[BLOG] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes the discovery that the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy NGC 1365 is rotating at nearly the speed of light. What does it mean?


• BlogTO features vintage photos of Queen Street East.


• Crasstalk's TS posts a followup to the spreading scandals besetting the Canadian Senate. Oh, but for a unicameral federal legislature!


• Daniel Drezner notes that despite a consensus among economists that financial austerity isn't working, politicians remain attached to the idea.


• Eastern Approaches had a couple of posts recently touching on Germany's relationship with its eastern neighbours, one noting a historic address to the Bavarian state parliament by the Czech prime minister expressing regret for the post-Second World War expulsion of the Sudeten Germans, the second observing Germany's critical role in managing the European integration of the Balkans.


• Geocurrents' Martin Lewis notes that well-governed Ghana still sees ethnic splits reproducing themselves in electoral politics.


• At the New APPS Blog, John Protevi finds fault with Foucault's sympathetic treatment of a 19th century Frenchman charged with sexual irregularities. What of the man's partner (or victim)?


• Joshua Foust frames Kazakhstan's foreign policy initiatives in the context of an economically prosperous country trying to translate wealth to power.


• Towleroad features a map of New York City showing where different non-English geotagged tweets were made. Spanish predominates over other languages, unsurprisingly, although English tweets outnumbered non-English tweets by thirty to one.