[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Bruce Sterling picks up on an analyst's prediction that by next year, more computers--including mobile devices--will be running Google's Android than Microsoft.


• Centauri Dreams remembers late British astronomer and popularizer Patrick Moore.


• Claus Vistesen doesn't think much of predictions that a low American birth rate will lead to economic ruin. (Frankly, it's not nearly low enough.)


• Will Baird at The Dragon's Tales reports on evidence found in geological strata as to an abundance of sulfur-metabolizing bacteria 2.7 billion years ago.


• Daniel Drezner seems as interested by the ways in which analysts will react to the new Global Briefs 2030, with its predictions of American decline, as anything else.


• Geocurrents notes the highly scattered and thin population of Australia.


• The Grumpy Sociology links to a series of posts he made analyzing different aspects of slavery in modern-day Thailand.


• Language Hat notes the Italian imprint in mid-19th century Odessa.


• Language Log suspects that Cantonese, by virtue of its base of Hong Kong, is resisting the pressures of Mandarin to a much greater extent than other Chinese regional languages.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer has noted that Chinese sabre-rattlings has succeeded in making the Philippines' government welcome Japanese militarization.


• Window on Eurasia observes that China is starting to compete for the scarce water supplies of central Asia.