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.

Was Obama inauguration speech also subtle "rise up" message to moderate Iranians?
A fascinating op/ed over at "The Daily Beast" today, arguing that Obama's inauguration speech this week served not just the usual purposes, but also delivered a subtle signal to Iran's huge population of moderate intellectuals that it is finally time for them to stand up against the radically conservative "Islamic revolution" that has ruled their country for the last thirty years now. This is a thing that many Americans don't realize, this article argues, that Iran is actually -filled- with the same kinds of politically middle-of-the-road, middle-class-yearning families that make up most of the US population as well; and encoded in his speech this week, so argues this article, was a message directly to them, that the US will stand up for them internationally if they were to make their presence more and more known within Iranian government. A very interesting thing to ponder.

Video: WATCHMEN fake '70s news report is absolutely pitch-perfect
People online have been going crazy over this video for the last couple of days, and for good reason: Inspired by the standalone supplemental material Alan Moore created for the original comic, the producers of the WATCHMEN motion picture have decided to create hours upon hours of supplemental original video footage as well for the eventual DVD, including this supposed videotape copy of a '70s news-show report on what was then the tenth anniversary of superhero Dr. Manhattan. And the reason people are going so nuts for this video is that every single solitary detail is '70s pitch-perfect, all the way down to that specific horizontal band of static you see only at the bottom of the screen during so many old '70s videotape transfers. Astounding. Man, I cannot freaking WAIT for this movie to come out.

Ten great angry ways people have celebrated the end of the Bush Era
The pop-culture blog 10 Zen Monkeys has a nice article up, showing ten outrageous ways that Americans have been angrily celebrating not the start of the Obama years but rather the end of the Bush ones, including the rapidly growing call in this country for Bush and his cabinet to be arrested for war crimes now that they're officially out of the White House, and brought before an international tribunal.

Classy Obama privately retakes Inaugural Oath
Showing his class and dry humor once again, one of the quieter official things President Obama did on his first day of office was to retake the Inaugural Oath with Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts again, after the man was ridiculed for getting the word order wrong during the official ceremony. Done only to let him officially save face, this second oath was done with no Bible, no video shot of the occasion, and with less than ten people even in attendance; and then Obama even ended the ceremony with the humorous line, "Okay, now the bad news is that there's twelve more balls." Nice. (UPDATE: Or did they do this to shut up future potential conspiracy theorists? That's the official explanation from the White House, after all, is that they wanted to give no opportunity for the right-wing talk-show nutjobs to argue to their uneducated, mouth-breathing audiences six months from now, "Obama never officially took the oath of office, so has therefore never actually been President.")

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