[BLOG] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Beyond the Beyond's Bruce Sterling links to an interesting analysis of the apparently jumbled and occasionally anachronistic elements of futurism in the Persian Gulf states.


• Crooked Timber's John Quiggin wonders whether Southern whites should be treated as an ethnic group, in some dimensions at least. (One implication in his analysis is that a Democratic Party outreach to Southern whites is doomed, on tribal grounds.)


• Far Outliers' Joel examines how the Spanish word biombo ("folding screen") came from the Japanese byōbu via the Tokugawa Shogunate's early 17th century exchanges with New Spain.


• Geocurrents notes that some organizations advocating for indigenous peoples in the Russian Far North have been subjected to what seems to be a measure of state persecution.


• Language Log takes a look at an interesting use of negation in language.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Erik Loomis observes that the Republican Party stands out in not recognizing contraception as a human right.


• Steve Munro and Torontoist both review the TTC's new streetcars.


• Torontoist's Chris Riddell notes that efforts by the owner to sell the decrepit and commercially unattractive Captain John's Harbourfront Restaurant aren't going so well.


• Elsewhere on Torontoist, Chris Riddell is rightly skeptical of the fuss over GE's nuclear fuel plant on Lansdowne Avenue.


• Towleroad notes that Uruguay's parliament has begun to debate full marriage equality for same-sex couples. This would make Uruguay the second Latin American country to achieve marriage equality, after neighbouring Argentina.