A Bit More Detail

• Montréal may yet get a new park to commemorate victims of the Irish famine of the 1840s. CTV reports.


• CityLab reports on the new spectacular Hudson Yards development in Manhattan.


• The nightclubs of Atlanta in the 1990s played a critical role in that decade's hip-hop. VICE reports.


• CityLab reports that, dealing with a housing crisis, city authorities in Barcelona have taken to finding the owners of empty buildings.


• Guardian Cities reports on how civic authorities in Copenhagen hope to create an offshore archipelago, a sort of floating Silicon Valley.

• CityLab looks at the fight to resist the low-density urban sprawl of Québec City into surrounding farmland at Beauport.


• CityLab looks at the vanished history of African-American tourism in Atlantic City.


• The population of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in northern Alberta, around Fort McMurray, has fallen by 11% in the past few years. Global News reports.


• Guardian Cities looks at how placemaking, the creation of innovation clusters attracting attention, is undermining social housing in London.


• CityLab looks at the challenges faced by Copenhagen, with a questionable model of urban redevelopment set to climax in the production of artificial islands.

• Bad Astronomy shares a photo of the Earth and Moon taken by a Mars probe.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money responds to a baffling claim by a New York City policeman that stranger rape is more of a concern than acquaintance rape.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw, returned from Denmark, wonders
  about the extent to which social happiness is maximized by stability and security.


• Progressive Download's John Farrell argues that scientists should approach the theory of evolution in a less mechanistic light.


• Window on Eurasia reports on the transformation of United Russia into a parallel structure of government akin to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and engages with the possibility of a pro-Russian Ukrainian government-in-exile.


• Alex Harrowell of Yorkshire Ranter looks at the problems of an independent central bank, finding that failings attributed to these are actually faults of government.


• Arnold Zwicky looks at the highly evolved fashion sense of faggots, in the context of Italy's divides and celebrities.

• blogTO notes that Toronto has its first Ethiopian food truck.


• Beyond the Beyond considers the alien ocean of Europa.


• Centauri Dreams looks at the protoplanetary disks of brown dwarfs.


• D-Brief notes that Saturn's moon Dione may have a subsurface ocean.


• The Dragon's Gaze looks at how broadly Earth-like exoplanets form their atmospheres.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog wonders about the benefits of praising failure, as a sign of risk-taking.


• Far Outliers notes how the English village became an imaginary eden.


• Language Log looks at a Hong Kong legislator's Sanskrit tattoo.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes one man's upset with the announcement that Wonder Woman must have a bi past.


• The LRB Blog considers controversy over electoral boundaries in the United Kingdom.


• The Map Room Blog links to some maps showing the continuing divisions of post-reunification Germany.


• Marginal Revolution looks at the limit of Danish "hygge", coziness.


• Seriously Science looks at the surgeries performed on fish.

• From last month, Charlie Stross imagined how the Laundry of his ongoing fiction series would have reacted to Boris Johnson as their superior.


• The Big Picture shares photos of winning Olympians.


• blogTO celebrates the Leslie Street Spit and south Etobicoke.


• Centauri Dreams notes a study of some of the smallest and most planet-like brown dwarfs.


• The Dragon's Tales considers the possibilities of relatively recent supernovas affecting Earth.


• Far Outliers looks at the fur trapper culture of the American west in the early 19th century.


• The Map Room Blog links to a study of the Brexit vote in maps.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen links to two columns, one on the end of economic miracles and one on what Danish-Americans do better than Danes.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes Russia's plan to drop the number of its astronauts on the International Space Station.


• Peter Rukavina wonders who are the 25 subscribers to The New Yorker on the Island.


• Savage Minds has a couple of posts noting the way the skills of anthropology can be made to apply outside the discipline.


• Window on Eurasia looks at Russia's interest in non-citizens in the Baltic States.

• Bloomberg reports on how the weakening yen is hurting some Hong Kong retailers, notes how Chinese are visiting Hong Kong in the search for approved vaccines, and observes Brexit may not change British immigration much.


• MacLean's notes a court ruling which states the Confederate flag is inherently anti-American, and reports on the Swedish Tourist Association's new campaign which offers people around the world the chance to talk to a random Swede.


• Juan Cole at The Nation reports the exceptional unpopularity of Egypt's transfer of two islands in the Gulf of Aqaba to Saudi Arabia.


• National Geographic considers the concept of dam removal in parts of the United States.


• Open Democracy examines the awkward position of Russian culture in the Ukrainian city of L'viv.


• Science Daily notes findings suggesting that the genes which influence homosexuality are found in most people in the world, explaining why homosexuality is common.


• The Toronto Star reports on a thankfully foiled, but still horrifying, suicide pact involving 13 young people in Attawapiskat, and notes Denmark's turn against even people who help refugees.


• Wired describes Yuri Milner's proposal to use powerful lasers to launch very small probes to Alpha Centauri.

Yet many Danes I talked to are less concerned about terrorism than about the threat they see Muslims posing to their way of life. Though Muslims make up less than 5 percent of the population, there is growing evidence that many of the new arrivals fail to enter the workforce, are slow to learn Danish, and end up in high-crime immigrant neighborhoods where, while relying on extensive state handouts, they and their children are cut off from Danish society. In 2010, the Danish government introduced a “ghetto list” of such marginalized places with the goal of “reintegrating” them; the list now includes more than thirty neighborhoods.

Popular fears that the refugee crisis could overwhelm the Danish welfare state have sometimes surprised the country’s own leadership. On December 3, in a major defeat for the government, a clear majority of Danes—53 percent—rejected a referendum on closer security cooperation with the European Union. Until now, Denmark has been only a partial EU member—for example, it does not belong to the euro and has not joined EU protocols on citizenship and legal affairs. In view of the growing threat of jihadism, both the government and the opposition Social Democrats hoped to integrate the country fully into European policing and counterterrorism efforts. But the “no” vote, which was supported by the Danish People’s Party, was driven by fears that such a move could also give Brussels influence over Denmark’s refugee and immigration policies.

The outcome of the referendum has ominous implications for the European Union at a time when emergency border controls in numerous countries—including Germany and Sweden as well as Denmark—have put in doubt the Schengen system of open borders inside the EU. In Denmark itself, the referendum has forced both the Liberals and the Social Democrats to continue moving closer to the populist right. In November, Martin Henriksen, the Danish People’s Party spokesman on refugees and immigration, told Politiken, the country’s leading newspaper, “There is a contest on to see who can match the Danish People’s Party on immigration matters, and I hope that more parties will participate.”

All these discussions of “Danish values” and the like are not that different than the fears of multiculturalism, diversity, and racial identity that are motivating many white American voters. The major difference seems to be that the Trump voter is seen as an idiot and yokel is probably missing teeth while the Danish anti-immigrant voter is seen as more class-respectable. But then Denmark seems to have adjusted better to the globalized economy with high rates of capital mobility thanks to that welfare state, and thus the economic desperation also driving white people toward a Trump vote isn’t nearly as profound there. Rather, in Denmark, the unemployed are also the immigrants.

When the Oresund Bridge (that’s Öresund in Swedish and Øresund in Danish) opened in 2000, it was taken as a harbinger of a bright, borderless future for Europe.

Linking Danish Copenhagen with the Swedish city of Malmo across five miles of the Oresund Strait, the bridge was an unquestionably bold feat of engineering, featuring a two-mile tunnel connecting to it via an artificial island. The bridge’s role in reshaping Scandinavia’s geography was more impressive still. It joined two countries previously linked only by sea and air and helped to bind Denmark’s first and Sweden’s third cities into a new international metro area.

[. . .]

This year, more than 120,000 refugees sought asylum in Sweden between January and November. The source of their exodus is the ongoing war in Syria, creating levels of violence and disorder so intense that hundred of thousands have risked the dangerous journey across sea and over land to reach safety. Of the 800,000 refugees who have arrived by sea this year, one in seven has ended up in Sweden.

This is substantially thanks to Swedish generosity in setting high quotas. (It also helps that conditions the country offers refugees on arrival are relatively better than elsewhere.) Other European states have notably failed to be so generous. The U.K., with more than 6.5 times the population of Sweden, has agreed to take just 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next parliamentary term.

Neighboring Denmark has taken a far tougher line. The country’s government has taken out anti-refugee advertisements in Lebanese newspapers, announcing recent 50 percent cuts to refugee benefits and emphasizing how quickly Denmark would be able to deport them. The contrast could hardly be greater with Sweden, where people crossing by train from Denmark are greeted in Malmo Station with notices reading “Welcome Refugees” in Swedish, English, and Arabic.

• Alpha Sources notes that Eurozone economic sentiment is holding up.


• Centauri Dreams looks at SETI in the light of KIC 8462852.


• D-Brief notes predictions that Cassini could determine if Enceladus' ocean is active enough to support life.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a video presentation examining how habitable planets around Alpha Centauri could be imaged.


• The Dragon's Tales has the latest on the Russian war in Syria.


• Geocurrents is impressed by this map of world religion, so finely and accurately detailed.


• Language Log notes the oddities of the promotion of China's next five-year plan.


• The Map Room is impressed by Martin Vargic's new book of maps.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw is touring Denmark and noticing the differences and similarities between that Nordic country and his native Australia.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes workshopping for the location of the first manned Mars landing.


• The Power and the Money notes that Cristina Kirchner might be setting up her successors to fail, so as to ensure her eventual re-election.


• Towleroad notes that Italy forced the removal of registries of same-sex marriages contracted outside of the country.


• Window on Eurasia talks to a Kaliningrad regionalist, notes Dagestanis are not being drafted in the proportions one would expect, and reports that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is out of control.

Ever think of Greenland as a wedding destination? After today you can add it to your list.

Depending on which statistics you believe, between 2,000 and 5,000 Greenlanders are now free to marry whomever they love. JoeMyGod reports that Greenland's parliament voted unanimously Tuesday to approve same-sex marriage in the arctic nation.

"Google Translate has a bit of difficulty with Danish," JoeMyGod notes. "But our resident international expert, JMG reader Luis, advises us that Greenland's Parliament has just voted unanimously to adopt Danish laws legalizing same-sex marriage and gay adoption. "

Located in North America, Greenland, which has a population of roughly 57,000, is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Denmark since 2012, but until Tuesday it had yet to reach Greenland. While the Danish government controls Greenland's foreign affairs and defense, the country has been self-governing on domestic policy since 2009.