LATEST ADDITIONS

Has <I>Toxoplasma gondii</I> affected human culture? Maybe so, claims Kevin Lafferty. Toxoplasma guru Karl Zimmer points us toward Lafferty's just published paper and tells us what to look for.

Just prior to the morning hour at which most liquor stores open, Don Byron and I are sitting outdoors at a sidewalk cafe on a steamy Park Avenue South (Technology Gulch)when a scene breaks out on the sidewalk.

Byron (head turns and he murmurs): "Oh my god."

A stringy&#150haired, smelly, obviously intoxicated woman staggers after a younger, taller man who's also worse for wear, and hollers in a drunken growl: "I got my own phone now. Yes it is. It works you used it."

Byron (laughing): "It's the metropolitan wino scene. You know what I mean? You know the scene in Firenze, now here it is in New York. It has all the elements: the dirty clothes, the ruddy skin, the formaldehyde lips."

Feel confused by the pace of scientific progress? Ah grasshopper, that is but the first step on the path to enlightenment.

I <I>love</I> NASA's <I>Astronomy Picture of the Day</I>, but today's image of a planetary nebula is spectacular even by <I>APOD</I>'s standards.

It <I>is</I> theoretically possible, but they'd have to destroy the original. You go first.

Conventional wisdom holds that continental strength relies upon the solidity of rock at a depth of 15km and that below that pressure and heat cause the rock to flow as liquid. Not so fast, say Klaus Regenauer-Lieb, Roberto F Weinberg, and Gideon Rosenbaum. Their new study says that "through dynamic interaction the strongest part becomes the weakest."

The linguistic distribution of the generic names for soft drinks.