THANKS, MR. GRIFFITH

Hello Everyone,

I had the opportunity to visit the newly-renovated Griffith Park Observatory this weekend. It was a great experience. They've got tons to see--four hours there was barely enough--and a great planetarium show. The telescope on the roof that you can actually walk into (thanks Zeiss) is pretty awesome. They also have a telescope trained on the sun, but since it was evening, we weren't able to avail ourselves of that feature.

Anyway, I just wanted to give props to this guy:






















A Welshman named Griffith J. Griffith, for establishing such an awesome park and planetarium. can you believe how civic-minded that guy was? It's impressive! I wish I could be that cool... Maybe someday...

I'd also like to thank THIS guy:

Galileo Galilei, for contributing so much to astronomy, and for also having the same first and last name--well, almost. I was thinking about how all these dudes like Copernicus and Galileo spent all that time looking at the stars, and figured things out about gravity and dark matter and the universe, and it made me ask myself, "What have I done to better the understanding of the universe lately?" And I quickly came up with an answer. "Not much." But then, those guys didn't have Tivo. Or Ben and Jerry's...

But anyway, I'm determined to work on my scientific contribution to the world. Really, I am. I started by going for a full moon hike at Charmlee wilderness park in Malibu this past week. I just wanted to make sure the full moon was really happening when my calendar said it was. I was simply taking the great piece of advice doled out by so many throughout history, but most recently by Glenn Close in FX's Damages: "Don't Trust Anyone."

Anyhoo, my visit to the observatory brings to mind one of my new favorite quotes: "We're all made of stardust. Why not take a moment to look up at the family album?" This quote comes from a new book called "The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science," by Natalie Angier, a science writer for the New York Times. It's really cool. Check it out.