Hello World!

My younger son, the penguinologist, has been waiting to see Happy Feet since the film was first announced, so you can guess what we're doing this weekend. This is the son who engineered our family trip this summer to see penguins at zoos and aquariums in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Newport, Louisville, Memphis and Knoxville, plus separate trips to Baltimore for Breakfast with the Penguins at the Maryland Zoo and to Mystic for a Meet a Penguin encounter program at the aquarium there. We already have two stuffed Mumbles in our house: one came free with the Happy Feet Nintendo DS game at K-mart, and one we put together ourselves at Build-a-Bear, so it has a heart light and can say phrases from the movie.

March of the Penguins definitely made my son more commercially acquisitive of penguins. But it also made him aware of the World Wildlife Fund and Steve Irwin's trip to Antarctica, which in turn have made him more aware of the plight of wildlife all over the world, from the species of wolf being hunted nearly to extinction in Canada to the poison dart frogs dying out in shrinking South American rainforests to the snakes on the verge of extinction in Wisconsin because their protective status has been lifted for housing developers. He wants to work with wildlife, though he is worried about having to see injured or dying animals. He also wants us to put an ice rink in the basement like in Mr. Popper's Penguins so we can help rescue penguins from oil spills and things, but that is not happening.

My local paper thought parts of Happy Feet might be too scary for children because "aliens" (a.k.a. humans) are doing terrible things to their environment. Actually it doesn't bother me a bit if my kids worry that the penguins can't sing and dance because people aren't taking care of the planet. I'd rather there be real penguins in the wild for a long time to come than for kids to start thinking of penguins as something to see only at zoos and at the movies.

Trek BBS Today

Below are some of the topics currently being discussed at the Trek BBS:

-Why we love the Mirror Universe!

-Is the VHS dying of loneliness?

-Anyone got a PS3 line nightmare story?

Many more topics can be found at the Trek BBS!

Trek Two Years Ago

These were some of the major news items from November 2004:

• 'Enterprise' Crew To Journey To 'Babel'
  Though it was canon from the original Star Trek that no one had ever seen a Romulan until Captain Kirk's Enterprise in the episode "Balance of Terror", the Vulcan-like aliens triggered an unlikely alliance among Andorians, Tellarites and humans in a Star Trek: Enterprise trilogy beginning with "Babel One" - an episode whose title referred to the original series' "Journey to Babel", which also featured the Andorians and Tellarites.

• Shatner Loving Life, But Not 'Enterprise' Salary Offer
  William Shatner (Kirk) said that he "truly love[s]" Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy (Spock), and thought chances were "fair, at least" that he would appear on Enterprise, though Paramount did not wish to meet his salary demands.

• Blalock Blasts 'Enterprise' Executives
  Jolene Blalock (T'Pol) complained that new showrunner Manny Coto should have been promoted sooner and again declared her displeasure with the way her character and the show in general has evolved: "You can’t substitute tits and ass for good storytelling. You can have both, but you can't substitute one for the other, because the audience is not stupid. You can’t just throw in frivolous, uncharacteristic...well, bull and think it's gonna help the ratings!"

More news can be found in the archives.

Poll Results

Below are the results of the most recent TrekToday poll:

Who's Star Trek's best hope for an Emmy next year? Ron Moore for 'Battlestar Galactica' 36.7% - (294 Votes) William Shatner on 'Boston Legal' 34% - (272 Votes) Alexander Siddig on '24' 12.5% - (100 Votes) Someone else 5.2% - (42 Votes) Jeri Ryan on 'Shark' 4.1% - (33 Votes) John Billingsley on 'The Nine' 3.7% - (30 Votes) Kate Mulgrew on 'The Black Donnellys' 3.6% - (29 Votes) Total Votes: 800

Please vote in our new poll on weekend entertainment!

Happy Birthday!

Sunday, November 19th is the birthday of both Terry Farrell, who played Jadzia Dax in Deep Space Nine, and Robert Beltran, who played Chakotay in Voyager; Tuesday, November 21st is the birthday of both Alexander Siddig, who played Bashir in Deep Space Nine, and Laurence Luckinbill , who played Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

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