[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• At Acts of Minor Treason, while considering alternate history's relationship with elections, Andrew Barton suggests that the best way to have avoided the recent outcome was for the Liberals to have not called for the election in the first place. Individual choices matter so much, and are relatively unpredictable (as shown by the NDP surge in Québec.


• At blogTO, Derek Flack suggests that Pizza Gigi, a pizzeria popular with University of Toronto students on Harbord Street that became famous as a nexus for the marijuana trade, may soon face its end as Toronto police seek the restaurant's forfeiture.


• Centauri Dreams reports that a recent satellite-based study has confirmed the curvature of space-time around the Earth in precise conformance with Einstein's theory of relativity.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog's Janis Prince Inniss considers the role of sneakers in popular culture, as utilitarian footwear and as items of conspicuous consumption.


• Far Outliers quotes from Drew Gilpin Faust's book The Republic of Suffering, reproducing a passage suggesting that--to us moderns--neither side of the American Civil War made special efforts to identify and locate their war dead.


• At A Fistful of Euros, Edward Hugh documents how the recent earthquake has caused a recession, hitting exports so badly that competitors may gain more market share.


• The Global Sociology Blog observes how a reality TV show set in Cape Town featuring a mixed set of American and white South African women reflects the dynamics of privilege globally.


• The Invisible College's Dov Jacobs is astonished that the president of the UN Security Council has explicitly approved of the death of Osama bin Laden, notwithstanding the international legal infrastructure that would seem to have required a trial of some sort.


• Noel Maurer writes about how the Libyan government's ability to strike at oil infrastructure in eastern Libya is causing serious knock-on effects there.


• In French, Une heure de peine's Denis Colombi points out the obvious, that feminism is as necessary for the liberation of men from sexism as it is for women.