[BLOG] Some Saturday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Centauri Dreams has a guest post from Jason Wright talking about using infrared telescopes to pick up waste heat from extraterrestrial civilizations.


• Cody Delistraty opposes a boycott of the Sochi Olympics, notwithstanding Russia's human rights issues, on the grounds that the Olympics have essentially no relationship to whatever country is hosting them at the present.


• The Dragon's Tales links to reports on plans for a future united Africa.


• The Dragon's Gaze reports that apparently close-orbiting binaries--stars within 20 AU of each other, like Alpha Centauri--are bad for planetary formation, and comments on the discovery of brown dwarfs near multiple stars including fabled Gliese 581.


• Eastern Approaches reports on the disarray at Sochi.


• Amitai Etzioni argues that the United States and China should be clear on their red lines regarding Taiwan.


• Far Outliers reports on the United States' constitution of an intelligence service from nothing in the First World War.


• Language Hat notes a proposal to give Russian official status in Austria-Hungary to defuse pan-Slavism, and observes how language clues within the Bible give hints as to authorship.


• Language Log notes the creative use of different scripts and languages in Taiwanese product advertising.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the role of Sochi in the final suppression and expulsion of the Circassians by the Russian Empire.


• Marginal Revolution notes the huge economic problems of Puerto Rico: shrinking economy, emigrating workforce, growing debt ... The disinterest of young Germans in apprenticeships is also noted.


• The Planetary Society Blog's Emily Lakdawalla reports that the world can't communicate with the returning ICE/ISEE3 probe because it no longer has the technology to do so.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer argues that Argentine currency controls which make imports increasingly unaffordable are soon going to have to fail.


• Discover's Seriously Science notes a study claiming that fish can use tools.


• Steve Munro quite dislikes false savings on TTC expenditures claimed by, most recently, the Toronto Star.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little takes a look at social science takes on the Chinese revolution, examining first Lucien Bianco's early study then Theda Skocpol's comparative study contrasting French and Russian revolutions.


• Window on Eurasia notes that the rise of Islam is the North Caucasus is partly a consequence of Arab-funded global networks, comments on the role of Crimean Tatars in keeping Crimea for Ukraine, notes that some Russians would like to start revising borders across the post-Soviet region, and observes that many Russians are surprisingly OK with Finland's Second World War leader Mannerheim.


• Zero Geography notes a paper commenting on uneven geographies of user-generated content.