[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• 80 Beats reports on new research arguing that Easter Island was doomed not by the people's overuse of resources but rather by invasive rats.


• Writing at the Everyday Sociology Blog, Colby King describes how he experienced Las Vegas as a sociologist and as a tourist at once.


• Eastern Approaches notes the success of the heavily Russophone-supported Harmony Centre party in the recent Latvian election.


• Far Outliers quotes from Bloodlands about the ways in which casualty numbers and perpetrators are used to deploy Second World War casualty figures for political reasons.


• Geocurrents reports on the nationalism and history of the Barotse people of western Zambia.


• The Global Sociology Blog observes that Western countries allow the export of relatively inexpensive and highly capable surveillance technologies that permit governance both minimalist and repressive.


• Naked Anthropologist Laura Agustín (originally writing in Spanish but translated via Google Translate) talks about how migrants are willing to take risks--including participate in the sex trade--in order to benefit themselves in the longer run in unknown or uncertain ways.
  
• Normblog's Norman Geras is overkind to people who suspect that Gadaffi wouldn't have engaged in a bloody massacre of Benghazi had his forces been allowed to enter the city before the NATO intervention.
  
• Slap Upside the Head seems not that pleased that queer men in Britain can now donate blood if they haven't had sex in the year prior to their donation.
  
• Writing in French at Une heure de peine (but translated into English thanks to Google Translate), Denis Colombi argues that the example of Steve Jobs shows that capitalism needs charismatic businessmen if it's to innovate.