[BLOG] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• At A (Budding) Sociologist's Commonplace Book, Dan Hirschman wonders why "traditional" religions--to use the nomenclature--aren't given respect. One answer might be related to the fact that practitioners of traditional religions are almost always minorities in their own countries.


• blogTO lists 12 different Mayan-apocalypse themed bar events around Toronto.


• Eastern Approaches notes the efforts of Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin's desires to improve the quality of life in the Russian capital.


• Geocurrents observes the mining boom that is populating a desert stretch of Western Australia.


• The Global Sociology Blog crunches the numbers and notes the many ways in which the United States stands out among countries for its gun violence, and factors leading to said.


• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that, for relatively less developed countries, the investments of Communism in human capital and assorted subsidies did give many of these an advantage. (Turkmenistan, yes; Estonia, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, not so much.)


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer predicts rising gas prices and relatively low oil prices.


• Window on Eurasia notes problems integrating Muslim conscripts in the Russian army.