Remastered “Star Trek” - Set Phasers For Fun

I know The Next Generation had its day in the sun but anyone - and I will brook no argument on this matter - who contends that the original is not the greatest sci-fi series of all time instantly loses their nerd cred around here.

So if you are a TNG nerd - no, wait, if you can name more than three characters on any one of the later spin-offs - here is your chance for redemption. Episodes of the original Star Trek are being digitally remastered and will be heading into syndication again in honor of its 40th anniversary.

Since you’re all scientists you know that “digital remastering” means pretty much anything you want it to mean, like “smurf” does to smurfs or “celibate” does to Paris Hilton. The folks doing the work want to assure you there won’t be wholesale bastardization, like that guy G–rge L-c-s ( name omitted so he doesn’t appear in a column of brimstone and fire and suck my soul straight to Hell ) did with Star Wars.

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This study says that TV in the bedroom cuts the sex life in half. Now, this is an Italian study so maybe that skews the results. Italian men only want to have sex with someone else’s wife. And Italian women? Don’t get me started. If I had to have sex with Italian women, my sex life would be cut in half too. Unless it is Monica Bellucci. And then it would be something like 8X.

But it seems to make sense. No TV equals fewer distractions and more boredom - scientists inherently understand this important correlation. So hidden cameras, yes. TVs, no.

Sony is a Japanese company - and the Japanese hate everyone. I am always baffled when I am out in public in America and someone mentions how polite the Japanese are. Yes, they are outwardly polite; they just bottle up all that hatred. But every 60 years - BOOM - Pearl Harbor.*

I give most any man travelling to Japan this advice: If you are hopelessly lost in Japan and no one speaks English, walk up to the hottest girl you see and start talking to her. Within seconds, you will be surrounded by five Japanese men asking you in English if they can help you. Because the only thing Japanese people hate more than gaijin is the thought of a big gaijin having sex with one of their women.

How does this relate to science? It’s the science of marketing. You see, Sony game machines are basically black boxes with Nvidia graphics chips and some other stuff thrown in. So if you want to inject some sizzle into a product that can’t be customized from a technology point of view, you simply … make it a new color. What’s the opposite of black? White, of course.

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We established that Reuters reporters don’t understand English, so the Reuters name and their association with general incompetence is probably the only reason I noticed this.

A nifty article they write claims that Bush is the least popular among the last 10 Presidents but I don’t really care about their politics. What I care about are the numbers. They write:

“Only nine percent of the 662 people polled picked Bush as their favorite among the last 10 presidents. John F. Kennedy topped that part of the survey, with 26 percent, closely followed by Bill Clinton (25 percent) and Ronald Reagan (23 percent).”

Now wait a minute. I do numbers in my head all of the time so this makes no sense. If Bush got 9%, Kennedy got 26% Clinton 25% and Reagan 23%, that’s already 83% of the vote. From only four Presidents. So if there are 6 other Presidents in the poll, even if 5 of them got only 1%, that means only one other President could be ahead of him. If my math is correct, and it is, Bush was probably only 5 among the last 10 Presidents and it was only possible he could be sixth. So how did Reuters get last place out of that?