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.

Philip Jose Farmer has died
Sad news from the world of science-fiction: Philip Jose Farmer, one of the classic authors of the New Wave 1960s and '70s, died peacefully in his sleep yesterday. For those who don't know, Farmer's best-known project is perhaps the "Riverworld" series; in it, every human who has ever existed finds themselves reincarnated on the banks of a million-mile river that zigzags all the way around a planet, part of a mysterious social experiment being run by a group of unknown aliens, making it partly sci-fi and partly historical speculative (and also the very first adult sci-fi books I ever read, which is why I remember them so fondly). He will be missed by his many fans.

Will Illinois hold special election, kick out Burris too?
For those who don't know, the international joke known as Illinois politics has gotten even funnier this last month: Turns out that Roland Burris, the man tapped by corrupt ex-governor Blagojevich to replace Barack Obama in the Senate, is in fact a corrupt "mini-Blago" himself -- that is, turns out that he too paid a bribe to Blago to get the seat, has now admitted it, but refuses to resign, exactly like Blago did just LAST month. So hey, guess what? We might be forcibly kicking him out too! In fact, turns out that the US Constitution refers to governor-appointed senators as "temporary;" many feel this provides the legal justification for holding a special state election in April, and essentially telling Burris, "Thanks for your, cough, service, but you're not needed anymore." But others say this is a shaky argument at best, and won't hold up in court when it undoubtedly gets contested next month by the Burris people. Yay, Illinois politics!

Turns out label incompetence is what caused U2 album leak
So how ironically perfect is this? Turns out that Universal Music Group, which was so obsessed with keeping the coming new U2 album secret that they wouldn't even send review copies to journalists (instead they held group listening parties, after frisking people at the door for listening devices), is directly to blame for the album leaking anyway; turns out some incompetent boob in their Australian division hit the wrong button somewhere and started selling the CD online two weeks before they were supposed to, leading to hundreds of sales before the mistake was caught. Dear music industry: All the draconian, customer-hating censorship measures in the world aren't going to help you keep CDs a secret, when you go around hiring people so f-cking stupid that they can't even press a button right. It's a little lesson that you should probably get around to one day learning...you know, while you still have a job and everything.

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