A Bit More Detail

• In an extended meditation, Antipope's Charlie Stross considers what the domestic architecture of the future will look like. What different technologies, with different uses of space, will come into play?


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the new SPECULOOS exoplanet hunting telescope, specializing in the search for planets around the coolest stars.


• The Crux looks at the evolutionary origins of hominins and chimpanzees in an upright walking ape several million years ago.


• D-Brief notes the multiple detections of gravitational waves made by LIGO.


• The Dragon's Tales looks at the development of laser weapons by China.


• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the gap between social theory and field research.


• Gizmodo shares an interesting discussion with paleontologists and other dinosaur experts: What would the dinosaurs have become if not for the Chixculub impact?


• Hornet Stories notes the ways in which the policies of the Satanic Temple would be good for queer students.


• io9 notes how the Deep Space 9 documentary What We Leave Behind imagines what a Season 8 would have looked like.


• Joe. My. God. reports that activist Jacob Wohl is apparently behind allegations of a sexual assault by Pete Buttigieg against a subordinate.


• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the uses of the yellow ribbon in American popular culture.
  
• Language Hat shares an account of the life experiences of an Israeli taxi driver, spread across languages and borders.


• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money makes deserved fun of Bret Easton Ellis for his claims to having been marginalized.


• Marginal Revolution considers, briefly, the idea that artificial intelligence might not be harmful to humans. (Why would it necessarily have to be?)


• The NYR Daily considers a British exhibition of artworks by artists from the former Czechoslovakia.


• Peter Rukavina looks at gender representation in party caucuses in PEI from the early 1990s on, noting the huge surge in female representation in the Greens now.


• The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress is preserving Latin American monographs.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains how Einstein knew that gravity must bend light.


• Window on Eurasia explains the sharp drop in the ethnic Russian population of Tuva in the 1990s.

• Antipope's Charlie Stross considers the question of how to build durable space colonies.


• blogTO notes that the musical Hamilton might be coming to Toronto.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that European populations are descended from Anatolian farmers, not local hunter0-gatherers.


• Far Outliers notes the plight of Czech and Slovak migrants in Russia following the outbreak of the First World War.


• Language Log looks at new programs to promote the learning of Cantonese, outside of China proper.


• Towleroad notes the sad story of a Belgian man who wants euthanasia because he's ashamed of being gay.


• The Financial Times' The World worries about the possible spread of illiberal democracy to Croatia.

The anger and fatigue were visible in the face of Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir 27 June when he spoke to reporters in Brussels about another urgent eurozone meeting on Greece.

“For four months we’ve been solving the electoral promises of Syriza,” Kazimir said to Czech and Slovak TV reporters. “If somebody has promised heaven on earth and isn’t able to deliver that, he shouldn’t blame others. Truth is truth, a lie is a lie.”

And that was the polite version. Behind closed doors, reporters were told, the post-communist eurozone member ministers used even stronger language.

These small countries de facto didn’t have much say in the solution to the Greek crisis, since decision-making was down to big member states, and the biggest contributors to the rescue funds. But having fresh memories of painful economic and political transformation, those governments – even the leftist ones, as in Slovakia – don’t have much patience with or understanding of Greek problems.

“We’re prepared to save Greece but not at any price,” Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said a week earlier at a conference in Bratislava.

In the Czech Republic, the prime minister said on Wednesday that joining the euro soon would help the economy after the president challenged the central bank’s long-standing resistance with a vow to appoint policy makers who favor the common currency. In Poland, the main divide between the top two candidates in the May 10 presidential election is whether the region’s biggest economy should ditch the zloty.

“It’s quite interesting how the sentiment has shifted -- I’m slightly surprised by this,” William Jackson, London-based senior economist at Capital Economics Ltd., said by phone on Wednesday. “As the story coming from the euro zone in recent years has been negative, it’s very hard to imagine how the euro case for the public would be made now.”

The obstacles are many. Romania, which has set 2019 as a potential target date, and Hungary don’t meet all the economic criteria. Poland faces legal hurdles and the Czech government has said it won’t set a date during its four-year term. As a standoff between Greece and euro-area leaders threatens to push the country into insolvency and potential exit, opinion polls show most Czechs and Poles oppose a switch.

The appeal of the euro, which all European Union members save Britain and Denmark are technically obliged to join, suffered when the area had to provide emergency loans to ailing members during the economic crisis. While five ex-communist countries that joined the trading bloc in 2004 -- Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -- have acceded, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary don’t have road maps.

The region’s three biggest economies argued that floating currencies and control over monetary policy helps shield themselves against shocks like the euro crisis even if smaller countries may benefit from lower exchange-rate volatility and reduced trade costs. Facing weakening in their korunas, zlotys, and forints, some politicians in eastern Europe are questioning that logic.

• blogTO notes plans for building a new condo complex at Front and Spadina.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper simulating the emission spectra of super-Earths.


• The Dragon's Tales suggests that the emergence of continents was crucial for the Great Oxidation Event and claims Mars took longer to lose its atmosphere than many people think.


• Joe. My. God. notes that the Archbishop of San Francisco is, among other things, strongly anti-masturbation.


• Language Log notes the death of feminist, linguist and science fiction writer Suzette Haden Elgin.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money makes a case somewhat in defense of Brian Williams.


• Spacing Toronto makes the case that lovers should buy Valentine's Day gifts at its store.


• The Tin Man considers his complicated relationship with the musical Falsettos.


• Torontoist looks at the evolution of CAMH over the years.


• Towleroad notes the active support of Pope Francis for an anti-gay referendum in Slovakia.


• Transit Toronto notes the steady expansion of the TTC's WiFi network throughout the subway system.


• The Volokh Conspiracy considers the challenges facing a Lohan family lawsuit against Fox News.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that Ukraine can't accept Russian demands because they'll keep coming, argues that Russians are noticing domestic incompetence, and notes internal border changes in Russia.

• blogTO shares photos of the Eaton Centre immediately after its opening in the 1970s.


• Crooked Timber's Chris Bertram comes out in favour of a federal United Kingdom.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that Australia is set to buy ten submarines from Japan.


• Eastern Approaches picks up on the travails of the Crimean Tatars.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes how Slovakia is a bad model for Scotland, not least because a large majority of Czechoslovaks wanted the country to survive.


• The Russian Demographics Blog links to a study that has a frankly optimistic projection for Iraq's Christian community over the next half-century or so.


• Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc describes Rob Ford's trajectory as a Greek tragedy. I'm inclined to agree.


• Torontoist and blogTO share reports of how Torontonians and others react to Rob Ford's cancer diagnosis.


• Towleroad notes European Union pressure on Serbia to improve its gay rights record.


• Window on Eurasia notes the issues of Crimean Tatars as well and suggests that the Russian government maintains bad population statistics.

On the one side, there is Poland, which has asked the United States to station thousands of troops on its soil. On the other, there is Hungary, which has signed a very suspicious deal with Russia for a loan to build two new nuclear reactors that will tie Budapest to Moscow for the next three decades. The Czech Republic and Slovakia are somewhere in between, but both strongly reject an additional NATO (read U.S.) military presence in their countries.

Polish diplomats present at recent conferences such as Globsec, where the prime ministers of the four countries openly disagreed, or at the Wroclaw Global Forum, have started to ask whether the country should invest so much energy into regional cooperation that does not reflect their basic national interests.

Milan Nic, director of the Central European Policy Institute in Bratislava, said that considering the Czech and Slovak prime ministers’ rejection of an American military presence, Poles “have to wonder about our attitudes and if Poland would be better off giving more attention to cooperation with Romania, the Baltic countries, and some Scandinavian ones, which see the threat from the east likewise.”

The Polish propensity to push their partners into a corner and entertain even the worst-case scenarios is viewed in Prague, Bratislava, and Budapest as hysteria, according to Nic. “The level of our strategic dialogue and understanding was not prepared for such a grave crisis as the Ukrainian one,” Nic said.

[. . .]

Mateusz Gniazdowski, director of the Central European department at the Polish governmental think tank, the Center for Eastern Studies has noted, “Above all, in Poland the opinion prevails quite often that countries with a common heritage and who are neighbors on a map have common interests.” While EU members obviously have varied histories, one would have thought their current priorities in regard to Russia would align more frequently than they do.

Hungary will stand up for its rights within the European Union and wants autonomy for ethnic Hungarians living beyond its borders in central Europe, including Ukraine, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday.

Orban, who was formally endorsed by parliament as prime minister for a second consecutive term after last month's landslide election win, said ethnic Hungarians supported his policies to unite the nation "above the borders".

His previous government granted ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries citizenship shortly after it took office in 2010, as part of his efforts to restore a battered sense of national pride.

[. . .]

"We regard the Hungarian issue a European issue," Orban said in his first speech to parliament since his reelection.

"Hungarians living in the Carpathian basin are entitled to have dual citizenship, are entitled to community rights, and also autonomy."

[. . .]

He said on Saturday the issue of ethnic Hungarians was especially topical due to the situation in neighboring Ukraine, where around 200,000 ethnic Hungarians live, who are entitled to Hungarian citizenship and also the right to self-administration.

"This is our clear expectation from the new Ukraine which is taking shape now," Orban said, adding the new administration enjoyed Hungary's support in its efforts to build a democratic Ukraine.

• Centauri Dreams notes that some astronomers have come up with methods for measuring the densities of the atmospheres of difference exoplanets.


• Crooked Timber's Chris Bertram thinks that the state of the migration debate in the United Kingdom is grim, given what he thinks is the toughness of even a liberal proposal.


• Eastern Approaches notes that the Czech Republic and Slovakia aren't as vocal in their support of Ukraine against Russia as Poland.


• At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Karen Sternheimer explores the role of justifications and excuses in culture.


• Far Outliers notes that, on the eve of the First World War, Germany lacked settler colonies.


• The Financial Times' World blog worries that Croatia might not be able to make effective use of European Union funds.


• Language Hat notes that Western-style romance novels were popular samizdat in the Soviet Union.


• Language Log's Victor Mair argues that, between influence from foreign languages and technology, the Chinese language is evolving rapidly.


• Marginal Revolution notes an argument that state-formation in Europe might have been driven by economics not military affairs.


• Towleroad notes the recent progressive court ruling on gay sex in Lebanon.

• Charlie Stross starts a discussion about the possible consequences of the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union. (He's against.)


• Will Baird, at The Dragon's Tales, celebrates the 4000th post at his blog by imagining what an updated version of Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history would be. A Sino-Indian alliance eventually at odds with transhumanists is fun.


• Daniel Drezner doesn't think much of gold fetishism.


• Eastern Approaches notes rising nationalism in Slovakia.


• At A Fistful of Euros, Edward Hugh thinks that the ongoing crises of the Eurozone might be handled for the time being by the policies advocated by Mario Draghi. For the time being.


• Geocurrents observes, drawing from the example of Punjabi, the blurry nature of dialect continua.


• Language Hat points to an online compendium of Canadianisms in English.


• Torontoist notes that if you now search for a book on the Toronto Public Library catalogue, you'll find links inviting you to buy the book at Indigo. (The library is expecting about $C 20 000 from this.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little asks what happened to Detroit and comes to the conclusion that the severe racial polarization certainly didn't help.


• Window on Eurasia notes that many of the smallest nationalities in Russia, indigenous peoples of Siberia mainly, are fast losing their numbers to assimilation.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell seems skeptical about a Kickstarter project aiming at buying a communications satellite and making it available to the Third World. Apparently the lack of suitable satellite modems is an issue.