[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• At Alpha Sources, Claus Vistesen writes about how the Japanese economy, with its aging population and vast debts, may soon find its export machinery unable to compensate for the lack of domestic demand.


• Laura Agustín at Border Thinking writes about how some otaku in Japan, not content with virtual sex, are hiring erotic maids and other cosplay characters for cleaning and (sometimes) sex.


• Centauri Dreams examines the discovery of a reasonably "normal" gas giant orbiting a star some 1500 light years away, with temperatures not wildly dissimilar from those of Jupiter, and about the possibility that stars other than Gliese 710 might pass near our planetary system.


• Crooked Timber's Maria Farrell reacts with horror to the expanding priest pedophile scandal in Europe and elsewhere.


• At A Fistful of Euros, Edward Hugh warns that countries like France and Germany won't be immune to the effects of economic collapses in southern Europe, and that the only option for the Eurozone is a fiscal union.


• Geocurrents examines the curious case of the Knights of Malta, a group recognized as a sovereign power although it lacks any territory over which to exercise its sovereignty.
  
• Ivor Tossell is unimpressed (1, 2) by the attempt of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to bypass media scrutiny through carefully selected YouTube questioners.


• Johnny Pez compares unfavourably the great emphasis based on the cultural milieu and ambiguity of The Pillow Book by Heian-era Japanese writer Sei Shōnagon and the lack of said for the Bible.


• At Murdering Mouth, Mark suggests that the collapse of America's virtual empire might lead to a pattern of territorial expansion in North America.


• Torontoist has located the geographic centre of Toronto in a pleasant residential district.


• At the Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin is critical of human rights instruments which allow notable violators of human rights a say.


• Window on Eurasia points out that the Georgian television station's hoax of a Russian invasion has weakened Georgian credibility abroad.