[BLOG] Some Monday links

• The Burgh Diaspora points to articles discussing Germany’s ongoing demographic issues.
• Crooked Timber’s John Quiggin meditates on the rapid urbanization of China.
• Daniel Drezner expects somewhat more out of the recent Iranian election of a moderate president than of North Korea’s latest diplomatic moves.
• The Dragon’s Tales’ Will Baird shares the news that none of the planets discovered orbiting Tau Ceti are likely to be habitable, e being Venus-like and f closer to Mars. There’s still space for a low-mass planet orbiting between e and f, though, right?
• Geocurrents criticizes the recently publicized linguistics thesis claiming that languages which have ejective consonants are likely to have evolved in mountainous areas, where these sharp sounds are suited to area with low air pressure.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen agrees now with Dani Rodrik’s long-staning critique of Turkish politics this past decade as undemocratic.
• The New APPS Blog notes the blemishing of Erdogan’s record in Turkey and mass protests in Brazil’s Sao Paulo over public transit.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer wonders if the Colombian-American alliance might worsen Colombia’s insurgencies.
• Peter Rukavina shares the GIS numbers of Prince Edward Island, the geographical coordinates of a box encompassing the island province.
• Torontoist notes that Toronto saw the first pay-TV show, a 1961 Bob Newhart special.
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes the imprisonment in Egypt of a Muslim cleric convicted of offending Christians.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Centauri Dreams notes that exoplanet discovery of late is still limited.
• Crooked Timber’s Maria Farrell, as wife of a British soldier, opposes the latest initiative of the British panopticon state aimed at protecting soldiers.
• Daniel Drezner thinks that Michelle Obama should have met her Chinese counterpart.
• Eastern Approaches covers the floods in Germany and the Czech Republic.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog examines the question of the Boy Scouts of America and sexual orientation.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money makes the case that the United States has become the energy colony of Canada (more specifically, Alberta).
• Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle considers whether gardeners should pick seeds or seedlings. It depends on their plans and experience.
• Towleroad maps the global acceptance of homosexuality based on a recent survey.
• Window on Eurasia suggests Siberian alienation from Russia, specifically in the Russian Far East, is growing.

[DM] “Some demographics-related news links”

I have a news links roundup at Demography Matters, covering everything fro the official overestimate of the German population by 1.5 million to emigration from Portugal and Hungary driven by economic and social (and political) conditions, from the transformation of the Latin American family to the depopulation of the rural United States. There’s even some funny links.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bag News Notes’ Michael Shaw takes a look at the pictures indicating extensive use of tear gas against protesters in Istanbul.
• In a guest post at Centauri Dreams, Larry Klaes takes a look at a 2011 anthology of papers examining the dynamics of spacefaring societies (ours and others’), Civilizations Beyond Earth: Extraterrestrial Life and Society.
• Crooked Timber’s Chris Bertram, visiting Brazil’s preplanned capital of Brasilia, starts a discussion about planned cities.
• Eastern Approaches notes the breakdown of the current coalition government in the Czech Republic.
• Geocurrents examines two Stalin Second World War-era ethnic cleansings, the first of the Volga Germans (now largely resettled in Germany) and the second of the Crimean Tatars (now largely returned to their Crimean homeland within Ukraine).
• Normblog’s Norman Geras wonders why many elements of Communist culture remain cool, despite its linkages with oppression.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer takes a look at mass transit in Colombia’s capital of Bogotá, noting that the current light rail system isn’t the best imaginable but is the best possible given the politics.
• Gideon Rachman notes the politics of green space, including parks, as exemplified by the Istanbul protests.
• Technosociology’s Zeynep Tufekci argues that online-driven protests do all fit a certain style.

[URBAN NOTE] Does every country have a “San Francisco”?

France has just carried out its first gay marriage, in the southern French city of Montpellier
that–as we are told in Agence France-Presse’s article–is apparently the San Francisco of France.

International media have begun converging on the “French San Francisco” where the country’s first official gay wedding is due to take place Wednesday amid tight security and fears of protests after months of opposition that saw tens of thousands take to the streets.

Vincent Autin, 40, and Bruno Boileau, 30, will exchange vows at the city hall in the southern city of Montpellier at 1530 GMT in the presence of hundreds of guests, including the Socialist government’s spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem.

Vallaud-Belkacem said she was attending the ceremony as a private citizen and not a state representative7, after the government backed away from sending officials fearing it would be accused of politicising the event.

[. . .]

Opponents have vowed to protest at the marriage in Montpellier, known as the “French San Francisco” for its gay-friendly reputation, and authorities have called in up to 100 police, with another 80 in reserve, to provide security.

“It is an exceptional event and we want everything to go as smoothly as possible,” said Frederic Loiseau of the local prefect’s office.

San Francisco is the origin of the trope, used in reference to cities of importance–not necessarily in the first tier of a country’s urban hierarchy, maybe even not the second, but a regional centre nonetheless–with a tradition of special liberalism. I’ve heard Cologne (German Köln) described as Germany’s San Francisco–see JD Van Zyl’s 2010 Pink News article and on the talk page for Wikitravel’s profile of the city.

Does this work for every country? I can’t think of Canada having a San Francisco-type city–Toronto and Montréal and Vancouver are too large. Can the trope work only in countries of a certain size, which have the population base necessary for a diversified urban hierarchy that provides relatively small groups with convenient potential niches?

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bag News Notes’ Michael Shaw considers the remarkable cool of one of the terrorists involved in the Woolwich killing of a British soldier. Does this cool mean this is routine?
• Beyond the Beyond’s Bruce Sterling and Will Baird at The Dragon’s Tales both note astronomers who think that Saturn’s moon Titan, nearing summer, is about to experience hurricanes.
• Also at The Dragon’s Tales, Will Baird notes a new study of exoplanet magnetic fields suggesting that planet Gliese 667Cc orbits too close to its sun to avoid tidal locking, and thus has suffered a collapse of its magnetic field and erosion of its atmosphere.
• Eastern Approaches notes the contretemps between Germany and Hungary, curiously triggered by the German chancellor saying that she would not send in the cavalry (metaphorically) to deal to Hungary’s destruction of its democracy.
• GNXP’s Razib Khan notes that the Aborigines of Australia were not culturally static, among other things observing that Aborigine language groups reflect the recent dominance of a single language family.
• The Search’s Butch Lazorchak argues in favour of the development of lossless recording techniques versus lossy ones, from the perspective of long-term preservation.
• At Une heure de peine, Denis Colombi writes, in French about a recent article on race and sex. There may be tendencies, but they are only tendencies, not uniform across populations by any means. What does it take to belong to amorphous groups?
• Window on Eurasia links to a Russian commentator who argues that Russia should look not to Europe or China for models of development, but rather to the continental superpower that is the United States.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait picks up on the news that the Canadian federal government is only going to fund research that leads directly to economic gain.
• The Burgh Diaspora’s Jim Russell wonders about the ethics of Cuba’s export of trained doctors as contract workers.
• Could a “Nebula Winter” explain Earth’s greatest glaciations? The Dragon’s Tales reports.
• Eastern Approaches reports on the indecisive election in crisis-ridden Bulgaria.
• Geocurrents examines the reasons for Bhutan’s surprisingly high level of development for a Himalayan polity.
• GNXP’s Razib Khan wonders about the ethics of certain kinds of eugenics, arguably already in practice today (pre-natal tests for Down’s syndrome, say).
• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on the prospects that the disastrous building collapse in a clothing manufacturing plant in Bangladesh might lead to new global standards.
• Strange Maps has fun with the unusual placenames of the Shetland and Orkney islands, off the northeastern coast of Scotland.
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes that a German family claiming asylum in the United States on the grounds that homeschooling is not permitted in Germany has been turned down.
• Window on Eurasia reports on a conspiracy theory in Russia that Siberia is going to be stolen by Muslim guest workers.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bag News Notes features photographs of the aftermath of the Bangladeshi factory collapse.
• Centauri Dreams takes a look at the electric sail, propulsion method for spaceships currently being tested.
• At The Dragon’s Tales, Will Baird links to a study suggesting that China’s Yangtze river is at least 23 million years old.
• Daniel Drezner doesn’t think that an age of cheap energy globally will necessarily destabilize the world, at least outside of oil exporters, since globalization binds in other ways.
• Eastern Approaches notes the continuing sensitivity of the post-Second World War deportation of the Sudeten Germans from the Czech Republic, as recently emphasized by the Czech president’s defense.
• Geocurrents examines the reasons for the sharp shift in most of India towards below-replacement fertility rates, suggesting that television shows featuring women with small families may be as important a factor as anything else.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis notes that one of the first victories of organized labour in the United States occurred in 1882 with the implementation of a ban on Chinese immigration. (Canada followed in 1885.)
• The Volokh Conspiracy’s Sasha Volokh examines the implications of prisons being reviewed on Yelp.
• Window on Eurasia notes that Ukrainians and Moldovans, not Central Asians, are more likely to be undocumented migrants in Russia. (They’re less visually and culturally distinctive, apparently, and harder to catch.)

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• In one of his first posts since moving back to Toronto, Acts of Minor Treason’s Andrew Barton describes coming across the immediate aftermath of a terrible accident (or “accident”) at Union station and wondering about the lack of empathy expressed by commuters.
• Bag News Notes features a post from South Side Chicago resident and photographer Jon Lowenstein, who caught the immediate aftermath of a shooting in his neighbourhood.
• Centauri Dreams’ Paul Gilster describes the dreams of American rocket pioneer robert Goddard of interstellar migrations.
• At Crooked Timber, Eric Rauchway documents that Keynes’ concern about the consequences of war indemnities on the economies of Germany and central Europe long predated any sexual affair with Germans.
• Daniel Drezner notes how off-base Marc Lynch’s statement that the ongoing war in Syria undermines a pleasant narrative of the Arab Spring is, since there was plenty of suffering beforehand.
• Extraordinary Observations’ Rob Pitingolo doesn’t like it when cyclists are in too much of a hurry pay attention to red lights, other vehicle drivers too.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, B. Spencer argues that guns in the United States are much more a fetishistic icon of belonging than anything else like resisting government oppression.
• Mark Simpson reposts his 2001 review of Niall Ferguson’s book The Cash Nexus.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen notes that Jamaica has seen sustained austerity for decades and also flat economic growth. Connection? And what of Europe?
• Torontoist notes that plans for a proposed shopping centre in Kensington Market along Bathurst Street have been released. Controversy will ensue.
• Window on Eurasia notes statistics suggesting that only 3% of Russians attended the Russian Orthodox Church’s Easter services.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bag News Notes’ Michael Shaw touches upon the use of infrared photography to detect a hiding Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
• The Burgh Diaspora notes the beginning of migration into Poland from western Europe, specifically of professionals fleeing southern Europe.
• Eastern Approaches describes the pragmatic deal struck between Serbia and Kosovo, hopefully allowing both states to normalize.
• Geocurrents’ Martin Lewis blogs about regional trends in economic development in China, coastal provinces rising relative to a declining northeast and interior.
• Marginal Revolution notes a recent study claiming that health in Cuba improved during the 1990s, as a result of the post-Soviet economic contraction and food scarcity. This is debatable.
• Steve Munro continues his analysis of the famously irregular 29 Dufferin bus route.
• The Volokh Conspiracy’s Eugene Volokh points to a UN committee arguing that racist Thilo Sarrazin should be prosecuted on the grounds of hate speech.