rfmcdonald | [LINK] Some Saturday links (Reply)

Boing Boing and Centauri Dreams both react to the very recent gamma ray burst GRB 080319B, an explosion so bright that it would have been briefly visible to the naked eye despite the fact that it occurred 7.5 billion light years away.

Crooked Timber's John Holbo links to his sprightly new edition of Edward E. Hale’s 1869 classic short story "The Brick Moon". (Yes, I think Holbo is the person who came up with the word "brickpunk.")

Douglas Muir at Halfway Down the Danube describes the various problems with Armenia's genocide museum.

Language Hat covers a recent report that linguists have found links between Siberian and North American language families, with many of the linguists involved popping in to comment on their own or on others' theories.

Finally, James Nicoll has linked to an interesting report about a collection of science fiction writers including Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and David Brin who are offering their services to the government of the United States as freelance advisors. Among their ideas is Niven's that "a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants."