[BLOG] Some Friday links

Mar. 1st, 2013 12:30 pm
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  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes the discovery that the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy NGC 1365 is rotating at nearly the speed of light. What does it mean?

  • BlogTO features vintage photos of Queen Street East.

  • Crasstalk's TS posts a followup to the spreading scandals besetting the Canadian Senate. Oh, but for a unicameral federal legislature!

  • Daniel Drezner notes that despite a consensus among economists that financial austerity isn't working, politicians remain attached to the idea.

  • Eastern Approaches had a couple of posts recently touching on Germany's relationship with its eastern neighbours, one noting a historic address to the Bavarian state parliament by the Czech prime minister expressing regret for the post-Second World War expulsion of the Sudeten Germans, the second observing Germany's critical role in managing the European integration of the Balkans.

  • Geocurrents' Martin Lewis notes that well-governed Ghana still sees ethnic splits reproducing themselves in electoral politics.

  • At the New APPS Blog, John Protevi finds fault with Foucault's sympathetic treatment of a 19th century Frenchman charged with sexual irregularities. What of the man's partner (or victim)?

  • Joshua Foust frames Kazakhstan's foreign policy initiatives in the context of an economically prosperous country trying to translate wealth to power.

  • Towleroad features a map of New York City showing where different non-English geotagged tweets were made. Spanish predominates over other languages, unsurprisingly, although English tweets outnumbered non-English tweets by thirty to one.

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[LINK] Fladungen's Ape Tower (1)

Nov. 26th, 2009 10:14 pm
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Over at Halfway Down the Danube, Douglas Muir starts to tell the story of the Bavarian town of Fladungen and its Ape Tower.

Okay, strictly speaking it's the "Maulaffenturm", the Tower of the Mouth-Ape. And that's really a pun, because in German "Maulaffen" means "gawker". And up on the side of the tower, sitting on a rain spout, there's a little gargoyle. It's vaguely simian, with long arms and a mouth hanging open in indignation or glee. It's hard to be sure, because 600 years of rain and wind have worn on him. He's sort of an ape-ish shaped lump. But his mouth is definitely open.

[. . .]

Fladungen... well, it's a dead end. You couldn't easily move an army through the surrounding hills or over the High Rhoen plateau. And if you did, you'd be nowhere very interesting. And it's not rich; it's one of the coldest corners of central Germany. The surrounding hills are rather bleak, with soil suited only to sheep-herding. Until the late 20th century, this area was more or less Germany's Appalachia.

[. . . W]hile Fladungen has never been large, it was -- back in medieval times -- the most important town for half a day's travel around. So it had all the trappings of a medieval market town: a large church, a large town hall, a town wall.

And a jail.


I, for one, await the story's completion. In the meantime, go over to his blog to read everything that Douglas has written about the subject so far.
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[BRIEF NOTE] Quebec Citizenship

Oct. 24th, 2007 08:26 pm
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The debate on the establishment of a distinct Québec citizenship regime (see The Globe and Mail, Montreal Gazette seems to have taken a fairly illiberal turn, not least since it isn't altogether clear whether it would be possible for a Québec citizenship regime to establish different legal status for Canadian citizens based on their province of birth. Bavarian citzenship in Germany comes closest to what's being proposed right now, but practically speaking it seems to be useless in the face of the existence of a common regime of civil and political rights for all German citizens across Germany.

Does anyone know off-hand of other subnational citizenship regimes and how they work?
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