[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Beyond the Beyond notes an image of a wooden model of Babbage’s difference engine.
• James Bow talks about the soundtrack he has made for his new book.
• Centauri Dreams considers ways astronomers can detect photosynthesis on exoplanets and shares images of Fomalhaut’s debris disk.
• Crooked Timber looks at fidget spinners in the context of discrimination against people with disabilities.
• D-Brief notes that Boyajian’s Star began dimming over the weekend.
• Far Outliers reports on a 1917 trip by zeppelin to German East Africa.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money argues that there is good reason to be concerned about health issues for older presidential candidates.
• The NYRB Daily reports on Hungary’s official war against Central European University.
• The Russian Demographics Blog notes the origins of modern immigration to Russia in internal Soviet migration.
• Savage Minds shares an ethnographer’s account of what it is like to look to see her people (the Sherpas of Nepal) described.
• Strange Maps shares a map speculating as to what the world will look like when it is 4 degrees warmer.
• The Volokh Conspiracy argues that the US Congress does not have authority over immigration.
• Window on Eurasia suggests Russia’s population will be concentrated around Moscow, compares Chechnya’s position vis-à-vis Russia to Puerto Rico’s versus the United States, and looks at new Ukrainian legislation against Russian churches and Russian social networks.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes how Evelyn Waugh’s writings on the Horn of Africa anticipate the “Friedman unit”, the “a measurement of time defined as how long it will take until things are OK in Iraq”.