[BLOG] Some Monday links

[rfmcdonald]

• At Beyond the Beyond, Bruce Sterling is impressed by outgoing Brazilian president Lula's interviews with leading Brazilian bloggers.


• James Bow mourns the passing of George Robitaille, the TTC employee photographed sleeping on the job. Making note of his medical conditions, Bow wonders about the Internet's ability to mobilize people for anything.


• Centauri Dreams examines how a team of Italian researchers have come up with a deep-space navigation system that makes use of the radio signals of pulsars to guide the craft.


• Daniel Drezner isn't happy with the increasingly untenable situation re: North Korea. What to do with that? Separate issue.


• At Halfway Down the Danube, Douglas Muir notes how Zambia was so much less marked by the massive Shaka-era population movements in southern Africa, and how the colonial-era concentration of the Zambian population has the salutary effect of giving most people direct access to markets and transportation.


• Language Log's Mark Liberman reports on the controversy surrounding the Royal Spanish Academy's language reforms, apparently including the abolition of two letters. (Hispanophones?)


• "Are video games art?" Matt Warren wonders. "Not yet," he concludes.


• Gideon Rachman is unimpressed by the contents of the latest revealed Wikileaks cables, noting that they mainly confirm established wisdom. Daniel Drezner is of much the same opinion.


• At The Zeds, Michael Steeleworthy defends Google Scholar as a valid research tool, as a good first step if nothing else.