At Transitions Online, Martin Ehl writes about how central European disinterest in the Dalai Lama maps onto an increasingly pragmatic pursuit of Chinese investment.

In this way, the October visit of the Dalai Lama - who was the main star of the 20th edition of the Forum 2000 conference, founded by late President Vaclav Havel - was also a test of ( Read more... )

• Beyond the Beyond notes an upcoming exhibition of photos of Vaclav Havel.
• blogTO notes a local controversy over the demolition of a community-built skate park.
• Centauri Dreams considers how advanced starfaring civilizations might deal with existential threats.
• Crooked Timber looks at how presidential debates could be used to teach logic.
• Language Hat ( Read more... )

• Antipope's Charlie Stross considers the question of how to build durable space colonies.
• blogTO notes that the musical Hamilton might be coming to Toronto.
• The Dragon's Tales notes that European populations are descended from Anatolian farmers, not local hunter0-gatherers.
• Far Outliers notes the plight of Czech and Slovak migrants in Russia following ( Read more... )

• Bad Astronomy notes the proposed names for new superheavy elements.
• Dangerous Minds examines the lost music of the Human League, neglected unjustly on the charts.
• The Dragon's Gaze notes a young hot Jupiter being eroded away after only two million years, and links to a paper suggesting high-metallicity stars preferentially form gas giants.
• The Dragon' ( Read more... )

• The Boston Globe's Big Picture reports on the scene from Palmyra after the expulsion of ISIS.
• James Bow links to a documentary on the search for Planet Nine.
• The Dragon's Tales speculates that the ability to enter torpor might have saved mammals from the en of the Cretaceous extinction.
• Honourary Canadian Philip Turner discovers the Chiac dialect of ( Read more... )

• Asahi notes the problems of Uniqlo.
• Atlas Obscura looks at the effort to restore the Old Spanish Trail, an early American interstate highway.
• Bloomberg notes the travails of the coal industry in the Czech Republic.
• Bloomberg View notes South Africa's serious economic problems and looks at how the Panama Papers make centrism more difficult.
• CBC notes ( Read more... )

Transition Online's Katerina Safarikova writes about how Czech president Vaclav Klaus, in his post-Communist opportunism, has now become decidedly pro-Russian.

he fact that the former Czech head of state flew out to the island of Rhodes for a friendly chat with Vladimir Yakunin and other Putin admirers − many of whom are on EU and U.S. black lists ( Read more... )

• blogTO notes the plans to build a large park under the western Gardiner.
• Centauri Dreams looks at Pluto.
• The Dragon's Tales goes to Syria.
• Far Outliers reports from a despairing Siberian village.
• Geocurrents notes that most Moravians live in Tanzania.

Open Democracy's Jan Hornát wrote about the language of culture wars, waged by the right, in the Czech Republic. (Hint: Rootless cosmopolitanism is always an enemy of the people.)

Czech president Milos Zeman is currently halfway through his first presidential term and it has become more than obvious that his divisive election campaign was not just ( Read more... )

Bloomberg's Lenka Ponikelska writes about the continued appeal to some in non-Eurozone central Europe of membership in the single currency.

In the Czech Republic, the prime minister said on Wednesday that joining the euro soon would help the economy after the president challenged the central bank’s long-standing resistance with a vow to appoint ( Read more... )