[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton makes the point that isolationism really can't work for the United States.


• Castrovalva's Richard speculates about the consequences of the Liberal Democrats' coalition with the Conservatives, approving in principle of the idea of coalitions, fearing the impact it might have on the Liberal Democrats' future, and suspecting that the coalition government's program won't do enough to fix Britain's problems.


• Centauri Dreams explores the questions of what sorts of life forms and biospheres will exist on worlds different from Earth.


• Daniel Drezner writes about the uproar surrounding a Lebanese-American woman's winning the Miss USA contest. She clearly won on her own merits--I can see that--and Daniel Pipes' racist suggestion of some sort of Muslim affirmative action in beauty pageants is without basis.


• Extraordinary Observation's Rob Pitingolo wonders why more people don't use cash: it's often easier, and financially sounder, too.


• Geocurrents' Martin Lewis argues that recognizing Somaliland's independence is not going to trigger the collapse of states across the world, owing to its highly particular circumstances.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Charli Carpenter celebrates the Saudi woman who beat up a virtue policeman, although she also warms that the woman could face very serious legal consequences.


• Murdering Mouth is not impressed by the sharply falling quality of the Chicago Tribune, reducing news content and having bad writing and making online reading difficult, and is skeptical about the future of newspapers generally.


• Mark Simpson suggests that some straight soldiers in the US military might act gay--uninhibited, self-mocking, et cetera--because it's funny, not because they're in the closet.


• Strange Maps reproduces a map of the Netherlands showing the surprisingly sharp differences in the sorts of first names given to Dutch children by parents in different regions of the country.