A CNET humor page lists all the reasons that TV "will never catch on," parodying criticisms of the Web. TV costs too much, has superficial content, replays movies and news headlines that are available elsewhere, and tends to isolate you from your neighbors. You have to rewire your house for the antenna or cable, and you need peripherals such as a VCR and TV Guide. Besides, it doesn't even have an international standard. . [Bill Park , 17Oct97.]

The "Science Made Stupid" site is . Or you can tap into the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) at , with back issues of their mini-AIR newsletter at . AIR's IgNobel Prize awards are documented at . [Bill Park, 14Oct97.]

AIR for Sep97 is a special how-to issue, including Eric Schulman's "How to Write a Ph.D. Thesis." "The author presents a complete guide not only to how to write a thesis, but also to what steps can and should be skipped." [Marc Abrahams , mini-AIR, Sep97.] (Humor, for the clueless. Worth a trip to your library?)

(AIR also applauds Scott Kern's new Web-based "Journal of Negative Observations in Genetic Oncology (NOGO)," designed to stop researchers from stumbling down the paths that others have shown to be dead ends. , .)