• blogTO shares pictures and photos of Toronto overhead from 1879 on, noting the ever-rising skyline.
• Centauri Dreams notes the fascinating results of an in-depth study of the emerging planetary system of HD100546.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper looking at causes for orbital eccentricty of planets in trinary systems.
• The Dragon's Tales notes the ( Read more... )

• Al Jazeera notes the breakdown of the Libyan state.
• Bloomberg mentions Finland's new interest in NATO, notes European Union plans to strengthen sanctions against Russia, takes note of China's vetoing of democracy in Hong Kong and looks at China's strengthening of its South China Sea holdings, and in West Africa notes the unburied bodies in the ( Read more... )

• Andart's Anders Sandberg links to a paper of his examining the ethics of brain emulations. How ethical is it do make very life-like simulations of minds?
• blogTO notes a public art movement tracing the former path of the Don River.
• The Burgh Diaspora's Jim Russell notes that population change in the US is a consequence of migration and natural change.
• ( Read more... )

Katherine Tweed's Scientific American article contrasting the ongoing boom in nuclear reactors in Asia with stagnation in the West makes a convincing contrast. (South Korea isn't mentioned in the article--it should be.) I do wonder if China's state-directed push will continue without consequences, and whether or not the current West lull might yet ( Read more... )

• io9 shares photos of Kazakhstan's capital of Astana.
• Anders Sandberg links to a recent discussion of a paper he co-authored on the ethics of augmentation.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper analyzing the density of different Kepler-discovered exoplanets that determines that worlds more than 2.5 times the diameter of Earth are likely to be mini- ( Read more... )

• At The Dragon's Tales, Will Baird reports that Sweden and Finland, spooked by Crimea, are now contemplating NATO membership.
• On a very different note, The Dragon's Tales also notes that Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, with a Europa-like ocean underneath, is perfectly suited for a space mission.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that workers are dying on ( Read more... )

• Crooked Timber's Jon Mandle reflects on his experiences of a visit to Auschwitz.
• The Dragon's Tales' Will Baird notes the development of a robot that can walk like a cat.
• Eastern Approaches suggests that Croatia, set to enter the European Union, should pick up economic tips from Finland's experience in the 1990s.
• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen ( Read more... )

• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton shares a photograph of a San Francisco streetcar
  
• Eastern Approaches describes how the Serbian ambassador to Turkey was cut off by the protests.
• Geocurrents' Asya Pereltsvaig traces the etymology of book in different world languages.
• GNXP's Razib Khan notes that imagined far futures where humans are recognizably ( Read more... )

• Burgh Diaspora notes the migration of Spanish professionals to Morocco. (It's close and the cost of living is low.)
• Daniel Drezner, in contrast to other writers, has become somewhat more dovish since the Iraq War, but not that much more.
• At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Jonathan Wynn examines the sociological settings of the coverage of the ( Read more... )

• Dan Hirschman, at A (Budding) Sociologist's Commonplace Blog, wonders about sociological studies of dying fields and institutions. He raises the example of the card game bridge.
• Far Outliers has a variety of links--1, 2, 3--describing how the Black Sea city of Odessa, in southern Ukraine, was in the 19th century a booming metropolis comparable in ( Read more... )