A Bit More Detail

• Bad Astronomy notes the very odd structure of galaxy NGC 2775.


• Dangerous Minds reports on the 1987 riot by punks that wrecked a Seattle ferry.


• Bruce Dorminey reports on a new suggestion from NASA that the massive dust towers of Mars have helped dry out that world over eons.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at how changing technologies have led to younger people spending more social capital on maintaining relationships with friends over family.


• This forum hosted at Gizmodo considers the likely future causes of death of people in coming decades.


• In Media Res' Russell Arben Fox reports on the debate in Wichita on what to do with the Century II performance space.


• Joe. My. God. reports on the decision of Hungary to drop out of Eurovision, apparently because of its leaders' homophobia.


• JSTOR Daily reports on the debunking of the odd theory that the animals and people of the Americas were degenerate dwarfs.


• Language Hat reports on how the classics can be served by different sorts of translation.


• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money considers how Trump's liberation of war criminals relates to folk theories about just wars.


• The LRB Blog reports from the ground in the Scotland riding of East Dunbartonshire.


• Marginal Revolution shares a paper suggesting that, contrary to much opinion, social media might actually hinder the spread of right-wing populism.


• The NYR Daily looks at the nature of the proxy fighters in Syria of Turkey. Who are they?


• Drew Rowsome interviews Sensational Sugarbum, star of--among other things--the latest Ross Petty holiday farce.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why we still need to be able to conduct astronomy from the Earth.


• Strange Maps explains the odd division of Europe between east and west, as defined by different subspecies of mice.


• Window on Eurasia notes how Chinese apparently group Uighurs in together with other Central Asians of similar language and religion.


• Arnold Zwicky explores the concept of onomatomania.

• Architectuul looks at some examples of endangered architecture in the world, in London and Pristina and elsewhere.


• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait examines a bizarre feature on the Moon's Lacus Felicitatus.


• The Big Picture shares photos exploring the experience of one American, Marie Cajuste, navigating the health care system as she sought cancer treatment.


• Centauri Dreams looks at a new proposal for an interstellar craft making use of neutral particle beam-driven sails.


• Ingrid Robeyns at Crooked Timber writes about the question of what individual responsibility people today should take for carbon emissions.


• The Crux takes a look at what the earliest (surviving) texts say about the invention of writing.


• D-Brief notes an interesting proposal to re-use Christmas trees after they are tossed out.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that India has approved funding for crewed spaceflight in 2022, in the Gaganyaan program.


• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina takes a look at the Apollo 8 mission.


• Far Outliers looks at the experiences of British consuls in isolated Kashgar, in what is now Xinjiang.


• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing argues that it can take time to properly see things, that speed can undermine understanding.


• JSTOR Daily notes how people with depression use language, opting to use absolute words more often than the norm.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how the Bolsonario government in Brazil has set to attacking indigenous people.


• Marginal Revolution links to a paper arguing that Greek life in the colleges of the United States, the fraternity system, has a negative impact on the grades of participants.


• George Hutchinson writes at the NYR Daily about how race, of subjects and of the other, complicates readings of Louisiana-born author Jean Toomey and his novel Cane, about life on sugar cane plantations in that state.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw reflects on his Christmas reading, including a new history of Scandinavia in the Viking age told from their perspective.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the Milky Way Galaxy in its formative years. What did it look like?


• Strange Company highlights its top 10 posts over the past year.


• Window on Eurasia wonders at reports the Uniate Catholics of Ukraine are seeking a closer alliance with the new Ukrainian Orthodox Church.


• Arnold Zwicky reports on the nearly iconic and ubiquitous phalluses of Bhutan, as revealed by a trip by Anthony Bourdain.

• The Buzz celebrates Esi Edugyan's winning of the Giller Prize for the second time, for her amazing novel Washington Black.


• Centauri Dreams notes the unusual rings of outer-system body Chariklo.


• The Crux looks at the long history of unsuccessful planet-hunting at Barnard's Star, concentrating on the disproved mid-20th century work of Peter Van De Kamp.


• D-Brief notes evidence that Mars knew catastrophic floods that radically reshaped its surface.


• Bruce Dorminey visits and explores Korea's ancient Cheomseongdae Observatory.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog notes the death of long-time contributor Peter Kaufman.


• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing considers the things--quiet, even--that modernity can undermine before transforming into a commodity.


• Imageo notes that global warming has continued this American Thanksgiving.


• Joe. My. God. notes the sour grapes of the Family Research Council at the success of the moving film about "gay conversion therapy", Boy Erased.


• JSTOR Daily links to a paper considering if the zeitgeist of the world is into major monuments.


• Language Log considers a news report of "arsehole" geese in Australia. As a Canadian, all I can say is that geese are birds that know they are dinosaurs.


• The LRB Blog reports from the scene of the recent unrecognized elections in the city of Donetsk, run by a pro-Russian regime.


• The Map Room Blog reports on how Atlas Obscura is exhibiting some amazing maps produced in Dungeons and Dragons campaigns.


• Marginal Revolution links to a paper noting how black teachers can help boost achievements among black students.


• The New APPS Blog looks at how the political economy of our time combines with social media to atomize and fragment society.


• Nicholas Lezard at the NYR Daily talks about his experience of anti-Semitism, as a non-Jew, in the United Kingdom.


• Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society Blog suggests families would do better to talk about space at Thanksgiving than about politics, and shares a list of subjects.


• Drew Rowsome talks about the frustrations and the entertainment involved with Bohemian Rhapsody.


• Window on Eurasia notes that fifty thousand ethnic Kyrgyz are being held in the Xinjiang camps of China.


• Arnold Zwicky shares some Thanksgiving holiday cartoons by Roz Chast.

• Eurasianet notes that the trial in Kazakhstan of an ethnic Kazakh woman from Xinjiang for illegal crossing is creating a public scandal via her revelations about the Chinese security state there.


• J. Bradford Delong identifies some of the many institutional and economic issues of Qing China in the 19th century, explaining why catch-up to the West was not possible.


• A very imperfect deterrence prevails between the United States and Iran, neither country being strong enough to make attack impossible. Global News reports.


• The Intercept reported that the new government of Ecuador is negotiating with the British government to expel Assange from its London embassy.


• Politico Europe notes that Germany is trying to catch up to the United States and China in the domain of artificial intelligence.

Manchu was the language of the last Chinese dynasty, the Qing, which ruled from 1644-1912, and had two of its emperors (Kangxi, Qianlong) each rule for 60 years or more.

Today, out of nearly ten million ethnic Manchus, fewer than one hundred can still speak the language fluently, and it is generally regarded as being on the brink of extinction.

[. . .]

When I listen to Sibe being sung, it's almost exactly what I imagined Manchu would sound like when I have had occasion to read texts in that language:

[. . .]

I am of the opinion that if enough Manchus have the resolve to resurrect their mother tongue, with Sibe serving as a model on which to base their efforts, it can be done. What is needed are individuals with leadership qualities who are committed to the task.

• Centauri Dreams considers the likely cometary explanation for KIC 8462852.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes an enigmatic dark spot on a white dwarf.


• The Dragon's Tales reports on China's construction of a military base in Djibouti.


• Joe. My. God. notes that the man who promised to reduce the price of an HIV/AIDS medication that his company hiked has reneged.


• Lawyers, Gins and Money notes that Trump was lying about protesting Muslims in New Jersey after 9/11.


• pollotenchegg maps the distribution of ethnic minorities in Ukraine, now and in 1926.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer looks at how the right won in Argentina.


• Torontoist notes local initiatives to welcome Syrian refugees to Toronto.


• Towleroad notes a Vietnamese trans right bill.


• The Volokh Conspiracy observes that American states cannot ban Syrian refugees.


• Window on Eurasia looks on a new Chinese railway passing from Xinjiang through Central Asia to Iran, and looks at the odd Communist-Christian-Muslim mélange being favoured by some Russians.

Isreal Ahmet, an ethnic Uighur who immigrated to Afghanistan from western China, lived and worked in Kabul for more than a decade before being detained and deported by Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) last summer.

Ahmet, who lived in a meagre, mud-brick house, was described as an honest businessman by those who know him.

An NDS official - speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorised to talk to the media - told Al Jazeera that Ahmet was detained for lacking legal documentation and carrying counterfeit money. He was held in a jail cell with more than two dozen other Chinese Uighurs, including women and children.

Flagged as a spy, Ahmet was quickly escorted to the Kabul International Airport, where Chinese officials were waiting for him. He boarded a plane and has not been heard from since.

Eleven other Uighur men sharing a cell with Ahmet were also sent back to China, according to the NDS official, adding that six women and 12 children in another cell had refused to go. The whereabouts of these women and children are currently unknown.

"Some [of the detainees] were spies, some were [potential] suicide attackers and some illegally entered the country," said the NDS official.

• blogTO notes the continuing problems of Toronto's food truck project.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes the differences between transit and radial velocity detection methods for planets and the relative advantages for detecting planets in stellar habitable zones, and links to a paper describing how hot Jupiters can become super-Earths.


• The Dragon's Tales notes the changing strategic situation of Australia.


• Marginal Revolution notes that most of IKEA's photo shoots are actually computer-assembled from stock imagery.


• Joe. My. God. notes the impending retirement of Berlin's gay mayor Klaus Wowereit.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that anti-Obamacare red states are hurting their poor citizens.


• New APPS Blog considers the question of what makes happy children.


• Towleroad notes anti-gay persecution by Lebanese police and quotes the mayor of Kazakhstan's capital city talking badly about non-heterosexuals.


• Window on Eurasia notes the emigration of Kazakhs and even Uighurs from Xinjiang to Kazakhstan, touches upon Western disillusionment with Russia, notes the possible impending defection of most of the Ukrainian churches of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and reports on the relocation of a Ukrainian factory to Russia.

[T]he attacks in Kunming are far more disturbing than other recent episodes of violence. To begin, they occurred outside Xinjiang. But unlike the October crash of an SUV in front of Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square, Kunming, the subtropical capital of Yunnan Province, is not a touchstone of Chinese political might. And unlike recent attacks in Kashgar and Khotan wherein perpetrators have targeted individuals with identifiable pro-CCP leanings – police officers, village secretaries, and other government officials, the assailants in Kunming indiscriminately and mercilessly attacked unsuspecting crowds.

As the nature of these attacks change, so too will China’s treatment of the Uyghurs.

For Uyghurs in Xinjiang, they will inevitably face more stringent surveillance and control as the government tries desperately to prevent further violence. Policy experts have already identified Zhang Chunxian’s, the current Party Secretary of Xinjiang, recently adopted hardline approach to stability in China’s far northwest as a nod in this direction. Invariably, these policies are aimed at curtailing the influence of Islam.

[. . .]

For the growing number of Uyghurs who work and study in eastern Chinese cities, they will likely face more distrust and harassment from Han Chinese. Even before the Kunming tragedy, young Uyghurs living in Chinese cities claimed widespread discrimination. According to reports I have gathered, several college-educated, bilingual (Chinese and Uyghur) individuals have been refused rooms at Han-owned hotels. At transport hubs, they are routinely targeted by police during “random” checks and forced to present their identification cards. Unfortunately based on the practices already in place, the next step may be to round up Uyghurs who do not possess proper documentation and send them back to Xinjiang.

Based on my experiences on university campuses in Beijing, Uyghur and Han students keep their distance. The rare encounters between Uyghur and Han are regularly shrouded in misunderstanding and prejudice. Uyghur students are routinely asked condescending questions by their Han peers, such as: Why are the Uyghurs thieves? Do you travel by camel in Xinjiang? Do you share rooms with domesticated farm animals? If Chinese blogs provide any indication of the immediate future of Han-Uyghur relations, the teasing will soon mutate into vicious slurs.

What is “Xinjiang?” Its most straightforward meaning is “new territory.” But for the Uighurs, how could the land possibly be their “new territory” when it has been their home and their ancestors’ home for generations. It is only a new territory for the occupiers.

The Uighurs don’t like to hear the name “Xinjiang” because it is itself a proclamation of an empire’s expansion, the bragging of the colonists, and a testimony of the indigenous people’s humiliation and misfortune.

Even for China, the name “New Territory” is awkward. Everywhere and on every occasion, China claims that Xinjiang has belonged to China ever since ancient times, but why is it called the “new territory?” The government-employed scholars racked their brain, insisting that “new territory” is the “new” in the phrase “the new return of old territories” by Zuo Zongtang’s (左宗棠, best known as General Tsao who led the campaign to reclaim Xinjiang in 1875-1876). This is far-fetched, because in that case, shouldn’t it be called the “old territory”?

I will never forget a scene once described by a foreign journalist in which, every evening, a seven-year-old Uighur boy unhoisted the Chinese flag, which the Chinese authorities required them to fly during the day, and trampled it underfoot. What hatred would make a child do that? Indeed, from children, one can measure most accurately the level of ethnic tension. If even children are taking part in it, then it is a united and unanimous hostility.

That’s why, in Palestinian scenes of violence, we always see children in the midst. I use the term “Palestinization” to describe the full mobilization of a people and the full extent of its hatred. To me, Xinjiang is Palestinizing. It has not boiled to the surface as much, but it has been fermenting in the heart of the indigenous peoples.

The indigenous peoples regarded Sheng Shicai (盛世才) , the Han (Chinese) war lord who ruled Xinjiang during the 1930s and 1940s, as an executioner, and they call Wang Lequan (王乐泉), the CCP secretary who carried out heavy-handed policies in Xinjiang, Wang Shicai. But when, in Urumqi, the Han taxi driver saw I was holding a copy of Sheng Shicai, the Lord of the Outer Frontiers, a book I had just bought from a bookstore, he immediately enthused about Sheng. “The policies at his time were truly good,” he exalted.

CCP’s policies in Xinjiang today have been escalating the ethnic tension. Continuing on that path, it will not take long to reach the point of no return where all opportunities for healthy interaction will be lost, and a vicious cycle pushes the two sides farther and farther apart. Once reaching that point of no return, Xinjiang will likely become the next Middle East or Chechnya.

Saturday’s rampage at a Kunming train station that killed 29 people and injured 140—an attack that the Chinese government linked to Uighur separatists from the Xinjiang region—hasn’t changed Cheng Lin’s view about the ethnic group.

“All the Xinjiang people are bad. Even before this happened, we didn’t talk to them,” the 36-year-old housewife said from her home in a dark narrow lane in Dashuying, where most Uighurs in Kunming live. She added: “This is not a discrimination against them.”

A Uighur kid tried to steal her son’s bike, she said, while others threatened to beat people standing in their way. For her, it’s personal.

Elsewhere in Kunming, as police singled out Uighurs for registration checks or told them to stay away from train stations, it was more official.

Saturday’s killings spurred fear locally as the separatist violence that has slain dozens since November—mostly in remote parts of Xinjiang, thousands of kilometers away—crept closer to home. Others were concerned that a much more common problem—discrimination against the Uighur minority—is poised to get worse.

Uighurs, whose language, culture, and religion differ greatly from those of the Hans, already face some discrimination. In Shanghai, for example, where Uighur pickpockets were once a well-known annoyance, natives have nicknamed the entire ethnic group “cantaloupes,” after the melon that’s the region’s specialty.