without families.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why the empty space in an atom can never be removed.


• Strange Maps shares a festive map of London, a reindeer, biked by a cyclist.


• Window on Eurasia notes how Mongolia twice tried to become a Soviet republic.


• Arnold Zwicky considers different birds with names starting with x.

• The closure of the GM plant in Oshawa will hurt local charities. Global News reports.


• MTL Blog notes that for a variety of factors, including affordability and attractiveness, Montréal is the best city in Canada in which to rent an apartment.


• Guardian Cities reports on a project mapping reported violent crimes in early 14th century London.


• Guardian Cities reports on how the city of Madrid has today banned polluting vehicles from its downtown.


• A high rate of deadly car accidents has led, Guardian Cities reports, to mass protests in the Ghana capital of Accra.

• At Anthropology.net, Kambiz Kamrani notes the Qesem caves of Israel, where four hundred thousand years ago hominids learned to make tools.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that star S2 is about to plunge to its closest approach to Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the heart of our galaxy, and what this means for science.


• Centauri Dreams takes a look at research done on Earth about the atmospheres of super-Earths.


• D-Brief takes a look at the recent research done on the regions on the edges of supermassive black holes.


• Bruce Dorminey notes that the Juno science team thinks that Jupiter probe has exceeded expectations.


• The Dragon's Tales notes the evidence for a massive migration from the steppes into Europe circa 3300 BCE.


• The Frailest Thing's Michael Sacasas makes the argument that the idea of humane technology is something of an oxymoron.


• Imageo notes evidence that permafrost will melt more quickly than previous predicted under the impact of global warming.


• JSTOR Daily looks at explanations for the unusually strong activism among high school students in East Los Angeles in the 1960s.


• Language Hat looks at evidence for the close relationship, in vocabulary and even in grammar, between the Turkish and Western Armenian languages now separated by bad blood.


• Lingua Franca notes how easy it is to change conventions on language use--like pronouns, say--at a well-functioning institution.


• Marginal Revolution looks at the economic progress made, after a recent lull, by Ghana.


• The NYR Daily looks at the growing involvement of the United States in small wars in Africa, starting with Niger and Cameroon.


• Justin Petrone at north! reports on a family visit to his ancestral home of Bari, seeing what little remains of the past there.


• Peter Rukavina wonders, apropos of a very successful experience shopping online at Amazon, how anyone else will be able to compete.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the difference between mathematics and physics. Where is the line to be drawn?


• Strange Maps' Frank Jacobs maps obesity in the United States and in Europe.


• Towleroad reports on the apparent interest of actor Cynthia Nixon in becoming governor of New York.


• John Scalzi at Whatever is a big fan of A Wrinkle in Time, a movie that is not perfect but is still quite good. I'm curious to see it myself.


• Window on Eurasia reports on food riots in isolated Turkmenistan.

Flocks of chattering African Grey parrots, more than a thousand flashes of red and white on grey at a time, were a common site in the deep forests of Ghana in the 1990s. But a 2016 study published in the journal Ibis reveals that these birds, in high demand around the world as pets, and once abundant in forests all over West and central Africa, have almost disappeared from Ghana.

According to the study, the pet trade and forest loss—particularly the felling of large trees where the parrots breed—are major factors contributing to the decline.

Uncannily good at mimicking human speech, the African Grey (and the similar but lesser-known Timneh parrot) is a prized companion in homes around the world. Research has shown that greys are as smart as a two-five year-old human child—capable of developing a limited vocabulary and even forming simple sentences.

Google the term “African Grey talking,” and you’ll find hundreds of videos—including Einstein the talking parrot’s TED presentation—showing the birds whistling and mimicking words and phrases.

The grey parrot has a wide historic range across West and central Africa—1.1 million square miles (nearly three million square kilometers)—from Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana in West Africa, through Nigeria and Cameroon and the Congo forests, to Uganda and western Kenya. Ghana accounts for more than 30,000 square miles (75,000 square kilometers) of that range, but losses of greys there have been some of the most devastating.

[T]he 2015 Cocoa Barometer [is] an overview of sustainability issues in the cocoa sector, written by various European and U.S. NGOs, and was released in the U.S. this week. And what they're really worried about is the people who grow the beans that are ground up to make our beloved treat.

"The world is running out of cocoa farmers," the report states. "Younger generations no longer want to be in cocoa. Older generations are reaching their life expectancy."

It's well known that most cocoa farmers live in extreme poverty. There are about 2 million small-scale farmers in Ghana and Ivory Coast, the West African countries that produce at least 70 percent of the world's cocoa beans. The average cocoa farmer in Ghana earns 84 cents a day, while the average small farmer in Ivory Coast earns just 50 cents a day, according to the Barometer.

I met two women cocoa farmers at the World Cocoa Foundation's meeting in Washington, D.C., this week. Assata Doumbia tells me (in French, through a translator) that she and her husband are both in ECAM, a cooperative of 900 farmers in Ivory Coast, and that their income is "extremely low, almost nothing." What little they do earn goes straight to her husband.

"Men have all the control and decision-making power in the cocoa sector," she says, though she and a few other women are trying to change that for the 120 women in the cooperative.blockquote>

• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talked about her social networks, and about the need to have faith in one's abilities and to be strong.
  
• C.J. Cherryh describes her visit to Grand Coulee Dam.


• Crooked Timber notes the ways in which Ian Macleod is actually a romantic writer.


• The Crux looks at the controversy over the siting of a new telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea.


• Cody Delistraty wonders if social rejection is needed for creative people.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at how difficult it is for Americans with criminal records to get jobs.


• Mathew Ingram notes how young Saudis can find freedom on their phones for apps.


• Language Hat suggests that a computer's word analysis has identified a lost Shakespeare play.


• Personal Reflection's Jim Belshaw linked to his local history columns.


• Otto Pohl notes the culinary links between Ghana and Brazil.


• Peter Rukavina remembers the fallen elms of Charlottetown and reports on innovative uses of Raspberry Pi computers.


• The Search reports on format migration at Harvard's libraries.


• Mark Simpson notes homoeroticism on British television.


• Speed River Journal's Van Waffle describes his discovery of wild leeks.


• Towleroad notes an Austrian magazine's printing of a limited edition with ink including HIV-infected blood, notes a gay Mormon's defense of his life to his church, and observes an Argentine judge who thought it acceptable to give a man who raped a possibly gay child a lighter sentence because of the child's presumed orientation.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes the repeal of blasphemy laws in Norway and examines the questionable concept of Straight Pride.

• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton describes how, playing the new Elite game, he visited the HD 28185 planetary system that features in his written science fiction.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly describes her recent visit to London.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes ways in which close binary stars like Alpha Centauri or Gamma Cephei can develop planets of their own.


• The Dragon's Tales notes a Japanese proposal to jointly build a submarine fleet with Australia.


• Joe. My. God. and Towleroad note how evangelical Christians who somehow are gatekeepers for civil marriage in Mexicali have been trying to block a same-sex marriage by claiming that the grooms are insane.


• Language Hat notes how early Christians, like post-revolutionary Russians, had a very complex relationship with their pagan past. Should they keep it, or not?


• Language Log's Mark Liberman looks at the continued shift from definite to indefinite articles in English.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the people who are continuing to defend David Petraeus.


• Marginal Revolution notes that the recent Gambian coup attempt seems to have cost less than a quarter-million dollars.


• Livejournaler Nicholas Whyte looks at the strange story of Marie Louise Kwiatkowski, a German expatriate who splattered Edward Heath with ink in 1972. Why did she do so? Who was she?


• Otto Pohl criticizes American president Lyndon Johnson for his role in the anti-Nkrumah coup in Ghana.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw looks at architecture in Australia.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer explains why the Saudis are pushing the global price of oil so low.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little looks at hip hop's impact on African-American thinking.


• Window on Eurasia looks at Central Asian countries' policies towards Afghanistan, the complexities of Central Asian migration to Russia, looks at Russia's distinction between nations with and without history, and notes Ukrainian support for a Russian-language television channel independent of Russia.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell finds reflections of the British economy in call centre employment records.

• 3 Quarks Daily links to an essayist wondering why people talked about Gaza not the Yezidis as a way to dismiss Gaza.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly notes how Americans subsidize Walmart's low wages by givibng its employees benefits.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that Chinese plans to reforest Tibet could accelerate the dessication of its watershed since trees suck up water, observes the existence of a new Chinese ICBM and links to a report of a Chinese drone, notes that the ecologies of Europe are especially vulnerable to global warming owing to their physical fragmentation, and notes that Canadian-Mexican relations aren't very friendly.


• Eastern Approaches notes Russia's reaction to the shootdown of the MH17 flight over eastern Ukraine and observes the issues with Poland's coal industry.


• Geocurrents' Martin Lewis calls for American military intervention to protect the Yezidis from genocide.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the plight of the Yezidi, examines the undermining of liberal Zionism, wonders how Russian relations with Southeast Asia will evolve, and after noting the sympathy of some Americans on the left for Russia analyses the consequences of a Russian-Ukrainian war.


• Marginal Revolution wonders if Russia's food import ban is a sign of a shift to a cold war mentality, notes the collapse of the Ukrainian economy, wonders about the strategy of Hamas, and comments on the weakness of the economy of Ghana.


• The New APPS Blog comments on the implications of the firing of American academic Steven Salaita for his blog posts.


• The Pagan Prattle looks at allegations of extensive coverups of pedophilia in the United Kingdom.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw notes the decreasing dynamism of the ageing Australia economy.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer doesn't think there's much of a crisis in Argentina following the debt default, notes ridiculous American efforts to undermine Cuba that just hurt Cubans, examines implications of energy reform and property rights in Mexico, has a good strategy shared with other for dealing with the Islamic State.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little contends with Tyler Cowen's arguments about changing global inequality, and studies the use of mechanisms in international relations theory.


• The Volokh Conspiracy touches upon Palestine's case at the ICC against Israel, looks at Argentina's debt default, and wonders if Internet domain names are property.


• Window on Eurasia has a huge set of links, pointing to the rivalry of Russian Jewish organizations in newly-acquired Crimea, looking at Ukrainian ethnic issues in Russia, suggests that the Donbas war is alienating many Ukrainians in the east from Russia, notes Islamization in Central Asia, suggests that Russia under sanctions could become as isolated as the former SOviet Union, suggests Ukrainian refugees are being settled in non-Russian republics, wonders if Ukraine and Georgia and Moldova will join Turkey as being perennial EU candidates, suggests that Belarusians are divided and claims that Belarusian national identity is challenging Russian influence, looks at the spread of Ukrainian nationalism among Russophones, looks at the consequences of Kurdish independence for the South Caucasus, and notes that one-tenth of young Russians are from the North Caucasus or descend from the region.

• The Dragon's Tales links to a private proposal for the ESA to launch
• The Everyday Sociology Blog's Peter Kaufman finds sociology and mindfulness meditation quite compatible.


• Far Outliers takes a look at the instability of the post-Ottoman Arab kingdoms of the Middle East.


• Joe. My. God. notes that AIDS denialists are trying to shut down YouTube commentary on their ideas by claiming copyright on videos referenced in these commentaries.


• Marginal Revolution notes that Spain is now partaking in the European Union-wide market for health care services.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw observes that, perhaps contrary stereotypes, his Australian region of New England had a very large Chinese population.
  
• J. Otto Pohl notes how the social geography of Accra, Ghana's capital, has changed and not changed over time.


• The Planetary Society Blog features a guest post from Bill Dunford talking of various missions sent to our sun.


• The Volokh Conspiracy announces a week of posts on the position of sharia law in the United States.


• Window on Eurasia notes that Ukrainian Orthodox (Kyiv Patriarchate) as well as Ukrainian Catholics are opposed to Russia, and quotes statistics (the high number of .ru-registered websites outside of Russia, the high Kazakh birth rate, conspiracy theories about Ukraine) which suggest things might be problematic for Russia.

• Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster writes about Titan, first noting an apparent river valley flowing into the north-polar Ligeia Mare, the second reflecting on the possible subsurface oceans of that Saturnian moon.


• At Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell reflects on the ignoble record of the Economist in relation to the Irish potato famine of the 1840s.


• The Dragon's Tales' Will Baird notes research suggesting that trees in the Amazonian rain forest have survived temperature peaks akin to those likely to be produced by global warming.


• GNXP's Razib Khan links to a 1930 article projecting a total American population of 180 million by 1980, noting that long-range demographic projections are problematic.


• Language Log's Victor Mair notes the problems with maintaining character fluency in Sinitic cultures like China and Japan.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer observes that Ghana has been forced by a UN tribunal to return to Argentina a naval ship held at the request of Argentian's debtors.


• A Registan guest poster, Anvar Malikov, observes that the questions of Afghanistan will dominate policy-making in Uzbekistan.


• Via Peter Rukavina, I've learned that peak electricity usage on Prince Edward Island amounts to 230 megawatts.


• Understanding Society's Paul Little notes the imprecision of the social sciences relative to the physical sciences. Is this really an enduring difference, though, or will the social sciences catch up?


• Window on Eurasia takes note of growing regionalism in Russia's Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic.