[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• In the light of Mike Huckabee's recent victory in Iowa's Republican caucuses, the criticism of 1948's Richard that Huckabee's refusal to accept evolution should be seen as a hallmark of non-rational intellectually should be heeded. Elect the right person, guys.


• Over at 'Aqoul, The Lounsbury examines the badly-structured housing market for lower- and middle-class Egyptians.


• Claus Vistesen predicts that some of the more prominent economics-related news stories in 2008 will include slow Japanese growth, a patchwork of performances in Europe, the impact of the declining value of the US dollar on international capital flows, and the risk of stagflation.


• Joe. My. God links to disturbing reports that the incidence of HIV infection among young MSM in New York City is rising. Canadian statistics seem to suggest that this trend hasn't manifested north of the border, but it may be only a matter of time.


• Mark Liberman at Language Log blogs about how the use of two different scripts for Hindustani helped produce separate Hindu and Urdu languages by the time of Partition, despite the languages' continued mutual intelligibility at the popular level.


• Norman Geras' essay "Criticism and Cleanliness" is an interesting meditation on the circumstances under which citizens of imperfect democracies can criticize faults elsewhere in the world.


• The Pagan Prattle has a roundup of fundamentalists' predictions of apocalypse in the year 2008.


• Strange Maps hosts Charles Joseph MInard's famous statistical map showing the horrific casualties resulting from Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia.
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