A few more links to soothe (or cause) the post-Christmas blues:

* More depressing news from the credit sector: the current credit and liquidity crisis could make 1929 look like 'walk in the park.'

* Via Srinivas, an apropos-of-nothing Jared Diamond profile in the New York Times tries to get at the heart of our complicated understanding of collapse and reemergence.

* Also in the Times, this review of Best American Comics 2007 preempts any review I might have written about the ways in which the book failed to quite live up to its promise this year, due in large part to Chris Ware's strange over-reliance on autobiographical comics (though, as the review notes, there are still as always some really good bits).

* Shankar points to this Daily Kos diary that nicely satirizes the recent, incomprehensible spate of anti-Obama rhetoric in the blogosphere, originating just in the moment that he started to gain traction against Hillary, proving once and for all that the Left wouldn't allow itself to be happy even if they did have a good candidate for once.

* And, in the Telegraph, we learn that the universe may be running down, presaging yet another possible end for everything: total stasis.

My dad is in town for a few days, so posting will probably be light even for a weekend. But there are a few interesting things going on today on the blogotubes:

* Diebold Election Systems is now Premier Election Systems. Please adjust your slogans and conspiracy theories accordingly. Via MeFi.

* Time to send a 'knowledge ark' to the Moon? I have a better idea. Also via.

* Modern Cosmology: Science or Folktale?, by the appropriately named Michael J. Disney.

* Lenin's Tomb looks at 2007 and 1929. With charts! For what it's worth, I think this overstates the case pretty significantly, but only because I place collapse a little further in the future.