[LINK] A Friday blogospheric survey

[rfmcdonald]

• Over at Alpha.Sources, Claus Vistesen outlines the fertility trap
, a demographic phenomenon of ultra-low fertility that is a synergistic product of postponed childbearing weakening long-term growth prospects, a shrinking ideal family size, and a perceived gap between incomes and expected expenditures, with a net result of a population far from reproducing itself. (Canada, France, the United States, and the Nordic states have escaped this trap; Italy, Germany, Spain, and Japan, not so much.)

• At Centauri Dreams, the author describes what he calls a "Gliese moment", a period of interest displayed on the part of a ienghbour normally incurious about extrasolar planets after news of Gliese 581 c's discovery made became big.


• Joel at Far Outliers quotes an author who takes a look at how Korea's last foreign mission prior to its 1910 annexation by Japan was ignored by the international community, explaining it in terms of the very idea being non-sensical.


• Peteris Cedrins' Marginalia's most recent post outlines the ideology of the opulist and homophobic Latvia's First Party, which turns out to be surprisingly innovative in responding to the ethnic and historical divisions of that Baltic state.


• Besides photoblogging about Korean churches, Robert Kohler at The Marmot's Hole introduces a book claiming that the United States supported the annexation of Korea by Japan. As commenters make clear, leaving aside the author's perhaps dubious credentials, American support for Japan was hardly direct enough to be meaningful.


• J. Otto Pohl reviews a book describing the post-Second World War expulsion of Sudeten Germans from what is now the Czech Republic.