[BLOG] Some Monday links

[rfmcdpei]

• At Geocurrents, Asya Pereltsvaig takes on the provocative, if apparently ill-founded, thesis that Ashkenazic Jews trace their ancestry to the medieval Khazars of the Russian steppe by taking a look at the structure of the Yiddish language.
• Language Hat claims that, with the advent of electronic communications which make them difficult to insert into text, diacritical marks are endangered in the Polish language. A campaign has been launched.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis links to an essay by feminist and historian Ruth Rosen wherein she states--basically--that early feminists didn't think about campaigning against violence against women in the 1970s because violence against women was taken for granted as inevitable.
• British journalist Mark Simpson unearths a vintage article about Napster and the Internet and free culture from 2001 that's still relevant today.
• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen links approvingly to a book, Cuisine, Colonialism and Cold War: Food in Twentieth Century Korea by Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, that examines "Korean-Japanese relations, the early history of Korean industrialization, and the rise of industrial food, as well as the evolution of Korean food in recent times". It does look interesting.
• Naked Anthropologist Laura Agustín takes a look at the ways in which the sex industry of New York City's Times Square was an integral part of the neighbourhood, in photos and posters.
• Torontoist notes that City Council has just declared Toronto a sanctuary city, guaranteeing undocumented residents access to municipal services. More on this later.
• Eugene Volokh in a couple of posts (1, 2) starts speculating whether or not indigenous peoples in the New World would have seen European migrants as illegal immigrants and starts to head in problematic directions. Again, more later.
• John Scalzi at Whatever shares his love of libraries.
• Window on Eurasia's Paul Goble notes, via various sources, that Chechen refugees in the European Union are facing forced returns to their ever-problematic homeland.