[BLOG] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• A BCer in Toronto's Jeff Jedras argues that the Liberal Party should try to become the party of federalists, inside Québec particularly.


• Centauri Dreams links to astudy suggesting that elliptical galaxies, older galaxies with less dust than our Milky Way, could still support planets and potential life.


• Geocurrents reports on the various problems--economic, environmental, political--facing the timber industtry in the Russian Far East.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen questions Ross Douthat's arguments about the decline of religious practice and its imports in the United States by wondering how, given the social and economic changes of the post-war period, this could have been prevented.


• Naked Anthropologist Laura Agustín takes issue with a recent New York Times article on the sex trade in Spain. Unquestioned narratives are not good analysis.


• At Personal Reflections, Paul Belshaw considers definitions of the Enlightenment and civilization as seen from different places--West versus non-West, England versus Scotland--with links.


• Registan's Nathan Hamm comments on the unseemly ties between Susan G. Komen Uzbekistan Race for the Cure, a breast cancer charity that recently featured in the American culture war, and various charities run by Gulnora Karimova, daughter of Uzbekistan's dictator.


• Torontoist's Jamie Woo makes the point that Rob Ford's disinterest in doing anything with Pride doesn't speak to his being very up-to-date.


• Kenneth Anderson at the Volokh Conspiracy notes that the background of the emergent war between the Sudans over oil pipelines proves that clear property rights can diminish conflict.