The 2010 Olympic Torch makes its ways across rural northern Canada by dogsled. See the entire fantastic series over at the Boston Globe.

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.

Doctorow: "Key to Wikipedia is that it's facts about facts"
Nice editorial from Cory Doctorow last week, on why it is that Wikipedia's been able to do what many people never thought could be done, i.e. create a credible encyclopedia through anonymous group input; because virtually everything found there is backed up by a reference to an outside "trusted" source, making entries there not exactly Wikipedia saying "these are facts" but rather "it's a fact that the following was reported by others as facts."

Concerning India's "English problem"
The problem? Huge sections of the rural population are still getting no decent public education, leading to a nearly permanent class separation because of their lack of English comprehension, seen by most in India right now as a key to getting ahead in the global economy.

FedEx launches "smart packages" for those shipping medical content
Very interesting -- for $120 a month, customers can now use "smart packages" at material shipper FedEx, ones that will tell you where it is at any given second, its temperature, whether it's been dropped, whether it's ever been opened, and all kinds of other stuff. It's being targeted towards purveyors of the life sciences -- so in other words, for shipping pharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostic kits, samples and the like.

India starts very slowly embracing indie-rock
Yet another fascinating article from the always great GlobalPost.com, this time on how the "indie attitude" is very slowly starting to take hold among large numbers in India these days, after decades of their culture being mostly defined through the safe confines of Bollywood and the like.

Jeff Bridges: "Iron Man had no script"
Fascinating admission recently from Jeff Bridges, who plays the heavy in the fantastic "Iron Man" movie that came out recently; that because of massive, unending studio interference, the crew actually went into production with no finished script, with actors sometimes making up dialogue mere minutes before it was actually shot. Bridges also confesses that it freaked him out at first, until deciding to think of the entire thing as a "$200 million student film," at which point apparently the entire cast started having a lot more fun.

Rick Moody's "Twitter story" kind of a disaster
Did you hear? Hipster author Rick Moody decided last week to try releasing a new short story exclusively through updates on Twitter; but the people behind the project made a bad mistake, having in actuality something like a dozen people reprint the updates at their own Twitter account, ostensibly to get the messages out more but with a lot of people ending up getting a spam-like rush of Moody story snippets in their streams that day, prompting a pretty severe backlash. Still, it's an intriguing idea, especially if you were to try writing the mini-chapters at actual Twitter-defined lengths, instead of writing one big story then arbitrarily chopping it into 150-character snippets. Anyone feel like giving this a try with CCLaP sponsoring it? Drop me a line and let me know!

Should Russia be removed from 'BRIC?'
For those who don't know, the big new hot term in international relations is "BRIC," standing for a coalition of Brazil, Russia, India and China, four countries supposedly transitioning out of third-world status these days and into first-world, and who many think will be able to politically band together in the future to present a voice on world affairs equal in power to the US and the EU. But here, an editorial at Foreign Policy argues that Russia hasn't really proven that they should be considered as "emerging" in the first place, and that maybe it'd actually be better to consider it the "BIC" coalition and with Russia still having a ways to go.

The Secret World of Golf Groupies
Linked to only for the salacious headline.

'Lessons in Disaster' heavily influencing Obama's Afghanistan policy
So if you didn't already know, Obama has apparently become a huge fan of the popular new Vietnam examination Lessons in Disaster by Gordon Goldstein, and has been using many of the conclusions drawn in it as cautionary tales to be avoided when it comes to Afghanistan. Here, the Daily Beast reads the book too, and makes educated guesses on the six biggest lessons Obama has probably learned, based on the details of his newest announced plan for the region.

Politico becomes first online news group named to Pulitzer board
Fascinating.