• blogTO notes a threat to some of Liberty Village's historic buildings through development.
• Centauri Dreams looks at planetary formation around close binary SDSS 1557, which includes a white dwarf.
• False Steps' Paul Drye announces a new book project, They Played the Game, which looks at how different baseball players overlooked in our history might ( Read more... )

• Anthropology.net describes an effort to digitize tapes recording Navajo oral history.
• Centauri Dreams remembers Vera Rubin.
• D-Brief looks
  
• Dangerous Minds shares a 1984 TV clip featuring George Michael and Morrissey talking about Joy Division.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper suggesting a gas giant exoplanet might be indicated by a protoplanetary ( Read more... )

• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the importance of truth in journalism.
• Crooked Timber looks at the example of Trump and wonders why that kind of charismatic authoritarianism is popular.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a model of the inner debris disk of HR 8799.
• Far Outliers looks at the cultural divergences between North and South Koreans.
• ( Read more... )

Torontoist's Emily Macrae reports on what lessons, positive and negative, Toronto can take from Seoul's bringing a buried waterway to the surface.

Today, the Cheonggyecheon stream flows through almost 11 kilometres of downtown Seoul, but it spent much of the last century covered in concrete. As the city grew, the stream became increasingly ( Read more... )

• Bloomberg notes Venezuela's hopes for an oil price at $US 50, looks at Labour keeping the current London mayor's seat, observes the vulnerability of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, and warns of a possible drought in the US Corn Belt.
• Bloomberg View notes the continuing fragmentation of the Orthodox Church, and suggests Putin might accept a partial ban ( Read more... )

• Bloomberg notes the rise of populism in Mexico, looks at how Europe is losing its reputation as a renewable energy leader, looks at political protest in Zimbabwe, and looks at changing habits of Saudi oil ministers.
• Bloomberg View notes the politicization of the Israeli army, looks at an effort to smuggle Korean pop culture into North Korea, and ( Read more... )

• Bloomberg notes the defection of 13 North Korean workers at an overseas restaurant to the South, reports that Venezuela has declared Friday a holiday to try to save on power consumption, wonders if low oil prices will hurt the Philippines through diminished remittances from the Middle East, notes that Russian efforts at import substitution are ( Read more... )

• The Atlantic's James Parker explains the unique power of the lyrics of David Bowie.
• Asia Times notes how the Korean Wave is an issue among some Vietnamese, who remember South Korean military atrocities during the Vietnam War.
• The Toronto Star looks at the legacy of Toronto's Hammy the Hamster.
• Northeasternontario.com explores the legacy of northern ( Read more... )

Heejin Kim of Bloomberg notes that Chinese upset at the South Korean deployment of an anti-missile defense system might derail the two countries' close relationship.

South Korean consumer shares, 2015’s stock-market darlings as tourists from China flocked to Seoul department stores, are now among the nation’s worst performers this year as a ( Read more... )

Bloomberg's Kyungji Cho examines how South Korea has become one of the major investors in American office towers, concentrating particularly in New York City and San Francisco. For all of South Korea's recent growth, the United States is still a preferred destination for investors.

South Korea’s institutional investors are putting money in debt to ( Read more... )