[BLOG] Some Saturday links

[rfmcdonald]

• 80 Beats notes the creation of the first artificial leaf--more precisely, an affordalbe implementation using technology of the basic processes of photosynthesis.


• At Acts of Minor Treason, Andrew Barton visits Japan's virtual music star Hatsune Miku. She might not be a hard light hologram, but she won't melt down!


• blogTO's Agatha Barc lists the various troubled, decaying heritage buildings of Toronto.


• James Bow notes a suggestion that PR firms working for the Conservative Party might be trying to recruit commenters to fill blogs with pro-Tory material.


• Russian-language photo blog centralasian takes a look at the different ways that light bulbs have been used to illustrate different themes.


• At Extraordinary Observations, Rob Pitingolo notices his Cleveland's popularity with tourists and notices that the things which make a city attractive don't necessarily suffice to make it attractive to permanent residents.


• At A Fistful of Euros, Doug Merill revisits a prediction he made seven years ago about the number and timing of the next countries to join the European Union. He found his earlier prediction over-optimistic, particularly on the fringes of Europe entering, particularly Ukraine and the Caucasus but also Turkey.


• Geocurrents' Martin Lewis explores the Alawites of Syria, a minority sect descended from Shi'ite Islam and certainly heterodox, that happens to dominate Syria and is in a decidedly unstable manner.


• At GNXP, Razib argues that genetic data suggests that the expansion of the Bantu language group across most of central and southern Africa was accompanied by Bantu migration, including the replacement/assimilation of populations on the standard model.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer visits the various Arab countries in revolution: Libya's rebels are ill-organized, Bahrain's future is in jeopardy, Egypt might, and Yemen, ack.


• Slap Upside the Head notes that a lawsuit has been lodged in Québec against the policy of that province's blood-collection agency for not taking blood from queer men.


• Sublime Oblivion's Anatoly Karlin notes that an analysis of the Russian census data suggests that the Russian population began growing again, thanks mostly to immigration but also to a higher birth rate, in 2008.