A Bit More Detail

• Charlie Stross hosts at Antipope another discussion thread examining Brexit.


• Architectuul takes a look at five overlooked mid-20th century architects.


• Bad Astronomy shares a satellite photo of auroras at night over the city lights of the Great Lakes basin and something else, too.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the directions love has taken her, and wonders where it might have taken her readers.


• Centauri Dreams reports on the Hayabusa 2 impactor on asteroid Ryugu.


• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes issue with the claims of Steven Pinker about nuclear power.


• D-Brief notes the detection, in remarkable detail, of a brilliant exocomet at Beta Pictoris.


• The Dragon's Tales considers the possibility that China might be building a military base in Cambodia.


• Karen Sternheimer writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about the importance of small social cues, easily overlookable tough they are.


• Far Outliers notes the role of Japan's imperial couple, Akihito and Michiko, in post-war Japan.


• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing writes about the potential inadequacy of talking about values.


• Gizmodo notes a new study suggesting the surprising and potentially dangerous diversity of bacteria present on the International Space Station.


• Mark Graham shares a link to a paper, and its abstract, examining what might come of the creation of a planetary labour market through the gig economy.


• Hornet Stories takes a look at Red Ribbon Blues, a 1995 AIDS-themed film starring RuPaul.


• io9 notes that Guillermo del Toro and Cornelia Funke are co-writing a Pan's Labyrinth novel scheduled for release later this year.


• Joe. My. God. notes a new study suggesting 20% of LGBTQ Americans live in rural areas.


• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the Bluestockings, the grouping of 18th century women in England who were noteworthy scholars and writers.


• Language Hat notes an ambitious new historical dictionary of the Arabic language being created by the emirate of Sharjah.


• Language Log examines, in the aftermath of a discussion of trolls, different cultures' terms for different sorts of arguments.


• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how early forestry in the United States was inspired by socialist ideals.


• The Map Room Blog links to a map showing the different national parks of the United Kingdom.


• Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, noting the new findings from the Chixculub impact, notes how monitoring asteroids to prevent like catastrophes in the future has to be a high priority.


• The New APPS Blog explains how data, by its very nature, is so easily made into a commodity.


• The NYR Daily considers the future of the humanities in a world where higher education is becoming preoccupied by STEM.


• Corey S. Powell at Out There interviews Bear Grylls about the making of his new documentary series Hostile Planet.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw considers the pleasures of birds and of birdwatching.


• Jason C. Davis at the Planetary Society Blog noted the arrival of the Beresheet probe in lunar orbit.


• Drew Rowsome reviews the new amazing-sounding play Angelique at the Factory Theatre.


• The Russian Demographics Blog notes a paper that makes the point of there being no automatic relationship between greater gender equality and increases in fertility.


• The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress has made use of the BagIt programming language in its archiving of data.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel comes up with questions to ask plausible visitors from other universes.


• Strange Company notes the mysterious deaths visited on three members of a British family in the early 20th century. Who was the murderer? Was there even a crime?


• Towleroad notes the activists, including Canadian-born playwright Jordan Tannahill, who disrupted a high tea at the Dorchester Hotel in London over the homophobic law passed by its owner, the Sultan of Brunei.


• Window on Eurasia notes rising instability in Ingushetia.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes that the British surveillance of Huawei is revealing the sorts of problems that must be present in scrutiny-less Facebook, too.

The Indian government has lauded a decision by the United Arab Emirates to allocate land for the building of the first Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi.

[. . .]

On Sunday, Modi became the first Indian premier to visit the country in 34 years, meeting with Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

The trip is seen an important step in burgeoning trade relations between India and the UAE, and the decision to allocate land for a temple in Abu Dhabi underpins the strategic vision of the two nations.

The UAE, a federation of seven emirates, is home to about 2.6 million Indian expatriates who comprise a third of the total population and outnumber the local Emirati population. Annual Indian remittances from the UAE are estimated at $14bn.

A military force from Bahrain's Gulf neighbors entered the tiny island nation Monday in an apparent attempt to restore order as anti-government demonstrations escalate.

The Bahrain Defense Force confirmed the arrival of military units from a special Gulf Cooperation Council security force. The Council is a regional economic and military alliance comprised of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman.

A Saudi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, told the Associated Press that the force would secure key buildings. The U.S. Embassy in Bahrain advised American citizens to stay in their residences.

Protesters who have been calling for democratic reforms have successfully shut down large swaths of Manama, the capital city, and Bahraini security forces have fought back with teargas and rubber bullets. Pro-government civilians have in some cases attacked protesters with sticks, knives and swords; the protesters have responded with rocks and other objects, witnesses have said.

Witnesses in Manama said that most downtown businesses were closed Monday.

Authorities in Saudi Arabia, which is connected to Bahrain by a causeway, have looked at its smaller neighbor with growing nervousness, fearful that a victorious Shia majority in Bahrain could embolden Saudi Arabia's own Shiite minority in nearby oil-rich Eastern Province. They are also worried about Iran exploiting the situation off their coast, although American officials have said that they do not believe Iran has been involved in the Bahrain protests.

• Anders Sandberg breaks down the possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox, the perceived mystery surrounding the vast size of the universe and the failure of extraterrestrials to contact us. What's the filter?
  
• Geocurrents examines the plight of the Assyrians, a Chrisitan population indigenous to the area of Iraq subjected to ottoman genocide and since then suffering ever-greater levels of violence, all while the world fails to notice..


• At the Global Sociology Blog, Habermas' warnings about the consequences of the delegitimizing of political elites are paired with reports from a Dubai where the idea of society, a shared public space, has collapsed altogether.


• Personal Reflections' Paul Belslaw engages with some of the global controversies around multiculturalism.


• At The Search, Douglas Todd writes about the traditional (and popular) Canadian belief in the possibility of interactions with the spirit world.


• Window on Eurasia <a href="http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2010/10/window-on-eurasia-irans-influence-in.html|>examines</a> Iran's influence in post-Soviet Central Asia. Perhaps alongside Tajikistan, Iran's closest relationship is with a determinedly neutral Turkmenistan. Cultural distances otherwise limit Iran's potential heft.</li> </ul>

The Arab world used to be a prime place for science, research and technology, but in the past couple of centuries it has deteriorated a lot, due to politics and ignorance. Things finally look like they are getting better now,” says Wael al-Delaimy, an associate professor of medicine at University of California, San Diego.

Abu Dhabi, for example, intends to pump Dh4.9bn ($1.3bn) into research and development by 2018 under a strategic plan for higher education announced last month. The emirate’s plan calls for 28 per cent of its graduates to be in engineering-related areas. But currently only about 9 per cent of higher education students are in those fields, says the Abu Dhabi Education Council.

Institutions such as the Qatar Foundation, home to branches of six US universities, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, and the Sorbonne and New York university branches being established in Abu Dhabi, are trying to fill the shortfall. Most are teaching establishments for undergraduates. But the intention is that, with time, they will conduct research and award doctorates. ....
Not all has gone well. This month John Perkins, the provost of Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Institute, said he was leaving for “personal reasons”. The Masdar Institute has been formed in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and aims to carry out research in renewable technologies. ....

“They [the universities] are slowly beginning to realise that money cannot buy people, especially scientists,” says Hilal Lashuel of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. “The lack of equal treatment is a major problem. Hiring and pay is based on nationality and not merit, and Arab scientists are often disadvantaged when it comes to both.”

In Dubai, Tarik Yousef, the dean of the Dubai School of Government, a think tank, agrees that a research culture cannot be developed remotely or by one and two-week visits. .... “I don’t think they [the universities] are going about it the right way. Who are they using to recruit people? [They use] this executive approach,” Mr Yousef says. Some universities are losing as many people each year as they recruit, he says. ....

“Academics want time for research – and they want to be rewarded . . . It has to be a two-way conversation,” he says. “The first question people ask me is: what is my teaching load? How much administrative work am I going to have to do? Am I going to be able to organise seminars and attend conferences and deliver papers?”

Another issue is citizenship. Gulf states have historically granted citizenship grudgingly if at all. In a globalised business such as academia where people prefer not to move frequently, the prospect of working for decades in a country and then being denied the right to stay there is unattractive.

• 'Aqoul's dubaiwalla writes about the challenges facing Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates as they try to increase citizen employment, as they try to improve their skills while avoiding harm to local economies.


• At Border Thinking, Laura Agustín takes a look at how Israel is fortifying its Sinai frontier-with Egyptian help--to keep out refugees, linking it with newly imposed penalties for Israelis who help people sneak into the country.


• Centauri Dreams reports on yet another astounding innovation in observational astronomy, this a new technique that allows ground-based telescopes to analyze the atmospheres of extrasolar planets.


• The Dragon's Tales reports on Iran's claim to have successfully launched a live cargo into space with its new launchers.


• Far Outliers examines how, in early modern Southeast Asia, different ethnic groups were governed by different legal systems.


• The Grumpy Sociologist is understandably grumpy about an Australian police official's dismissal of attacks on Indian student in Melbourne by saying that they're safer than in India, anyway.


• Murdering Mouth nails the sort of environmentalist survivalist who longs for an early 20th century (or earlier) existence and attacks the contemporary era with its complexities, all while happily taking advantage of these very useful complexities themselves.


• Noel Maurer at the Power and the Money makes the claim that, contrary to popular mythology, the Republican and Democratic Parties in the United States actually work in ways not unlike parties in Canada, with party policy overriding individual representative's wishes.


• Slap Upside the Head observes that, in Saskatchewan, religious denominations support measures aimed at allowing civil marriage commissioners the right to opt out of marrying same-sex couples (and who next?).


• Towleroad carries the news that US military officials expert it could take years to integrate queers into the American military; commenters suspect that this is political.

Global stock markets, commodities and emerging market currencies retreated sharply Thursday after state-owned investment conglomerate Dubai World asked for a six-month reprieve on its massive loan repayments.

The company is burdened with $59-billion (U.S.) in debt.

The debt standstill marks the end of Dubai's credit-fuelled real estate explosion, which spurred construction of scores of ostentatious infrastructure projects, including the world's tallest building and sprawling palm-shaped tourist resorts built on sand foundations.

It also raised the spectre of the largest sovereign default in nearly a decade and prompted fears of financial woes spreading to other economies just as the global recovery strives to take root.

The Dubai crisis could hit emerging-market sentiment and investor tolerance for risk, which have both helped drive the global economic recovery this year, Scotia Capital currency strategist Sacha Tihanyi warned.

[. . .]

“The thing that would make anyone nervous is the fact that this is a financial-sector shock. It was financial-sector shocks that played such an intensive role in the recession and financial crisis,” Mr. Tihanyi said in an interview.

Indeed, shares of banks with exposure to Dubai World debt or holdings in the United Arab Emirates, including HSBC, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, fell sharply on the news. European markets suffered their largest one-day decline in seven months, dropping more than 3 per cent. Emerging-market currencies and equity markets sank. Brazilian shares dropped more than 2 per cent and Mexican stocks lost about 3 per cent. Commodities, including oil and base metals also lost ground. Even gold, which has surged to record levels in recent weeks, sold off as investors reined in their risk exposure.

At this point, I am of course simply trying to get an overview like the rest of you and not least deciding whether it will have any far reaching repercussions beyond today's theatricals. However, in case you did not turn on your Blackberry today, they story is that the Dubai government has requested investors in the debt of the investment company Dubai world whether they wouldn't be so nice as to accept a wee postponement of the payment of their debt. Especially, a payment due already the 14th of December in the form of $3.52 billion of bonds from property unit Nakheel PJSC looks as if it is near dead in the water.

The price of Nakheel’s bonds fell to 70.5 cents on the dollar from 84 yesterday and 110.5 a week ago, according to Citigroup Inc. prices on Bloomberg.“Nakheel is now standing on the brink of failure given the astonishing amount of cash Dubai would have to inject on it in order to see the enterprise survive,” said Luis Costa, emerging-market debt strategist at Commerzbank AG in London.

Obviously, announcements of delay of debt payments smells an awful lot like default and with $59 billion worth of liabilities at Dubai World many a financial institution and investor are exposed here. Naturally, and apart from the internal mess this is likely to cause in the Middle Eastern region, I am looking closely at the notion of European banks being sucked in here too.

in George Bush's words 'this suckers going down'. well it may be.....this is a potential mutiple default scenario. The 'implied support' by the emirates for the companies they own when no guarantees are in place has been the basis for credit ratings across the region. That is, that the sovereign would not default. That the federal government has allowed this to come into question demonstrates a very real hazard for investors, It is something it would avoid at all costs. Its about cash. There just isnt enough of it

• Gilbert Casasus at Marianne2 notes (in French) that Germany is now seeing net emigration, with Switzerland being a major destination and with East Germans being especially likely to leave.


• Silicon India observes that over 2003-2008 remittances sent by Keralan guest workers in the Middle East have risen by 135%, with the United Arab Emirates emerging as a major target and with Muslim Keralans providing a disproportionately large share of remittances.


• The Portugal News reports that Chinese trade with Lusophone countries fell by 34% in the first half of 2009, with trade with its most important Lusophone partners Brazil then Angola falling the most. In addition, efforts to promote trade between Lusophone countries aren't working.


• Loro Horta in Thailand's The Nation comments on the long-term consequences of an increasingly close Sino-Brazilian relationship on the wider Americas.
National Geographic News' Brian Handwerk reports on new research suggesting that large differences between juvenile and mature dinosaurs may have led to a misidentification of juveniles as separate species.

• National Geographic News also reports that, for a variety of reasons, indigenous peoples are suffering more at a per capita rate from swine flu than the general population.


• Wired Science's Alexis Madrigal covers the news that some space scientists would like to dispatch a probe on a return mission to a Martian moon, carrying life, in order to see whether or not life could survive in space and panspermia would be possible.


• The Times Online reports on the latest effort by the (disputed) heir to the French throne to try to reestablish the French throne in the face of general disinterest.

• Broadsides' Antonia Zerbisias writes about Castor Semenya's heartbreakingly bad treatment by the media.


• Centauri Dreams talks about laser launch technology, the amazingly detailed discovery of the extrasolar planet CoRoT-7b, and the reasons for communicating with extraterrestrial civilizations.


• Far Outliers describes how the exchange of firearms for hogs on Tahiti started a series of wars.
  
• Hunting Monsters reports on the latest depressing news from Fiji.


• Joe. My. God reports that a South Carolina teen whose insurance company dropped him after he tested HIV-positive has been awarded damages of $US 10 million.


• Noel Maurer examines the massive cost overruns in the private sector, concentrating on the Albertan oil sands' development.


• Normblog considers the most commonly offered reasons for discouraging Jewish assimilation and boosting the number of Jews in the world and finds them unconvincing.


• Towleroad reports on how the Ukrainian Orthodox Church--I think the autonomous one under the Patriarch of Moscow--rejoices that Elton John can't adopt Ukrainian children. We also learn how violent Iraqi homophobes are using Internet chat room to brutally murder gays in that poor country.


• Torontoist reports that the Burj Dubai isn't going to take away the CN Tower's record as the tallest free-standing building in the world. No, I don't understand how.


• The Volokh Conspiracy's Ilya Somin suggests that the strong association of American Jews with the left in the modern United States might be explained by a distaste of the Religious Right associated with conservatism.


• Window on Eurasia wonders if Turkey, home to a large Abkhaz diaspora, might be the next country to recognize Abkhazia's independence, as well as reporting on how many prominent Ukrainians want a security guarantee against Russia.

dubaiwalla

[T]he government ordered over a thousand buses. While the old ones were generally adequate, the new ones are uniformly shiny. While I have yet to see the onboard information screens work as designed, they will one day give travelers route information. A large number of them are either double-decker or articulated. This will be important in September, when the metro disgorges large numbers of people on to the streets at once. If commuters can't trust buses to get them near their houses and workplaces reliable and in comfort, they will not use them. The metro will then be of very limited use outside the central business district, and will not do much to alleviate traffic on the city's main north-south corridor. New bus routes now serve the vast majority of the city, at least as it stands today. In an effort to make sure commuters have no excuse to avoid the buses, the city has built air conditioned stops, put up route maps at each of them, and started running buses through the night, with varying levels of success. Punctuality has been a serious problem in the past, not least due to congestion. The sheer number of new buses will probably serve as a brute-force solution to this problem. In other words, the schedules may still mean little, and a given bus might still be 45 minutes late, but if you can expect a bus every 10 minutes instead of every hour, it does not matter all that much. Currently, bus transfers and day passes do not exist at all. The only reform in that department in the past few years has been the institution of a flat AED 2 (55¢) fare for all buses in the city. Luckily, the electronic payment machines already visible on newer buses will be linked to the fare card system for the upcoming metro in order to allow for various discount schemes.