http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug11/NyeSolarClock.html

["Look at that -- it's fantastic!" exclaimed Bill Nye '77, as a sun-shaped circle on the face of the new Bill Nye Solar Noon Clock at Rhodes Hall began to glow against a cloudy bright sky. A crowd of hundreds at Hoy Field cheered.]

Denialism
Michael Specter
New York: Penguin Press, 2009

The Introduction and the first chapter are somewhat disorganized, but the rest of the book is good. Especially check out Chapter 2 — “Vaccines and the Great Denial”. Every chapter is full of information, but this is the best in my opinion.

@23 MTU: Cool! I love reading about exoplanets. I almost forgot to post because I wandered off for an hour googling exoplanet links

@20. Joseph G :

@14 MTU: That’s definitely NOT the case in my experience.
You mean all autistic people are very similar?

Er, no, the opposite of that. Maybe I misunderstood the original comment?

@20. Joseph G :

Also, I would think Mercury and Venus would be the only appropriate objects to represent on a frying pan (maybe hypothetical Vulcanoids, too). Most everything else would be better represented on things like ice cream bowls.

What about Hot Jupiters, Mustafar-like exoplanets* and Sun-grazing comets?

* Some have been perhaps discovered such as COROT-7b (click my name for wiki-basics), Kepler-10b & Gliese 581 e.

Have you ever read Elizabeth Moon’s novel Speed of Dark?

In it, a group of gifted autistic people are offered the opportunity for a “cure”, and there’s a great deal of debate about whether such a fundamental change to a person would prevent them from being the same person afterwards. I’ll not go into detail in case I spoil the story.

@18 Marianne: Mine looks very much like the surface of a metallic asteroid, but that’s because it’s extremely old

Also, I would think Mercury and Venus would be the only appropriate objects to represent on a frying pan (maybe hypothetical Vulcanoids, too). Most everything else would be better represented on things like ice cream bowls