[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• blogTO reports that Church Street restaurant Zelda's has moved away on account of too-expensive rents.


• Excitingly, Centauri Dreams talks about a model of the Europan interior ocean that allows for the possibility of large amounts of oxygen dissolved in that moon's water, creating the possibility for macroscopic life, not just microorganisms.


• Crooked Timber argues that European left-wing political parties have done so badly of late because, well, there isn't much left-wing about them any more.


• Daniel Drezner doesn't think that China's possession of US Treasury bonds makes it all that much a financial power, and likewise doesn't think that Europe's long experience with multinational negotiations via the European Union will help it at the G-20 table.


• English Eclectic's Paul Hall is critical of some criticism of an increasingly queer-friendly British Conservative Party for its anti-gay European Parliament allies.


• Far Outliers quotes a reflection on the frequent contradictions between official and personal histories as illustrated by the history of Thessaloniki.


• Gideon Rachman blogs about the intensification of Latvia's ongoing economic crisis.


• Hunting Monsters says that the problems surrounding the European Constitution's passage and the documents lack of popularity generally reflect wider European ambivalence about an unaccountable Union.
  
• Normblog cites a couple of paragraphs by David Malouf making the point that one of the best things about cities is the way they can detach people from tribes.


• Slap Upside the Head reports on a recent court ruling in Russia establishing the legal non-existence of same-sex marriage in that country.


• Window on Eurasia reports that most Ukrainians don't see a military threat from Russia and observes the growing role of Central Asians and Caucasians in Russian Islamic communities.