Instruction Manuals for the USS Enterprise | Cracked.com

With the comfy starship and the open-minded, humanistic captain, life in the Star Trek universe sure looks a hell of a lot easier than what we're doing now. But make no mistake, the USS Enterpr...

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Alpha Centauri, Mk. V (1981)

Three different shots of the fifth and final iteration of the Alpha Centauri, a spacecraft I built from scratch with my Legos. While borrowing liberally from the Phoenix from "Battle of the Planets," I still made many touches that were my own: rotating/angling gun turrets on top of the wings (that doubled as escape pods), rotating wing-mounted guns on the wingtips, retractable landing gear (well, only the front wheel - I ran out of the bendy pieces), and detachable fightercraft mounted to the top of the hull. There's even an openable cargo bay on the underside.

I started work on the first version sometime in 5th grade (so 1979 or thereabouts), and made progressively more complex versions, up to the fifth, completed in 7th grade (1981, when I was 12 years old). My best friend, Stan, told me, as only a 12-year-old can, "Man, this thing is really good. Don't ever take it apart!" And, with a spirit driven by fierce pride, almost 27 years later she's still in one piece.

Over the years, people have recommended that I glue it all together, which I've always abstained from, for that would destroy the very idea that it's made of Legos, which, by their very nature, are to be taken apart and put back together again in different ways. The fact that the inside of this spacecraft (I actually built a small crew compartment) hasn't seen the light of day since the first Reagan administration hasn't bothered me much.

I put up this post because of a guy named Mark who made a response to a comment I posted on a very strange little video on YouTube, which was the original inspiration for the ship's name. I won't try to explain the song, check it out yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iHqVyeluPw It's from about 1978, I believe, and it's Crystal Gayle singing the song "We Must Believe in Magic" on the Muppet Show. The weird, ethereal nature of the song (coupled with the fertile imagination of a pre-teen obsessed with all things sci-fi) resulted in the spacecraft pictured here. Mark says he was doing much the same thing the same time I was, in terms of building Lego replicas of spaceships. Ah, the life of a nerd in the late 70's...

Hello, my name is Simon, and I like to do drawrings

Modern ethics and the educational establishment

I just read an interesting article on Yahoo! News about the current state of morality and ethics in the public high schools in America. A survey of almost 30,000 high school students from 100 high schools nationwide were surveyed on topics ranging from theft to cheating and whatnot. Predictably, the results of the survey were dismaying - over 30% of students surveyed have stolen from a store in the past year, 64% have cheated on a test, blah blah blah. This isn't what has disturbed me about the content of the article.

What disturbed me was the statements made by Mel Riddle, of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. I quote:

"We have to create situations where it's easy for kids to do the right things," he added. "We need to create classrooms where learning takes on more importance than having the right answer." (emphasis mine).

Two points:

Create situations where it's easy for kids to do the right things? Is he kidding? Oh, because that's an appropriate model of what it's like to live in the world - I'm sure that adults in the corporate world never have to deal with questions of morality and ethics. I cannot disagree with this more. What kind of world will we be setting our students up for if we do not set high expectations for them? The fact that individuals in various fields (the mortgage industry, for example) have been able to lie and cheat their way to millions of dollars does not justify allowing such actions to continue. To quote the old saw, one must always pay the piper. Those who lie and cheat do eventually get found out, and then it all collapses around them. Far better than to "create situations where it's easy for kids to do the right things," we should be setting high standards of morality and ethics for them. As Katrina has pointed out, however, where there is no accountability for one's actions, there is no need for moral imperatives. When students are going to be passed on to the next grade regardless of their academic achievement, what motivation is there to excel? When a high school student can be handed a diploma for doing D minus work for four years, and then they can go on government assistance to get their bills paid for them (since they won't be able to get any kind of worthwhile job with only a high school diploma), then what is the motivation for wanting to succeed?

My second point:

Learning takes on more importance than having the right answer. Friends and neighbors, raise your hand if you want the bridge you're going to drive over tomorrow to be designed by an engineer who focused more on learning than on having the right answer. Or if you want to have your surgery done by a doctor who spent more time "learning" than getting the right answer.

Dispatch from just this side of Neverland

The Bug has taken a renewed interest in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan.

After heading up the stairs for bed, we could clearly hear her in her bedroom intoning,

I do believe in fairies, I do!

Sushi Buddy

I took The Bug out for a daddy/daughter date on Friday night, because it seemed we'd been missing good time together with just the two of us. To say that she's a verbal kid is quite the understatement - from the moment we left until the moment we got home, she spoke a blue streak - telling me all about her favorite Barbies, about what she wants for her birthday next month, who she's inviting to her sleepover, what she thinks of all her friends, on and on and on. I listened intently, watching this brilliant little mind click over as topic went to topic and idea jumped to idea, and she reveled in the joy of hanging out with just Dad.

Finally, about halfway through dinner, she stopped suddenly, and asked me, "Am I talking too much, Daddy?"

I asked her to come around to my side of the table, and, with tears in my eyes, I whispered in her ear, "it's okay, sweet Bug... I missed about six years of what you had to say, and we've got a lot to catch up on."

Weather, weather, everywhere

Okay, so we went from 100 degree plus weather a few days ago to the current temperature of 64 degrees with intermittent rain showers. Kinda crazy weather lately.

We were all woken up by the single loudest noise I think I've ever heard in my life Monday morning - a thunderbolt must have arced four inches above our roof, because the sound was literally window-rattling. Kat jumped up to check on the girls as I struggled to free myself from the mask of my CPAP machine, and all three of them slept right through it. Go figure. Thoughts of sleeping through a train wreck come to mind.