[LINK] Some Friday links

[rfmcdpei]

Acts of Minor Treason speculates on the constellations people might see in the sky from the star HD 98618, a very Sun-like star a hundred light-years away
• James Bow is decidedly unimpressed by the decision of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Recife to publicly excommunicate the mother of a nine-year old who became pregnant with twins after she was raped by her stepfather and had to have an abortion to save her life, and the doctors who performed the abortion.
• Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster refers to interesting computer simulations suggesting that Earth-sized--perhaps even Earth-like--planets can form in close orbits around dim red dwarf stars. Since most stars are red dwarfs, this has obvious implications for the search for extraterrestrial life.
• Edward Lucas reviews an interesting book on Jewish historians in interwar and Second World War Poland who tried to preserve their history in the face of oppression and eventually genocide.
• Marginal Revolution cites the fact that a black man in Washington D.C. is more likely to be HIV-positive than his Rwandan counterpart.
• Normblog's Norman Geras considers the ways in which liberalism and socialism are intimately and necessarily intertwined.
• Slap Upside the Head reports that the Anglican Church of Nigeria wants to punish participants in gay marriages with long jail sentences.
• At Space and Culture, Anne blogs about Mumbaikers' tolerance for random street encounters and how this makes their city livable. (Thoughts?)
• Strange Maps features a map showing how Israeli travel restrictions have helped make Palestinian communities in the West Bank into a disconnected archipelago.
• Over at Noel Maurer's blog, Jussi Jalonen makes a guest post explaining why, after 1815, the autonomous Russian-affiliated states of Finland and Poland experienced such divergent political fates.
• Torontoist reports on someone who's spreading false rumours that the food at Laila, a Middle Eastern take-out restaurant in the Annex, is killing people.
• The Volokh Conspiracy links to Toto's music video for Africa, shot in a law library, and addresses the question of whether or not the Vatican is required by international law to keep its various artistic treasures.
• Windows on Eurasia quotes a Russian scientist who suggests that Russia's population decline might prompt ethnic minorities, like Tatars and Udmurts, to seek independence lest they disappear, and blogs about how Russia's Komi Permyak are very unhappy with the results of the amalgamation of their ethnoterritorial unit with Perm oblast.