When I was younger and watching Star Trek, mostly what I heard about was that they didn't get along very well. Galaxy Quest did a nice job showing the difficulties of the arrogant captain and the lesser crew. In recent years, they seem to have mellowed somewhat, appearing in each others' commercials and showing up at comic-cons together. Leonard Nimoy got to hang around a little longer in the new Star Trek series as the longer-lived Vulcan ambassador, appearing a few times in Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1991 and in the most recent reboot of Star Trek Into Darkness in 2013.
My favorite video from Leonard Nimoy occurred a few years ago when Bruno Mars came out with "The Lazy Song." Bruno's original is one of the best videos. Leonard's take on it is pretty amazing as well.
Threadless came out with a hoodie by Paulo Bruno called "Spock Hand" which allows the wearer to wish everyone to Live Long and Prosper by unzipping it a ways. You can see it here.
I spent some time talking to the kids after I heard about Terry Pratchett's death. It was not unexpected. He had advanced Alzheimer's Disease and had been doing poorly in recent weeks. Nate remarked that there were not many outside cultural interests in his life that had a greater effect than Terry Pratchett's books. We have read them all - 40 novels about a discworld that sits on the backs of four elephants who ride on the back of the great turtle A'Tuin. I had heard or read about them in the mid 80's somewhere and decided to look into them. There were a couple in the book store but that was all. We ended up ordering several paperback copies from Amazon.co.uk and having them shipped from England. It was the first thing I bought that I paid for in pounds rather than dollars. Within five years they were much more prevalent in US bookstores, although I still have my account and password from Amazon UK just in case.
The first few books in the series are not as good, as expected of a new author. When I read about his death I downloaded "Eric" onto my Kindle and read it through that night. It is #9 in the sequence and contains two of my favorite characters - Rincewind and Death. It is a very funny book and tells a lot about our desire for fame and riches and what we would do to get them. It includes some sufficiently silly lines: "Where does that door go? I think it just stays there." and a few other thoughtful ideas as well:
Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.
“The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight.”
“The Tezuman priests have a sophisticated calendar and an advanced horology," quoted Rincewind.
"Ah," said Eric, "Good."
"No," said Rincewind patiently. "It means time measurement."
"Oh.”
“Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind.”
So enjoy a Discworld novel this week in honor of Sir Terry Pratchett. If you are not sure where to start, this handy chart from Pinterest may help. Happy reading!!!!!
I've never seen that chart before, and I love it.
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