[BLOG] Some Monday links

[rfmcdonald]

• blogTO reports on a controversial and expensive renovation of the University of Toronto's Robarts Library that might soften its brutalist lines.


• Charlie Stross jokes--I think-- that artificial intelligence and the singularity might be the product of spambots' efforts to penetrate filters.


• Bad Astronomy has a gallery of pictures of exoplanets.


• Daniel Drezner suggests that North Korea let the South get away with its military exercises in disputed waters substantially because realized the government (or majority of factions therein) realized that the South was serous.


• Far Outliers presents a missionary to the mid-19th century Ryukyus who hated the locals despite a long tenure there.


• The Global Sociology Blog reviews a book examining the hypercrime endemic to the Mexican border city of Cuidad Juarez. Canada's detached from this, you know?


• The Long Game's Matt Warren strongly approves of Terry Pratchett for the same reason that I do: his work is thick with an understanding of the world.


• At Personal Dispatches, Jim Belshaw presents an argument, based on his own personal experiences, for a relatively non-transparent government bureaucracy.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little wonders where hate comes from. What demographic? What reasons? What dynamics?


• The Volokh Conspiracy started an interesting discussion on what it would take for China to be a legitimate hegemon.