[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• 80 Beats reports that the drug Truvada failed to protect some participants in a study on HIV infection in Africa from infection as a prophylactic mainly because they weren't taking it.


• Far Outliers quotes from a passage in Christopher Clark's Iron Kingdom to the effect that Prussia in the mid-19th century was becoming increasingly diverse, along ethnic and regional lines.


• At the Invisible College, Otto Spejkers refers to a legal dispute between Belgium and Senegal before the International Court of Justice over Senegal's failure to extradite Hissène Habré, former dictator of Chad. Inadequate national legislation (i.e. a failure in Senegalese law to require the extradition of non-citizens accused of crimes against humanity) is no excuse if international covenants also exist, it's argued.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Erik Loomis is quite right to argue that "the major problem with Hugo Chavez is that he is full of shit".


• Is Kazakhstan's denuclearization after the Soviet Union's end a model for Iran? Quite possibly, Registan argues.


• Kyle Bachan at Torontoist interviews the owner of the Silver Snail, a venerable comic book store set to leave its Queen West location after 36 years.


• Torontoist's Rachel Lissner reports on an effort in east-end Toronto to learn lessons in urban revitalization from the Australian city of Newcastle, in New South Wales.


• Towleroad reports on the launching of a concrete project to clone the woolly mammoth.


• At the Volokh Conspiracy Ilya Somin points out that although the Galactic Empire of Star Wars fame may have had famously unpragmatic leadership styles (and failings!), these principles suited an aggressive totalitarian state perfectly. Who said that the Galactic Empire was supposed to be a rational-bureaucratic society?