[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Daniel Drezner notes, using as an example the controversial Keystone pipeline, that interest group political movements inevitably become compromised whenever they encounter politicians not beholden to said (here, Kerry's beliefs).


• Eastern Approaches notes the continued rivalry between contending political factions in Georgia.


• Language Log analyses a recent photo of Vietnamese written in Chinese script. What does the odd character order mean?


• Marginal Revolution notes that poor soil conditions in much of Africa inhibit economic development.


• In a guest post at the Planetary Society Blog, Bill Dunford describes, in photos and words, some of the more evocatively-named features on other worlds.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer makes the case that there is no such thing as a resource curse, just bad governance.


• Torontoist notes that Fort York's new visitor centre is under contstruction.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little describes an interesting-sounding conference in China on rural economic development, one that features an actual visit to an up-and-coming rural cooperative.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell visits the David Bowie exhibit in London and considers Bowie as pioneering a sort of post-colonial modernity that the United Kingdom hadn't had until that point.


• Zero Geography's Mark Graham maps controversial articles in different versions of Wikipedia.