[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Centauri Dreams suggest that the latest research into the question argues convincingly that a hidden star--a red or brown dwarf, likely--doesn't exist within two light-years of our planetary system, and wonders if impending space probes might discover remains of Theia, the proto-planet that collided with the Earth billions of years ago and so created the moon.


• Far Outliers' Joel examines how Ethiopians, subjects of the only African state to remain uncolonized, saw a Japan that stood as the chief representative of a modernizing non-white world. In addition, the blog explores the novelty of the nation-state and the exclusion of ethnic Germans from post-Weimar Germany.


• Hunting Monsters blogs about Puntland, an autonomous government in northeastern Somalia most famous as a base for piracy, as well as Moldova's Russophone and Russophile Transnistria.


• The Invisible College's Mel O'Brien comes out in favour of a vigourous prosecution of the remaining Nazi war criminals.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer examines the troubles facing the Greek economy, on the verge of recession thanks to blows to tourism and the shipping industry.


• Gideon Rachman compares the mass protests in Georgia and Thailand.


• Slap Upside the Head examines the outrage of a Polish politician that the Poznan Zoo hosts a possibly gay elephant.


• Towleroad shows how, as if in compensation for the above silliness, the Polish government is inviting a New York gay couples whose wedding photos were once used in a homophobic campaign to Poland, for what may be a stereotype-breaking visit.


• Torontoist reports on the controversial Virgin Radio ads in Toronto's TTC stops--since pulled--that have featured radios as suicidal jumpers.


• Window on Eurasia examines how immigration to Moscow is creating ethnic neighbourhoods in a once-homogeneous city, and writes about the (Eastern Orthodox) Moscow Patriarchate's efforts to create a powerful Orthodox Christian lobby in the European Union.