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.

I'm not a fan of the badly written science-fiction show Fringe, but here's something my old college friend Greg Young recently pointed out at his "Bowery Boys" New York history blog; that one of the running storylines on the show has featured an alternative-universe Manhattan, and that it features a glittering surrealist skyscraper by Early Modernist Spanish artist Antonio Gaudi. Believe it or not, such a skyscraper actually was commissioned by a group of New York developers in 1906 but never built, and would've sat at the location where the World Trade Center was eventually constructed. Check out Greg's blog post for more, including sketches from the original plan.

Introducing the Google Font Directory
Big news for bloggers this week that went largely unnoticed: Google has now uploaded a series of 18 browser-friendly specialty fonts online for public use, and that require only an extra two lines of code in your HTML documents. This essentially lets you swap out the tired old Helvetica and Times at your blog and replace it with something more interesting, and with all your visitors being able to display that typeface correctly on their end too.

Politico: "Gates and Clinton are surprisingly working together like well-oiled machine"
I have to admit, I'm impressed with the quietly great job HIllary Clinton has been doing as Secretary of State, which after all had originally been more of a political peach handed to her to bring her supporters over to the Obama camp; and as Politico reports, a key aspect of this has been the surprisingly close and productive relationship she's formed with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who let's not forget had actually been a conservative darling during the Bush years, kept on by Obama simply so to not interrupt long-term plans in Iraq. And as this article points out, there are also political gains for both by maintaining such a relationship; Clinton, still disliked by many Obama staffers for her shrill 2008 presidential campaign, stays in the inside circle of White House influencers through Gates' help, while Gates himself gains an important liberal supporter of his manytimes hawkish plans to combat terrorism.

It's no surprise that Turkey is becoming major east/west liaison
A nice article from the English edition of Al Jazeera, arguing why it's no surprise that the first-world-emerging Turkey is suddenly taking a bigger and bigger role in east/west diplomacy; after all, before its conversion to Islam, for centuries it was known as Byzantium (aka the Eastern Roman Empire), precisely known for blending European and Persian cultures, influences and even DNA. And also see...

FP: "Turkey and Brazil may be too big for their britches, but it signals something huge"
An interesting article from Foreign Policy magazine looks at the recent diplomatic breakthrough achieved by Brazil and Turkey, to get Iran to agree to have their uranium enriched by a third party...which was then promptly smacked down by a US-led coalition within the United Nations, which was seen by many as a case of these emerging nations biting off a little more than they could chew. But as FP points out, such events are essentially these countries' ways of simply flexing their muscles, getting prepared for the much bigger achievements still to come, and can be directly compared to such late-1800s American events as the Monroe Doctrine and resulting Spanish-American War, the period that saw the US first step up from an emerging nation to first-world status, and eventually into global power at the end of World War One. Although they were eventually spanked like children by the Western powers over this particular issue, the important thing is that they were taken seriously in the first place, and FP says that you can expect to see a lot more events like this from the BRIC and other emerging nations over the next decade. And ALSO see...

Brazil Olympics will likely displace thousands of squatters
Although you'd think we were long past this, it's been turning out that such big affairs like Olympics and World's Fairs are still excellent signs of a nation's ability to be a player on the world stage; and it's because such events are hugely expensive and cause massive challenges, making that country's response a nice litmus test over how it'll be able to respond to more pressing global problems. (And for a good opposite example, look at the disaster that was Chicago's 2016 Olympics bid -- how it quickly became bogged down in multiple worries about unprecedented corruption, complete befuddlement over where the money would come from, a city population that largely intensely disliked the whole notion, angry grumblings from a hundred well-entrenched unions, a general weariness over the idea of yet another Extreeeme Mountain Dew corporate-dominated American Games...sheesh, no wonder we lost to Rio de Janeiro.) But Rio is finding massive problems of their own regarding hosting the Games, as this article from the always great GlobalPost.com shows; for example, to find the room for the new Olympics media center, the city is going to have to displace several thousand poverty-stricken squatters, hard not to do in a megapolis with millions of people living in pre-industrialized conditions (i.e. no electricity, no running water, no indoor plumbing, etc). These Games are going to be a major test for Brazil, to see whether they have what it takes to be considered the newest "first-world" nation, and it'll be interesting to see how they ultimately respond to it.

Here's a surprise: Libertarian says something horrifically offensive in public
Want to shut up a Libertarian at a cocktail party real fast? I learned this in college -- simply say, "Hey, aren't you the people who believe that parents should have the right to have sex with their children?" This is merely one of the violently radical "personal freedoms" that is supported by Kentucky's new Republican Senate nominee, Rand Paul, who after his stunning surprise primary victory (being hailed as the first big national triumph for the teabaggers) promptly went on MSNBC and ruined his chances of ever getting elected, by glibly mentioning how of course restaurants should have the right to not serve black people if they don't want to, or for department stores to hang big signs on their front doors saying "N-GGERS NOT WELCOME." Ironically, it's people like Paul who remind us why it's so important that we have things like child-labor laws and anti-slavery legislation to begin with -- because there will always be people around to come up with weasely little justifications for such heinous acts, unless you literally make them criminal offenses.

Onion AV Club's "Cult Canon" series is partnering with Chicago's Music Box Theatre
All right!

100-year delay for Mark Twain's autobiography is now finished
Mark Twain wrote a huge confessional autobiography at the end of his life, one that supposedly trashes several friends and vehemently opposes the imperialism of Theodore Roosevelt; and that's why he stipulated in his will that a hundred years must pass before it's published, to spare the feelings of those people until long after they and their children were dead. Well, guess what? That hundred-year delay expired this year! First volume comes out in November! I CAN'T WAIT!

Regarding the curious connections between "Dragon Tattoo" girl and Pippi Longstocking
With the American version just coming out of the third book in Stieg Larsson's "Millennium" crime trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, interest is high again for his bewitchingly complex and fascinating main character, prickly and violent goth girl and private eye Lisbeth Salander, the "girl" mentioned in all three books' titles. Here, a nice article from the New York Times which compares trait by trait this character with the classic children's hero Pippi Longstocking; after all, Larsson said many times how interesting he thought it'd be to write a novel about a contemporary, grown-up Longstocking, and how her shenanigans would these days likely be interpreted as the work of an Asberger-suffering enemy of the state, not coincidentally exactly how Salander is thought of by many of her peers in the "Millennium" books.

Author of 'Drugstore Cowboy,' 73, busted for holding up drugstore
No. Freaking. Way.