[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bruce Sterling, at Beyond the Beyond, takes a look at the applications of statistical analysis to the study of literature. (Apparently Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott were hugely influential.)
• Centauri Dreams’ Paul Gilster describes the latest on the nascent planetary system of TW Hydrae, a very young orange dwarf two hundred light-years away.
• Daniel Drezner thinks that the current informal global structures charged with managing international finances are actually working well.
• Eastern Approaches argues that anti-Americanism specifically, and xenophobia more commonly, is becoming normative in Russia, as demonstrated by recent laws passed covering everything from adoption to the mass media.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money’s Scott Lemieux notes the irony of torture advocate Alan Dershowitz criticizing a conference on the Israeli occupation held in a New York City college as immoral.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen notes ads funded by the British government in Bulgaria and Romania actively trying to discourage potential migrants.
• Naked Anthropologist Laura Agustín points out the problems with the evangelical Christian campaigns against the sex trade, suggesting that they often fail to pick up on vital nuances (like, say, what the women involved actually want).
• At New APPS Blog, the threats against the conference mentioned at Lawyers, Guns and Money above–held at Brooklyn College–are detailed, and a call to support the college made.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that the plan by Uzbekistan’s government to shift the official script from Cyrillic to Latin will discourage reading generally and hit the provinces hard.