“I am what I am, Leila,” Mr. Spock declares after the spores’ effect has worn off and his emotions are again in check. “And if there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else’s.”
An evening pause: For the engineers in the audience.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: From a 1966 television special.
Hat tip Danae.
An evening pause: Rickles is funny, in his annoying sort of way, but stick around to the end for the finish when Sinatra puts the final nail in the coffin.
Hat tip to Phil Berardelli.
An evening pause: Instead of relying on the modern boring use of bathroom humor and obscenities, watch Groucho make everyone laugh by simply reacting to circumstances in exactly right way.
Hat tip Danae.
An evening pause: Believe me, this has everything to do with engineering.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Link here.
An honest actor reviews the show he stars in: “Please stop watching it … Please stop filling your head with filth.”
Seven ways Star Trek changed the world.
The oldest known color videotape recording: President Eisenhower in 1958.
An evening pause: “Your name, sir?”
An evening pause: This is not what you think.
An evening pause: From a 1967 live television performance, one of the first ever broadcast by satellite around the world. Though this version has been colorized, the synch is off in the original. Also, in doing the colorization they cleaned up the recording, making it much clearer.
It is especially fascinating to watch Lennon and McCartney work together, chewing gum as they sing. And keep your eye out for Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and other rock performers in the audience.
An evening pause: A 1965 live television performance.
An evening pause: I sometimes think all human attempts at communication go like this.
Ten science fiction episodes that changed television.
I don’t know if these particular episodes changed anything. I do know, however, that any single episode that people are still talking about fifty years after it was aired (such as “Walking Distance” from the original Twilight Zone) as got to be special.
The television as envisioned by dreamers — before it existed.
R.I.P. Eugene Polley, inventor of the television remote control.
An evening pause: I think we’ve all seen this — or something like it — on television.
If you build it they will come: An engineer has proposed using the USS Enterprise from Star Trek as a model for building an interplanetary spaceship for exploring the solar system.
Though similar in scale and appearance to the USS Enterprise (“it ends up that this ship configuration is quite functional,” Dan writes), the “Gen1 Enterprise” would be functionally very different. Firstly, the main nuclear-powered ion engine (boasting 1.5 GW of power) would strictly limit the Enterprise to intra-solar system missions, being incapable of anything approaching faster-than-light speeds. However, Dan claims that the Gen1 would be capable of reaching Mars from Earth within ninety days, and reaching the Moon in three.
The website is Build the Enterprise.
