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.

NYT on Obama's post-crisis goals: The peaceful letting-go of empire
A big article in the New York Times this weekend looks at Obama's long-term goals for transforming the US, after the worst of the current economic crisis is finally taken care of: diminish the reliance on consumerism to drive the economy, encourage more savings, grow the middle class, make the rest of the world less dependent on America's successes and failures for their own, and more. And here's the interesting thing -- these neatly match up with the way the British were able to start peacefully letting go of their own empire as well, beginning around a hundred years ago now, which to this day is one of the only times in human history that an empire was able to lose its imperial status without mass anarchy and bloodshed and a complete downfall of their society. Now that the Cold War is over, I think it's important we start looking at dismantling the old Cold-War US hegemony this way too; and this is versus Bush's plan, for the rich to just keep skimming from the top until everything completely falls apart in apocalyptic ruin.

TechCrunch explains Netflix "instant" expiration dates
The other day I was complaining here about the expiration dates on streaming "instant films" you sometimes come across at Netflix, and how it's hard to see that as anything other than the studios trying to create out of thin air a fake sense of scarcity and resulting demand, for movies that are neither scarce or much in demand. Ah, but it turns out that it's actually a contracts issue, explains TechCrunch.com today: turns out that the industry breaks these third-party services down into categories, and that legally they're required to withhold movies from certain categories while they give exclusive access to others, like premium cable and then basic cable. That's why instant movies come and go at Netflix: Because at first they're considered "rentals," so are allowed to be "stocked" as long as Blockbuster is allowed to as well, but then are forcefully removed while the movie runs exclusively on HBO et al for its contract length, until being re-added years later in the same exact format as "free online content." Ugh, what a screwy system.

JG Ballard has died
Yet another titan of the postmodern age has passed away; this time it was JG Ballard, whose trippy transgressive work from the '70s ("Crash" et al) brought him countercultural fame, and who then broke into the mainstream in the '80s with the autobiographical "Empire of the Sun," made into a popular movie by Steven Spielberg. I confess that I haven't read nearly as much of Ballard's work as I should; I do have to admit, though, that one of my favorite contemporary novels of the last ten years was his spooky story about a possibly haunted corporate planned community in rural France, the little-known "Super-Cannes" which I highly recommend.

After ten months, Screen Actors Guild saga comes to pathetic end
I've been following the pathetic saga of the Screen Actors Guild for the last year now, as they've worked almost this entire time without a new contract, essentially letting the studios boss them around like puppets in these post-Labor-Age times of ours; they've basically not liked any of the studios' offers, but have refused to strike (and indeed, broke into public civil war about six months ago, with one half of the union actually suing the other half for control of the negotiation team), essentially working for the studios under their old contract terms almost a year longer than they were supposed to. And now a settlement's been reached -- which is basically the same deal the studios offered an entire ten months ago when this is all started -- and a bitter, tired, divided union membership is expected to approve it. And since it's not retroactive, their profession lost a collective $65 million in new fees while they spent a year arguing about it, all money the studios now keep. Sigh.

Michael Chabon confirms: "I polished 'John Carter of Mars' script"
So apparently this is older news, but I hadn't heard it: Pulitzer-winning author Michael Chabon has confirmed publicly that he helped "polish up" the script for the upcoming big-budget adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' old "John Carter from Mars" adventure, the first live-action movie from Pixar veteran Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, WALL-E). Hmm!

Boing Boing: "Kindle owners are lifelong slaves of Amazon"
So why do I never talk about the Kindle eBook reader here? Here's why: because as Cory Doctorow reminds us today at Boing Boing, Kindle owners are almost completely and totally dependent on the services of Amazon.com for their device to even function correctly, with it essentially becoming a $300 doorstop if you ever close your account with them or if they ever suspend it. It'd be like buying a Walkman in 1983, but then having to send Sony ten bucks a month as well to keep it working, and with them able to somehow magically shut it off remotely if you ever miss one of these payments. And that's a ridiculous situation for a $300 retail device, which is why I refuse to have anything to do with Kindles, even to the extent of talking about them much here at the site.