[LINK] Friday links round-up

[rfmcdonald]

• alexpgp checks out claims that Livejournal is set to die out and finds them, at best, unconvincing.


• Richard at Castrovalva suggests that the alternative to indulgent consumerism isn't going to be rural simplicity, or, at least, a rural simplicity that won't owe a lot to Sparta's determinedness.


• Daniel Drezner points out that, whatever Iran may be doing in Iraq, its role in Afghanistan is far more constructive than Pakistan's.


• Nick Moles reveals the origins of Fanta in Nazi Germany.


• Joel at Far Outliers compares black resorts in the United States with the white missionary resorts of his Japanese childhood.


• Jason Kuznicki at Positive Liberty observes the peculiar take on social engineering of a Protestant seminary that fired a woman from its faculty of theology because women shouldn't be doing that sort of thing.


• John J. Reilly at The Long View wonders just what sort of ruins our civilization will leave behind.