[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes 2MASS J05233822-1403022, 40 light years away, a very low-mass star that's just barely massive enough to be an actual star, not a brown dwarf. (The lowest-mass, in fact.)


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper examining the peculiarities of giant planets orbiting giant stars.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a paper analyzing archeological remnants (shell middens) of the earliest Maori settlers in New Zealand.


• Joe. My. God. notes Roman Catholic cleric Robert Carlson, testifying about sexual abuse cases during his tenure as a bishop in Minnesota, stating he wasn't sure if priests having sex with children was criminal.


• Language Log's Victor Mair takes another look at the situation with the Arabic-language translation of Frozen, noting similarities and differences between the sociolinguistics of Arabic and Chinese.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the use of slave labour--often immigrant--in the fisheries of Thailand.


• Marginal Revolution comments on the exceptional difficulty of reforming Pemex, the Mexican state oil company.


• The Search looks at the results of a conference on community digital archiving, noting that the actual software is only a small portion of the overall effort.


• Savage Minds' Simone notes the importance of text and tourism, looking at guide books to the Nordic Faroe Islands.


• Strange Maps' Frank Jacobs describes a proposed urban development in Scandinavia, uniting Norway's Oslo, Denmark's Copenhagen, and the west coast of Sweden.


• Towleroad notes that Hong Kong is not allowing Britons the right to marry--including same-sex marry--at the British consulate in that city-state.


• Window on Eurasia notes potential problems with new Russian legislation on dual citizenship.