Tag Archives: Star Trek

George Takei

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Star Trek Insigna

Star Trek Insigna

Last night, we got to hear the actor and activist George Takei speak at the Touhill. Mr. Takei first came to prominence in the sixties through his role on the TV series Star Trek. He played the character Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu. As Takei explained, Gene Roddenberry, the Star Trek creator, had a social agenda when he created Star Trek. Through the allegory of science fiction, Roddenberry wanted to discuss the real-world social issues that then were considered too controversial for television. Roddenberry envisioned the starship Enterprise as a surrogate for the planet Earth and its crew, all mankind. Among the crew were representatives from around world. Scotty was Europe, Chekov the communists, Uhura Africa and Sulu Asia. He chuckled at his pairing, since he had grown up in LA and only looked Asian.

Takei was five-years-old, living in LA, when in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor he, his family and 100,000 other Japanese-Americans were rounded up at gunpoint and sent east to be interned in concentration camps. He spent the remainder of the war, growing up behind barbwire in southern Arkansas. After the war, penniless, his family returned to LA, but then could only afford to live on Skid Row. With some bitterness, he recalled the smell of urine there, but then you could see chest swell with pride when he related that within just a few years the family was able to move to a house on Wilshire Blvd.

As an activist, George Takei is most famous for his involvement in the Gay Rights movement. To protect his acting career, he remained closeted for a long time. He dated girls in high school, but on double dates he was more interested in the other guy than either of the girls. He credited his ability to act for getting elected class president and making it through high school. When he did come out, he became very active in the LGTBQ community and his acting fame gave him an effective soapbox to champion the cause. In the Q&A afterwards, he introduced his life partner, his hubby, who was in the audience.

His talk was nice, but his performance during the Q&A was amazing. This week’s elections were an undercurrent throughout the evening that bubbled to the surface then. One questioner asked Takei for his thoughts about certain cavalier campaign comments on the use of nuclear weapons. He responded with some personal history. Before Pearl Harbor, but sensing the inevitability of war, his grandparents, his mother’s parents and her younger sister, his aunt, moved back to Japan. They were in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped. His grandparents were spared by an intervening hill, but his aunt and her young child, a cousin that he never met, perished in the flames. To everybody’s underlying concerns, he offered some perspective. FDR is now considered to be one of our great leaders, but his internment order was awful. Our people’s democracy is a messy thing. It often leads to two-steps backwards for every step forward. Work for what you believe in and then, live long and prosper.

Take Me to Your Leader

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Take Me to Your Leader

Take Me to Your Leader

I was pleased to hear that House Republicans caved and passed the funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, not only for my usual partisan political reasons, but also for personal reasons. We are planning on visiting Washington DC and the prospect of another government shutdown, even only a partial one, was not very appealing. The last time we had planned to visit our nation’s capital was in 2011 and that trip ran afoul of another government shutdown. We ended up going to Chicago instead of DC that year.

When we get there, part of our time will certainly be spent visiting the Smithsonian Institute, which has just this week promulgated new rules banning selfie sticks. A Selfie Stick is a 2-3’ pole that holds a cellphone and gives the user a better camera angle from which to take a picture of themselves and their friends. The good ones are Bluetooth enabled for remote shutter release. The reason given for this ban was that the use of selfie sticks was causing too much congestion in crowded areas of the museum. Tripods and monopods were already banned, but handheld photography is still permitted. The Saint Louis Art Museum banned selfie sticks last week, so this must be a trend.

I had contemplating acquiring one, but now I’m not so sure. It is sort of the same for me with drones. I’m speaking of those little quad-copters that can be remotely controlled and can carry a GoPro camera. I’ve seen some to die for movies made with these little gizmos. Unfortunately now, drones are even more notorious and more of a pariah than selfie sticks are. If I got one and started flying it around, I might find that the cops could be showing up soon thereafter.

Another new word that I have recently learned is Spocking. Spocking is of Canadian origin and with last week’s passing of actor Leonard Nimoy, has become all of the rage there. Simply put, Spocking involves the “defacement” of the Canadian $5 bill, the one with the picture of former Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier on it. His image makes a near perfect canvas for drawing Spock’s picture over it. I think that evil Spock, with the beard, looks the best. The Bank of Canada has taken note of this phenomenon and has commented on it, “Spocking is not illegal, but it is just not what Canadians do.” I think that they are completely right. A much more Canadian practice would be Kirking, because after all William Shatner hails from Montréal.

Live Long And Prosper

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Star Trek Insigna

Star Trek Insigna

This is e-week or in the vernacular, Engineering Week. The purpose of this week is to celebrate engineers and all that they do for us. Being an engineer myself, this celebration is more than a little self-congratulatory. Still, it is a relatively arcane discipline, practiced by many of the most eccentric folks that I know. To non-engineers, my colleagues must appear as the very embodiment of geek-dom. The Fashionista would be appalled with our dress code. Our body images tend to segregate themselves into either pencil neck geeks or overweight fatties, with few of us in the happy middle. As a group, we are not even the most personable of people. If we were still in high school, we would all be trying on locker overcoats for size. So we are not much to look at or be around, but then we are not being paid for are good looks or personality anyway. We do things. We create things. We make our modern life possible. When you buy some new techno-bauble it is me you should thank. When your car starts it is me you should thank. When your toilet flushes it is me you should thank. You’re welcome!

This celebratory week was tinged with sadness with news of Leonard Nimoy’s death today. An actor that has been ambivalent about his role as Mr. Spock on Star Trek, he served as a lightning rod for my kind. I heard him speak once at a Star Trek convention in Dallas. My brother Chris and I went there together. Jewish, he spoke at length about his then upcoming series of Hanukkah stories that I later listened to on NPR. His talk was an interesting departure from the rest of that convention’s program, still he held the audience. I still hear his voice daily. I play a video game, Civilization that tracks humankind’s progress from the Stone Age to tomorrow. Every time a new technology is invented, Nimoy’s voice recites an appropriately famous quote. His spirit will be missed.