I love the question of dating the universe. It's frustrating that there's not a bigger globular cluster close enough to earth that its distance can be made more precise by parallax, a method that doesn't leave much room for any sort of error. It'd be so wonderful to pin this down ... one of the many things we need warp drive for; we'd have such a better understanding of the universe with even one good observatory ten light-years away.

Most of my library's back in New Jersey, to my particular frustration when I'm thinking of a trivia point for the day. It's re-forming here, though; if I get another contract extension I'm going to have no choice but to move to SIngapore permanently, as otherwise it'll be too big to ever ship back ...