[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton photographs the Gibraltar Point lighthouse and wonders about the Toronto Islands.


• Bag News Notes visits Iraqi Kurdistan and the survivors of Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurdish city of Halabja.


• At Behind the Numbers, Mark Mather notes that the projected size of the American population in decades hence has decreased owing to the recession-related fall in the birth rate.


• Eastern Approaches notes the church-sponsored attack on a gay pride protestin Georgia, its implications for law and order in Georgia, and the impact on Georgia's reputation abroad.


• Geocurrents' Asya Perelstvaig goes over the fluctuating Russo-Finnish border regions.


• GNXP's Razib Khan argues that devoting ten thousand hours to practising a particular skill, as described by Gladwell, won't do anything if one doesn't have the requisite talent.


• Language Hat notes an article on the life of Alice Kober, one of the linguists who helped decrypy the Minoan script Linear B.


• Open the Future's Jamais Cascio wonders how astronomers would recognize artifacts of a supercivilization--Dyson spheres, FTL warp bubbles, et cetera--as artifacts.


• Window on Eurasia's Paul Goble notes that many Russian nationalists are opposed to integrating with post-Soviet countries, particularly in Central Asia, that are currently de-Russifying.