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While the whole Health Bill backlash in the U.S. isn’t exactly our problem, like most American politics and nuclear testing, fall out tends to drift beyond borders. On what could be called “the lighter side” of scary rhetoric a Flickr user called Paragon has compiled a set of photos taken at various Tea Party demonstrations illustrating their ironically liberal interpretation of the English languange. It’s a set called Teabonics.

Postmodern theorists writing in the late 20th-century once surmised that, during an era of airplanes, cell phones, and the Internet, the importance of geographical space was quickly diminishing. The French anthropologist Marc Augé, for example, famously claimed that modern technological developments such as these had led to a homogenization of culture that was reflected in the proliferation of “non-places” (non-lieux) that were devoid of any particular cultural identity.
Jeanne Haffner PhD/Architecture Boston

It likely isn’t much of a surprise that Chuck Palahniuk’s website features some fairly grim and stomach turning topics of investigation. For example there are the YouTube episodes hosted by Dr. Josh Bazell entitled “Sorry You Asked.” Chuck’s site readers can send in their questions in order to prove or debunk urban myths, body panic issues and other topics with answers that might make you, well, sorry you asked.

We’re excited to announce that we’re bringing DailyLit to Tumblr. In case you haven’t heard of it, Tumblr is an innovative blogging platform that allows readers to follow certain blogs (also called Tumblogs) and reblog posts to share with friends. We’re offering Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; The Art of War; Emily Dickinson’s Poems as our first, what should we call them? Tumblogbooks? Tumblooks? Well, anyway, the countdown begins now, and the books begin on Tuesday, March 30th.

For a change of pace I’ve gathered three bits of puffy fun that have little or nothing to do with literature. Well that’s not true. Not strictly true, depending how you look at it. I mean Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is based on a graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Bryan O’Malley. Damien Jurado is a singer/songwriter with a bit of a Raymond Carver feel. And Buzzfeed is a website where you can discover what percentage of Americans believe Obama is literally, not metaphorically, the Antichrist. The Bible is a book.

Open submissions will ONLY be accepted and read from January 1st to March 31st of each year. Currently looking for nonfiction, juvenile / YA, and poetry manuscripts. We have children’s poetry selected for the next three years. Also looking for illustrator portfolios. All unsolicited manuscripts submitted outside the time frame will be returned unread. We do not accept email submissions, although we recommend you query before sending your manuscript. We got over 400 submissions last year and only publish 4-6 books a year. If you are sending poetry, please query with a sample first. No attachments please.

The novelist Margaret Atwood has been awarded a $1-million international prize for her contributions to modern literature, a prize she will share with one other author.

Atwood and the Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh were both announced as 2010 laureates of the Dan David Prize at Tel Aviv University. Under the terms of the prize, each author will donate 10 per cent of their winnings to graduate students working in the field of literature.
Peter Scowen/The Globe and Mail

Mark S. Luckie of California is the author of the Digital Journalist’s Handbook, a manual that charts the changing face of news and information in our computer-accelerated age. He also runs the 10000 Words website that likewise provides insights into current trends as well as tips and hints for how to better present information so that it gets noticed online. Now that the book trailer/commercial is coming into common practice you might want to take a look at the recent post we’ve linked to within.