A Bit More Detail

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports on the massive cloud of material detected around the active galaxy Cygnus A.


• The Crux suggests our contemporary problems with wisdom teeth represent not a failure of evolution but rather a failure on our post-Neolithic parts to eat hard foods which stimulate the jaw growth capable of supporting wisdom teeth.


• D-Brief notes how the astronomers involved in a planetary effort to image a black hole are preparing to make an announcement next week.


• Gizmodo notes how the debris field created in orbit by India testing an anti-satellite weapon threatens the ISS.


• Joe. My. God. notes that at least some hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei are deleting their social media profiles following protests over Brunei's violent anti-gay laws.


• JSTOR Daily considers if, between the drop in fertility that developing China was likely to undergo anyway and the continuing resentments of the Chinese, the one-child policy was worth it.


• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money uses a recent New York Times profile to note the sheer influence of Rupert Murdoch worldwide.


• The Map Room Blog notes a new exhibition, at the shop of a Manhattan rare book dealer, of a collection of vintage maps of New York City from its foundation, sharing some photos, even.


• Marginal Revolution remarks on the rapid growth of Native American numbers in the United States over the past century.


• The NYR Daily shares a report from Debbie Bookchin in North Syria arguing that the West needs to help Rojava.


• Roads and Kingdoms provides some tips for first-time visitors to the capital of Uruguay, Montevideo.


• The Russian Demographics Blog notes the continuing growth in numbers of dead from HIV infection in Russia, with Siberia being a new hotspot.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains how the Event Horizon Telescope project will image a black hole's event horizon, and what questions exist around the project.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares an Anish Kapoor map demonstrating the Brexit divides in the United Kingdom.


• Daniel Little at Understanding Society considers the study of ethical disasters in capitalism, looking at OxyContin as an example.


• Window on Eurasia notes continued threats, and continued protests to these threats, surrounding Lake Baikal in Siberia.


• Arnold Zwicky has fun with a cartoon that plays on a pun between the words chants and chance.

• Samantha Edwards at NOW Toronto writes about Tunirrusiangit, the new Inuit art exhibit playing at the AGO, here.


• National Geographic reports on the discovery of the royal home of a Floridian king known for opposing Spain.


• An app that tells one about the indigenous history of the place where one lives is really quite useful. Yes Magazine has it.


• Smithsonian Magazine examines the question why it takes so long for scientists to verify indigenous knowledge, here.


• This Stephanie Nolen report from The Globe and Mail takes a look at the struggle of descendants of the Charrua, the indigenous people of Uruguay, to gain official recognition.

• Bloomberg reports on Dutch losses from Brexit, looks at the scene in Fallujah, observes the fragmentation of Venezuela's opposition, and notes the positive impact of a solar energy boom on Japan's fuel consumption.


• Bloomberg View notes the lack of regional pressure on Venezuela, reports that Brexit would hit Britain's poor and British-based banks hard, and suggests Russian support for the European far right is secondary.


• CBC looks at Canada's restrictive Internet packages.


• The Inter Press Service notes Thailand's progress in controlling HIV/AIDS, looks at Peru's elections, and notes Uruguay's hopes to be an offshore oil producer.


• National Geographic notes the sperm whales in the Caribbean seem to have a distinctive culture.


• The National Post notes there is no such thing as wilderness, that the entire Earth is touched by human activities.


• Open Democracy looks at Egypt's fear of the urban poor and considers what can be learned about the failure of the Swiss basic income initiative.


• The Toronto Star notes a stem cell-based treatment for MS that offers radical improvements, even cures.


• Wired notes that AirBnB is unhappy with new San Francisco legislation requiring the registration of its hosts.

• Bloomberg notes that Alberta's oil camps are set to revive quickly and looks at Uruguay's venture onto global caviar markets.


• Bloomberg View argues that the US military buildup in Europe is unnecessary and talks about reducing urban inequality.


• CBC notes controversy over forcing women to wear high-heeled shoes and considers the import and scale of Russia's doping scandal.


• The Globe and Mail interviews prolific author James Patterson.


• MacLean's notes how the Parti Québécois' cycles of self-destruction hurt Québec's politics.


• The National Post reports of a FBI raid of an Orthodox school in New York's Kiryas Joel.


• Wired argues California's drought is likely permanent and notes the impending mass introduction of electronic paper.

This began as a story of compassion and renewal. Before dawn one warm Sunday last December, six inmates from the U.S. military jail in Guantanamo Bay landed at an airstrip here in the Uruguayan capital. The U.S. flew them from Guantanamo shackled and hooded, but Uruguayan officials insisted they be unbound before they left the plane, and walk as free men into their new lives.

These six – four Syrians, a Tunisian and a Palestinian – were all identified as former al-Qaeda fighters, and theirs was a significant resettlement from the prison that bedevils the Obama administration.

They moved into a house in a slightly down-at-heel neighbourhood in the centre of Montevideo. In the first days, the six – who had spent years in solitary confinement and on hunger strikes – took wide-eyed trips to the grocery store and walks on the beachfront. Uruguayans waved and approached to welcome them and wish them well. They were to begin Spanish classes, and a construction company and other businesses promised them jobs.

The euphoria, however, was fleeting. Six months in, the men are adrift and struggling – baffled by Uruguay in the best case, enraged and bitter, in the worst. As the U.S. government seeks somewhere, anywhere, to resettle the other Guantanamo inmates, Uruguay’s story of transcultural empathy stands as a cautionary tale.

[. . .]

[President José Mujica] agreed to take them – but did not, it now appears, do much to prepare his tiny country, with a total Muslim population of about 300, to support and resettle six men with murky pasts who endured years of brutal interrogation and isolation.

• blogTO notes that a party celebrating the end of Rob Ford's term as mayor is being planned for election night at City Hall.


• Centauri Dreams notes the discovery of secondary targets for New Horizons after it passes Pluto.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper that looks to examine the oblateness or otherwise of some exoplanets discovered by Kepler.


• The Dragon's Tales links to one paper examining underwater archeology and links to a series debating the question of whether or not there was a human presence 30 thousand years ago at a site in Uruguay.


• Eastern Approaches reports on the aftermath of a failed claim by Radek Sikorski that Russia made a 2008 proposal on partitioning Ukraine.
  
• Joe. My. God. notes a Costa Rican survey suggesting that up to a fifth of Costa Rican police think that harassing GLBT people is OK.


• Language Hat notes the etymology of the Egyptian title of "khedive", apparently obscure for a reason.


• Language Log notes a contentious issue in Chinese translation: "rule of law" or "rule by law"?


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer looks at the aftermath of a stunt at a Serbian-Albanian football game.


• The Russian Demographics Blog considers estimates for Russian losses in Ukrainian fighing.


• Towleroad notes that Argentina has granted asylum to a Russian GLBT claimant.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that Ukrainian events have awakened Belarusian nationalism.

• Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster visits depictions of Europa in classic science fiction.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper claiming that whether a planet of Earth's mass becomes Earth-like or a mini-Neptune depends not so much on the planet as on the characteristics of its nebula.


• The Dragon's Tales notes archeological analyses which suggest that Neanderthals were just as technologically capable of Homo sapiens.


• Joe. My. God. quotes from ex-ex-gay John Paulk, who describes the factors that led him to flirt with the ex-gay movement.


• Language Log's Victor Mair doesn't think Putonghua will become a world language because of its script. (Me, I think that's decidedly secondary.)


• Lawyers, Guns and Money starts a discussion on nuclear waste that's a bit too panicky for my liking.


• The Power and the Money notes that southern Brazil, like Argentina and Uruguay experienced sharp relative economic decline in the 20th century. This regional decline got missed in national statistics.


• Strange Maps' Frank Jacobs wonders why so many towns in the American South--especially Georgia--seem to be circular.


• Towleroad notes that prominent Russian homophobe and politician Vitaly Milonov is calling on Russia to abandon Eurovision on account of its queer associations.


• Transit Toronto notes a proposal to connect Toronto to London and Kitchener-Waterloo via high-speed train.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that the Russian private sector is being undermined and notes that Russians don't travel all that much.

• The Burgh Diaspora notes that although the Bronx might have more incomers than fellow New York City borough Manhattan, Manhattan's catchment area is global.


• Centauri Dreams takes a look at the study of planetary systems of subgiant stars, relatively aged stars, starting with Kappa Coronae Borealis.


• Eastern Approaches deals with the legal and criminal controversies surrounding a Czech lobbyist.


• In an era of increasingly pervasive and efficient surveillance technologies, the Everyday Sociology Blog's Tristan Bridges and Tara Tober wonder what privacy actually is these days.


• Geocurrents' Asya Perelstvaig profiles the Samaritans, a little-known but enduring ethnic group related to--but distinct from--the Jews.


• GNXP's Razib Khan notes a preliminary genetic study that gives credence to the idea of pre-Columbian Ainu migration to South America six thousand years ago. I want to see more on this.


• Joe. My. God observes that "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead" is a hit on the UK pop charts.


• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Robert Farley notes that much criticism of Margaret Thatcher's role in the Falklands War is ill-judged, and wonders why so few people blame the Argentine junta.


• Michael in Norfolk notes marriage rights successes in Uruguay and France.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer outlines the recent history--surprising to me--of fairly loud conflict between Argentina and Uruguay.

• The Burgh Diaspora's Jim Russell notes how Brazil is using the Afro-Brazilian majority legacy of the transatlantic slave trade to justify the construction of new transatlantic links with Africa.


• Crooked Timber comments upon the Irish anti-abortion laws that just cost a woman her life and the homophobia of the Reagan administration that made HIV/AIDS a laughing matter.


• Daniel Drezner wonders if the ongoing expanding Petraeus scandal will end up diminishing the American public's regard for the military.


• Eastern Approaches notes that no one in the Balkans seems to be commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the First Balkan War.


• Far Outlier's Joel quotes from Matthew Restall's Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest to describe how Christopher Columbus was really riding on the coat-tails of Portugal's successful long-range maritime exploration.


• Geocurrents observes efforts by some Arab Christians in the Levant to revive Aramaic.


• The Global Sociology Blog reviews Laurent Dubois' Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, highlighting the extent to which Haiti's catastrophes are the products of foreign meddling.


• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis maps Detroit. The extent to which the borders of the City of Detroit overlap with African-American majority populations, and to which the sprawl of Metro Detroit is constructed so as to detach the suburbs from any responsibility for the city at their region's center, is noteworthy.


• The Planetary Science Blog's Emily Lakdawalla reports on Carl Sagan's feminism.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer summarizes what's going on with Uruguay's decriminalization of marijuana for personal use.

• Acts of Minor Treasons' Andrew Barton blogs about the power problems of Iqaluit, capital of the Arctic territory of Nunavut, as symptomatic of Canada's neglect of the north and wonders if a compact nuclear reactor might be a good solution.


• Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow reproduces part of a 1965 IKEA catalogue.


• At Broadsides, Antonia Zerbisias blogs about how anti-choice activists have consistently lied about so-called "abortion trauma syndrome."


• Centauri Dreams speculates as to the possibility of whether or not a brown dwarf--briefly, a massive object heavier than a planet but not heavy enough to become a star--lies close to Earth. The blog also reports on speculation that stars with massive planets may have evolved nearer to the galactic core than others.


• Will Baird reports that fog has been found on Titan, suggesting the recycling of liquid in Titan's atmosphere in a model very similar to the water cycle on Earth.


• Far Outliers mentions intra-Buddhist civil war in late medieval/early modern Japan.


• Hunting Monsters suggests that British relatives of the dead in the Lockerbie disaster seem to be reacting to the convicted Libyan al-Megrahi's release less negatively than their American counterparts because they're aware of questions over the official conclusions and because they know about many wrongful prosecution cases at home.


• Joe. My. God reports on new studies which report that, in the United States, gay/bi men contract HIV at 50 times the rate of the general population.


• Marginal Revolution rehearses the ancient debate as to whether Americans or Europeans live better and more prosperous lives.


• Noel Maurer wonders why the Mexican government's response to the recession is to cut spending, rather than increase it in good counter-cyclical manner. Also, he has questions about Canadian oil taxes.


• Slap Upside the Head blogs about how a Minnesota pastor blames a recent tornado in that state on same-sex blessings.


• Towleroad reports that Uruguay, already one of the most GLBT-friendly countries in South America, is about to legalize gay adoption.


• The Vanity Press' Chet Scoville writes about the disconnection of so many right-wingers in the United States with reality. Death panels indeed!


• Window on Eurasia suggests that Medvedev is referring to Ukraine as--roughly speaking--"the" Ukraine as opposed to Ukraine, I think, perhaps suggesting a certain tension regarding Ukrainian nationhood.