Good stuff on the tube

The wife, kid and I had dinner at our neighbor's house the other night. It was nice to get out o the house, even if it was only across the street. The kid was a complete angel, as usual. She sat next to the table and talked to herself while we ate. I also got to try some of the best Scotch I've had in a long time. Lagavulin Single Malt, I believe it was. good stuff.

We got home, put the kid to bed, and turned on the TV. We flipped over to the History Channel and watched a documentary on The Sun, full of completely useless information like: "If the sun were made of wood, it would burn for about 5,000 years."

OK, maybe not completely useless. That may come in handy later.

I quite enjoyed it, not only because it was informative, but it also featured Dr. Holly Gilbert, one of the most attractive physicists I've seen in quite a while. Which brings me to this: Dr. Gilbert is not only a preeminent scientist in her field, but also does a fair bit of work with organizations that encourage girls and young women to get involved in the sciences. My (slightly) older sister and I grew up in a world where we were always told that we could be pretty much anything we wanted to be. For my sister, tho, there was a dearth of real-life examples to look up to. NASA didn't fly a woman into space until Sally Ride in '83, and the Navy didn't get a female fighter pilot until '94.
As the father of a 5 month old baby girl, I actually hope that when the time comes, she won't have the opportunity to be the first woman to do anything. It will already have been done by someone else.