• blogTO notes that TTC tunnels will get WiFi in 2018.
• Border Thinking's Laura Augustín shares some of Edvard Munch's brothel paintings.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the latest science on fast radio bursts.
• Dangerous Minds shares some of the sexy covers of Yugoslavian computer magazine Računari.
• Dead Things looks at the latest research into dinosaur eggs.

• The Dragon's Gaze reports on speculation that the Fermi paradox can be answered by assuming extraterrestrial civilizations have died already.
• The Dragon's Tales looks at the climate of early Mars.
• Far Outliers takes a look at ethnic divisions among Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war in Russia.
• Joe. My. God. reposts his essay on gay pride parades, in ( Read more... )

• The Boston Globe's Big Picture reports on the scene from Palmyra after the expulsion of ISIS.
• James Bow links to a documentary on the search for Planet Nine.
• The Dragon's Tales speculates that the ability to enter torpor might have saved mammals from the en of the Cretaceous extinction.
• Honourary Canadian Philip Turner discovers the Chiac dialect of ( Read more... )

Open Democracy's Stephen Jones takes a look at South Ossetia. Nominally independent since the 2008 Russo-Georgian war like Abkhazia, South Ossetians seem inclined to favour unification with their co-ethnics in North Ossetia, in the Russian Federation. There's little prospect of that, though.

‘[I]ndependence’ will bring little to most South ( Read more... )

• blogTO notes the construction of another tall condo on Wellesley between Yonge and Church.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper observing that the Titius-Bode law apparently doesn't work for exoplanets.
• The Dragon's Tales observes that Western sanctions against the Russian space industry could harm its long-term prospects vis-a-vis China and the United ( Read more... )

• Eastern Approaches follows the story of Crimean Tatars who are now refugees in western Ukraine.
• At the Financial Times' The World blog, John Reed examines the unlikely media star who is Crimean attorney-general Natalia Poklonskaya.
• A Fistful of Euros' David Weman notes the United Nations vote against the annexation of Crimea by Russia.
• Geocurrents has ( Read more... )

Writing for Open Democracy, Vakhtang Komakhidze writes at length about how the official policies of the Georgian government towards secessionist South Ossetia--basically, doing the best to cut off all contact with South Ossetia in the hopes that the South Ossetians will give in and unify with Georgia on Georgian turns--is counterproductive.

Over ( Read more... )

The Ossetians are going to be reunified within Russia, or at least their leaders expect such to come about as reported by the Associated Press.

The breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia has predicted it would become part of Russia ( Read more... )

From the Financial Times comes Jan Cienski's article "Saakashvili lays blame for crisis firmly on Russia".

[O]n the night of August 7, when Georgian forces began their rocket and artillery barrage of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, Brigadier General Mamuka Kurashvili, the chief of Georgian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, went on Georgian ( Read more... )