[BLOG] Some Monday links

[rfmcdonald]

• A BCer in Toronto's Jeff Jedras wonders whether the Liberal Party of Canada should continue to exist, if in so doing it would allow a centre to exist beyond the Conservatives on the right and the NDP on the left. (If, as he notes, is the question.)


• Beyond the Beyond's Bruce Sterling mourns the imminent death of Minitel, the prototype French computer network launched in the 1980s that after three decades is set to be ended. (It still has three-quarters of a million users, apparently.)


• Centauri Dreams notes the recent astronomical data suggesting that planets are common regardless of the abundances of elements in their parent stars. The discussion in the comments about the sorts of variations noted in planetary systems so far is worth noting.


• Eastern Approaches visits northwestern Bulgaria and finds a declining region kept afloat by mass migration,to Bulgarian cities and to the wider European Union.


• Extraordinary Observations takes a look at statistics on migration to and from Rust Belt cities in the United States, finding that while net migration seems to be up there's not such a huge revolution as some sources suggest.


• Language Hat and Language Log take a look at the emergent linguistic tendency to refer to LPs as "vinyls".


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Erik Loomis points out that the term "Latino" in the United States is so broad as to make generalizations about the present behaviour of Spanish-speakers untenable, never mind future predictions.


• Strange Maps looks at the north-south variations in vocabulary spoken in German-speaking Europe. Bavaria and Baden-Württemburg have more in common linguistically with Austria than with the former East Germany, unsurprisingly.


• Supernova Condensate features pictures of the Egg Nebula, AFGL 2688, a pre-planetary nebula belonging to a planetary system in the process of forming.