IT Insights Blog — Star Trek

There are many, many different conferences, conventions, and other gatherings that are themed around IT, education, or some combination of the two. Frequently, tech groups rope in celebrities (or at least "celebrities") to speak at such events. Former NBA MVP Shaquille O'Neal will be at CompTIA's ChannelCon event in August. Hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger will deliver the keynote address at (ISC)²'s Security Congress gathering in October.

In 2019, April 26 is still just a Friday. It's also, however, the day that Avengers: Endgame arrives in theaters, and that makes it more than just any old Friday. The way that superhero worship and comic book lore have come to dominate American pop culture in recent decades, you kind of get the feeling that we might someday have holidays that honor the made-up sacrifices of Earth's made-up mightiest heroes. It's an open secret that Iron Man (probably) dies in the new movie. April 26 = Tony Stark Day?

There's a marker in Riverside, Iowa, declaring the tiny rural town to be the "future birthplace" of Captain James T. Kirk. Yes, that Captain James T. Kirk. The official town motto is "Where the Trek Begins." There's even a Star Trek Museum, the Voyage Home Riverside History Center. All of this apparently goes back to a book written by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, The Making of Star Trek, in which Roddenberry asserts that Kirk was — or, you know, will be — born in Iowa.

As explained by Starfleet captain and occasional rock climber James T. Kirk at the beginning of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, the "most important reason to climb any mountain" is the root motivation for many, if not most, feats of human adventure and daring: "Because it's there." (Kirk is busy attempting to climb Yosemite's El Capitan.) A challenge exists, ergo I must overcome it. The impulse to prove ... something has inspired many a mountaineer to attempt the insurmountable.

Don't look now, but NASA just landed a spacecraft on Mars. Somehow, news of the landing broke Monday and Tuesday with (more or less) zero fanfare. Which is odd, considering that we just completed a successful process that involves flinging a spacecraft way up into the exosphere, piloting it across hundreds of millions of miles of deep space, and safely getting it down to surface, intact ...