what i learned from the television show

The last two nights I managed to catch Jack Horkheimer, Star Hustler and he pointed out to me that I should look in the western sky about 45 minutes after sundown on Monday and Tuesday to catch the waxing crescent moon flanked by Jupiter. With a telescope I could see Jupiter’s four biggest moons. Jupiter is so big that it would take 13 Earths lined up to be as wide as one Jupiter. Repetition is a good way to learn things.

Also, I caught the very end of Nova the other night, which was about Einstein’s theory of relativity in general I guess, but the part I saw was about Lisa Meitner, who essentially discovered fission but got shafted because she was a German of Jewish descent in the late ’30s/early ’40s. According to the dramatization, she figured it all out while cross country skiing with her nephew (Robert Frisch) in Norway, then reported back to Otto Hahn, who took the Nobel Prize and ran, never recanting, even after the war. What an a-hole. (By way of a PS — Meitner refused to work on the Manhattan Project at any point, even though everyone else around her, including Frisch, was really into it. Admirable, though I didn’t live through that time so I can’t say really what I would’ve done).

Also watched most of a documentary about the founding of the African National Congress, and the last few minutes of the first part of a two-part show on Andy Warhol. It’s alright when PBS is pretty good while you’re sick.