As I lay dying...

The creeping crud that's been bothering for the better part of a week has reached a crescendo, resulting in me taking a "I think I'll hang around plumbing" day. Ick.

As I awaited the grim specter of Death, or the even grimmer specter of Yet Another Screaming Run to the Commode, I finished 1632, by Eric Flint, which I picked up while Wintergift shopping.

What, you don't buy stuff for yourself too?

Anyway, I really enjoyed the book, and am eagerly waiting for the chance to grab the sequels. Basic summary: In the year 2000, an spherical chunk of West Virginia, six miles across, trades places with a chunk of Southern Germany from 1632. All the German chunk has is some burned farmhouses and slaughtered peasants.. the West Virginian chunk contains the town of Grantville. The residents of which have just been dropped into the middle of the Thirty Years War. Hilarity ensues.

Flint handle the American's pre-knowledge of many historical events by keeping the newcomers out of the big events until the end. By the time they do get involved, enough changes have occurred to make a history textbook useless (There is a nice scene where Gustav Adolphus mentions that he was supposed to die in three months time in a cavalry charge.)

My favorite character had to be the perky head cheerleader who becomes the frigging Angel of Death as the first sniper on Earth. (See, she was training for the biathlon...) Fictional characters mingle with historical characters, and the entire thing just feels right. Worth a read. Also piqued my interest in a period of history that I've overlooked before.

I read a few of the Cross-Time Engineer books, and enjoy the entire "OOP" (Out Of Place) subgenre of AH fiction a great deal.

Interesting little test

http://www.alllooksame.com/

Can you tell the difference between Asians?

I got 8/18. A bit embarrassing since I tend to swear in Korean.

Great quote

"The music of Queen without Freddie Mercury is like a Garbo movie without Garbo." - from today's Mercury News.

Cute Alert! Prepare to squueeee!

This almost makes me forget being sick for a minute.



More at the link.

Once theory, now found

Astronomers discover possible miniature solar system

Astronomers peering through ground- and space-based telescopes have discovered what they believe is the birth of the smallest known solar system.

Scientists found a tiny brown dwarf - or failed star - less than one hundredth the mass of the sun surrounded by what appears to be a disk of dust and gas.

The brown dwarf -located 500 light years away in the constellation Chamaeleon - appears to be undergoing a planet-forming process that could one day yield a miniature solar system, said Kevin Luhman of Penn State University, who led the discovery.

It's long believed that our solar system came into existence when a huge cloud of gas and dust collapsed to form the sun and planets about 4.5 billion years ago.

The latest finding is intriguing because it's the smallest known brown dwarf to be discovered with planet-forming properties. If the disk forms planets, the resulting solar system will be about 100 times smaller than our system, scientists say.

Very cool news. And it has an accretion disk! Pity it's so far out, would have made a neat location for the Concordat.