Monday, January 18, 2016

Link roundup

1. "it turns out that 'plants growing over old sites of human habitation have a different chemistry from their neighbors, and these differences can reveal the location of buried ruins.'"

2. "the essence of the idea is that people actively bred wolves to become dogs just the way they now breed dogs to be tiny or large, or to herd sheep."
The prevailing scientific opinion now, however, is that this origin story does not pass muster. Wolves are hard to tame, even as puppies, and many researchers find it much more plausible that dogs, in effect, invented themselves.
3. "A teenage singer made headlines in China and on her home island of Taiwan this weekend, but not for the winsome K-pop music that she hoped would attract fans. Instead, a glum, shaken apology after a controversy over a flag landed the singer, Chou Tzu-yu, in the maw of tensions between China and Taiwan"