[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• At Beyond the Beyond, Bruce Sterling blogs about Russian spy Anna Chapman's surprisingly high post-arrest profile. Cheesecake photos and spies mix!


• Eastern approaches examines the need to modernize Poland's railways.


• Joe. My. God. writes about the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, who responded to that city's impending gay pride march by promising to organize a donkey pride march. (No, he's not queer-friendly. You needed to ask?)


• Language Hat blogs about one American student's encounter with language chauvinism in Central Asia, here, on an Uzbek promoter's hostility to a supposedly impoverished Persian.


• Language Log explores the Mad Men writers' commitment to using period-appropriate language in their scripts, and examines the use of English script to write Taiwanese morphemes.


• At Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen makes an argument that private space exploration could receive heavy funding based on precedents of private funding of astronomical observatories.


• Strange Maps' Frank Jacobs blogs the several proposals for a greater Switzerland, expanding from its Alpine base regardless of Qadaffi's hostility.