Yes, it's true. We have no idea what we're doing. And we're astrophysicists. It all started as we were driving to BEAUTIFUL Miami, Florida for a conference (not a convention, an actual scientific conference where we were both presenting our work). On the way down, as we lamented the lack of Firefly/Serenity merchandise in the form of plushies, we had the brilliant idea. Why don't we make our own? And as we thought more about it, we realized that others might enjoy the fruits of our labor. Thus, we invented "This Land" so that we could offer our wonderful Firefly-inspired plushies to the rest of the 'verse. It's one of those hobbies that consumes your life.

As for our day job, both of us are astrophysicists at the University of Florida, working desperately toward the Ph.D. Alison started with local stuff like asteroids, but now works with high-redshift (i.e., very far away) Active Galactic Nuclei and Quasars. For those that don't speak Astronomy, that means supermassive black holes (millions of times bigger than the sun) sucking in matter and then spitting it out again at near the speed of light. As a study in opposites, Valerie started out by looking at high-redshift quasars and now studies local microquasars. Microquasars are the same sort of system, but they are inside the galaxy and occur in systems that are only a few times bigger than the sun. She often wonders how she ended up doing the "local news".

Speaking of local news, neither of us are affiliated with NASA, the shuttle, or the space station. That's REALLY LOCAL as far as we're concerned. You asking us what's going on in low Earth orbit is like us asking you what's going on in your left ventricle. It's not even local news. But things seem to be running smoothly, so we're not too concerned. (NOTE: If things are not running smoothly in your left ventricle at this moment, you should really stop surfing this web page and see to that.)

As for the whole Pluto issue, we're on the "ehh" side. Pluto is still the same lump of rock it has always been and it will continue to revolve in peace long after the sun goes red giant on us and blasts out the inner solar system. (Don't worry. We have another 5 billion years before that happens.) Our favorite bumper sticker on the issue reads "First the Brontosaurus, now Pluto?! Is nothing sacred?" If you are unfamiliar with the Brontosaurus issue, you really shouldn't be concerned about Pluto.

But to say the "Us" of "About Us" stops here would really be a lie. We could not offer you all the wonderful "This Land" loot without the help of certain someones all over the 'verse to whom we outsource various projects. Just because we don't know what we're doing doesn't mean we don't know someone who does. So to all you who help make This Land possible, thanks!

(***Picture Courtesy of www.therealspaceman.com)