beam him up, god

20 Jul 2005

James Doohan, well-loved and best-known as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the original Star Trek series, died early this morning of pneumonia and Alzheimer's Disease, at age 85.

When I heard the news, I thought of the scene in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, when Scotty is playing "Amazing Grace" on the bagpipes after Spock's death. Today those pipes play for him.

Coincidentally, today is also the anniversary of the Apollo 11 first manned moon landing on July 20, 1969 (which the almost seven-year-old me watched, idolized and longed to be part of). In honor of the latter anniversary, Google has incorporated lunar imagery into its wonderful Google Maps technology, at Google Moon. Zoom in all the way to find out what the moon is made of after all--albeit yellow, not green, as it turns out. You can also see the front page of the New York Times from the following day.

Posted by thom on Wednesday, July 20, 2005 at 1:54 PM

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This page contains a single entry by thom published on July 20, 2005 1:54 PM.

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Thom Watson was born in a "pro-America" part of the country but then grew up to become a gay, liberal, Harvard-educated atheist living in northern California. He has come to terms with the fact that this pretty much disqualifies him from ever holding public office.

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