[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• BCer in Toronto and Liberal Party stalwart Jeff Jedras is happy that the NDP is encountering controversy on the national unity front.


• Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster notes, briefly, exoplanets with retrograde orbits around their stars (revolving around their suns in a direction opposite their suns' rotation).


• Cosmic Variance's Julianne Dalcanton wonders if Google+ might have a future as a social network for niches, like young people who want to social network independent of their parents.


• Daniel Drezner notes that even Israeli hawks think Iran is several years from developing nuclear weapons. Why do some Americans choose to think otherwise?


• The Global Sociology Blog reviews Lawrence Wright's Going Clear, a book on Scientology that's an expansion of Wright's earlier article in The New Yorker.


• GNXP's Razib Khan posts some personal research suggesting that speakers of Austro-Asiatic languages in South Asia are historically recent immigrants.


• Norman Geras posts excerpts from a Matthew Parris article in The Times pointing out, contra Argentine claims of British colonialism re: the Falklands, that Argentina's own very white population is a product of its own genocidal state-building imperialism in the 19th century.


• Torontoist's Steve Kupferman notes that Ana Bailão, my city councillor, has pled guilty to charges of drunk driving, paying a thousand dollar fine.


• Inspired by Aaron Swartz, the Volokh Conspiracy's Orin Kerr starts a debate as to what the prosecution should do if a defendant becomes suicidal.


• Window on Eurasia posts an article suggesting that the Circassian diaspora is caught between two very strong globalization currents, one Westernizing them the other Islamizing them.