Travel writer Sophia Dembling's essay Confessions of an Introverted Traveler on Worldhum received so much feedback that she's followed up with Six Tips for Introverted Travelers. I am now absolved for reading Jasper Fforde on the Champs-Élysées.
posted by kimdog on May 16, 2009 - 37 comments

The Last Days of W. Another great photo essay from the folks at Magnum In Motion.
posted by netbros on Apr 1, 2009 - 35 comments

"To make off with hubby's fortune, yea, I think I heard of that happenin' once or twice around L.A. And… you want me to do what exactly?" He found the paper bag he'd brought his supper home in and got busy pretending to scribble notes on it, because straight-chick uniform, makeup supposed to look like no makeup or whatever, here came that old well-known hard-on Shasta was always good for sooner or later. Does it ever end, he wondered. Of course it does. It did. Thomas Pynchon's next novel, the 416-page Inherent Vice, is described by Penguin Press as "part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon — private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog." While we wait for its August 4 publication, we can read an essay on the dystopian musical he co-wrote at Cornell or watch a clip of that movie they made of Gravity's Rainbow. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Feb 6, 2009 - 76 comments

The Revolutionary Pleasure of Thinking for Yourself
posted by divabat on Jan 3, 2009 - 30 comments

Is this your paper on single serving sites?
posted by blue_beetle on Dec 13, 2008 - 41 comments

It was a dark and stormy campaign... A film theorist's thoughts on the narratives of Barack Obama and John McCain. [more inside]
posted by defenestration on Nov 8, 2008 - 15 comments

Foreclosures. A photo essay by Magnum photographer Bruce Gilden. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Nov 7, 2008 - 35 comments

When Books Could Change Your Life: an excellent essay on Children's literature by Tim Kreider, (previously), on the importance of reading as cultural socialization.
posted by Jon_Evil on Sep 25, 2008 - 32 comments

Truth's Caper : essay by Simon Blackburn on Sokal's Hoax.
posted by Gyan on Aug 18, 2008 - 175 comments

The Kindergarchy: An essay on modern parenting.
posted by kimdog on Jul 31, 2008 - 113 comments

The End Of The World As We Know It. If you want to imagine the catastrophe - how you would cope, what would you do to save yourself and your family - where do you turn for advice?... The idea of dying together, all of us, in some ways seems less appalling than the thought of going alone. Via.
posted by amyms on Apr 1, 2008 - 29 comments

How I Want To Be Remembered by Jack Handey. He was fabulously wealthy, but he would pretend to be broke, and often tried to borrow cigarettes and money from people. Little did they know that those who gave him stuff would later be rewarded in his will, with jewels and antigravity helmets. You may know Jack Handey from his Deep Thoughts which first gained fame on as filler between sketches on Saturday Night Live. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker (scroll down this page for his other essays).
posted by amyms on Mar 31, 2008 - 57 comments

An essay by Bill Lawrence, creator of "Scrubs," on why he writes. It's part of a series: "Why We Write." [more inside]
posted by Tehanu on Mar 16, 2008 - 28 comments

English As A Second Language: "In which our heroine helps a Japanese friend find where the Goonies lived. Sort of." A recent essay from Emily's World, a biweekly column written by Emily Maloney, at The Smart Set.
posted by amyms on Mar 15, 2008 - 13 comments

"The Worst Addiction of Them All", by Kurt Vonnegut, 1983. A classic and prescient essay on addiction to war.
posted by stbalbach on Feb 1, 2008 - 19 comments

"Reflections on White Privilege" by Tad Lawrence, dean of faculty, Cambridge School of Weston "That white Americans would send cards such as the ones I will show you for the most ordinary of purposes indicates the frightening extent to which they had internalized, accepted and condoned the presentation of African Americans that were the public face of the cards they sent." [more inside]
posted by exlotuseater on Nov 13, 2007 - 57 comments

Unqualified Reservations is a fascinating ongoing commentary on society and governance in postmodernity. He's currently on about the pwning of Richard Dawkins, after writing about Mediocracy and Official Journalism. It might be best to first read his earlier posts in which he defines the self-invented terminology he's fond of using, like: Formalism, The Iron Polygon, Universalism, Neocameralism, and The Rotary System. [more inside]
posted by blasdelf on Oct 29, 2007 - 44 comments

Errol Morris, documentary filmmaker, talking pictures in the N.Y.Times. The comments are not bad either. (previously)
posted by From Bklyn on Jul 20, 2007 - 8 comments

Matt Nicholson's Breast Punishment Primer discusses the history of tit torture, the anatomy of breasts and the motivation for torturing one (or two), and various manners in which one might torture a tit. That and tit torture trivia. All links NSFW.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jun 25, 2007 - 72 comments

"Some legal experts said the charge against Allen Lee is troubling because it was over an essay that even police admit contained no direct threats against anyone at the school." Newsfilter: A high school senior is arrested for a "disturbing" essay in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting.
posted by Many bubbles on Apr 26, 2007 - 78 comments

Mysterious number 6174. An excellent recreational math article.
posted by fatllama on Jan 13, 2007 - 34 comments

No language, just sound: How writer Ned Raggett came to ignore the lyrics.
posted by klangklangston on Sep 6, 2006 - 79 comments

Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism. An essay by Jaron Lanier.
posted by mr_crash_davis on Aug 15, 2006 - 70 comments

Queen Street: Thematic Preview - "Queen Street is one of Toronto's oldest, longest, and most varied routes. It began in 1793 as a line on a map, running dead straight for ten miles, in modern measure some 16 kilometres. It is the spine, the high street, the main street of many distinct, and quite different, neighbourhoods. The street's fine grain is a cavalcade of urban variety, where the grain is broken by parks, institutions, industry. Queen Street is a promenade of public life, one you can stroll for 16 kilometres. I have, all of it, often camera in hand: I wanted others to see it, to know something of its life. And its gifts — meant to be shared. Here I'll share with you some of what I have seen along, and just off, Queen Street."
posted by heatherann on Aug 3, 2006 - 5 comments

Ever Wonder? "[H]oping to push existing boundaries, this paper will put the accumulated knowledge of two animals to the ultimate test, in an attempt to answer the age-old question of who would win in a fight between a penguin and a lemur. Courtesy of MeFi's own Milkman Dan.
posted by rossination on Jul 28, 2006 - 17 comments

Auden and Christianity "The notion that religious faith and serious thought are mutually exclusive categories always struck Auden as risible and unintelligible. But he would have bristled at an effort to separate out his religious beliefs and restate them as systematic propositions, or examine them independently or thematically, rather than see them as players in his rich and various inner symbolic drama."
posted by vronsky on May 26, 2006 - 3 comments

Camille Paglia How should the humanities be taught, and how should scholars in the humanities be trained? These pivotal questions confront universities today amid signs of spreading agreement that the three-decade era of poststructuralism and postmodernism is over.
posted by vronsky on Apr 29, 2006 - 72 comments

The Chernobyl Legacy
posted by rinkjustice on Apr 25, 2006 - 17 comments

In Praise of Loopholes, simply put, is a great story and an example of fine writing you can only find online. (From our own shadowkeeper).
posted by mathowie on Apr 25, 2006 - 21 comments

Debris. The terminus of ballistic arches. A photo-essay by Jonas Bendiksen of a different kind of space junk: Proton rocket stages peppering the Khazak countryside discarded from Baikonur Cosmodrome launches.
posted by trinarian on Apr 12, 2006 - 17 comments

President Jonah --an essay/history lesson/bible lesson/etc by Gore Vidal. ...We have also come to a point in this dark age where there is not only no hero in view but no alternative road unblocked. We are trapped terribly in a now that few foresaw and even fewer can define ...
posted by amberglow on Jan 28, 2006 - 33 comments

Your Guess Is as Good as Mine --by Kurt Vonnegut (it's an excerpt from his new book)
posted by amberglow on Dec 12, 2005 - 38 comments

How to learn about difficult things
posted by iffley on Oct 26, 2005 - 26 comments

Submitted for your approval. Very cool essay from Jonathan Lethem on the life of Rod Serling.
posted by braun_richard on Aug 15, 2005 - 10 comments

Planes, Trains, and Plantains, or the Greatest Essay Ever Written.
posted by swift on Jan 14, 2005 - 27 comments

Do you want to be a writer? "Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon?... Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles. The problem is structural; it is insoluble; it is why no one can ever write this book. Complex stories, essays and poems have this problem, too -- the prohibitive structural defect the writer wishes he had never noticed. He writes it in spite of that." Luminous and wise writing advice from Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, one of the most beautiful books written in the last hundred years (published when Dillard was 29). As a writer myself, I am often asked by younger folk how to become one. Dillard says best what I would tell them.
posted by digaman on Jan 10, 2005 - 67 comments

A Picture of the Future, You're not in It An address to the John F. Kennedy School of Government...September 11th, 2011
posted by timsteil on Jan 9, 2005 - 41 comments

A right that ends in sorrow , aka the difficulty of standing up for something that really sucks. (via Amy Sullivan)
posted by alms on Dec 16, 2004 - 73 comments

Nominations for the best software essays of 2004. There's lots of reading here, pardners, and much of it is great.
posted by bonaldi on Dec 3, 2004 - 3 comments

The Iraq problem solved. George Saunders has got it all figured out. (from the New Yorker natch.)
posted by lilboo on Nov 30, 2004 - 34 comments

"Ironic Detachment as an Escape from Routine" by Christopher Lasch ; Compared to What by Eugene McDaniels as performed by Les McCann ; What Is Cynical Reason? Peter Sloterdijk Explains ; Rainer Maria Rilke on Being and the Transitory ; Albert Einstein on Intellectuals and the Masses, Specialization and the Division of Labor, and the Quality of Life ; T.W. Adorno on Zen Buddhism ; Temporarily Humboldt County and Pondering the Spirit World with Seinfeld--just a taste of The Autodidact Project by Ralph Dumain (Librarian-Archivist-Information Specialist Researcher-Scholar) Can you dig it?
posted by y2karl on Nov 16, 2004 - 22 comments

How it is that we have come to invade iraq Zen teacher Sevan Ross, on the reasons for our invasion of Iraq.
posted by tranceformer on Nov 8, 2004 - 43 comments

Web of Influence Every day, millions of online diarists, or “bloggers,” share their opinions with a global audience. Drawing upon the content of the international media and the World Wide Web, they weave together an elaborate network with agenda-setting power on issues ranging from human rights in China to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. What began as a hobby is evolving into a new medium that is changing the landscape for journalists and policymakers alike. Hmm. Big Talk or should I get a clue & with the program ? Decisions, decisions....
posted by y2karl on Nov 4, 2004 - 15 comments

The Great Bear in Maine.
posted by homunculus on Oct 28, 2004 - 3 comments

An unusually long article about ketchup. Fascinating, I swear.
posted by Hildago on Oct 16, 2004 - 21 comments

Western dominance, Islamist terror, and the Arab imagination, by Sadik J. Al-Azm, emeritus professor at the University of Damascus. (via Aldaily)
posted by semmi on Oct 15, 2004 - 6 comments

Essay on the meanings and significance of Blade Runner. Interesting insights on particular scenes and quotes and how they are more relevant today than ever.
posted by stbalbach on Sep 13, 2004 - 27 comments

Oh Rob! What it was like to be in the studio audience of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Nice essay from Mark Evanier.
posted by braun_richard on Aug 5, 2004 - 8 comments

Laws Concerning Food and Drink; Lamentations of the Father. Something to give all parents a chuckle.
posted by iffley on Jul 14, 2004 - 27 comments

So You Think You Might Be A Writer? Just because you write? An astute essay by Joseph Epstein poses the uncomfortable question: are you weird enough? There's something very unnatural and unhealthy about writing (as opposed to reading, for instance) - but what is it? [Via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Apr 19, 2004 - 51 comments