(no subject)
The 4th was pretty good. After fighting about going to the beach (sitting on a crowded beach is a little slice of hell for me), we just ended up heading out to dinner at the Saddle Ranch on the Sunset Strip. I've spoken about it a few times with Lumi and decided to go on a whim.
We couldn't figure out which fireworks show we wanted to go to, so we decided to try and see them all at once from the Griffith Observatory. I had hiked around Griffith Park many times while the observatory was being remodeled, but since its reopening last year they instituted a shuttle system which prevents anyone from getting near the trails behind the building. I can't believe it took me almost a year to get my ass back up to this art-deco nerd shrine in the sky.
We arrived about a half hour before sunset, so we decided to catch one of the shows in the new planetarium. It was a cool little show, taking us through the history of astronomy from Ptolemy to supercomputers and illustrating just how insanely insignificant our little planet really is. The actor-type who narrated the show (live) had some of the worst inflection I've ever heard, somewhere between Shatner and movie trailer guy, but the graphics on the dome were incredible. They paid a hefty chunk of change for the new star projector, and every penny was up there.
Then we did a quick run through the exhibits--I could sit and watch that cloud chamber for hours--before heading up to the roof. The clouds has descended through twilight, so we couldn't see as much of the LA basin as I'd hoped. Still, there were probably 7 or 8 good fireworks shows going at once which put on a pretty good display. I got bored of watching them and stood in line to look through the "most looked through telescope in the world" and got to see a very blurry Jupiter orbited by the Galilean moons.
I did my nerdy best to get my wife as excited about science as I am. She's a language geek, so watching neutrons pass through a cloud chamber just doesn't fill her with excitement the way it does me. It kind of makes me sad that she doesn't grok these things, but the fact that she indulges me for it makes it all better. We even had a good conversation about space exploration and communication on the way home. Any time I get to bust out the Fermi Paradox and Drake's Equation is one I'm taking.
We couldn't figure out which fireworks show we wanted to go to, so we decided to try and see them all at once from the Griffith Observatory. I had hiked around Griffith Park many times while the observatory was being remodeled, but since its reopening last year they instituted a shuttle system which prevents anyone from getting near the trails behind the building. I can't believe it took me almost a year to get my ass back up to this art-deco nerd shrine in the sky.
We arrived about a half hour before sunset, so we decided to catch one of the shows in the new planetarium. It was a cool little show, taking us through the history of astronomy from Ptolemy to supercomputers and illustrating just how insanely insignificant our little planet really is. The actor-type who narrated the show (live) had some of the worst inflection I've ever heard, somewhere between Shatner and movie trailer guy, but the graphics on the dome were incredible. They paid a hefty chunk of change for the new star projector, and every penny was up there.
Then we did a quick run through the exhibits--I could sit and watch that cloud chamber for hours--before heading up to the roof. The clouds has descended through twilight, so we couldn't see as much of the LA basin as I'd hoped. Still, there were probably 7 or 8 good fireworks shows going at once which put on a pretty good display. I got bored of watching them and stood in line to look through the "most looked through telescope in the world" and got to see a very blurry Jupiter orbited by the Galilean moons.
I did my nerdy best to get my wife as excited about science as I am. She's a language geek, so watching neutrons pass through a cloud chamber just doesn't fill her with excitement the way it does me. It kind of makes me sad that she doesn't grok these things, but the fact that she indulges me for it makes it all better. We even had a good conversation about space exploration and communication on the way home. Any time I get to bust out the Fermi Paradox and Drake's Equation is one I'm taking.