• Antipope's Charlie Stross wonders if the politics of Trump might mean an end to the British nuclear deterrent.
• Centauri Dreams shares Andrew LePage's evaluation of the TRAPPIST-1 system, where he concludes that there are in fact three plausible candidates for habitable status there.
• Dangerous Minds shares the gender-bending photographs of Norwegian ( Read more... )

• Bloomberg notes an unexpected housing shortage in the Midwest, and considers the impact of the Panama scandal on the British Virgin Islands' economic model.
• Bloomberg View calls for better regulation of the high seas, suggests (from the example of Yugoslav refugees in Denmark) that low-skilled immigrants can be good for working classes, and notes ( Read more... )

The Inter Press Service carries an article from The Daily Star of Bangladesh, by one Muhammad Azizul Haque, looking at the prospects for a reunification of South Asia. As Haque puts it, there is little chance of this given India's issues with its existing Muslim population.

India's ruling BJP’s General Secretary, Mr. Ram Madhav, recently said in ( Read more... )

Alternet's Zaid Jilani describes how Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic congressperson from Hawaii who came out in support of Sanders, is also intimately tied up with the Hindutva movement.

“Meet the Democrat Who’s Not Afraid to Criticize President Obama on ISIS,” intones a recent ABC News headline. The story describes remarks by Hawaii Rep. Tulsi ( Read more... )

Quartz' report about Hindu nationalist propaganda at American universities is alarming.

In October 2015, the University of California, Irvine, announced the creation of an endowed chair-the Thakkar Family-Dharma Civilization Foundation Presidential Chair in Vedic and Indic Civilization Studies-supported by a $1.5 million grant ( Read more... )

Al Jazeera reports on the decision of Abu Dhabi to allow the construction of a Hindu temple in that UAE state.

The Indian government has lauded a decision by the United Arab Emirates to allocate land for the building of the first Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi ( Read more... )

If Rhitu Chatterjee's NPR report about the role of high-caste Hindus enforcing religious food taboos on lower caste children is correct, I wouldn't be surprised. Sacrificing the weak and vulnerable in the name of high-sounding religious ideals is common worldwide.

India is in the midst of a war of sorts - a war over eggs. To eat them, or not to ( Read more... )

• blogTO takes a look at the reasons for the failure of the Toronto Sushi Festival, a failure that included the blog's own misrepresentation of the event's success.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly argues that, in our media-saturated environment, paying attention to everything is exhausting.
• Centauri Dreams and D-Brief react to Dawn's arrival at ( Read more... )

Writing in response to a claim of an Indian government minister that Sanskrit could eventually displace English as India's common language, The Hindu's Data column argues that such a dream is completely unrealistic. There aren't even enough second-language speakers of Sanskrit to pose a challenge; Sanskrit's descent Hindi would be infinitely better ( Read more... )

• blogTO suggests five things the world can learn about Toronto.
• The Dragon's Tales notes that the moa of New Zealand became extinct when the country was home to only a couple thousand people.
• A Fistful of Euros links to satirist musician Wolf Biermann's performance in the Bundestag.
• Geocurrents maps oddly-shaped American electoral regions.
• Language Hat ( Read more... )