Star Trek

[Valka]

Yes, he really is James Doohan's son, Chris Doohan. He does a great job of playing Scotty.

[Buster's Uncle]

You didn't know, Geo?

[Geo]

I do now.

[Unorthodox]

is that real? I might have to get me some of that.

please tell me it's Kirk, none of the other captains have any business dealing with the apes. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I understand it's real, and that sure ain't Picard's uniform...

[Geo]

Now, did 'Trekverse went ape, or was someone monkeying around?

[Buster's Uncle]

[Buster's Uncle]

Orion: I’m on Board – Nichelle Nichols

[Buster's Uncle]

Opinion: ‘Star Trek’ time capsule 2047 launches as Earth burns
MarketWatch
Paul B. Farrell  Oct 14, 2014 8:13 a.m. ET



Patrick Stewart as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “The Inner Light.”



One very special “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode haunts me. From stardate 45944.1: “The Inner Light” gives us a brief glance at the star-crossed future of two civilizations. One boldly exploring new worlds. The other leaving behind a brief snapshot of its mysterious death. A bold metaphor for our own planet, in the near future, perhaps 2047?

The facts: The U.S.S. Enterprise is on a research mission, completing a magnetic survey of the Parvenium system when it encounters a probe floating in space. Suddenly a telepathic energy bolt drops Capt. Jean-Luc Picard on the deck, unconscious.

He wakes up on a strange planet. Dazed, recovering from a fever as “Kamin.” He cannot recognize his wife. Friends think he’s delusional, mumbling about being a starship captain.

Time passes. He gradually adapts to this new reality on this far-off world. Memories of his prior life slowly fade. He falls in love with his wife again, raises a family, his children give him grandchildren. He lives the quiet, peaceful life he never imagined in his space travels.

The planet’s natural resources gradually disappear as temperatures rise. Water gets scarce. Desert lands replace forests and rich farmlands. Food supplies depleted. The planet is dying. Near the end, he stands alone, a wide brimmed hat shielding his eyes from the blinding sun, watching the launch of a rocket, soaring into the clouds, contrails disappearing into the heavens, carrying the final record of a great civilization on a once-rich planet.

Suddenly the probe powers off. Picard wakes up on the floor of the Enterprise bridge. Only a few minutes had passed. Back in command. Engines power up. They accelerate to warp, continuing on their mission, boldly going where no one has gone before.

Picard is left with long memories of a simpler life on a planet that vanished thousands of years earlier. Alone in his quarters, Picard begins playing the flute retrieved from within the drifting space probe. A haunting melody fills his ship ... time and space fade to black.

A metaphor for Earth? Perhaps, but which one? We live with 7.3 billion people today. By 2047 the United Nations estimates the population will rocket to 10 billion, with everyone competing with America’s 400 million capitalists for ever-scarcer resources.

Yes, huge odds against us, with the rest of the world outnumbering us 22 to 1. Every nation, every society, everyone fighting for their own version of the American Dream, in an unsustainable lifestyle war that will require the resources of not one but six planets.

An impossible quandary in a world where population demographics — the bubble of all bubbles — becomes the force driving all other bubbles, economic, political, cultural. The ultimate force driving us in an accelerating trajectory into an unsustainable reality on a planet that can never feed 10 billion people.


WWIII 2020: Capitalism on a winning streak, climate keeps losing

That’s right, by 2047 Planet Earth will be incapable of feeding 10 billion people. Many already own over a million cars that also feed on an endless supply of gas. This dilemma is clear in Naomi Klein’s new classic, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate”: “There’s something fundamentally wrong with the way we’re organizing our economy and thinking about our place on the planet.” Yes, capitalism. And as Einstein would say, we cannot fix the problems of capitalism with capitalist solutions.

Still, capitalists believe capitalism is the solution to everything. Stalemate. Only worldwide revolutions shift this paradigm. Which are likely to come, but too late. We’re in denial: We get wake-up calls from many leaders like Klein. But our brains are wired to ignore them. Gallup polls confirm: Global warming is not a major national issue for 76% of Americans.

None of this is new: America had a huge wake-up call over a decade ago at the launch of the Iraq War. In the “Pentagon’s Weather Nightmare” Fortune analyzed a classified George W. Bush Defense Department report on climate and global warming, one that sounds eerily like the Star Trek scenario.

Yes, our own Pentagon predicted global climate wars, coming even before 2047. Listen: “The climate could change radically, and fast. That would be the mother of all national security issues … massive droughts, turning farmland into dust bowls and forests to ashes … by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is happening, an old pattern could emerge — warfare defining human life.”

Too many people, too few resources, competing interests, the clock’s ticking loudly. And 2020 is dead ahead.

Get it? We have been warned. Many, many times. Even by America’s own generals and our war machine. But America just keeps digging, deeper and deeper, into our collective denial. We get wake-up calls. We ignore them. Nothing new, we prefer denying reality.

Are we “boldly going” anywhere? Should America launch its own time-capsule probe now? In 2020? Wait till 2047, when it may be too late to do anything about it?

Let’s here from you, in the comment section below. And if you can’t be civil, don’t be snarky, try rational. Be on your best behavior, or silent. We may post the best of the best. Advice, policies and decisions that articulate what future civilizations need to know about our experience on global warming and climate change ... from both the right and the left ... what works, what didn’t. How to build opportunities. Avoid mistakes. Do the right thing.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/star-trek-time-capsule-2047-launches-as-earth-burns-2014-10-14?siteid=yhoof2

[Geo]

Stupid article.

[Valka]

Why do you think it's stupid?

[Geo]

Ameri-centric all the way. Why assuming the rest of the world is still reaching out to get the inside  American Dream? A concept that's largely been dead anyway even within USA borders.

[Unorthodox]

Ran into a guy at work that has a doodad that makes the door sound whenever someone enters his office.  Made me smile.

(there's also 2 other Halloween wackos at work but they are more of the store bought collector variety)

[Buster's Uncle]

Star Trek TAS music.

[Mylochka]

Only tastes good at night!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6dnms69R40