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's nightly Leno experiment has turned into ratings disaster
Well, so much for the idea of broadcast networks aiming any higher than cable channels; NBC's experiment in a nightly Jay Leno show in primetime, to replace five shows that they now no longer have to produce, has quickly settled into the cable-basement numbers of only a few million audience members per episode. Be prepared for a lot more of this, as the 2010s sees the complete bottoming-out of broadcast television in general, eventually leaving no difference at all between them and the average cable station.

Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul co-host craziest f-cking town hall ever
Yikes.

Concerning the UK's obsession with Obama's supposed British slights
For those who don't know about this yet, here's an interesting article from Politico on the national obsession among the British press, every time President Obama does something that they perceive as a slight against prime minister Gordon Brown, no matter how small or subtle.

The "village industries" of free-market Vietnam are starting to fail
Fascinating article in the NYT, on how a whole series of villages in Vietnam switched over into essentially town-wide one-item craft factories in the '90s, when the country first decided to embrace free-market global capitalism, and how many of these former farming villages are now going belly-up in the face of the global recession. And that's what you get, of course, when basing your entire town's economy on the trendy obsessions of cash-flush middle-class white people, a basic lesson about capitalism that many of these communist peasants never understood when first deciding to switch industries.

Inside a 1982 Dungeons & Dragons summer camp
Brilliant. The same year this camp took place, by the way, I participated in a D&D tournament in St. Louis sponsored by old defense contractor McDonnell Douglas, where my dad used to work (many of their engineers were the first adults to play D&D, back in the '70s). I was one of the only kids allowed to enter, which made all my teammates groan when they learned I had been assigned to their group; but we ended up taking second place. Booyah!

The Last Days of Jim Carroll
For those who missed it the first time, here's a widely read article that ran in the NYT last week, regarding the reclusive, illness-stricken last days of late writer and musician Jim Carroll, who in his mid-sixties had holed up in the building where he used to live as a kid in order to finally complete his first-ever novel, an autobiographical tale about an artist who achieves a stupendous amount of fame as a rebellious youth then lives to eventually regret it. Sad and fascinating.

The Daily Beast to start new publishing company with ultra-fast turnaround
It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Tina Brown's web venture "The Daily Beast;" and now the organization has announced a brand-new publishing wing, devoted to getting paper editions of current-events books actually printed and into people's hands at a profoundly faster rate than usual, cutting the entire process down to weeks instead of the year to two years it usually takes. Will it work? We'll see, I guess.

Adding Facebook features to your website just got a whole lot easier
Regular readers will remember that I tried to add a few Facebook-sponsored features to the CCLaP website earlier this year, but with the process so complicated that I soon gave it up again; well, now Facebook has addressed the difficulties inherent in the old system, and has now created a streamlined process that takes only three steps and barely any technical expertise at all. The new service lets you start a new "fan page" for your site automatically, lets people join it straight from your site, lets people leave comments at your blog that are automatically reposted to their Facebook Walls, and a lot more.

Will Obama's Olympics trip to Copenhagen backfire on Chicago's chances?
So, the host city of the 2016 Olympics is being announced in just two days; and it seems like half the city of Chicago right now is over in Copenhagen, the European city where the announcement will be made (and the voting beforehand take place). Here, an interesting article from Politico on whether President Obama's appearance there this week might've actually been a mistake, leading to a cloying overexposure that ironically will hurt Chicago's chances of getting the bid. (I don't personally believe this, but it's interesting reading nonetheless.) My promise to you: If Chicago does get the bid, CCLaP will start a local couchsurfing service for international artists who wish to attend, and will sponsor a series of paid/paying live events that summer featuring writers from around the planet!