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.

THC levels in pot have doubled in last twenty years
A new report shows that the potency of marijuana has doubled in the last twenty years, from a THC level of 5 percent to 10; that's the chemical in cannabis that gets you "high," for those who don't know, the level of which can be manipulated through selective plant breeding and the like. Plus I always feel the need to add this when talking about pot -- that more and more studies are showing that THC actually helps trigger psychotic episodes in existing schizophrenics and bipolars, an issue that will become more troublesome as the levels keep going up; plus let's not forget that treatment admissions for marijuana addiction have jumped by a third in the last ten years now too, from 200,000 to 300,000. It's important to always remember that -- that today's pot is not the same fun harmless little party drug of the hippie days, or even the '80s when I was in college.

Will "Road" adaptation be ridiculous Bruckheimer-style action spectacular?
The first official trailer for the long-delayed movie adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's revered apocalyptic drama "The Road" is now online, and the news isn't good: if the actual movie is anything like this preview, it's in fact going to be some crappy bombastic Bruckheimer-style action spectacular, instead of the intense and cerebral meditation on human evil that the Pulitzer-winning novel is. (I mean, sheesh, over half the trailer takes place in the notorious Mad Max cannibal compound, when in the book that scene is only a tiny minor one; and the trailer also starts with a clear explanation of what actually happened to the planet to make it a disaster zone, when the whole point of the book is that the reason is never mentioned even once.) Let's pray that the movie is actually better than this crappy trailer makes it look, and that it's overly zealous marketers to blame.

Publishing industry just keeps handing out millions to illiterate celebrities
$11 million to Sarah Palin for her new book. $2 million to Kathy Griffin. Half a million to Rod Scumbag Blagojevich. $7 million to Miley Cyrus. The mainstream publishing industry just isn't going to learn its lesson until every damn company is out of business, is it?

Oprah apologies to James Frey for '06 surprise on-air confrontation
He's a douchebag, let's make no mistake (and I finally got to read some of the book recently too, and realized that it's f-cking terrible); but it's also true that when Oprah had her famous on-air confrontation with James Frey on 2006 about his made-up memoir "A Million Little Pieces," the way she got him on the show was by promising him a chance to plead his case, and didn't mention anything about the coming confrontation that happened instead. Anyway, turns out that she recently privately apologized to him for it all, which I thought was big of her, or at least bigger than I'd be about it.