A Bit More Detail

• Cody Delistraty considers the new field of dystopian realism--of dystopia as a real thing in contemporary lives--in popular culture.


• D-Brief notes how direct experiments in laboratories have helped geologists better understand the mantle of the Earth.


• Far Outliers shares a terribly sad anecdote of a young woman in China who killed herself, victim of social pressures which claim many more victims.


• Imageo notes how recent headlines about ocean temperature increases are misleading in that they did not represent the steady incremental improvements of science generally.


• Joe. My. God. notes the unexpectedly rapid shift of the location of the northern magnetic pole.


• JSTOR Daily links to a paper that links to the quietly subversive aesthetics and politics of the 1950s and 1960s surf movie.


• Language Hat links to an intriguing paper looking at the relationship between the size of an individual's Broca's area, in their brain, and the ways in which they can learn language.


• Language Log shares a poster from Taiwan trying to promote use of the Hakka language, currently a threatened language among traditional speakers.


• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the extreme secrecy of Trump regarding his Helsinki discussions with Putin, going so far as to confiscate his translator's notes.


• Justin Petrone at north! writes about the exhilarating and liberating joys of hope, of fantasy.


• The NYR Daily examines the new Alfonso Cuarón film, the autobiographical Roma.


• Drew Rowsome takes a look at the interesting show by Damien Atkins at Crow's Nest Theatre, We Are Not Alone.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel reports on what a report of the discovery of of the brightest quasar actually means.


• Window on Eurasia notes the historical cooperation, before Operation Barbarossa, between the Nazis' Gestapo and Stalin's NKVD.


• Arnold Zwicky shares a video examining Chavacano, the Spanish-based creole still spoken in the Philippines.

• This r/unresolvedmysteries thread asks the question of where the Armenian language, a unique Indo-European language, came from.


• This Ragnar Jónasson article in The Guardian asks the question of how long the Icelandic language, with relatively few speakers and facing a tidal wave of influence from English, can outlast this competition.


• The Irish Times notes that the Irish language was heard in the British House of Commons for the first time in a century, spoken by a Plaid Cymru MP asking why this language has so little institutional support in Northern Ireland.


• Over at the BBC, Susanna Zaraysky takes a look at the Ladino language--a Spanish variant--traditionally used by the Sephardic Jews of Bosnia, and how this language is declining here as elsewhere among the Sephardim.


• Atlas Obscura takes a look at the Scots language, a distinctive Germanic language that was never quite broken away from English, and how this language persists despite everything.

• The Dragon's Tales notes that Raytheon has been awarded a contract to deliver a 100 kilowatt laser weapon system.


• Hornet Stories offers a guide to LGBTQ sites in Manila.


• JSTOR Daily explores the writing career of mid-20th century SF writer "James Tiptree Jr", the pseudonym of Alice Bradley Sheldon.


• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money explores the idea of a liberal world order, particularly as a manifestation of American policy post-1945.


• Ben Yagoda at Lingua Franca takes a look at how Big Data--specifically, large archives of the written word--can illuminate lots about patterns of language usage, noting some examples.


• The Map Room Blog looks at the way that maps of population density are being used in the United States to legitimate or delegitimate specific groups of voters.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen considers the concept of "reciprocity anxiety", of owing people.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer reports on some swear words in Argentine Spanish as well as a case of government expropriation of Mapuche lands.


• Drew Rowsome takes an extended look at Scotty and the Secret Life of Hollywood, an extended documentary looking at the life of scotty Bowers in closeted 20th century Hollywood.

• Adam Fish at Anthro{dendum} takes a look at the roles of drones in capitalism, here.


• Bad Astronomy talks about the discovery of a nascent planet in orbit of young star PDS 70.


• Centauri Dreams notes what the discovery of a Charon eclipsing its partner Pluto meant, for those worlds and for astronomy generally.


• D-Brief notes a demographic study of Italian centenarians suggesting that, after reaching the age of 105, human mortality rates seem to plateau. Does this indicate the potential for further life expectancy increases?


• Dead Things shares the result of a genetics study of silkworms. Where did these anchors of the Silk Road come from?


• Jonathan Wynn at the Everyday Sociology Blog considers the role of the side hustle in creative professions.


• Far Outliers reports on the time, in the 1930s, when some people in Second Republic Poland thought that the country should acquire overseas colonies.


• Hornet Stories reports on how, in earlier centuries, the English word "pinke" meant a shade of yellow.


• JSTOR Daily reports on how, nearly two decades later, Sex and the City is still an influential and important piece of pop culture.


• Language Hat links to Keith Gessen's account, in The New Yorker, about how he came to teach his young son Russian.


• Lingua Franca, at the Chronicle of Higher Education, reports on the decent and strongly Cuban Spanish spoken by Ernest Hemingway.


• The NYR Daily looks at the mystique surrounding testosterone, the powerful masculinizing hormone.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer shares his thoughts on the election, in Mexico, of left-leaning populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Worst-case scenarios aren't likely to materialize in the short and medium terms, at least.


• Vintage Space notes how, at the height of the Cold War, some hoped to demonstrate American strength by nuking the Moon. (Really.)


• Window on Eurasia links to an essayist who suggests that Russia should look to America as much as to Europe for models of society.

• Kambiz Kamrani at Anthropology.net notes new findings suggesting that the creation of cave art by early humans is product of the same skills that let early humans use language.


• Davide Marchetti at Architectuul looks at some overlooked and neglected buildings in and around Rome.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait explains how Sirius was able to hide the brilliant Gaia 1 star cluster behind it.


• Centauri Dreams looks at new procedures for streamlining the verification of new exoplanet detections.


• Crooked Timber notes the remarkably successful and once-controversial eroticization of plant reproduction in the poems of Erasmus Darwin.


• Dangerous Minds notes how an errant Confederate flag on a single nearly derailed the career of Otis Redding.


• Detecting biosignatures from exoplanets, Bruce Dorminey notes, may require "fleets" of sensitive space-based telescopes.


• Far Outliers looks at persecution of non-Shi'ite Muslims in Safavid Iran.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the history of the enslavement of Native Americans in early colonial America, something often overlooked by later generations.


• This video shared by Language Log, featuring two Amazon Echos repeating texts to each other and showing how these iterations change over time, is oddly fascinating.


• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis is quite clear about the good sense of Will Wilkinson's point that controversy over "illegal" immigration is actually deeply connected to an exclusivist racism that imagines Hispanics to not be Americans.


• Lingua Franca, at the Chronicle of Higher Education, looks at the uses of the word "redemption", particularly in the context of the Olympics.


• The LRB Blog suggests Russiagate is becoming a matter of hysteria. I'm unconvinced, frankly.


• The Map Room Blog shares a map showing global sea level rise over the past decades.


• Marginal Revolution makes a case for Americans to learn foreign languages on principle. As a Canadian who recently visited a decidedly Hispanic New York, I would add that Spanish, at least, is one language quite potentially useful to Americans in their own country.


• Drew Rowsome writes about the striking photographs of Olivier Valsecchi.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that, in the 2030s, gravitational wave observatories will be so sensitive that they will be able to detect black holes about to collide years in advance.


• Towleroad lists festival highlights for New Orleans all over the year.


• Window on Eurasia notes how recent changes to the Russian education system harming minority languages have inspired some Muslim populations to link their language to their religion.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell makes the case that Jeremy Corbyn, through his strength in the British House of Commons, is really the only potential Remainder who is in a position of power.

• Apostrophen's 'Nathan Smith has a two part review of some of the fiction that he has recently read.


• blogTO looks at Casa Loma lit up for the holidays.


• Dangerous Minds notes The London Nobody Knows, a documentary of the grim areas of late Victorian London.


• Language Hat looks at how 16th century Spanish linguists represented Nahuatl spelling.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the iatrogenic transmission of syphilis via unsterile instruments during the Civil War.


• The LRB Blog notes the many conflicting contracts signed by the KGB with different television groups at the end of the Cold War.


• Marginal Revolution notes Rio de Janeiro's attempts to deal with tourism-targeted crime by compensating victims with a tourist-directed tax.


• Maximos62 looks at the geological reasons for Indonesia's volcanism.


• Progressive Download looks at the all-woman Homeward Bound expedition to Antarctica.


• Peter Rukavina looks at the backstory behind the creation of the village of Crapaud.


• Spacing Toronto looks at how signs asking people to go slow in children-inhabited zones.


• Torontoist looks at where Suicide Squad was filmed in Toronto.


• The Understanding Society Blog looks at the specific experiences which molded the French tradition of sociology.

• blogTO notes that retail space on Bloor Street in Yorkville is not only the priciest in Canada, but among the priciest in the world.


• Centauri Dreams notes how fast radio bursts, a natural phenomenon, can be used to understand the universe.


• Dangerous Minds looks at a Kate Bush music performance on Dutch television in 1978.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to an analysis of the asteroids disintegrating in orbit of WD 1145+017.


• The Dragon's Tales notes evidence from meteorites that Mars has been dry and inhospitable for eons.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the way we construct time.


• Language Log highlights a 1943 phrasebook for English, Spanish, Tagalog, and Hokkien.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the resistance of the Tohono O'odham, a border people of Arizona and Sonora, to a wall.


• The LRB Blog looks at a curious painting claiming to depict the cause of England's greatness.


• Marginal Revolution notes the sheer scale of mass tourism in Iceland.


• Strange Maps shares an interesting map depicting support for Clinton and Trump, showing one as a continental landmass and the other as an archipelago.


• Towleroad praises the musical Falsettos
for its LGBT content (among other things).

• Window on Eurasia looks at controversy over ethnonyms in Russian, and argues Putinism is a bigger threat to the West than Communism.

First off, neither Huerta, the precinct's permanent chair nor the precinct captains for Clinton and Sanders could be reached for comment Sunday. Nevada Democratic Party officials, who oversee the caucuses, have yet to respond to requests for comment about events or procedure. Ferrera also declined to comment.

Second, this video really does not indict Huerta of the bias alleged by Sanders supporters; it's easy to see why she felt abused and upset after being shouted off the stage. Nor does it completely clear the Sanders supporters of all the allegations against them; some of the comments that are clearly audible in it amount to more than bad public behavior.

[. . .]

The Voting Rights Act requires that translated voting materials and language assistance or interpretation services be made available in areas with a certain concentration of voters with limited English proficiency. Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, is one of those places. It has been since the 2000 Census.

Voting is serious, and goodness knows that the caucus process is unique. So making sure that people fully understand what is going on at a given event and don't have the added burden of rapid personal interpretation is only common sense. Federal funds were provided to states to do so under the Help America Vote Act and to study the best methods. Nevada is not an exception.

The reasons for these laws are clear -- so clear that the applause and excitement as the English-only decision was made at the Harrah's Casino caucus Saturday perhaps did strike some people, including Huerta, as highly inappropriate.

Whether intended or not, those applauding effectively sanctioned a process that allowed qualified voters who do not speak English, or who are Spanish-dominant, limited insight and influence in the evening's events.

Some people at the caucus gathering may have been singularly focused on what they viewed as the risk of a Clinton supporter interpreting events for all Spanish-speakers in the room. But then, at the very least, they shouted an 80-plus-year-old woman off the stage for what they believed to be political bias. That is not a moment of which to be proud.

Acquiring Spanish as a second language led me to poetry, and becoming a better poet helped me become a better bilingual. I had been a good high school and college student of Spanish and had studied abroad in Spain and Mexico. After college, I wanted a way to give kindness back to the many Spanish speakers who tolerated and nurtured my emerging bilingualism. As a Spanish major with coursework in theatre and creative writing, it made sense to become an elementary school teacher. I was quickly overwhelmed. I struggled to teach third grade math, science, and California history in my new classroom in South Central Los Angeles.

This was 1992. Rodney King. Race riots.

Each school window had iron grating on the outside. On the inside, we decorated with window paint and crepe paper, a beautiful carpet displaying the map of the world. My students were all considered “LEP,” limited English proficient.. The institutional structure gave me, their inexperienced “bilingual teacher,” a few short months to teach Spanish literacy with the explicit caveat that English monolingualism was the true goal. To be successful in public K-12 education, my students had to forego Spanish proficiency. Meanwhile, I was learning more and more Spanish than ever before. The same bilingualism which was so privileged and nurtured in my college education was shut down for young, immigrant youth,; this didn’t seem right. As a hard-working teacher, I felt I had no time or energy left to contemplate this irony. I turned to poetry, and, then, to graduate school.

My first graduate school teachers were anthropologists of education at UC Santa Cruz. Dr. Greta Gibson and Dr. Cindy Pease-Alvarez taught me how to take field notes, to understand sociocultural theories of learning, to immerse myself in classroom life and interview bilingual parents and children. I was engaged by what I learned in educational research, but I yearned for methods and texts that were less planned and more playful, evocative of surprise and feeling. I read poets on the side: Martín Espada, Dorianne Laux, Chitra Divakaruni, Wislawa Symborska, June Jordan. I was moved by the ways in which these poets wrote about human experience across race, social class, language and culture. I wanted educational anthropology to stir as their words did, to reconsider bilingual policies and practices that seemed cruel and ineffective.

During one of my many summer indulgences in poetry, away from dry social science prose, I attended the Squaw Valley Writers conference. As I searched for my nametag, I saw Renato Rosaldo’s name a few rows away on the table. The “Renato Rosaldo,” author of Culture and Truth (1989)? Could it be that a prominent anthropologist was also an emergent poet? Indeed it was. Renato encouraged me to read other “antropoetas” as he referred to them: Ruth Behar, Dell Hymes, Kirin Narayan, and others. There was a small tribe of poetic anthropologists and they convened in the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. The word “humanism” became a new “homeroom,” a place to put my bookbag down and represent poetic evocations of ethnographic learning.

I had a quest, to place myself among a community of artful social scientists and socially evocative artists. I learned to use ethnographic strategies to understand forms of bilingual education and I could sift theory with fieldnotes and interview data and find the images, the music, the performance of bilingualism in everyday life. If I gave myself permission and I studied craft in both poetry and anthropology, then I might contribute to the creative and humanistic renderings that have continued to inspire my teaching and learning. I have written a great many terrible poems. I have also written many bland academic words in prose. I feel lucky that part of my job has the goal to improve the quality of my writing so that it might evoke greater understanding and action.