[BLOG] Some Monday links

[rfmcdonald]

• 80 Beats reports on research suggesting that the young Earth was warm despite a dim sun not because of a dense greenhouse-gas atmosphere, as had once been thought, but perhaps because of very clear skies.


• Jeff Jedras at A BCer in Toronto points out that even leading Conservative strategists like Tom Flanagan doesn't think that the Canadian media as a whole is left-wing, Jedras arguing that the mass media is driven by a desire for profit above ideology (most of the time, at least).


• Over at Beyond the Beyond, Bruce Sterling points out that despite very high levels of terrorist violence, India still manages to be a fairly well functioning state. The implicit question is, why not other countries?


• blogTO's Matthew Harris debates the question of whether it matters, really matters, for the view corridor looking north towards the Ontario provincial legislature at Queen's Park not to be marred by the sight of a tall tower behind it.


• Daniel Drezner writes about a recent report suggesting that Chechen government forces do a better job of catching Chechen insurgents in Chechnya than Russian or mixed Russian-Chechen forces do has led the insurgents to broad their campaign, into suicide bombings and into neighbouring regions.


• Extraordinary Observation's Rob Pitingolo writes about the rapid decay of some US suburbs, dependent on cheap credit, into slums.


• Far Outliers takes a look at the relationship in the colonial Dutch East Indies between social mobility among Christian South Moluccans and military service, and the failure of efforts to script written Hebrew from its native script to Latin script.


• A Fistful of Euros' Alex Harrowell reviews Ernest May's Strange Victory - Hitler's Conquest of France, which makes the case that Germany's victory over France in 1940 came about not because of material superiority, as is commonly thought, or because of low French morale, but rather because German warplanning and intelligence planning was more flexible and less hierarchical than its equivalent services in France or the United Kingdom.


• Geocurrents examines first nations in the United States, beginning with the struggle of the Lumbee of North Carolina to gain government recognition and continuing with a look at the limited sovereignty enjoyed by self-proclaimed sovereign Native American tribes.


• Over at Itching for Eestimaa, Palun suggests that Estonia is becoming integrated into a greater Norden, not through becoming a Nordic social democracy but rather being a favoured place for outsourcing for Swedish or Finnish corporations. This is good, right?


• At Lawyers, Guns, and Money, Charli Carpenter is profoundly unimpressed by Amitai Etzioni's recent defense of unmanned drone attacks, pointing out that a distinction between "good" and "bad" civilians who aren't actual combatants is problematic besides being unworkable.


• One great thing about the economy of the United States in the late 1990s, Murdering Mouth notes, is that so many people were at work.


• For outsiders and younger Australians alike, Paul Belshaw deciphers the Austrlian English words of "Waltzing Matilda."


• Steve Munro criticizes a recent report comparing traffic congestion in different world cities and putting Toronto at the bottom of the list, arguing that this doesn't take into account the fact that the Toronto conurbation covers a very large area.


• Over at Torontoist, Torontoist's Jamie Bradburn reported on the attempt (ultimately failed) by public space activists to keep a concrete park at Yonge and Eglinton that's the only public space in the area from being taken over by building construction. Kelli Korducki, meanwhile, writes about the brief presence of a homophobic ad on TTC buses.