• io9 links to a map showing the Milky Way Galaxy's location in nearer intergalactic space.
• The Big Picture has pictures from the Sochi Paralympics.
• blogTO shares an array of pictures from Toronto in the 1980s.
• D-Brief notes the recent finding that star HR 5171A is one of the largest stars discovered, a massive yellow hypergiant visible to the naked eye ( Read more... )

• Centauri Dreams notes that some astronomers have come up with methods for measuring the densities of the atmospheres of difference exoplanets.
• Crooked Timber's Chris Bertram thinks that the state of the migration debate in the United Kingdom is grim, given what he thinks is the toughness of even a liberal proposal.
• Eastern Approaches notes that the ( Read more... )

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait approves of the names of Pluto's two most recently-discovered moons, Kereberos and Styx.
• Beyond the Beyond's Bruce Sterling observes that Altavista is set to disappear from the Internet as of the 8th.
• Daniel Drezner notes that the inability of Edward Snowden to find a country to grant him, buster of state secrets, asylum ( Read more... )

The "feniks" in the title of Martin Ehl's Transitions Online article about the rebirth of the Yugosphere as an economic space is, as it happens, Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian for "phoenix".

It helps that the Slovenians, once the undisputed business rulers of the post-Yugoslav space, have suffered a loss in prestige and confidence, and even in the ( Read more... )

• Crooked Timber's Jon Mandle reflects on his experiences of a visit to Auschwitz.
• The Dragon's Tales' Will Baird notes the development of a robot that can walk like a cat.
• Eastern Approaches suggests that Croatia, set to enter the European Union, should pick up economic tips from Finland's experience in the 1990s.
• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen ( Read more... )

The first article is Sara Milosevic's Global Post article "Why Pope Francis isn't welcome in Serbia", which connects the lack of a papal visit to Serbia to continuing Serbian resentment over the massacres committed by Catholic Croats of Serbs during the Second World War, and what Serbia and its national church see as a lack of specific repentance ( Read more... )

As Croatia is set to become the 28th member-state of the European Union, Alex Sakalis' Open Democracy essay describing the role of that other transnational institution in post-Second World War Croatia, the Roman Catholic Church. In Sakalis' telling, the Roman Catholic Church in Croatia has definitely capitalized on its historical status as ( Read more... )

• At Beyond the Beyond, Bruce Sterling points towards the first step of the exact role that the famed underground tunnels of Gaza have on the political economy of that territory.
• Crooked Timber's John Holbo argues that the legacies of coded racism used by many Republicans in the United States continues to make the party not credible among non-whites.
• ( Read more... )

When I saw the title of this Reuters article, I was confused. Certainly Reuters wasn't talking about any kind of Croatian annexation of Bosnian Croat communities, since renouncing irredentism was a requirement for Croatian membership in the European Union? But no, instead the article was talking about how a transfer of territory from the Republic ( Read more... )

Belgrade's gay pride parade has been cancelled, as the Serbian interior minister wanted so as to avoid harm coming to the police the way that they did last time, when anti-gay protesters rioted and attacked--among others--the police. There have been six arrests of potential hooligans, but Belgrade's mayor Dragan Djilas would have banned the gay ( Read more... )