[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• io9 links to a map showing the Milky Way Galaxy's location in nearer intergalactic space.


• The Big Picture has pictures from the Sochi Paralympics.


• blogTO shares an array of pictures from Toronto in the 1980s.


• D-Brief notes the recent finding that star HR 5171A is one of the largest stars discovered, a massive yellow hypergiant visible to the naked eye despite being twenty thousand light-years away.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes recent studies suggesting that M-class red dwarfs are almost guaranteed to have planets.


• Eastern Approaches argues that the lawsuits of Serbia and Croatia posed against each other on charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice will do little but cause harm.


• Far Outliers explores how Australian colonists in the late 19th century feared German ambitions in New Guinea.


• The Financial Times World blog suggests that, in its mendacity, Russia is behaving in Crimea much as the Soviet Union did in Lithuania in 1990.


• Geocurrents notes that the Belarusian language seems to be nearing extinction, displaced by Russian in Belarus (and Polish to some extent, too).


• Joe. My. God. notes the protests of tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews in New York City against mandatory conscription laws in Israel that would see their co-sectarians do service.


• Marginal Revolution notes that, in pre-Israeli Palestine, local Arabs wanted to be part of a greater Syria.Otto Pohl notes the connections of Crimean Tatars to a wider Turkic world and their fear that a Russian Crimea might see their persecution.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes that Venezuela has attacked Panama in retaliation for a vote against it by confiscating the assets of its companies there. In turn, Panama has promised to reveal the banking accounts of Venezuelan officials in Panama.


• John Scalzi of Whatever is unimpressed with the cultic adoration of Robert Heinlein's novels by some science fiction fans.