[BLOG] Some Monday links

[rfmcdonald]

• At blogTO, Matthew Harris blogs about the ongoing condo boom in the tony Toronto neighbourhood of Yorkville. No, Toronto doesn't have a real estate bubble, really it doesn't ...


• Charlie Stross blogs about his recent second visit to Japan, a country that he sees has being alien but with this alienness rooted as much in its own distinctive history as in its futurisms.


• Daniel Drezner makes the point that certain conservatives in the United States don't want to accept, that the US shouldn't have to boost its military spending up to Cold War levels since the United States isn't facing a power as remotely as globally powerful as the Soviet Union.
  
• Eastern Approaches wonders what the European Union's policy to post-crackdown Belarus is going to be. The author doesn't seem to expect that much will change, owing (I suspect) to European lack of effort rooted in lack of interest.


• At Far Outliers, Joel writes about how an American missionary in 1860s Japan created the modern system of Romanization and kickstarted English-language education in Japan.


• Maximos blogs about Sydney, Australia's, disappeared tram (streetcar?) network.


• Mark Dandridge photoblogs his encounter with Britain's Gilbert and George.
  
• Science not Fiction's Kyle Munkittrick uses Google's Ngram viewer to note that people really aren't talking about the future--or at least, using the word "future"--as much as they were before 2000.


• Window on Eurasia has an interesting brief piece on Russia's Assyrian minority.