As promised in my last post:

Interesting piece on how climate change may have affected the rise of the Assyrian Empire, and contributed to its collapse as well.  However, the scientists are so hyperventilating about these...

I'm at a conference for a few days.  We're by the sea!  It's lovely.  Some of us will have a party on a ship in a couple of days.  I'll see all sorts of friends!  It's going to be a blast.

It will also be busy and overwhelming and I'll not have much time to myself.

I've begun to learn, after almost thirty years of conference-going, that I survive these things better with some quiet, and a regular reminder to myself that you wanted to come to this thing, and there are things about it you really...

Soil erosion reduces the productivity of ecosystems, it changes nutrient cycles and it thus directly impacts climate and society. An international team of researchers, recorded temporal changes of soil erosion by analyzing sediment deposits in more than 600 lakes worldwide. They found that the accumulation of lake sediments increased significantly on a global scale around 4,000 years ago.  Is that one way to...

Early in the mornings over the past few years, when I first wake up, stumble downstairs, make coffee, and begin to try to start the day, I have taken to not looking at my phone, or opening my laptop, and going on the internet.  Instead I begin by reading on paper, trying to set my day by more perduring textual orientations than the morning's outrages, whether they are global news or national news or just someone Wrong On The Internet.  There are hours enough later in the day to allow the rest of the busy world to elbow into your consciousness; but I find that...

This is totally interesting, though I don't understand it very much.  Seems that some physicists have stumbled upon an equation that offers a tremendously simplifying short-cut for measuring something about neutrinos, and the equation also seems to offer a more general solution to a more...

OK maybe not, but this DoD report on the "principles on the Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence by the Department of Defense" is interesting.  A lot to process here.

A couple quick comments: 

In general, this doesn't really undercut my reflexive humanist's cynicism, but in fact makes me...

They keep coming.

This is an interesting, and especially at 7 AM pretty alarming, account of how the narrow genetic basis of almost all the world's coffee makes us especially fragile and vulnerable to a disease that would destroy this particular species. Among the other interesting facts, is the information that there are 150 kinds of wild coffee as well.

Some more stuff on religion for your Sunday evening:

If you are worried about the PRC's suppression of religion, you can be a little cheered that Taiwan is moving in another direction: 

Just as China embraces restrictions on practice of religion, Taiwan is stepping up as a supporter of...

In the face of the forces rending the United States, Lepore depicts it as a unitary society with a distinct and laudable set of civic ideals, one whose past can be intelligibly told as a single story.  

Can Jill Lepore do what historians used to do in their spare time, namely, write a single-volume history of the United States that is both honest and uplifting? Lepore, as this reviewer...

You know how to do it.

Your life is empty, you say?  The ennui of mid-November getting you down?  Distract yourself from your imminent death with these fabulous links!!  First hit's free.

We talk about the "police state," but we often don't realize that "the police" as an idea isn't that old.  In fact it's just barely over 200 years old.  Here's a...