[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• The Japanese will be sending a walking humanoid robot probe to the moon.


• Centauri Dreams wonders about the implications of artificial intelligence for the human future, whether in self-regulating deep space probes or in post-singularity cultures.


• A Fistful of Euros' Douglas Muir doesn't think much of a Stratfor article that analyses Hungary's interest in giving passports in ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring countries as a way of acquiring strategy depth.


• Geocurrents has a couple of posts (1, 2) mapping Thailand's political conflicts on the conflicts between the centre and the ethnolinguistically distinct northeast.


• Noel Maurer doesn't like the idea of making Puerto Rico decide whether or not to be a state, on the grounds that its current status as a self-governing commonwealth works fine.


• The Search's Douglas Todd blogs about the support for Sikh nationalism and separatism, the Khalistan movement, in the Canadian Sikh diaspora.


• Slap Upside the Head writes about the latest anti-gay conservative to turn out to be in the closet, this one a founder of the Family Research Council who's been cavorting with a young prostitute.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little writes about how British writers from opposite ends of the political spectrum in the 19th century saw much poverty as a product of immorality on the part of the lower classes, as opposed to unemployment and factors outside their control.