The National Galleries of Scotland presented their first 100 public-domain photos online today, as the newest participating partner in the massive and massively cool Flickr Commons project; here's just one of the stunners, a shot from 1888 of the Glasgow International Exhibition, inspired by a similar one in Edinburgh two years previously, which of course was inspired itself by the much larger one held by Queen Victoria in London.

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.

List: Ten most expensive rare-book sales at AbeBooks.com in 2008
A fascinating list, the ten most expensive rare books bought at famed used-book service AbeBooks.com in 2008, including short descriptions of the volumes under discussion. My biggest salivating dream of them all -- a first-edition, first-issue copy of "Grimms Fairy Tales," including 22 etched illustrations, housed in a clamshell box, which went to one lucky customer last year for a little over $11,000. (Via Christian Science Monitor.)

Spielberg is keeping Dreamworks afloat these days with his personal money
Ooh, the economic meltdown is tough on everyone these days: Take Steven Spielberg, for example, who this week has had to dip into his personal checking account and add $13 million to the total $26M owed right now to Paramount, in order to keep the rights to 17 upcoming movie projects; plus he'll be footing half the overhead budget for his production company Dreamworks this year too, which comes out to yet another $25 million in personal funds. My oh my.

Regarding Obama's coming "Nite Owl White House"
An interesting article at Politico today, talking about President-Elect Obama's famously long daily schedule, including regular staff conference calls as late as midnight; and also how the Obama administration is working on ways for staffers to still keep tight with their families on such a schedule, including the idea of regular evening dinners and the like right inside the White House itself, and with staffers' families invited to come and hang out while their spouses work.

Season premiere of "24" f-cking tanks in the ratings
Joyful news for all those who can't stand the right-wing propaganda fest which is "24" -- turns out that its latest season premiere, airing earlier this week, received a pathetic 4.2 share and ranked lowest among all network shows for its time slot. Here, futurist and entertainment-industry veteran Jon Taplin talks more about it, including reminding us of just what a neocon nutjob its creator Joel Surnow is, and how he's actually proudly declared in interviews before that the show has always been meant to be a Hollywood justification and apologia for the Bush Doctrine, a weekly show designed specifically to get Americans more and more desensitized to the idea of us torturing our enemies. What a f-cking douchebag; I'm SO glad the season premiere tanked as badly as it did.

Clueless Facebook execs shut down "anti-friend" Burger King promotion
I'm not saying I liked it, but it's certainly been effective: In just one week, Facebook members dropped nearly a quarter-million of their collective friendships, because of a Burger King promotion that sent people a coupon for a free Whopper after tracking them drop at least ten of their friends from their account. But instead of glowing in the busy activity of their customer base, or trying to set up an official cross-promotion with Burger King, Facebook instead decided to remove the application that let the fast-food chain actually track these friendship losses, citing "privacy concerns" (i.e. "screw you, we don't like what you're doing"). Man, I agree with what Michael Arrington says in this TechCrunch article on it all -- what an incredible opportunity completely squandered by the idiots at Facebook.

Google announces first-ever round of layoffs, closes a dozen small projects
Final proof that this economic meltdown is going to get a lot worse before it starts getting better: so-called "untouchable" tech company Google announces its first round of layoffs in the history of the company, plus that they'll be shutting down nearly a dozen small services they've been running over the years, including Google Video (redundant now that they own YouTube), Dodgeball (a Twitter precursor that never caught on), Jaiku (which is actually being converted by Google into a free yet no-longer-supported open-source project for the general public), and a lot more. Man, when Google starts shutting down services, you -know- we're all in trouble.

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