[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• In a guest photo essay at Bag News Notes, Rita Leistner draws from her experiences in Afghanistan to investigate the ways in which different forms of photography can have different effects on their users.


• Centauri Dreams notes the latest effort to discover planets orbiting Proxima Centauri, the dim red dwarf star that's not only the dim third component in Alpha Centauri but the closest star to our own. (No superterrestrials in the habitable zone, at least.)


• Daniel Drezner starts to define the Sino-American relationship, noting that continuing cooperation disproves the idea that they are inherently confrontational.


• Geocurrents' Martin Lewis notes Egyptian upset at Ethiopia's plan to dam one of the tributaries of the Nile, noting that Egyptian (and Sudanese) dependence on current flows of the Nile and the ongoing efforts of upstream black African countries to develop may be a serious cause for tension.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen draws too much importance from the ongoing horrors in Syria, which no more disprove the idea of progress than other isolated horrors.


• The Numerati's Stephen Baker likens the brief tumultuous and fatal activity of a cicada to that of a teenage human contemporary.


• Torontoist's Hamutal Dotan notes the belief of Gawker that the alleged Rob Ford crack video is "gone", whatever that means.


• Window on Eurasia reproduces a Tatar nationalist's call for a national revolution in Tatarstan.