[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• At 'Aqoul, The Lounsbury links to an article by a former Bush Administration figure saying that Iraq will work out and that the United states should stay a bit longer. "You broke it, you fix it" seems at least as compelling an argument to me, but hey, one works with what's available.


• Centauri Dreams links to a map that has been drawn of some islands in a methane sea on Titan. (They might also be high points in a sea of methane sludge, but the imagination needs to be pleased.)
  
• Charlie Stross draws from a graph at The Economist to argue that the rate at which new technologies are diffused throughout potential user populations has been accelerating for a while.


• Joel at Far Outliers links to an affecting story of the life of a young girl, born to stern loveless members of the Communist Party in Stalin's era. Something in that excerpt reminds me of "The Little Match-Girl."


• A Language Log post goes on to examine borrowings being made from English into Mandarin.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen blogs about the new import of the Northwest Passage, now that it's actually a functioning seaway.


• Peteris Cedrins at Marginalia writes about the unity and disunity of the Baltic States.


• Scotland's The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are currently subject of a very annoying and very stupid hate E-mail campaign (1, 2).


• Finally, on the subject of recent media reports suggesting a Turkish state plan to revise Islam,
  slit provides a very extensive critique of the media reports, and John Reilly jokes that the inclusion of a Jesuit--responsible, some Islamists claim, for commission's imminent subversion of Islam--reminds him of a Poul Anderson short story where a Jesuit does just that, over a SETI-style interstellar connection no less.

I'd have had more links, but--a pity--Wordpress.com keeps timing out on me.