[LINK] Some Friday Links

[rfmcdonald]

First off, I'd like to announce the additino of Andrew Barton's blog Acts of Minor Treason. A published science-fiction writer and amateur photographer, Andrew has already come up with some great posts.

• Cabalamat's Phil Hunt notes that Israel has banned two Arab parties from the election on the grounds that, instead of supporting Israel as a Jewish state, they want Israel to be a state of all its citizens.


• The Lounsbury at 'Aqoul argues that the global financial crisis, by wrecking Dubai's economic boom, will help discredit liberal economics in the Persian Gulf region.


• Charlie Stross suggests that the genre of horror is driven by the distortion of the human condition beyond recognition.


• Crooked Timber's Kieran Healy argues, drawing from cognitive scientists and from Georg Simmer, that cities can overload the minds of humans. We evolved in groups of a hundred or so, after all.


• Pogge.ca reiterates the argument that people talking about "clashes of civilizations" are just trying to justify ex post facto their actions.


• Windows on Eurasia reports that three-quarters of the population of the Urals supported secession from Russia in the early 1990s, and notes that a majority of clergyman qualifying to vote for the next patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church don't hold Russian passports (most are Ukrainian).