[BLOG] Some Wednesday notes

[rfmcdonald]

• Daniel Drezner links to an analysis of the import of Taiwanese-American basketball star Jeremy Lin that makes the point that Lin likely never would have come to prominence had he (say) grown up in China instead of the United States: not only is he not tall enough, but the concentration of China's sports bureaucracy on sports to the exclusion of all else puts off the parents of many potential players.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's SEK fisks an essay claiming to be literary analysis in its conspiracy theory claiming Obama's books were ghostwritten by one left-wing radical or another.


• NewAPPSBlog examines the connections between economist Adam Smith and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, seeing the extent to which their conceptions of freedom were compatible.


• Not Rocket Science reproduces the news of the thirty thousand year old seeds frozen in the permafrost which were made to flower.


• John Lorinc at Spacing Toronto reacts to yesterday's firing of Gary Webster by arguing that the anti-Ford majority on Toronto's city council should mobilize against him.


• Toronto transit blogger Steve Munro thinks the same.


• Finally, Sublime Oblivion's Anatoly Karlin posts a brief note suggesting that, with recent population growth driven by immigration and rising fertility along with falling mortality rates, Russia has left its demographic crisis period.