Below are simple links to other interesting stuff I've come across on the web in the last day or two; they may or may not concern literature or photography, or indeed the arts at all. You can click here to learn more about how I compile this list and what software I use, if you're interested.

And by the way, what's McCain got against Dungeons & Dragons players?
And speaking of McCain, his campaign responded to this latest Solzhenitsyn plagiarism charge (see below) by calling the accusations "typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd." Pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd? What? I'm still trying to figure out what McCain meant by that one. (Via BoingBoing.net.)

Did McCain steal "cross in the sand" story from Alexander Solzhenitsyn?
John McCain has been getting a lot of attention this week for a story from his Vietnam days he related during an interview with a Christian preacher, in which supposedly one of his guards drew a cross in the sand and prayed with him during one of the Christmases he was a prisoner; turns out, though, not only is this a -very- similar story to one told in the '70s by Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but that McCain has gone on record before about what a big fan he is of Solzhenitsyn. Hmm.

EFF wins censorship lawsuit against Boston transit agency
Did you hear? Turns out the new fare cards for Boston's transit system can be hacked insanely easily, a fact that a group of MIT students were going to detail at a security conference last weekend; but the city managed to get an emergency gag-order against the group, which this week they tried to extend to six months. Our heroes at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, though, came to the rescue; yesterday they successfully convinced a judge to drop the entire injunction altogether, which means today you too can read all about how to get free bus rides in Boston due to governmental incompetence. (Via BoingBoing.net.)

That bizarre Bigfoot-hoax viral-marketing story just keeps getting weirder
You know already, right, that a group claiming to own the remains of Bigfoot had a press conference last week that generated an insane amount of attention from the mainstream press? And you know, right, that the whole thing turned out to be a hoax, done as a sneaky viral-marketing gimmick for a new website? Well, it gets even weirder; now the group is claiming they're the victims of a hoax too, that they didn't get to examine the carcass themselves until the press conference either, and that the "hunters" they paid for media rights (including an ex-cop) have disappeared with their money. Gee, what a surprise!

Americans just keep getting fatter and fatter and fatter and FATTER
A new report delivers news so bad it sounds surreal: that after years of weight-consciousness programs and a national obsession with dieting, last year the obesity rate in the US still went up in almost 40 states. J-sus C-rist, people, what's it going to take to finally get you fat f-cking tubs of lard to trim down a little? By the way, the link between obesity and poverty was proven again too: 7 out of the 10 states with the highest number of fat people are also in the list of top-10 poorest states. (And as a final regional insult, almost every one of those states is in the deep south.)