Best Of MetaFilter

In Ask Metafilter, Thorzdad wonders, Are there any accounts of how poor eyesight may have affected history? and asks for writings, studies, research or ancient documentation of world events affected by vision problems, pre-spectacles.

0xF8 by 0x FF (cc by)

someone forgot to tell like 99% of the human race this is going to happen to them ... flug with some great information about presbyopia in the What is up with my glasses? Ask Metafilter thread

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? by Bistrosavage (cc by)

The question of what information the visual system gets right before the eye movement is, quite literally, a chapter in my dissertation ...

Mefite Making You Bored For Science has some very interesting observations in the thread on saccadic masking (and other eye/brain illusions) in which we discover our visual systems blatantly lie to us all the time. (Also see Rhaomi's comment about the sci-fi novel that employs saccadic exploitation by space aliens!)

Anableps anableps by rubund (cc by-sa)

zamboni with the facts about giant diamonds, the Venus lander, and what this has to do with export taxes.

Can a fish see out of water? Wolfster introduces us to the amazing anablep, the fish whose eyes are bifocals.

Pogo_Fuzzybutt reflects on "one of the better" pizzas he's had -- the day began with a hiker falling off a cliff (Spoiler: don't worry, the hiker lives).