[LINK] Links Roundup

[rfmcdonald]

Pinyin.Info has an interesting paper ("Implications of the Soviet Dungan Script for Chinese Language Reform", drawn from Victor Mair's 1990 paper "Two Non-Tetragraphic Northern Sinitic Languages") examining the ways in which the Chinese languages spoken by the Dungans--briefly, Chinese Muslims who fled the Qing Empire in the mid-19th century for Central Asia--have been effectively given a Cyrillic script, with implications for the Romanization of the Chinese languages.

leex links to Joe Watson's Phoenix New Times article "The Crying Game", on the difficult situation of male-to-female transgendered people of Native American descent in the Southwest, especially from the Navajo and the Pueblo peoples.

springheel_jack links to the racy photoshoot of Wafah Dufour, niece of Osama Bin Laden. I'd like to wish her success. I'd also like to suggest that if the nieces of terrorists deeply implicated in Islamic radicalism are happily posing for cheesecake photos to launch their pop music careers, traditional Islamic cultures are doomed to assimilation.

Eleanor Brown at Opinionated Lesbian writes about Truman Capote and Capote (1, 2) as well as about non-heterosexual witnesses and victims of the Holocaust.

Geitner Simmons at Regions of Mind provides information on same-sex marriage among California's indigenous populations. The Spanish were appalled.

Over at Castrovalva, Richard finds a real fault with Lewis in his concern that sin be halted by punishing the sinners.

Fellow Islander Ryan Pollard wonders, with reason, just what the divorce rate for married same-sex couples will be. All that I can really add is that the established same-sex relationships I have seen seem to have very different dynamics from opposite-sex couples. Whether this is a temporary anomaly or a deeper difference remains to be seen.

Abiola Lapite's critical takedown/celebration of the Intelligent Design folk is something I entirely agree with. Isn't there something in the Bible about being honest?

Jonathan Edelstein examines ethnic conflict between native Kanaks and Wallisian migrants on New Caledonia. This sort of tension with other non-Kanaks, combined with the Kanaks' own minority status, is exactly the sort of thing that will keep New Caledonia from ever leaving France.