A little over the top? I know some people are depressed but......this?
posted by Ron at 9:49 PM PST - 84 comments

Luck Chain Letters Predecessors: Ancient documents that advocate their own perpetuation. The Letters from Heaven. Transitions to chain letters.--from Chain Letter Evolution, which is part of the Paper Chain Letter Archive via History News Network's Cliopatria
posted by y2karl at 9:09 PM PST - 4 comments

Driven, immodest, intense and abrasive, Jeffrey Sachs is clearly a man on a mission. That mission is ending global poverty in our lifetimes. Can the man who once administered "shock therapy" to a reeling Russia, with tragic if predictable results, redeem himself? And even if the developed world somehow comes to a consensus that this is a project worth undertaking, would it work? (Apologies for yet another NYT piece.)
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:09 PM PST - 9 comments

10 X 10 One Hundred Words and Pictures that Define the Time
posted by ColdChef at 7:32 PM PST - 11 comments

Irredentos. The sun beats down insufferably on the rust coloured landscape, stretching for mile after mile under a cobalt blue sky. In the distance, a convoy of rented farm trucks packed with thousands of penitents kicks up a serpentine cloud of dust that rises and then dissipates over the land. Through the dry air comes a jingling of chimes and a clicking of rosaries, a shuffling of processions, and with eyes heavenward, a ceaseless chanting of invocations. This is a holy and sun-scorched land, the Backlands of Brazil's northeast - the Sertão. Some believe Jesus is buried here.
Christian Cravo, the photographer, is Mario Cravo Neto's son.
posted by matteo at 5:08 PM PST - 7 comments

Robert J. Vanderbei is trying to show us we're not as divided as it seems.
It's not quite the City Vs. Country conflict that you may have understood it to be in this years election. Methinks, perhaps, this extends to other political opinions as well.

Lots of great voting result visualizations are available at this blog. Including my favorite, state results, with electoral votes dictating the relative size of the state. I'm not explaining it well. Go look here.

I *promise* this'll be the last political post for a while. I know we're all wretchedly sick of it.
posted by Parannoyed at 4:02 PM PST - 24 comments

Metafilter is Under Attack!
posted by crunchland at 4:00 PM PST - 27 comments

WXYC, the oldest web radio station celebrates ten years today. Chapel Hill, NC. Pretty good station too.
posted by Duck_Lips at 2:17 PM PST - 6 comments

Repairing your Aglets. Are your aglets frayed or peeling, or simply discolored and unsightly? Have you looked for a source of fresh, user-friendly aglets and come up empty? Do all of your friends have snappy, crisp aglets that put yours to shame? You can break the chain of aglet neglect and decay.
posted by mecran01 at 12:16 PM PST - 8 comments

The Numero Group is a web-based record company specializing in unearthing great music that you probably didn't know existed but can't live without. (Flash site; more inside)
posted by ba at 11:34 AM PST - 6 comments

The anti-war speech that earned Eugene V. Debs a prison sentence in 1918 for opposing the draft. Debs was prosecuted under the Sedition Act, and he received almost a million votes behind bars as the American Socialist Party candidate for president. He's much admired by Kurt Vonnegut. [Via wood s lot.]
posted by homunculus at 9:48 AM PST - 5 comments

All Pop Art. Do you like Andy Warhol pop art? Did you want your face to be on it? Is your narcissism overwhelming? I always viewed pop art as having a sense of irony, poking fun of mass culture. When mass culture then embraces and produces pop art based on themselves, is this a reflection of the apocolypse? I think this is similar to going back in time and meeting yourself.
posted by geoff. at 8:28 AM PST - 12 comments

Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism by Mark Twain
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:56 AM PST - 10 comments

Speegle: search results read aloud. News, too! [Via.]
posted by steef at 7:38 AM PST - 5 comments

Two Americas, but not the ones you might have thought. Apologies for perpetuating ElectionFilter, but this page has, in addition to all the blue/red/purple maps we've seen, a bar graph at the bottom of the page that I find fascinating. To quote the authors, "It appears that there are, as the pundits have been telling us, 'two Americas,' but they are not the ones people usually talk about. They are 'divided America,' where people split roughly evenly between Republican and Democrat, and 'decided America,' where everyone is a Democrat. " (via Crooked Timber)
posted by Kat Allison at 7:33 AM PST - 69 comments

Cocoon. Rainbows. Diorama. Grass. Karaoke. Wedding. Dave. Apparently these are all ads for NEC. How they're promoting something, and what that something is, I haven't a clue. But they made me laugh. {movs, I think. via News Today}
posted by dobbs at 1:12 AM PST - 7 comments