[LINK] Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

[rfmcdonald]

• Joel at Far Outliers has posted some fascinating excerpts (1, 2, 3) from Linda Lewis' Laying Claim to the Memory of May, a book that deals with the Kwangju massacre of 1980.


• Matthew Alderman, at the Shrine of the Holy Whapping, gives the Hapsburgs the soap-opera treatment.


• Logan Ferree at Democratic Freedom raises Canadian public education--an area of public policy that, under The British North America Act (1867), is an exclusively provincial domain--as a model for the United States. While I think he neglects pressures towards uniform standards, it's an interesting comparison.


• Over at The Long View, John J. Reilly (entry of 13 May 2005) examines the decline of French Catholicism. He suggests that much of the blame for the collapse of that organization can be placed on the Church hierarchy's intentional shift towards informality and small group organization. What is the incentive to go to a Church deprived of the ceremonies which make the experience so memorable?


• Emmanuel at Ceteris Paribus examines the arguments used against Turkish membership in the European Union, and finds them lacking.


• Ken MacLeod reacts to the news, via Seymour Hersh, that German shepherds at Abu Ghraib were trained to attack the groins of prisoners. I believe that he is overreacting; I certainly hope that he is.


• Douglas Muir, at Halfway Down the Danube, begins a wonderful little essay by noting that the plains around Bucharest have been almost completely deforested. He goes on to take his readers to interesting places.


• Tobias Schwarz, at A Fistful of Euros, informs his readers that the European Union now has its own entry in the CIA World Factbook.


• Geitner Simmons' Regions of Mind has two interesting entries, one examining the Scotch-Irish cultural legacy in the United States, the other studying the mechanics of New York City's representation in the movies.


• David Adesnik links to a paper of his examining Reagan's shift away from supporting Ferdinand Marcos' dictatorship in the Philippines. He argues that the Philippines marks a watershed in Reagan's policies towards pro-American dictatorships.


• Vaara at Silt 3.0 fisks sloppy reporting about Amsterdam's immigrant population. It turns out that the actual statistics, surprise surprise, don't support fevered rhetoric.


• Matthew Yglesias takes on the meme that the Second World War was a useless war. His conclusion? "World War II -- not a Good Thing, but a Very Bad Thing That Had To Be Done Given The Circumstances."


• Continuing its coverage of Armenian genocide-related news, RESEUNATE.90 links to an essay by Turkish-German writer Zafer Senocak about the malign effects of genocide denial for Turks everywhere.


• Jinderella at Hot Needle of Inquiry introduces her readers to Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. Boyer's observations on fundamentalism, as a rear-guard ideology of reactionaries who want to raise the cost for potential defectors who might otherwise leave, are interesting.