[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton discusses how science fiction writers have neglected to include the costs of launching things into space form Earth into their plans for interstellar imperium.


• Bad Astronomy highlights the recent discovery of a high-mass but very low-density planet orbiting a red dwarf that seems to have an atmosphere of steam.


• Castrovalva's Richard R dislikes Karen Armstrong's approach to religion, first stripping it of many of its identifying features, then defending it from criticism of religions generally while representing her version as normative, then expecting it to be taken up by the population at large. No, no, and hell no.


• Daniel Drezner--author of a book on zombies and international relations--produces a template for zombie-themed articles, including zombie as metaphor, et cetera.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money observes that South Korea has raised the stakes with its doctrine of quick response to North Korean attacks.


• At The Power and the Money, Noel Maurerhas hope that German recognition of the costs of a Eurozone breakup will make Germany support more radical actions in support of endangered currency partners.


• Gideon Rachman reconsiders his earlier belief that WikiLeaks was irrelevant on the grounds that it's conforming that the public face of US diplomacy does substantially reflect private opinions, to say nothing like bleak American views of Russia or the suggestions of US troops fighting alongside Pakistanis.


• Strange Maps' Frank Jacobs discusses a mid-19th century plan to shift the American capital to a site more centrally located relative to the expanding country's geography, as a way to strengthen the United States' unity and further its progress. Compare Brasilia, if you would.


• Sublime Oblivion reposts a WikiLeaks cable from former American ambassador to Russia, William Burns, really a great author. This cable discusses the corruption and cynicism of the war in Chechnya, discussing particularly the role of economic factors, including control of oil, as well as the handing-off of Russian sovereignty to local warlords.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that the Karakalpak, a Turkic minority group related to the Kazaks living in the environmentally devastated west of Uzbekistan, by the Aral Sea coast, are being provoked by their environment's collapse into separatism.