• blogTO notes the Distillery District's Toronto Light Festival.
• Border Thinking Laura Agustín looks at migrants and refugees in James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia.
• Centauri Dreams suggests that Perry's expedition to Japan could be taken as a metaphor for first contact.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a report about how brown dwarf EPIC 219388192 b.
• The LRB Blog ( Read more... )

CNBC's Nyshka Chandran suggests that the Greater Mekong Subregion, uniting southwesternmost China with mainland Southeast Asia, may become a major manufacturing region as Chinese wages rise while the region integrates. It might be worth considering this in the context of China's potential emergence as an immigration destination, with Southeast ( Read more... )

• 80 Beats notes that the discovery the asteroid 24 Themis has substantial amounts of water ice gives credence to the idea that Earth's oceans come from meteoritic and cometary bombardments.
• At Border Thinking, Laura Agustín writes how about female street prostitution thrives openly in Karachi, even outside the tomb of Pakistan's founder Jinnah.
• ( Read more... )