A Bit More Detail

• Architectuul notes the recent death of I.M. Pei.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes what, exactly, rubble-pile asteroids are.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about definitions of home.


• Centauri Dreams considers white dwarf planets.


• The Crux notes how ultra-processed foods are liked closely to weight gain.


• D-Brief observes that a thin layer of insulating ice might be saving the subsurface oceans of Pluto from freezing out.


• Bruce Dorminey notes the critical role played by Apollo 10 in getting NASA ready for the Moon landings.


• The Dragon's Tales notes the American government's expectation that China will seek to set up its own global network of military bases.


• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina reports on the Soviet Union's Venera 5 and 6 missions to Venus.


• Far Outliers looks at the visit of U.S. Grant to Japan and China.


• Gizmodo notes a recent analysis of Neanderthal teeth suggesting that they split with Homo sapiens at a date substantially earlier than commonly believed.


• io9 notes the sheer scale of the Jonathan Hickman reboots for the X-Men comics of Marvel.


• Joe. My. God. shares the argument of Ted Cruz that people should stop making fun of his "space pirate" suggestion.I am inclined to think Cruz more right than not, actually.


• JSTOR Daily notes the wave of anti-black violence that hit the United States in 1919, often driven by returned veterans.


• Language Hat shares a recognizable complaint, written in ancient Akkadian, of bad customers.


• Language Log shares a report of a village in Brittany seeking people to decipher a mysterious etching.


• This Scott Lemieux report at Lawyers, Guns and Money about how British conservatives received Ben Shapiro is a must-read summary.


• Benjamin Markovits at the LRB Blog shares the reasons why he left his immigrant-heavy basketball team in Germany.


• Marginal Revolution looks at one effort in Brazil to separate people from their street gangs.


• The NYR Daily looks at how ISIS, deprived of its proto-state, has managed to thrive as a decentralized network.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw tells of his experiences and perceptions of his native region of New England, in southeastern Australia.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes how the Chang'e 4 rover may have found lunar mantle on the surface of the Moon.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes that while Argentine president Mauricio Macri is polling badly, his opponents are not polling well.


• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of things to do in see in the Peru capital of Lima.


• The Signal examines how the Library of Congress engages in photodocumentation.


• Van Waffle at the Speed River Journal explains how he is helping native insects by planting native plants in his garden.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes how scientific illiteracy should never be seen as cool.


• Towleroad notes the questions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as to why Truvada costs so much in the United States.


• Window on Eurasia notes how family structures in the North Caucasus are at once modernizing and becoming more conservative.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes how the distribution of US carriers and their fleets at present does not support the idea of a planned impending war with Iran.


• Arnold Zwicky examines the tent caterpillar of California.

• At MacLean's, Meaghan Campbell reports on how the devastating crash of the Humboldt Broncos has hit that small Saskatchewan farm town.


• Hamilton police announces the arrest of local anarchist Peter Hopperton in connection with the actions of a crowd bent on vandalism on that city's Locke Street. CBC has it.


• Queen's University is participating in a summit with the city of Kingston on how students and long-term residents can be accommodated in the changing city. Global News reports.


• Attacks by right-wing groups in the Berlin district of Neukölln make many locals worried. DW reports.


• The small Chinese centre of Sidangkou, in the area of Tianjin, has become a world centre of saxophone production. The New York Times reports.

• At Anthrodendum, Elizabeth Marino takes issue with what she identifies as the naively and fiercely neoliberal elements of Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now.


• Anthropology.net's Kambiz Kamrani takes a look at an innovative study of the Surinamese creole of Sranan Tongo that uncovers that language's linguistic origins in remarkably fine detail.


• Architectuul examines the architecture of Communist-era Hungarian architect István Szábo.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the nearly naked black hole at the heart of galaxy ZwCl 8193, 2.2 billion light-years away.


• The Big Picture shares photos from the 2018 Paralympics in South Korea.


• Gerry Canavan has an interesting critical take on Star Trek: Discovery. Is it really doing new things, or is its newness just superficial?


• Centauri Dreams considers the impact the spectra of red dwarfs would have on biosignatures from their worlds.


• Russell Darnley takes a look at Australia's Darling River, a critical watercourse threatened by extensive water withdrawals.


• Inkfish notes that patterns of wear on the tusks of elephants indicate most are right-handed.


• Joe. My. God. links to a study suggesting a relationship between Trump rallies and violent assaults.


• JSTOR Daily links to a paper examining why people drink Guinness on St. Patrick's Day.


• Language Hat takes a look at the use of Xhosa as the language of Wakanda.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money mourns Alfred Crosby, the historian whose work examined the epidemiological and ecological changes wrought by contact with the Americas.


• The Map Room Blog links to a map showing indigenous placenames in Canada.


• Marginal Revolution suggests AI will never be able to centrally plan an economy because the complexity of the economy will always escape it.


• In the aftermath of the death of Stephen Hawking, Out There had a lovely idea: what nearby major stars emitted life than arrive at the moment of his birth? Hawking's star is Regulus, and mine was (nearly) Arcturus.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel examines Stephen Hawking's contribution to the study of black holes.


• Supernova Condensate shares a list of moons, fictional and otherwise, from Endor on down.

• blogTO shares the new face of the Broadview Hotel.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the joys of the unscreened life.


• Dead Things reports on a study suggesting that although humans are violent by the standards of mammals, we are among the least violent primates.


• The Dragon's Gaze reports on the discovery of five sizable planets orbiting HIP 41378.


• Language Log reports on the perils of 7 and 9 in Cantonese.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the usefulness of The Battle of Algiers.


• The Planetary Society Blog reacts to the Elon Musk proposal for colonizing Mars.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer responds briefly to the question of what Mexico can do about Trump.


• Window on Eurasia notes how the Russian invasion of Ukraine has spurred new arms purchases throughout the eastern half of Europe, even in Belarus.

• D-Brief looks at a study of the Jomon of prehistoric Japan, noting low levels of violence.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog considers the sociological complexities of effective policing and crime.


• The Frailest Thing's Michael Sacasas reports on the many good things in his life, personal and professional.


• Language Hat considers the origins of the Chinese name for Rome and links to a map of Native American languages.


• Language Log tracks down the origins of a Japanese sign barring Russian visitors.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the unemployed white working class and looks at American anti-urbanism in the 20th century.


• Marginal Revolution notes the poor prospects of immigrants in Belgium on the job market.


• Zero Geography reports on the importance of understanding the deep background to big data and the cloud.

• blogTO shares vintage postcard images of Toronto in the 1970s.


• Centauri Dreams notes a proposed method for detecting exomoons, by detecting the disruptions that they cause in their parent worlds' magnetic fields on the pattern of Io's disruption of Jupiter's magnetic fields.


• The Dragon's Tales notes a new paper suggesting that Enceladus' geysers are caused by its tides with Saturn.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at what sociology has to say about sibling relationships.


• Joe. My. God. notes that some American conservstives think gays should oppose immigration because immigrants bring tuberculosis which kills HIV-positive people.


• Languages of the World's Asya Perelstvaig demonstrates that there is no evidence at all that Yiddish descends from the Turkic Khazarian language, noting instead arguments for a Germanic origin.


• The Russian Demographics Blog maps population change in Estonia over 1989-2011, noting that there has been population growth only in the metropolitan areas of three Estonian cities with Russian-majority Narva not seeing growth.


• At Savage Minds, Uzma Z. Rizvi thinks about racism in the United States over time.


• The Search interviews online anthropologist Robert Kozinets.


• Spacing Toronto notes that Toronto saw the invention of the first arcade game.


• Strange Maps shares an interactive infographic tracing the cross-border electricity trade in the European Union.


• Towleroad notes a fatal gay-bashing in San Francisco and the near-murder of an Azerbaijani teen by parents who wanted to burn him alive.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes an American court ruling refusing to enforce a Moroccan court judgement on the grounds of the Moroccan legal system's corruption.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that support for federalism is spreading in Russia, notes one analyst's argument that Russia can become a beacon of reactionary conservative ideology, and suggests that Russia is trying to nudge outside powers out of the Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute.

A man who beheaded a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba will soon be allowed to leave a mental hospital without an escort.

Thursday's ruling by the Criminal Code Review Board means Vince Li will be on his own in public for the first time since he stabbed Tim McLean and then ate parts of his body six years ago.

The board granted Li all the new freedoms his psychiatric team had requested at a hearing earlier this week. Lead psychiatrist Dr. Steven Kremer said Li, a schizophrenic, has stopped experiencing delusions and is a model, non-violent patient.

Instead of the supervised outings Li had been granted previously, he will be allowed unescorted trips from the Selkirk Mental Health Centre into the nearby city of Selkirk. The visits, to begin next Thursday, are to start at 30 minutes and increase to full days.

[. . .]

For McLean's mother, the changes were an outrage.

"We're not surprised. We're very disappointed, embarrassed, ashamed," Carol DeDelley said.

[. . .]

Crown attorney Susan Helenchilde did not oppose the changes proposed at this year's hearing. She noted that Li has co-operated with hospital staff at all times.

Li's doctors said he willingly takes his medication and understands the importance of doing so.

DeDelley is not convinced. She said there is no way to guarantee that Li will continue to take his drugs if he's unsupervised.

"He poses no threat in care. I propose they keep him in care so he's not a threat."

DeDelley has been running a website, www.timslaw.ca, where she highlights cases across the country in which people found not criminally responsible for crimes reoffend after being released.

• At Geocurrents, Asya Pereltsvaig takes on the provocative, if apparently ill-founded, thesis that Ashkenazic Jews trace their ancestry to the medieval Khazars of the Russian steppe by taking a look at the structure of the Yiddish language.


• Language Hat claims that, with the advent of electronic communications which make them difficult to insert into text, diacritical marks are endangered in the Polish language. A campaign has been launched.


• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis links to an essay by feminist and historian Ruth Rosen wherein she states--basically--that early feminists didn't think about campaigning against violence against women in the 1970s because violence against women was taken for granted as inevitable.


• British journalist Mark Simpson unearths a vintage article about Napster and the Internet and free culture from 2001 that's still relevant today.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen links approvingly to a book, Cuisine, Colonialism and Cold War: Food in Twentieth Century Korea by Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, that examines "Korean-Japanese relations, the early history of Korean industrialization, and the rise of industrial food, as well as the evolution of Korean food in recent times". It does look interesting.


• Naked Anthropologist Laura Agustín takes a look at the ways in which the sex industry of New York City's Times Square was an integral part of the neighbourhood, in photos and posters.


• Torontoist notes that City Council has just declared Toronto a sanctuary city, guaranteeing undocumented residents access to municipal services. More on this later.


• Eugene Volokh in a couple of posts (1, 2) starts speculating whether or not indigenous peoples in the New World would have seen European migrants as illegal immigrants and starts to head in problematic directions. Again, more later.


• John Scalzi at Whatever shares his love of libraries.


• Window on Eurasia's Paul Goble notes, via various sources, that Chechen refugees in the European Union are facing forced returns to their ever-problematic homeland.

james_nicoll

I recently visited Calgary from Michigan. As a police officer for 20 years, it feels strange not to carry my off-duty hand-gun. Many would say I have no need to carry one in Canada.

Yet the police cannot protect everyone all the time. A man should be al-lowed to protect himself if the need arises. The need arose in a theatre in Aurora, Colo., as well as a college campus in Canada.

Recently, while out for a walk in Nose Hill Park, in broad daylight on a paved trail, two young men approached my wife and me. The men stepped in front of us, then said in a very aggressive tone: "Been to the Stampede yet?"

We ignored them. The two moved closer, repeating: "Hey, you been to the Stampede yet?"

I quickly moved between these two and my wife, replying, "Gentle-men, I have no need to talk with you, goodbye." They looked bewildered, and we then walked past them.

I speculate they did not have good intentions when they approached in such an aggressive, disrespectful and menacing manner. I thank the Lord Jesus Christ they did not pull a weapon of some sort, but rather concluded it was in their best interest to leave us alone.

Would we not expect a uniformed officer to pull his or her weapon to intercede in a life-or-death encounter to protect self, or another? Why then should the expectation be lower for a citizen of Canada or a visitor? Wait, I know - it's because in Canada, only the criminals and the police carry handguns.

Wawra wrote that he speculated the men did not have good intentions. He claims the men spoke in an “aggressive, disrespectful and menacing manner.” Menacing? A question about the Stampede is construed as a menace? Or, as someone commented on the Herald’s website: “... for asking if you had been to the Stampede? Since when is that grounds to be dead?” Another commenter wrote: “I can see why they were frightened. If you rearrange the letters in ‘been to Stampede yet?’ you get “a beset potted enemy’.”

Most likely, the men noticed something about the Wawras that indicated they were tourists, and were trying to make conversation. Maybe they themselves were enjoying the Stampede’s centennial celebration and wanted to let these tourists know that their visit to Calgary wouldn’t be complete without a day at the Stampede. The fact that the young men looked bewildered by Wawra’s response indicates that their intentions were indeed friendly ones and that they were quite puzzled at being rebuffed.

Wawra did not return my call requesting an interview Tuesday afternoon. Too bad. I would have liked to ask him why an American visitor to Calgary would treat a friendly encounter in a city park here as if it were a midnight stroll through a drug-dealer infested alley on the south side of Chicago. One can only stand open-mouthed at the knee-jerk mindset of suspicion, fear and loathing on the mean streets — which is so ingrained in Americans that they can’t leave it at home when they visit another country.

Americans argue that they need to carry guns, because having a concealed weapon makes them feel safe. Their thinking seems to be that at any given moment, they could be under attack from the very next person they meet on the street, and they’ll need to shoot in self-defence. Whereas, when you walk down a street in Canada, you don’t assume that you’re at risk of being suddenly assaulted or killed. You just see ordinary people going about their day and you give their motives no further thought.

• 80 Beats' Andrew Mosemen reports that Japan's unlucky Hayabusa asteorid probe is on track to return to Earth with its sample container, even though the probe might not have succeeded in taking a sample after all.


• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton writes about how the future may well give birth to new kinds of discrimination, suggesting that people who try to technologically augment their bodies might be the next major sufferers.


• Crooked Timber's Ingrid Robeyns tells her readers that a leading Belgian bishop has resigned after admitting that he sexually abused a family member for at least a decade.


• Daniel Drezner wonders where all the anti-globalization protesters have gone.


• Extraordinary Observations' Rob Pitingolo takes a look at some of New York City's best coffee shops.


• Joel at Far Outliers quotes at length a writer on how madrassahs often provide much better education than state schools.


• Geocurrents examines how unexpectedly heavy rain in Australia has led to a temporary revival of Australia's landlocked Lake Eyre.


• Personal Observations' Jim Belshaw observes that regional disparities within particular jurisdictions--nation-states, states, provinces--can produce serious internal conflicts.


• Slap Upside the Head observes the hysterical, and homophobic, opposition to a recently withdrawn plan for sex education in Ontario.


• Surprise! Towleroad notes a recent study observing that queers are substantially more likely to suffer violence than their straight counterparts.


• Alex Harrowell at the Yorkshire Ranter examines how a French project to implement personal rapid transit failed thanks to internal culture clashes and a failure to consult outsiders.