[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdpei]

• 80 Beats observes the discovery of a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, that's the most massive star discovered to date with a mass three hundred times that of our sun.
• At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Janice Prince Inniss writes about the rising rates of intermarriage in the United States, with Asians and Hispanics marrying outside their demographic more often than whites or blacks, and some potential partners (whites, mainly) more valued than others.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Robert Farley is properly scathing of a book, Walter Laqueur's The Last Days of Europe, that's terribly sloppy in its argument that Europe is becoming Eurabia.
• Marginal Revolution quotes from a Stratfor analysis of Greece's situation that's altogether too reductionistic: Greek problems aren't all about geography, people.
• At the Search, Douglas Todd points out that rumours that Muslim birth rates in Canada are so high that soon we'll be elected Muslim prime ministers are, well, Eurabia.
• Towleroad's Andy Towle announces that after many years, the Obama administration has helped the International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Commission to finally gain consultative status at the United Nations, along with other groups. Abroad, a coalition of mainly Muslim countries has opposed the recognition; inside the United States, some Republicans followed suit.
• Undercover Economist Tim Harford writes about the thriving--and mass popularity--of board games like Settlers of Catan in Germany.
• Window on Eurasia reports speculations that the recent ouster of the nationalist governor of the Russian republic of Bashkortostan might mean that the Russian government is finally going to place the autonomous ethnic republics more tightly under its control.