Link roundup for 14 June 2009: Extrasolar Earths, Spanish culture, warp drives, saving energy, languages in Europe...

I have far too many tabs open at the moment in Firefox so that means it's time to go over some of the links I've been meaning to write about but have never made it into their own posts. Here they are.

First one is in Spanish; it's an op-ed asking whether Spanish culture is inferior to Anglo-Saxon culture or not, and references cultural exports (movies, etc.).

Nice picture of the Milky Way here from an article in French on Concordia Station in Antarctica as it enters total night.

The new Star Trek movie resulted in a number of articles on whether warp speed is really possible and this is one of the more detailed ones.

Painting the roofs of houses white to save energy - from late last month, caused a bit of a bit of a media storm amongst those that don't understand the effectiveness of simple solutions done over a large population.

A huge debate on a forum here about the future of languages in Europe. Another one here on the same forum can be read in French. There's a third one on the same subject and same site here too.

More on habitable zones around other suns. Tidal forces are as important as the radiation from a star, and let's also not forget that there's no reason that life couldn't evolve on the surface of a large enough moon orbiting a larger planet, so when we discover extrasolar gas giants for all we know there could be planets orbiting them that have just the right conditions for life. Something to think about.

Investment in green energy has overtaken that in the fossil fuel sector.

Ryu Shiwon (류시원) is an actor that was hired to promote the city of Seoul for a campaign of theirs. While doing so he was asked what parts of Korea he likes. Forgetting for a second who hired him, he talks about Jeju-do (the island in the south), Andong, the province of Gangwon-do, pretty much everywhere except Seoul until he finally gets reminded that he was supposed to talk about Seoul. Oh yeah! Seoul's the best! Kind of funny if you know Korean.

How to unleash your brain's inner genius

The hunt is on for another planet Earth

On a new, effective way to search the atmospheres of other planets for signs of life