[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

Yes, I'm a day late. Sue me.

• 'The Lounsbury at 'Aqoul has a post up examining the ambiguities of reform in the Middle East and North Africa, using Morocco as a case in point.


• Bonoboland's Edward Hugh examines the economy of Argentina, currently experiencing rising levels of inflation and growing energy shortages even as the economy booms, levels of external debt fall, and living standards improve. The country might well be headed in a good direction despite everything.


• Centauri Dreams takes a look at the current state of knowledge about the possibly Earth-like planet of Gliese 581 c, and comes to the conclusion that we just don't have enough hard data to come to any sort of accurate conclusion.


• John Holbo at Crooked Timber, inspired by Norman Podhoretz' renumbering of the world wars (we're in the middle of World War IV right now) wonders how the wars of the world should be properly numbered. Should we start with the Seven Years War?


• Joe.My.God reports that Claudia Contrara, daughter of one of Massachusets' most prominent public homophobes, has outed herself as a lesbian.


• james_nicoll reports that the Canadian dollar is stronger than ever before, with one Canadian dollar being worth $1.07 American, just five years after the Canadian dollar was worth only 62 cents American.


• feorag at the Pagan Prattle reports about teh case of one Christian fundamentalist reader who refuses to believe that Dumbledore is gay, on the grounds that, by placing her characters in the public domain, she has lost all rights to them. Besides being willfully ignorant, it also assumes that J.K. Rowling doesn't have final say over the Hogwarts universe, a thesis that's unsupported by the reality of Rowling's coptright and by the experience of other popular media universes (Star Trek or Star Wars, anyone?).


• Among the interesting maps hosted at Strange Maps is one map showing a utopian "United States of Islam," an Islamic state covering northern Africa, the Middle East, all of South Asia, western China, and the Volga region of Russia (but curiously, not the Malay world), and another of the locations of UFO sightings in the United States.