[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• 80 Beats' Andrew Moseman lets us know that not only can some fish see in the ultraviolet, but that they can use markings visible only in the ultraviolet to distinguish between individuals.


• Cartophilia blogs about the possible fusion of Cincinnati and Dayton in Ohio through suburbanization.


• Centauri Dreams wonders whether, based on the evidence from Earth's primates and birds and cetaceans and cephalopods, whether intelligence is common in the galaxy but tool-users are rare.


• Over at City of Brass, Aziz Poonawalla reports on the discovery of a possible temple complex dating to the last Ice Age and wondering about its implications for the relationship of humans to religion.


• Daniel Drezner points out that Thomas Sowell's thoughts on intellectuals' overreaching are problematic, especially insofar as his thinking on Iran is concerned.


• Edward Lucas points out that, between Poland's emerging political and economic weight, it has a chance to be a major influence in Europe.


• The Global Sociology blog argues that high levels of inequality can readily co-exist alongside low levels of social mobility.


• Joe. My. God. writes about a recent Dutch study suggesting that young people newly diagnosed with HIV can expect near-normal lifespans, also commenting that lifespans doesn't correlate to quality of living.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Sek lets us know Warren Ellis' (correct) observation that the new American embassy in London is "A FORTRESS WITH A FUCKING MOAT".


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen suspects that the United States might be settling into a period of extended high unemployment, with only those people who absolutely need to be and deserve to be hired (as seen by the company) being hired, a theme taken up by his co-blogger Alex Tabarrok who doesn't like government pressure on employers to boost benefits and wages for existing employees.


• Mark Simpson writes about how the 1980s modelling career of Massachusetts Republican congressman Scott Brown couldn't have happened now: he doesn't nearly have enough muscular development to be anything but an also-ran. How standards--and how male awareness of the need to be desirable and what to do towards that end--have changed.


• Peter Rukavina posts pictures of Charlottetown harbour in 1984 and now. The extent to which the harbourfront has been deindustrialized of oil drums and whatnot and made into an attractive area of promenades and shops and hotels and parks, et cetera, is noteworthy.


• Savage Minds' Rex wonders whether "Christendom" might be a useful word to refer to early modern Europe and its overseas empires.


• The Search's Douglas Todd writes about how "Cascadia"--briefly, the Pacific Northwest and Alaska plus British Columbia--is one of the most secularized regions in North America, without many historic churches in the downtown, even.
  
• Slap Upside the Head lets us know that one Ugandan anti-gay MP wouldn't mind killing his queer children.


• At Torontoist, Historicist Kevin Plummer writes about the mysterious 1919 disappearance of Toronto theater impresario Ambrose Small.


• Towleroad reports that Anglican bishops in the United Kingdom's House of Lords support reforming that country's civil partnership legislation in order to allow religious denominations the right to authorize civil partnerships as well as marriages in their own facilities.
  
• Window on Eurasia reports that protesters in the Russian Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad are protesting their lot, comparing their living standards and whatnot not with "metropolitan" Russia but with adjacent Poland and Lithuania. The blog also announces that some Russian political exiles have set up a union in Kyiv, suggesting that they think Ukrainian democracy is quite durable, and analyses ethnic competition in Dagestan.