[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Andrew Barton at Acts of Minor Treason wonders about the next generation of birthers, concerned with "natural-born" presidential candidates: what of the genetically engineered?


• blogTO notes that People's Foods, an iconic diner in The Annex on Dupont Street, is closing down due to rising rents.


• Far Outliers profiles the displacement of classical Chinese as the written language of Vietnam by Latin-script Vietnamese under the French.


• Geocurrents observes that Eurovision's second-place winners, Russia's Buranovskie Babushki, come from the pagan-inflected Finnic republic of Udmurtia.


• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis provides a sympathetic review of the Earth Liberation Front and the documentary If A Tree Falls.


• Language Log notes the controversy in Ukraine regarding the introduction of Russian as an official language.


• Open the Future's Jamais Cascio blogs about his impressions of Kazakstan's new capital Astana--being built practically overnight in the middle of the steppe--and an economic conference being held there that's curiously tone-deaf.


• Torontoist noted that red-paned Toronto skyscraper Scotia Plaza has been sold for a cool $C 1.27 billion.


• Zero Geography's Mark Graham compares English- and French-language geotagged articles on Wikipedia and finds with the exception of France, the Maghreb, and selected points elsewhere, English outnumbers French.