Weekend Links!

* We have decades of research in child development and neuroscience that tell us that young children learn actively — they have to move, use their senses, get their hands on things, interact with other kids and teachers, create, invent. But in this twisted time, young children starting public pre-K at the age of 4 are expected to learn through “rigorous instruction.”

* Yet in spite of these lofty commitments and goals, not everyone is impressed with the proposed solutions that are surfacing ahead of the Paris talks. This includes the leading climate scientist James Hansen, who published an editorial on Friday in which he derided an Obama-led climate initiative as “unadulterated 100% pure bullshit.”

* The Wampanoag Side of the First Thanksgiving Story. What Really Happened at the First Thanksgiving? The Wampanoag Side of the Tale. The Secret History of the Pilgrims and Beer.

* My Favorite African Science Fiction and Fantasy (AfroSFF) Short Fiction of 2015. I liked both “Discovering Time Travel” and “Last Wave” a lot.

* The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a historic and controversial election from moving forward in Hawaii.

* The story of the first Black Friday.

* 40 maps and charts that explain sports in America.

* Planetary Resources, the asteroid mining company, applauds President Obama who signed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (H.R. 2262) into law. This law recognizes the right of U.S. citizens to own asteroid resources they obtain and encourages the commercial exploration and utilization of resources from asteroids.

* How The House Of Representatives Voted To Make Refugee Resettlement Impossible.

* Assassinating Terrorists Does Not Work.

* Dinosaurs in Science Fiction.

* “Bad News For The Planet,” Says The World Meteorological Organization.

* Utopia in Rojava.

* The circle of life at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

* As unions have declined, lawyers are suing less under the laws that govern labor-management relations and more over wages and hours, gaining familiarity with the statute as they go.

* For a thousand years, the societies of the Western world transmitted and preserved much of their written cultures on and between the skins of beasts. Cows and calves, rams, ewes, and lambs, camels, deer, and fauns, goats, gazelles, and horses, seals and walruses, perhaps cats and dogs on occasion were rendered into scrolls and codices, bindings and booklets, charters and mezuzot. A large part of our written inheritance survives as a great mass of animal remains.

* Scientists just caught a black hole swallowing a star — and burping a bit back out.

* Jessica Jones: shattering exploration of rape, addiction and control.

* “false testimony occurred in hundreds of trials, incl. 32 death penalty.”

* Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World.

* How Did Doctor Who Manage To Waste a Companion Like Clara Oswald Actress Like Jenna Coleman? However they did it, they certainly did…

* What if Trump wins?

* I’ve seen this movie. Though this one is intriguing: We Still Don’t Know Why the Heck There Are So Many Blue Tarantulas.

* It’s Time to Change Your Amazon Password.

* My son, the mass murderer.

* The case for letting children vote.

* Star Wars as its own genre. The Heartwarming Story Behind R2-KT, And How She Joined Star Wars Canon.

* A Unified Theory of the Rocky Movies.

* And now they tell me: Childless adults are generally just as happy as parents.

Monday Night: Scooby-Doo, Stalin’s Daughter, and More

* “You can’t regret your fate,” Ms. Peters once said, “although I do regret my mother didn’t marry a carpenter.” Josef Stalin’s daughter has died. More at MeFi.

* Occupy the Mystery Machine: The very first rule of Scooby-Doo, the single premise that sits at the heart of their adventures, is that the world is full of grown-ups who lie to kids, and that it’s up to those kids to figure out what those lies are and call them on it, even if there are other adults who believe those lies with every fiber of their being. (via)

* Behind the scenes of Planet of the Apes.

* No second acts in America: The life and times of Chris Hardwick. (also via)

* Terry Gilliam, the heir of Fellini and the enemy of God. (you know what I’m gonna say)

On his flight to Los Angeles, Gilliam tried to watch the $1-billion hit “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” and he felt battered and sullen by the time the landing gear came down. The old wizard says it’s the stage magicians who rule Hollywood now.

“You just sit there and watch the explosions,” Gilliam said. “I couldn’t tell you what the movie was about. The movie hammers the audience into submission. They are influenced by video games, but in video games at least you are immersed; in these movies you’re left out. In films, there’s so much overt fantasy now that I don’t watch a lot because everything is possible now. There’s no tension there. People can slide down the side of a building that’s falling and they don’t get ripped to shreds? The shots are amazing, but if there is no consequence, no gravity, what’s the point? I can’t watch Hollywood movies anymore. There’s no room for me.”

* Safe, reliable, and too cheap to meter: Japan’s science ministry says 8 per cent of the country’s surface area has been contaminated by radiation from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

* “For our brewery, growth depends on abundant clean water and quality barley and hops—and climate change puts those ingredients at risk. Our supply chain—including barley, hops and water—is especially vulnerable to weather in the short-term and to climate change in the long-term,” Orgolini told Forbes.

* Medicine and “never events.”

* Of islands and invaders.

* Against Gremlins.

* Nearly half (48%) of all Americans say that the U.S. is the greatest country in the world, and another 42% say that it is one of the greatest countries in the world. Fewer than one-in-ten (8%) Americans say that the U.S. is not one of the greatest countries in the world.

There are sharp generational differences on this question. Millennials are the least likely to say that the U.S. is the greatest country in the world, with just 32% holding this view. This number rises with each successive generation, culminating in nearly two-thirds of Silents (64%) expressing the view that the U.S. stands above all other nations. Within the Silent generation, it is the oldest members who feel most strongly about America’s greatness – fully 72% of those ages 76 to 83 say the U.S. is the greatest country in the world. About half of members of Generation X (ages 31 to 46) and the Baby Boomer generation (47 to 65) believe that the U.S. is the greatest country in the world.

* “Berkeley Police Defend Actions by Sensationistically Claiming Protestors Could’ve Used Lethal Violence.” That’s good enough for me!

* The engineers behind Russia’s failed Mars attempt could face criminal charges.

“Recent failures are a strong blow to our competitiveness,” explained Medvedev. “It does not mean that something fatal has happened, it means that we need to carry out a detailed review and punish those guilty.”

* Speaking of punishing the guilty: The Walker recall is already almost halfway there. @wi_defender: One signature every 3.456 seconds for 12 days. #WIRecall #RecallWalker #damn

* Corporate synergy watch: Staples is launching Dunder Mifflin brand paper.

* And in terrible local news:

The North Carolina Senate voted (27-17) Monday to repeal the Racial Justice Act, sending SB 9 off to Governor Bev Perdue. The Senate’s approval came just hours after the Judiciary Committee heard emotional testimony on both sides of the legislation.

Johnston County District Attorney Susan Doyle told legislators that DAs were “fearful” that the two-year-old law had the potential to parole death row inmates.

One shudders to think!

Tuesday Night!

* Hard to say which is more shocking: that a male worker born in 1973 retiring at age 70 can expect to live a full year less than the expected length of retirement for a worker born in 1912, or that Richard Shelby apparently has evidence that by 2025 “America will be burned … and a lot of us will be dead.”

* Catholic Church approves iPhone confession app. Not an Onion hotline…

* Paul Campos tries to read Laurence Tribe’s mind.

* The Tea Party Movement has driven out Colorado state party chairman Dick Wadhams. Because I am an adult, I will leave the man’s absurd name out of this, and just bid him adieu…

* Behold the Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator.

* Wolverine or 2 Batmen: a duckrabbit for our time.

* Academic Cliche Watch: “I want to argue that . . .”

* Fox News draws ever closer to its Fort Sumter moment.

* HuffPo’s Achilles Heel: Search engine optimization won’t work forever.

* Provocative claim of the day: …I find myself slightly gratified that one consequence of the now-dying post-Thatcher free-market consensus is that it made nuclear power development in the Anglosphere more or less economically impossible.

* And a quick note on how beer commercials work.

Beer commercials are designed around certain dominant themes, but the people who sell the beer would prefer that the dominant themes be misunderstood. What are beer commercials about? The two central premises are these: 

1. Beer—cheap, common, domestic beer—is a rare commodity that drives men mad with the desire to have it, at any cost.

2. Women are the great obstacle between men and the fulfillment of this desire.

Taken literally, this is baffling. Beer is cheap and easy to find. The only cost should be $6.99 for a six pack, at any convenience store. And rather than hiding from women to drink their beer, many single adult heterosexual men seek out female company when they’re drinking. “Drink our beer and avoid contact with women!”—who could possibly be the target for that pitch?

But it makes perfect sense if the target audience is—and it is—16-year-olds.

The girls aren’t really girls; they’re Mom. And Mom is the first hurdle in the thrilling obstacle course that makes up the world of the teenage beer drinker.

Wes Anderson’s 7th Film

…takes the form of a beer commercial.