just in case you think i've gone completely soccer/football crazy. i haven't. managed to read a book as well. manifold time by steven baxter. a little too pie in the sky for me. there is some silly probability shell game (seems to me at least) that humanity will be gone in a couple hundred years. this book works around the idea. not that it is without interest -- cool look at intelligent enhanced squid ( but dropped after a point in time), good writing, interesting characters. But all that stuff about deep time, the ultimate fate of humanity and the universe and computers making simulations of us, yada yada, just ain't all that interesting to me. Somewhat hard to relate to one could say. Others I know would say otherwise.