Thanks to everyone who participated in our end of the world exercise. Perhaps you missed one of two during the hectic holiday week. Good news: they're all here! Print and save for later... or for the actual end of the world. You'll have plenty of time for reading then. READ MORE

The day I learned that the Earth would be cracked open by a comet, that the seas would turn suddenly to steam and the wind from every direction would catch fire, that the sky would be covered over with heavy tarps of black burning dust and every one of us would end up stenciled like letters into the fossil record, I went to the movies. But then Richard Gere burst out into "Razzle Dazzle," and my heart went nuts and my head went light and my skin went damp and it went cold and the only thought I could manage was this: "The world is going to end and I'm sitting here watching fucking Chicago." READ MORE

I was supposed to be a geologist. It’s true: I know a lot more about dips and strikes, mass extinctions, the relative time scale (which I can recite thanks to the mnemonic “Please come over some day, maybe play poker, three jacks cover two queens”—look it up), dissolved oxygen, schist, gneiss, basalt pillow formations and various dramatic fault lines than I do about the current New York Times bestsellers list, or what’s trending on Twitter. I’m an editor, but I still spend a lot of time thinking about rocks. And water. Actually, saying I was supposed to be a geologist isn’t quite right: I was supposed to be a limnologist, an expert in fresh water. READ MORE

When the world finally ends, the odds are long on The Horrific Event taking every single living soul on Earth with it. And if there are at least two of us left, our need to inauthentically connect with each other via technology will remain, and we'll be forced to devise new and unconventional ways to facilitate the comforting feeling of social networking even after The Whole Internet has finally, mercifully, been burned to the ground. READ MORE

TO THE CLASS OF 2011: a hearty hail and hello to you and to those others from the town and from your families who have been able to make it here today. I greet you and I thank you for inviting me to this ceremony. It is a date which must have seemed so significant when you began the academic year nine months ago, but which could easily have been overshadowed by the current crisis. After all, faced with what we are facing, why should this day be different from any other day? What meaning could it possibly hold placed against the grim import of that ultimate hour, rushing even now out of the future and toward the present? Nothing will change after today, certainly. Why should you pause in your great work? Why should you put off, even for a moment, your search for a solution, for a way to elude the grip of this final moment? Why should you stop and listen to me? READ MORE

A poem by Rachel Herman-Gross. READ MORE

Some years ago I toured a container ship as a guest of its ambitious young Yugoslav captain. It was by far the most awe-inspiring company tour I’ve ever been on; the sheer size and scale of everything we were shown made us feel utterly antlike, awestruck, and then awestruck again, in a different way, at the magnificence of what people are able to achieve when they put their minds to it. READ MORE

If I knew the world was coming to an end, I would fuck with impunity. I would crunch birth control pills between my teeth like they were pink Pez all day long. With the specter of annihilation on horizon, all would be carnage and I would need to start regularly shaving my legs. READ MORE

I have known some impatient people over the years who couldn’t wait for the end of the world. READ MORE

What, you thought we’d been canning our own goods for fun? That we set up farms on the roofs of buildings because we had nothing better to do? Carved “artists' lofts” out of crumbling factories because they’re so much more aesthetically pleasing? Let me let you in on a little secret here: for any disaster that's coming, the young Brooklynites? We’re ready to survive it. READ MORE