Tired of the same old screaming heads on network and cable television? Me too. Do you really need movies about bestiality? Here is a recent CNN.com list of headlines that would send my dog running, and she’ll watch anything.

Senate Passes Iraq Bill Bush Will Veto (Yawn-What a Surprise)

Rosie O'Donnell leaving “The View” (Like, We Care)

Sheryl Crow's Toilet Paper Square Just a Joke (Anyone Laughing?)

Battle of the Baldwins (Another War of the Roses?)

Movies: “Zoo” (The Best? of Hollywood)

When The Stars Come Out

A famous astrologer opines that fiery Kim Basinger, a Sagittarius, and mad dog Baldwin, an Aries “create fireworks together.” I'd say more like the big bang. Apparently the volatile duo’s Sun signs make them “combustible.” Adding insult to injury, according to the astrologer, both birth charts are “seriously situated in Mars.” Isn't he the god of war? Hmmm.

An Earth-Like Planet

With Washington fiddling while Iraq burns; young people murdering young people in America, Americans dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, the one news story that lifts me out of the doldrums of despondency is a newly discovered “earth-like planet.” Although astrology is empirically unproven, and the science of astronomy is empirical, the sad Baldwin/Basinger affair seems an acceptable segue out of star gossip and into something a little more uplifting within the realm of the universe.

A Star is Born

I must have relatives living in another solar system because I’ve been a stargazer all my life. By age nine I’d memorized all the planets’ distance from the sun, and the locations of the constellations. Together with a few classmates (we were the Comets), the Hayden Planetarium became my hangout on Saturday afternoons. Their Zeiss projector was my gateway to the cosmos, from the beginning of time to the present. It put on a better show than any movie theater, well almost. Favorites are Jodie Foster’s “Contact,” and Jeff Bridges’ romantic “Starman.”

New Star in Town

The discovery this week by a European team of astronomers of a new planet in the constellation of Libra gets my adrenalin pumping. Apparently the newly found planet, given the unromantic name, Gliese 581c, orbits its red dwarf star, which is only about 7 million miles away from it. A red dwarf is a dim star. Some other dwarfs are even dimmer and appear brownish-red. By comparison, our own young brilliant sun star is safely over 92 million miles from planet earth and isn’t expected to become a red giant for another 5 billion years. So there's ample time before calling Homeland Security about the incinerating results of that big bang.

“We Can Go There”

We’re told that Gliese 581c has a surface temperature between 32 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit and it could easily have water. Children being born now, and their children, will be working on this discovery the rest of the century. One of the astrophysicists on the team says the planet is 120 trillion miles from earth and 20 light-years away. “We can go there,” he says. I don't want to dampen the man’s enthusiasm, but we haven’t figured out how to safely make the 35 million miles to Mars and back—supposedly in eight months. But if we stop paying for wars, we can do it and much more to enhance life on our own planet before we do have to leave it.

One Small Step For Man

In any case, the fact that earthlike temperatures and water may exist on Gliese 581c, may also mean life exists there; maybe not life as we know it, but modern man (homo sapiens sapiens) has proven his/her adaptability. And that’s what makes this whole business of space travel and colonization so fascinating to people with their heads in the stars. I wish that astronomer/astrobiologist Carl Sagan could have lived to experience this moment, another of the best of man’s accomplishments. You have only to spend a few moments looking up at night with even a small telescope to know the man was right.

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”—Carl Sagan