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.

Random Links

Random links in anticipation of the big speech tonight.

* Wikipedia’s page on the crucial compound unobtanium. Via kottke.

* A brief history of tabloids.

* Geographically misplaced statues of pop-culture icons.

* McCain gets prickly with Time.

There’s a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could define honor for us?
Read it in my books.

I’ve read your books.
No, I’m not going to define it.

But honor in politics?
I defined it in five books. Read my books.

* 9 very cool bridges.

* Have we hit Peak Tequila?

* And Banksy visits New Orleans.