[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• 80 Beats reports that Neandertals lived just as long as the direct--rather, majority--ancestors of homo sapiens sapiens, putting paid to theories that they were outcompeted by virtue of a short lifespan.


• A BCer in Toronto's Jeff Jedras notes that while the incumbent Conservative government of Canada might condemn Liberal leaders for criticizing government policy while outside of the country, the Conservatives themselves have been willing to do so in office, while the predecessor Canadian Alliance's leadership went so far as to pay for an ad in the Wall Street Journal apologizing for not supporting the invasion of Iraq.


• At A (Budding) Sociologist's Commonplace Book, Dan Hirschman takes issue with the idea of a pre-tax income as meaningful, since that income is itself dependent on investments made from tax money. A commenter disagrees, suggesting that it's still meaningful if not in as precise a way as some might have it.


• Crooked Timber's Henry Farrell notes that, already, and arguably reasonably, the French and Germans are telling the Irish that their low corporate tax rates aren't acceptable at a time when the economy's being bailed out.


• Eastern Approaches' notes a few things about Estonia's accession to the Eurozone, everything from Estonia's hosting any number of Europe-wide cultural events to the unique topography of Estonian Euro coinage.


• Geocurrents explains that Belgium became a country because it's the Catholic, non-French, rump of late medieval Burgundy.


• The Global Sociology Blog has so many good posts that it's difficult to share them all. Start with his post arguing that the poor are truly more altruistic than the rich, continue with this post observing that cash transfers to the poor like Brazil's Bolsa Familia are more effective than traditional charities and demonstrate the trustworthiness of the poor, and end with this review of Richard Sennett's new book arguing that modern capitalism destabilizes traditional bureaucracies as a matter of course and threatens social capital.


• Language Hat covers the Stalin-era shift of minority languages' alphabets from Latin to Cyrillic.


• Marginal Revolution suggests that things were so bad for early 19th century Mexico that average height--that basic metric--was declining.


• At Registan, Joshua Foust observes that Uzbekistan's cotton harvest still depends on forced labour, by students and others.


• On the anniversary of Haiti's terrible earthquake, at Savage Minds anthropologist Chesley Kivland writes about his experiences that day. The extent to which people mobilized is impressive.


• The Search's Douglas Todd reports on a fascinating-looking history of lesbians in early- and mid-20th century Canada.


• Slap Upside the Head notes that a Conservative MP is unhappy with a court's ruling that, as civil servants, marriage commissioners in saskatchewan can't refuse to marry a same-sex couple.


• Window on Eurasia argues that, contrary to Lithuanian arguments that Russia is responsible for Soviet attacks on Lithuanian civilians in Vilnius in 1991, the Russian republic under Yeltsin worked actively against these attacks.