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.

MadMenFootnotes.com
Niiiiice.

IFC and Criterion sign distribution deal
The Independent Film Channel is one of the better companies out there these days as far as getting small, creative films into theatres; and Criterion is one of the greatest companies ever when it comes to releasing lovingly restored and extras-packed DVDs of such films. So how nice is it that they recently signed a deal to work with each other to get more IFC-distributed films the Criterion treatment?

Popular Middle East comic "The 99" about to become a TV show
Yet another fascinating article from the always great GlobalPost.com, this time on a comic book called "The 99" that has apparently become a huge hit recently in the Middle East; although secular in nature and actually inked by Western artists who usually work for such companies as Marvel and DC, the title's underlying messages are based on the more tolerant parts of the Islamic religion, as well as some of the wilder images from its mythology. Created by the only licensed psychologist in the entire country of Kuwait!

Congress at its lowest approval rates in 24 years
And thus do we prepare ourselves for yet another round of Mid-Term Flipflop, a proud tradition in this country for decades now. "Yeah, all those idiots in charge of things the last two years really suck! Let's replace them all with a whole roomful of other idiots who also suck!"

Fried: "'Expected future profits' is not the same thing as actual profits"
One of my favorite people in the entire tech industry, 37signals' Jason Fried (who I've interviewed before, by the way), has yet another great article up at their company blog; in it he rails on the recent NYT article on using "freemiums" to turn a profit, pointing out that not a single company they cite has yet to actually turn a profit, just that business "experts" are expecting them to. This is one of the well-known secrets of 37signals' success, is that they don't believe in stock-based "projected profit" based on how impressive a company's investors are; it's what allowed them to become so big in the first place without having needed any outside investors for years and years, in that they insisted from day one on turning an actual quantifiable profit with the actual products and services they provide.

Stross: "Liberal transhumanism can surprisingly be used as the basis for fascism too"
Yet another brilliant essay from science-fiction author Charles Stross, on how the liberal-seeming principles behind the Singularity and transhumanism (that is, the idea that in the future, we might be able to remake human bodies through technology into whatever we want them to be) might in fact be laying the groundwork for the next great wave of fascism as well. You need to read the entire long article for the whole thing to make sense, but it's well worth the time.

Afghanistan is the new Afghanistan
A nice article from Foreign Policy magazine, reminding us that there's no need to make Vietnam comparisons when trying to explain the US's current mess in Afghanistan; that the Soviet Union went through a major disaster there themselves just a few decades ago, facing nearly every single problem we are as well, problems that aren't even being mentioned out loud in official military policy papers on the subject.