[LINK] Some Monday links

[rfmcdonald]

Here's the blogs roundup post that you didn't get New Year's day morning.

• 80 Beats' reports the sad news that the Spirit Mars rover may well not escape its sand trap, and that its voyage will be done after six years.


• Andrew Barton points out that the so-called "ancient" vanished races which feature in science fiction so often are actually quite young, sometimes gone only for thousands of years versus millions or billions.


• Centauri Dreams writes about using solar sails to decelerate space probes.


• Daniel Drezner points out that the Aughts were actually a great decade for much of the world, as economic growth and civil society blossomed.


• At A Fistful of Euros, Edward Hugh wonders if Spain's economy is actually deteriorating while the other economies of the Eurozone are recovering.


• Gerry Canavan reproduces the now-famous chart mapping health care expenditures onto lifespans, showing the United States as being quite, quite inefficient.


• Marginal Revolution's Alex Tabarrok considers the flawed economic models that led some economists to predict that the Soviet economy would outstrip the American under Communism.


• The Pagan Prattle goes over the various predictions of apocalypse made by religious nutters that didn't come true last year.


• Spacing Toronto's Sean Marshall looks at the Toronto neighbourhood of Agincourt a standalone community that got assimilated over the 20th century.


• The Volokh Conspiracy's Ilya Somin reviews a book examining the causes behind the Roman Empire's collapse
(political instability at the highest levels was key) and Kenneth Anderson writes about what he sees as the Untied States' need to reiterate its right to act against non-state threats.