• James Bow calls for an end to the US-Canada Safe Third Country agreement prohibiting people coming from American soil from claiming refugee status in Canada.
• D-Brief reports on the vast array of man-made minerals appearing in what is now being called the Anthropocene Era of Earth.
• Dangerous Minds notes the efforts of the Disco Preservation Society to ( Read more... )

• Apostrophen's 'Nathan Smith wonders why so many stories featuring gay children kicked out of their families feature the children later reuniting with these same people.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly draws from her own experiences growing up in a family marked by abuse to argue that Trump is treating Americans as any abuser treats their ( Read more... )

• The Crux makes the case that, for too long, modern homo sapiens have underestimated the genius of the Neanderthals.
• D-Brief looks at the efforts of some scientists to develop brewing standards for the Moon.
• Language Hat examines different languages' writing standards--Turkish, Greek, Armenian--in the late Ottoman Empire.
• Language Log deconstructs ( Read more... )

This news comes from the end of 2016, but it's still quite good. May China continue to progress in space travel, for the benefit of us all.

China vowed Tuesday to speed up the development of its space industry as it set out its plans to become the first country to soft land a probe on the far side of the moon, around 2018, and launch its first ( Read more... )

• Bad Astronomy shares a photo of the Earth and Moon taken by a Mars probe.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money responds to a baffling claim by a New York City policeman that stranger rape is more of a concern than acquaintance rape.
• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw, returned from Denmark, wondersabout the extent to which social happiness is maximized by ( Read more... )

• Bad Astronomy notes the discovery of water vapour clouds in the atmosphere of nearby brown dwarf WISE 0855.
• blogTO notes the imminent arrival of winter weather.
• Centauri Dreams reports on a new theory of the Moon's origins suggesting the impact collision which create it was much more violent than we thought.
• The Dragon's Gaze notes how snowlines ( Read more... )

Emma Grey Ellis' Wired article takes a look at how China's space program is progressing.

On Monday, at a launch center in the middle of the Gobi desert, two taikonauts boarded a spacecraft and rocketed into space. Yesterday their ship, Shenzou-11, docked with China’s experimental space lab, Tiangong-2. For the next 30 days-China’s longest crewed ( Read more... )

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait evaluates the doability of Elon Musk's proposal for colonizing Mars.
• blogTO notes that Casa Loma will be transformed into a haunted house for the month of October.
• The Dragon's Tales notes NASA's belief that Europa almost certainly has watery plumes.
• False Steps shares an early American proposal for a lunar base.
• Far Outliers ( Read more... )

• At Antipope, Charlie Stross describes how Brexit has forced him to rewrite his latest novel.
• D-Brief suggests early Venus was once habitable, and notes the rumour of an Earth-like planet found around Proxima Centauri.
• The Dragon's Gaze notes the detection of storms of brown dwarfs.
• The Dragon's Tales reports on more signs of water on Mars.
• False Steps ( Read more... )

• Bloomberg notes concerns over Northern Ireland's frontiers, looks at how Japanese retailers are hoping to take advantage of Vietnam's young consumers, examines the desperation of Venezuelans shopping in Colombia, looks at Sri Lankan interest in Chinese investment, suggests oil prices need to stay below 40 dollars US a barrel for Russia to reform, ( Read more... )