The wanderer learns a lot about prairie dogs, which are in sharp decline and should be listed as threatened, says the World Wildlife Fund. And about the last Congress, which was insufficiently environmental, according to the League of Conservation Voters. I download a superb four-part, college-level course on the ozone hole from the University of Cambridge. And I am assured by www.eco.freedom.org/unibomb.htm that Bill Clinton and Al Gore are environmentalists (a deniable charge, surely) and in league with Earth First! and the Unabomber.

And...it's 4 a.m.; do I know where my eyeballs are? So--oxymoron alert--a beginner's conclusion. The Web's strongest suit, at least as it deals with the environment, is serendipity, random walking. Search engines only pretend to sort out the jumbled and expanding Internet universe. Which, as has been widely noted, is unedited, unowned, unsanitized--though Congress continues to try--and, like the worldwide world itself, decidedly not guaranteed. Likewise for its environmental subset. Run barefoot through its meadows, but be careful where you put your feet.