[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• The Bloor-Lansdowne blog covers the celebration surrounding the reopening of the Bloor-Lansdowne Library.


• Centauri Dreams covers the possibility that life in the Galaxy might emerge in great, irregular waves as punctuated evolution would hold, reports more signs that water may exist on/inside Enceladus, and suggests that the threat from comets to Earth may be quite exaggerated.


• Demography Matters co-blogger Aslak Berg points out that better metrics indicate that European fertility is substantially higher than TFRs would indicate.


• The Dragon's Tales links to Venus exploration proposals and the discovery of evidence of an asteroidal collision with Earth 129 thousand years ago.


• Edward Lucas reviews a new book by the admittedly problematic Andrew Roberts that makes the point that Germany's loss of the Second World War has everything to do with Naziism and Hitler's erratic nature.


• A Fistful of Euros covers the news about the expansion of new liberal visa rules to only some Yugoslav successor states, and reports on the growing irrelevance of Kosovar Albanians and Serbians to each other.


• Language Hat reports on recent neurological discoveries suggesting that brain damage is more likely to damage knowledge of a second language than of a first.


• Marginal Revolution links to an article claiming that China's also suffering a bubble economy, with commenters disputing the accuracy of foreign reports.


• Spacing Toronto's Jake Schabas reports about a charming secret garden on Eglinton Street and touches on the history of market gardens.


• Slap Upside the Head lets us know that a Saskatchewan public marriage commissioner who claimed that he didn't have to perform gay marriages because of his religion lost his case.


• Torontoist blogs about Hamilton's image-changing efforts, vintage ads about a defunct store chance, and the Bloor-Gladstone Library's revival.
  
• Towleroad reports, rather surprisingly, that Albania's president says he wants to push for gay marriage in his country.