When is “act locally, think globally” not expansive enough? The Science Museum of Virginia provoked my thoughts on almost a weekly basis when my children were growing up, and it did so again on 7/23/2011.

The Museum offers a seemingly endless range provocateurs, and the current big boy is the IMAX film, “Hubble.” The theme is cliché: that this planet is a spec of dust within an immeasurable vastness. But “Hubble” overrides the cliché by doing something that I didn’t realize is possible: takes us on a real (not “artist-rendered”) ride through galaxies that are zillions of miles away. This is not stuff I’ve seen before. And of course my new question is how all this relates to my ongoing dilemma: which grocery line to stand in.