A Bit More Detail

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes how a photo of the Large Magellanic Cloud makes him recognize it as an irregular spiral, not a blob.


• Centauri Dreams celebrates the life of cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.


• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes issue with one particular claim about the benefits of war and empire.


• The Crux looks at fatal familial insomnia, a genetic disease that kills through inflicting sleeplessness on its victims.


• D-Brief looks at suggestions that magnetars are formed by the collisions of stars.


• Dangerous Minds introduces readers to the fantasy art of Arthur Rackham.


• Cody Delistraty considers some evidence suggesting that plants have a particular kind of intelligence.


• The Dragon's Tales notes the expansion by Russia of its airbase in Hneymim, Syria.


• Karen Sternheimer writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about the critical and changing position of libraries as public spaces in our cities.


• Gizmodo looks at one marvelous way scientists have found to cheat quantum mechanics.


• Information is Beautiful outlines a sensible proposal to state to cultivate seaweed a as source of food and fuel.


• io9 notes that, in the exciting new X-Men relaunch, immortal Moira MacTaggart is getting her own solo book.


• JSTOR Daily notes how the now-defunct Thomas Cook travel agency played a role in supporting British imperialism, back in the day.


• Language Log notes that the Oxford English Dictionary is citing the blog on the use of "their" as a singular.


• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the grounds for impeaching Donald Trump.


• The LRB Blog looks at the politics of Mozambique at the country approaches dangerous times.


• Sean Marshall notes the southern Ontario roads that run to Paris and to London.


• Neuroskeptic notes a problematic scientific study that tried to use rabbits to study the female human orgasm.


• Steve Baker at The Numerati looks at a new book on journalism by veteran Peter Copeland.


• The NYR Daily makes the point that depending on biomass as a green energy solution is foolish.


• The Planetary Science Blog notes a 1983 letter by then-president Carl Sagan calling for a NASA mission to Saturn and Titan.


• Roads and Kingdoms interviews photojournalist Eduardo Leal on his home city of Porto, particularly as transformed by tourism.


• Drew Rowsome notes the book Dreamland, an examination of the early amusement park.


• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper considering, in broad detail, how the consequence of population aging could be mitigated in the labour market of the European Union.


• Strange Company reports on a bizarre poltergeist in a British garden shed.


• Window on Eurasia notes the new strength of a civic national identity in Kazakhstan, based on extensive polling.


• Arnold Zwicky, surely as qualified a linguist as any, examines current verb of the American moment, "depose".

• Wired explains what would be the point of a crewed mission to the South Pole of the Moon, and what challenges remain.


• Evan Gough at Universe Today notes the evidence for the surprising depth and complex hydrological cycles of the methane lakes of Titan.


• Matt Williams at Universe Today reports on the interest of NASA in dispatching a low-cost mission to the Neptune moon Triton.


• Universe Today looks at the nearby barred spiral galaxy of Messier 83, just 15 million light-years away.


• Universe Today notes the recent disproof of the theory that dark matter is made up of primordial black holes.

• Motherboard notes that climate change endangers a majority of the coffee species growing in the wild.


• Universe Today notes that CERN is planning to build a successor to the LHC, one a hundred kilometres in diameter.


• A review of data from Cassini, Universe Today reports, suggests the probe saw rain fall in the north polar region of Titan.


• A new analysis suggests that mysterious object in the heart of the galaxy, HCN–0.009–0.044, is actually a black hole massing 32 thousand suns. Universe Today has it.


• Universe Today shares an ambitious proposal for future humanity to use interstellar probes to seed life on potentially hospitable but lifeless worlds, a planned panspermia.

• Centauri Dreams takes a look at how new technology makes access to deep-sky astronomical images easier than ever, allowing for the recovery of more data.


• The Crux considers the factors that make humans so inclined to believe in the existence of god and the supernatural, including our pattern-recognition skills.


• D-Brief sharesa the latest research into the origins of the atmospheric haze of Titan.


• Todd Schoepflin at the Everyday Sociology Blog has an intriguing post performing ethnography on the fans of the Buffalo Bills.


• At A Fistful of Euros, Alexander Harrowell notes one thing to take from the elections in Bavaria is the remarkable strength of the Greens, nearing the CDU/CSU nationally.


• io9 shares the delightful Alien-themed maternity photos of a British Columbia couple.


• JSTOR Daily looks at contesting visions of motherhood among American feminists in the 1960s and 1970s.


• Language Hat reports on "The Midnight Court", a poem written in the 19th century in a now-extinct dialect of Irish.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes one astounding possible defense of Saudi Arabia faced with Jamal Khashoggi, that his death was accidental.


• Christine Gordon Manley shares with her readers her words and her photos of Newfoundland's dramatic Signal Hill.


• The NYR Daily shares the witness of Käthe Kollwitz to the end of the First World War and the German Empire in 1918-1919.


• Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society Blog criticizes First Man for not showing the excitement of Armstrong and the other Apollo astronauts.


• Roads and Kingdoms reports on one woman's search for the Korean cornbread remembered by her mother as a Korean War refugee.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel shares images of some of the most distant objects in the universe images by us so far.


• Strange Company expands upon the interesting life of early modern English travel writer Thomas Coryat, who indeed does deserve more attention.


• Window on Eurasia wonders where protests in Ingushetia regarding border changes with Chechnya are going.


• Arnold Zwicky explores the fable of the forest that identified too closely with the wooden handle of an ax.

• Crux takes a look at some of the lost moons of the early solar system, including those of Jupiter, Saturn inward of Titan, and Neptune before its encounter with Triton.


• D-Brief notes that, in its relatively warm and watery youth, the Moon could conceivably have supported life.


• Dangerous Minds shares photos, and a precise, of the ball--the Diner de Têtes Surrealistes--thrown in 1972 by the Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild and her husband Guy at the Château de Ferrières outside of Paris.


• Jonathan Wynn at the Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at how students' race can complicate the act of studying abroad. http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2018/07/race-and-studying-abroad.html
  
• Imageo notes the heat wave aggravating forest fires in California and Oregon.


• JSTOR Daily considers if, perhaps, the Ford Pinto received an undeservedly negative reputation from its contemporaries.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money links to a Matthew Yglesias analysis about the usability of swing voters in the American context.


• At the LRB Blog, Anne Orford draws from the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki the argument that international politics is much too important to be decided by two men alone and their translators.


• The Map Room Blog shares some remarkable infrared images of Titan, looking beneath that world's clouds.


• Marginal Revolution notes one report suggesting that oil revenues could lead to a tripling of the size of the GDP of Guyana in five years.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel illustrates the discovery of an ancient galaxy almost entirely absorbed into the Andromeda Galaxy, M32p.


• Towleroad reviews the new Broadway play Straight White Men, which has an interesting take on this hitherto-dominant portion of North American society.

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares one picture of a vast galaxy cluster to underline how small our place in the universe is.


• The Boston Globe's The Big Picture shares some photos of Syrian refugee families as they settle into the United States.


• Centauri Dreams looks at the Dragonfly proposal for a Titan lander.


• The Crux notes the exceptional vulnerability of the cultivated banana to an otherwise obscure fungus.


• Bruce Dorminey notes NASA's preparation of the Clipper mission to investigate Europa.


• The Frailest Thing's Michael Sacasas takes a look at the role of surveillance in the life of the modern student.


• Hornet Stories has a nice interview of Sina Grace, author of Marvel's Iceman book.


• Joe. My. God. reshared this holiday season a lovely anecdote, "Dance of the Sugar Plum Lesbians."


• JSTOR Daily took a look at why Americans like dieting so much.


• The LRB Blog considers the Thames Barrier, the meager protection of London against tides in a time of climate change.


• The Map Room Blog notes the digitization of radar maps of Antarctica going back to the 1960s.


• Marginal Revolution seems cautiously optimistic about the prospects of Morocco.
  
• Russell Darnley at maximos62 is skeptical about the prospects of the forests of Indonesia's Riau province.


• Stephanie Land at the NYR Daily talks about how she managed to combine becoming a writer with being a single mother of two young children.


• Out There argues a lunar fuel depot could help support crewed interplanetary exploration.


• Science Sushi notes genetic evidence the lionfish invasion of the North Atlantic off Florida began not with a single escape but with many.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel makes the argument an unmanned probe to Alpha Centauri could have significant technological spinoffs.


• Supernova Condensate makes the point, apropos of nothing at all, that spaceship collisions can in fact unleash vast amounts of energy.


• Window on Eurasia notes that, while Kazakhs see practical advantages to cooperation with Russia, they also see some problems.

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait celebrates the many achievements of Saturn probe Cassini in its two-decade lifespan, with images.


• Centauri Dreams took a look at Cassini on its final approach to Saturn, having passed Titan.


• The Crux interviews a Cassini scientist who, after the probe, would be surprised if Enceladus does not have life.


• D-Brief bid a fond farewell to Cassini.

• Centauri Dreams notes the exobiological potential of Titamn after the detection of acrylonitrile. Cryogenic life?


• This guest essay at Lawyers, Guns and Money on the existential problems of Brazil, with politics depending on people not institutions, is a must-read.


• The LRB Blog considers, in the context of Brexit, what exactly might count for some as a marker of dictatorship.


• Did the 15th century construction of the Grand Canal in China lead the Ming away from oceanic travel? Marginal Revolution speculates.


• The NYR Daily considers
  
• Out There explores the reasons why the most massive planets all have the same size.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes the 5th anniversary of the arrival of Curiosity on Mars.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes that, with regards to Venezuela, the United States has no good options.


• Roads and Kingdoms considers the febrile political mood of Kenya.


• Window on Eurasia argues that Putin is making the mistake of seeing the United States through the prism of Russia.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes a proposal for British mayors to have representation at Brexit talks makes no sense.

Q: Why is humanity so fixated on travelling to Mars?

AH: It’s always been fascinating because back in the earliest observations, it looked like there were canals on Mars and some sort of greenery, [as if] there could be aliens. It remains a good option for looking for past life, and more accessible than some of the places in the outer solar system that might have current life. So it’s interesting as a target scientifically, but for long-term human settlement, it’s not the place to go.

CW: We’re a very long way from being able to put humans safely on Mars. The issues with [brain damage from] galactic cosmic rays, or GCRs, are serious, and in the past year, NASA has really come to recognize them: an internal document says you only have 150 days of safe travel unprotected—which won’t get you anywhere near a Mars-and-back mission with current technology. It’s probably time to level with the American people, and setting a farther-out human habitation goal is a better way to start solving those problems, rather than thinking about a short-term trip to Mars that’s probably not going to happen.

[. . .]

Q: Why specifically is Titan the place to go, and can we realistically get people as excited about Titan as we have been about Mars?

AH: Titan is a much more interesting place just visually; in terms of the landscape and the opportunities there, Titan offers so much more. It’s really Earth-like: it’s the only other place in the solar system that has any liquid on the surface. It’s not water, but it’s ethane and methane, and there’s a nice atmosphere. It’s one-and-a-half* the [atmospheric] pressure that we feel here on Earth, so it’s not too much and not too little. The main benefit, of course, is that people will be shielded from a lot of the the GCRs that are so damaging. It takes a long time to get there, and it’s cold, but there are ways around that.

• Antipope shares a guest essay by an author pointing out how duelling was a social plague.


• 'Nathan Smith's Apostrophen shares an essay noting that being a Donald Trump supporter who reads gay romance is a contradiction.


• Beyond the Beyond notes new European Union interest in defense integration.


• blogTO reports that a Torontonian designed the new Starbucks holiday cup.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly wonders how much our parents shape us.


• D-Brief looks at Semantic Scholar, an AI tool for scholars.


• The Dragon's Tales reports on methane humidity near Titan's surface and an active drainage system.


• Joe. My. God. notes the interest of Florida attorney-general Pam Bondi at the interest of serving in the administration of Donald Trump.


• Language Hat shares a lovely poem translated from the Russian.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the upsurge in hate crimes post-election in the United States.


• The LRB Blog shares one man's memories of Leonard Cohen.


• Marginal Revolution notes the problems of Saudi Arabia.


• The NYRB Daily notes the largely negative effect of the Internet, and social media, on the election.


• Savage Minds notes how anthropology teachers can teach the Trump election.


• Towleroad shares RuPaul's horror at the election.


• The Volokh Conspiracy argues the Gary Johnson candidacy helped Hillary, though by not enough.


• Window on Eurasia argues that a state ideology would make Russia totalitarian.