[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Andrew Barton's Acts of Minor Treason features shots of Toronto's Peace Foundation and a rumination on the increasingly baroque and distant nature of Canadian democracy.


• Centauri Dreams suggests that the famous question of what and where is dark matters might be explained by an abundance of dim brown dwarfs, and points out that red dwarf Gliese 581 might yet possess a world in the habitable Goldilocks zone.


• Far Outliers quotes Niall Ferguson on how revolutionary Naziism came to be recognized as rather different from a much more conservative and traditionalist fascism.


• A Fistful of Euros takes a look at the surprising and hopeful rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia.


• Itching in Eestimaa observes that the dreams of Estonian Communists for an independent Communist Estonia on the Mongolian model were doomed.


• Joe. My. God. reports how, after he came out, the leader of a Christian student group at Cornell University was kicked out of his position.
  
• Language Log reports on growing support in Shanghai for the preservation of their dialect/language.


• The Pagan Prattle reports that faith schools in the United Kingdom often do a worse job of educating children than their secular counterparts.


• At The Power and the Money, Noel Maurer takes a look at one of Hugo Chavez's heroes, president Cipriano Castro who engaged in a standoff with European powers over debt.


• Slap Upside the Head reports how the Albertan government's pension fund continues to define married same-sex couples as consisting not of spouses but of "benefit partners."


• From Towleroad, we've learned that the famous sex research team of Masters and Johnson lied about studies suggesting that gays could be converted to heterosexuality.


• Window on Eurasia examines the increasing marginalization of Russian television elsewhere in the former Soviet Union.