[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Acts of Minor Treason features a vintage 1989 photo from the streets of the far northern Ontario community of Moosonee.


• blogTO's Rick McGinnish blogs about how the corner of Queen Street West and Roncesvalles has remained so astonishingly the same for decades.


• Centauri Dreams suggests that very soon, we'll be able to see if there are any Earth-like worlds, broadly speaking and otherwise, next door at Alpha Centauri. In addition, it seems as if even during the very heavy bombardment of Earth by various asteroids and comets and whatnot in the period 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago, life could have persisted beneath the surface.


• The Dragon's Tales reports that, in select portions of the Martian surface, rivers may have recently flowed, i.e. less than a billion years ago.


• Daniel Drezner, Far Outliers, and Lawyers, Guns and Money have all reacted to the publication of the memoirs of Zhao Ziyang, a liberal Chinese leader dismissed after the Tiananmen Square massacre.


• Far Outliers blogs about how the British government was so much readier to support the Sudetenland's separation from Czechoslovakia than Ireland's from the United Kingdom, and compares and contrasts the evolution and the fates of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires as seen by contemporaries.


• A Fistful of Euros reports that, characteristically, the Soviet Union missed the importance entirely of European integration after the failure of the European Defense Community.


• Hunting Monsters blogs about the numerous reasons for low voter turn-out in European Parliament elections.


• Paul Wells reports that Canada's fiscal record for the past decade may well make it a better exemplar of fiscal small-c conservatism than the United States, this news leaving some American heads spinning.


• Joe. My. God reports how some Americans are demanding that the U.S. Census Bureau include questions about same-sex couples in time for 2010.


• Towleroad documents how Mariela Castro, daughter of Fidel, continued to promote gay rights by taking part in a gay conga line in Havana, and reports on the recent arrest of dozens of gay rights protesters in Moscow during Eurovision.


• The Volokh Conspiracy's posters are justly critical of the idea of Somali pirates as forces for social justice and cover the decline of universal jurisdiction statutes.


• Window on Eurasia reports that many Crimean Tatars are unhappy with their continued marginalization in their homeland, regarding education and language issues, land rights, and similar issues.