Monday, November 8, 2010

Can't Argue with Vulcan Logic

In the last 10-14 days, the weather here's gone from being 10+ degrees warmer than usual to about 10 degrees colder than usual (though it's warming up this week).  Waiting for the bus last week in the chilly rain, I was idly speculating on this abrupt shift.  When I got on the bus, an episode of Star Trek: Voyager was on.  Apparently, the crew was having difficulty beaming people down to this planet due to bizarre storms.  Tuvok said, "The only logical conclusion is that they are controlling the weather."



And hey, you know, that really does explain a lot.

The best line was when a teenage boy was complaining to his dad, who wanted him to stay home, living in their primitive culture, instead of attending Star Fleet, like "Dad, we have to start living in the 24th century!"  OK, it's not up there with "But I was going to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters" in the annals of SF teenage whining, but it was funny.

I dedicate this post to B., the one in Tam's program about whom she said, when I asked her to describe him, that he likes bad science fiction.  Apparently he is the "dweeb" of the group.  I know, you're thinking, But isn't Tam in a math PhD program - how can there be only one?

But as we all know, There can be only one.

(In the interest of full confession, I did immediately recognize the dude on Voyager as "Tuvok" even though I've probably seen fewer than half a dozen episodes of the show.  While you may be tempted to excuse this as just a function of my amazing intelligence - no.  There are people in my own program I have a harder time remembering the name of than this character from a minor Star Trek TV program.)

2 comments:

rvman said...

There can be, or at least is, only one "Tuvok". Most of the folks in your program have names you already have 'attached' to someone else.

I suppose whether you remember the name of the Polish? first year would be a test of this theorem.

Sally said...

Unfortunately, to remember his name, I would have had to have encoded it first, which I did not. It was too difficult for me to take in properly. Vulcan names are a lot easier than Polish names, I guess.