I'm Betting They're Technical Manuals

I don't like to crib from Gawker, but this photo they found of an abandoned Russian library is stunning. So here it is.

(Awaiting my handy Central Asians’ translation of the original site to see what it is.)

In other news, Zimbabwe is a wreck post-election. Rounding up the foreign journalists, as my colleague put it, is always a sign of a deeper crackdown. In a place where exiles are spending dollars to have South African bus drivers carry in a bag of flour for their relatives, how much worse can it get? I heard on NPR the other day inflation is at 100,000 percent.

Books in a heap; reporters in prison. Wrecks everywhere: Everybody blog.