I have to say that I'm a wee bit disappointed.

<I>Bad Astronomy</I> (gotta love that name) hosts a video animation of what would happen if a 500-mile wide asteroid hit the Earth. Yes, I could have embedded the <I>YouTube</I> video here, but I found <I>BA</I>'s comments worthwhile.

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.

Yup, but this five book list of technological books that matter from the <I>WSJ</I> is a corker. The only book on it that I've read in Dava Sobel's superb <I>Longitude</I>, but if the others match it for page-turning readability, I'll hoover 'em all up.

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.