[BLOG] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Andrew at Acts of Minor Treason takes an extended look at Vancouver's wonderful-sounding mass transit system, the Skytrain.
  
• Anatoly Karlin of Sublime Oblivion has started up a new blog, Arctic Progress, focused on events in the global north. In a new post, "Arctic Mosques", Anatoly takes a look as mosque construction and Islam generally in the region.


• At Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster looks at astronomers on how we may soon be able to detect volcanic eruptions on hot, close-orbiting planets, discover worlds with dense, Earth-like atmospheres orbiting nearby red dwarf stars., and determine that the environments of globular clusters are just too hostile for "hot Jupiter" planets, at least.


• Daniel Drezner doesn't think much of recent Venezuelan currency policies which have the effect of reducing imports of prestige items like fine whiskeys and the lot, and is likewise skeptical of elite-targeted sanctions.


• The Global Sociology Blog analyzes the recent Foreign Policy ranking of global cities. What does it mean to be a global city, after all?


• GNXP's Razib Khan links to a recent study suggesting that the classification of marsupials as a group being less smart than placental mammals (like us) as a group is flawed, simply because primates (again, like us) are such outliers that we throw off the average for placentals.


• Slap Upside the Head notes the story of an XBox gamer who was thrown off of that network, if temporarily, because he listed his hometown as Fort Gay, in West Virginia.


• Towleroad marks the death of Seymour Pine, the NYPD officer who led the raid on the Stonewall Inn back in 1969 that touched off the modern gay rights movement, and a man who repented for his role in that event.