HOW COMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES are preparing for a pandemic. Well, I’m glad that they are. But I’m currently reading John Ringo’s latest, which is about an outbreak of bird flu in a “year without a summer” — and now I see the above, and am waiting for the NASA press conference on solar cooling on Tuesday, and, well, I don’t want things to get any more realistic. I mean, even Fallen Angels doesn’t have a pandemic and an ice age.

As I recall, though, Ringo had the same feeling a little while ago. All full of carrots and apples, he is . . . .