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I thought about maybe doing book reviews, since I have read some recently that I really rather enjoyed. Then I thought, instead, I would just give people passages from these books and say "no, really, read them. They are fun."

If you go to the NASA Microgravity University Web page, you will see photo after photo of students concentrating intent on their projects and, in the background of many of these shots, a pair of grinning fools floating into each other like shirts in a dryer. That's me and Joyce. Joyce is from the education department at NASA headquarters in Washington. She helps run the student flights program but had never been on one of the flights. I should really be down on the floor with my team, taking notes on how it's going. I can't do this, however, because my notebook is floating in front of my face with the pages all fanned out, and I need to stare at it for a while longer. It hovers, not rising and not falling, in the manner of a party balloon a few days postparty. (When I get back to my room to review my notes, I find that I've written nothing of substance. I wasn't so much taking notes as testing my Fisher Space Pen. My notes say: "WOO" and "yipee.")

--Packing For Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, Mary Roach

There's actually a long history of banning foods that provoke not only lust but the "wrong" kind of lust. An early version of the New Testament banned eating rabbit because it was believed that they grew a new rectum every year and that eating their flesh would fill the diner with an urge to sodomize. The same text claimed that eating a weasel instilled an insatiable urge to perform oral sex because the aimal procreates through its oral cavities. Hyena sandwiches were a complete no-no because the beast's well-known habit of changing its sex at the full moon inevitably induced bisexual impulses in the unsuspecting gourmand.

--In The Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food, Steward Lee Allen