[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Crasstalk's MonkeyBiz wonders if Apple has jumped the shark and is just coasting on past achievements.


• Crooked Timber's Henry Farrell takes issue with Tony Judt's dismissal of Stephen King. A good case can actually be made that King, through his fiction, is something of a public intellectual--a left-winger, at that.


• Daniel Drezner partially retracted his criticism of Mitt Romney after that man was caught on video talking about displacing the Israeli-Palestinian dispute's resolution into the indefinite future, but also wonders whether Romney is actually seen as a credible antagonist and leader. What good is a posture based on strength if that strength is disbelieved?


• Geocurrents has a post describing the confluence of environmental catastrophe and local autonomy in the Ogoniland district of Nigeria's polluted, unstable, Niger delta.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Robert Farley took note of a proposal in the Canadian media to modernize the Avro Arrow as a new-generation warplane. Wouldn't work, of course.


• Language Hat notes the completion of a dictionary of Demotic, the ancient Egyptian written in the time of Rome.


• Using highly-detailed poll data, Patrick Cain wonders if, suitably and plausibly redistricted, Ontario might return a Liberal majority.


• Supernova Condensate notes that the discovery of exoplanets in the young Beehive Cluster suggests planets can form and remain in orbit of their star(s) even in densely-packed star clusters.