Playing with the moon last night

Pop

Just after checking out the Liechtenstein exhibit at the Art Institute.

Heroes

If I could choose two living  people I could meet and have a little dinner party with, it would be Bob Dylan (of course), and Neil deGrasse Tyson.  This guy is a freaking astrophysicist rock star.  His enthusiasm is incredibly infectious and he is so intelligent and his passion for the universe is so beautiful, and every time I hear him speak I have so much hope, in that feeling small sort of way.

ps-he coined the term "Manhattanhenge"

Vija Celmens

 I am really enjoying these old drawings of space by Vija Celmens.  (And what a studio!)

images from here

Sun

The sun and the International Space Station
image by Thierry Legault

Just a dot

View of Earth from the surface of Mars.
Keeps things in perspective, indeed.

 *image from here

Back to Church

Millenium Park
second row
Band of Horses
My Morning Jacket
It was an unofficial celebration of officially being done with breastfeeding, which was quite bittersweet but ultimately a good thing.  Baby girl is growing up so fast.

Hope

Listening to Jill Tarter's reasoning behind extraterrestrial civizations coming to earth without malice gave me so much hope for humanity...

"... I don't worry about the consequences. If they can get here, they are technologically far in advance of the 21st century Earth.
They are an old technology. How did they get to be an old technology? Well, one thing - one way might have been that they outgrew the aggressive tendencies that were probably at the base of their becoming intelligent in the first place. When you look at evolutionary biology - at least, on this planet - one explanation for how intelligence arose is the predator-prey situation that ratchets up intelligence.
But after a while, when the kill power becomes so extreme, then in fact, our evolutionary best strategy might be to back away from that. Steven Pinker has a recent book that argues that we are kinder today than we used to be. So I don't think you can get to be an old technology unless you manage to stabilize your population, husband your resources, and get your world in shape.
And if you've done that, then what we offer them is information, is uniqueness. I think they're - if they were to come here, would be interested in exactly what the laws of physics and chemistry did here, as opposed to what it did where they came from."
Via Fresh Air

*image from National Geographic