[BLOG] Some Tuesday links (1)

I accumulated quite a few links over the long weekend just past in Canada, Monday having been Canada Day. That volume will make for two [BLOG] posts today.

(Feedly, thankfully, seems to be working well.)

• Bag News Notes compares coverage of the protests in Brazil and Turkey, arguing that although the photos from the two countries convey similar images of violence, in actual fact the Brazilian protests are encountering less violence and are getting substantially more response from the national government than their Turkish counterparts.


• The Dragon's Tales notes a recent study suggesting that gas giants--heavy planets like Jupiter and Saturn, not their smaller ice giant kin like Uranus and Neptune--seem to form, on the relatively rare occasions they do form, close to their sun.


• Daniel Drezner considers the ethics of institutions of higher education receiving very large grants from foreign governments. Does it compromise them and/or can it engage them with the wider world?


• Eastern Approaches notes the likely dire consequences on press freedom in Ukraine of a gas magnate's purchase of Forbes' Ukrainian edition.
  
• The Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at what, if anything, the inability of Trayvon Martin witness Rachel Jeantel to read a handwritten note says about social capital.


• Far Outliers' Joel describes the medieval Venetian empire, the stato da mar, at its peak.


• At A Fistful of Euros, Edward Hugh makes the case that the Czech economy is bound for stagnation.


• Geocurrents maps the regional and ethnic dimensions of the recent Iranian presidential election.


• Joe. My. God. links to Nate Silver's chart showing the progression of same-sex marriage rights across the world, by population and by continent.


• Language Hat examines the question of what exactly is Aranese (the Gascon Occitan dialect spoken in northwestern Catalonia, for starters).


• New APPS Blog analyses a secular French feminism that is nonetheless anti-gay.


• Progressive Download's John Farrell argues that Slovenia is caught in an unusually intense form of stagnation stemming from its managed transition from Communism.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links (2)

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait approves of the names of Pluto's two most recently-discovered moons, Kereberos and Styx.


• Beyond the Beyond's Bruce Sterling observes that Altavista is set to disappear from the Internet as of the 8th.


• Daniel Drezner notes that the inability of Edward Snowden to find a country to grant him, buster of state secrets, asylum demonstrates that states around the world like keeping their prerogatives and secrets intact.


• Commemorating the accession of Croatia to the European Union, Eastern Approaches visits a Dubrovnik that is virtually an enclave on account of the Bosnian frontier, and, at the other end of the Croatian arc, a Vukovar still caught up by ethnic conflict and the legacies of the Serb war in Slavonia.


• Far Outliers notes the decline of immigrant Japanese Buddhism in Hawaii.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer explains why Uruguay, contrary to the wishes of many Argentines including--apparently--the president, is a country separate from Argentina.


• Registan approves of alumnus Sarah Kendzior's examination of the plight of Uzbek migrants, stigmatized by the Karimov dictatorship as lazy for trying to earn a living and forced to witness the victimization of their relatives if they do anything wrong.


• Savage Minds quotes from Umberto Eco's definition of fascism.


• The Tin Man celebrates, as a coupled American gay man, the end of DOMA.


• Torontoist reports that much of the controversy over the Walmart on the fringes of Kensington Market might be--according to the designer--a consequence of a lack of understanding of the design.


• Van Waffle reports on highlights of his 2012 breeding bird survey.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell reports on David Goodhart's still-dodgy use of statistics.