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.

NBC forced to hire image consultant just to help define itself
So how rudderless have things become at the television broadcast networks? Well, NBC this week very quietly hired an expensive, well-known image consultant, just so they could figure out what exactly they now stand for and how exactly to best sell what they currently have to the public. Now admittedly, at this point I know just a little about the role and purpose of corporate upper management, but I do know this -- that if a company is having to hire an outside image consultant to help make basic decisions like this, that represents a true and legitimate failure of intelligence and vision on the Vice President, President and Board levels of NBC. We're used to seeing middle managers at these places be comically inept -- that's how we got DRM, reality shows and more -- but when your upper management is this inept, it's like a cancer that can't be removed without killing the patient. This is not good news for NBC.

Zune revenue drops 100 freaking million dollars over Christmas
So when historians in the future look back to determine what exactly went so wrong in the 2000s, I'm convinced that one of the case studies will be the Microsoft Zune MP3 player -- designed from step one to be the corporate-friendly version of the iPod, a music player that would accept all the draconian DRM limits the music industry was so in love with during the Bush years, the Zune turned out to barely work at all once it finally reached the consumer level. Microsoft was arrogantly convinced that they could sell millions of units anyway, the same way they sold millions of Windows CDs in the '90s; hundreds of millions in advertising, unfair back-room big-box-store partnerships, and fostering a monopolistic environment. Ah, but it turns out that this didn't work, not in a world with iPods and evermore savvy consumers; and with no actual decent product to fall back on, the Zune is now bleeding money like a stuck pig. You reap what you sow, Microsoft.

Turns out Haggard f-cked plenty of guys while heading New Life Church
Poor Ted Haggard! As you remember, the former Evangelical preacher got booted out of the church he started in 2006, when it was revealed that he had an ongoing meth-and-sex relationship with a male prostitute; and now just when he was starting to get that finally resolved and in his past, now a teenage boy has come forth and alleged that he was being schtupped back then too, back when he was a freaking high-school student attending the actual church that Haggard ran. And since even the church freely admits that they paid the teen hush money back then to keep him quiet (he's come out this week because of anger over Haggard's "rehabilitation tour," including an appearance on Oprah later this week where he will claim that he's now "cured" of his homosexuality), it begs the question: Just how many other guys did Haggard get it on with, and how many of them are choosing to still remain silent?

What a surprise: Guantanamo prisoner files are unintelligible mess
So the Obama administration started the hard work this week of getting the notorious US torture facility at Guantanamo Bay closed within the next year; and hey, guess what they found when they finally got to look at the paperwork for the first time? That's right -- turns out that not a single person within the Bush administration had ever gathered all the evidence and facts about a single prisoner there, with the info instead spread out among a dozen intelligence agencies, all of whom hated each other and refused to share information. Even worse, former Bush officials have giddily confirmed these charges, and have said it was all a deliberate result, a direct order from the top down for these bureaucrats to concentrate much more on detaining and torturing these prisoners than in ever prosecuting them and determining a verdict. So unbelievable, my brain can scarcely take it in.

White House website starts using Creative Commons licenses
A major, major victory for Lawrence Lessig this week, founder of the voluntary copyright-easement program Creative Commons, essentially a series of legally airtight ways for artists and organizations to release projects and documents under -some- rights while voluntarily yielding others they find too restrictive about current copyright law: after years of fighting corporate resistance and nuisance lawsuits over his endeavors, the White House through Obama has officially embraced the movement, and is now publishing all third-party material at WhiteHouse.gov under a liberal CC license. (All first-party material of course is public domain from the get-go, as per federal law.) This is a huge thing not only for the group but for Lessig himself, a warm embrace by no less than the freaking President, after dealing with years of pointless expensive harrassment from Disney and others, over his insistence that current copyright law is geared too much to benefit giant companies like theirs.

ASCAP luncheon subject leaked: "How to stop Lawrence Lessig"
Wow, just after talking about Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, and how after years of needless corporate harrassment his theories have finally been embraced this week by the Obama White House, comes this news: that corporate music organization ASCAP is about to have a professional luncheon soon whose agenda was recently leaked to the public, and that one of the three major issues being discussed is "working together to counter the growing prevalence of the 'copy left/free culture' pontificators in the public discourse about creators rights." See, it's not paranoia when people talk about these corporations working nefariously behind the scenes to shut down groups like Creative Commons; here's undeniable proof that such things are actually going on.

Holy crap, even Chavez likes Obama now
So what's the news that's had me closest to believing the Rapture conspiracy theory of Obama actually being an antichrist here to usher in a nefarious one-world government? Turns out that even firebrand Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is now praising him for his early handling of Guantanamo Bay, calling him a "man of good intentions" who "should be applauded." And Chavez don't like NO ONE, I'm telling you!

Obama team tries Digg-style policy-making: number-one issue, legalizing pot
So okay, not every aspect of the Web 2.0 is going to transfer well to the shiny new government of the Obama years: Over at Change.gov, his team decided to try a Digg-style experiment on the public registering their opinion on policy initiatives, letting the public submit issues important to them and then other members of the public vote on them. Number-one issue by far? The legalization of marijuana, becoming such a huge thing in fact that the team ended up having to shut down the experiment, and flat-out declare in plain language that Obama has no plans either now or in the future to nationally decriminalize pot. You try and learn, you know? Same reason, for example, that the just-opened White House blog probably shouldn't allow for unmoderated anonymous comments either.

Blagojevich announces he will not defend himself at upcoming impeachment
So how interesting is this? Apparently the proof of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's corruption is just so overwhelming and insurmountable at this point, his entire team has started giving up; in fact, nearly every lawyer he had going into his upcoming impeachment trial has now quit, some of them citing their client's refusal to plea-bargain as the reason. Blago's reaction? Yesterday he announced that he will not even bother putting up a defense at the impeachment, declaring the entire thing a "witch hunt" with an outcome that's already been determined. And that's nice, of course, nice to see even Blago himself now admit that there's no chance of him staying in office anymore; but proves even more what scum he is, that he won't just resign now when faced with the inevitable, and save the taxpayers the millions of dollars the full impeachment trial is going to cost. What. A. Douchebag.

Have your own interesting link you'd like to share? Post it to the CCLAPocracy, the center's new community-driven microblog. Membership is free!