Last year I commented about what was described as (and in fact was) the last public apperance by Jimmy Doohan, known to countless Star Trek fans as Scotty, the ship's engineer. I wrote that entry as a eulogy for him, knowing (and hoping, for his sake) that it wouldn't be long before he died. He died today, after a (comparatively and mercifully) short struggle with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and lung fibrosis (from his service in the Canadian military during WWII), at the age of 85.

I don't want to repeat everything I wrote before, but I'll say that Scotty was always my second-favorite character on the original Star Trek (after Spock), but Jimmy was probably my favorite member of the cast. I've never heard a bad thing said about him by anyone who ever met him, which included a lot of people. He didn't get along with Bill Shatner, but that's because of Shatner's ego. His fans included not only countless future engineers, but Neil Armstrong, the man who actually did go Where No Man Has Gone Before (exactly 36 years before Jimmy died). Unlike some actors who chafe at being typecast, or has-beens who cling to their past stardom like a life preserver, Jimmy grew to enjoy the fame that Trek brought him, and tried his best to give back to his fans. Next-Generation actor and self-described geek Wil Wheaton, commented that "Everyone who watched Star Trek liked Scotty, but everyone who met him loved Jimmy."

Once when asked about hearing the catch-phrase (which - for the record - was never actually spoken in an episode of the series) "Beam me up, Scotty," repeated over and over and over, he answered, "I'm not tired of it at all. Good gracious, it's been said to me for just about 31 years. It's been said to me at 70 miles an hour across four lanes on the freeway. I hear it from just about everybody. It's been fun."

Which pretty much sums it up.

May your dilithium crystals be fully charged, your matter/anti-matter reaction balanced, your wee bairns well cared for, and I wish you a safe and painless transport to your final shore leave.

Energise.

If you follow technology news, there's a good chance you've heard that Apple has announced that they'll be switching to Intel processors in their Mac line, starting next year. This is fairly big development, and not just because of how it affects CPU manufacturers like Motorola, IBM (who makes Apple's current PowerPC CPUs), AMD, and (obviously) Intel.

One of the interesting implications of this is that, for the first time ever, Apple computers will be able to run Windows. Not through an add-in board like the Performa machine back in the 90's, and not through Virtual PC software which turns a fast Mac into a slow Windows machine. I mean simply running Windows. If you want, you'll be able to strip out Mac OS X and replace it with Windows XP.

At that point, "Macintosh" will cease to be a separate platform from the rest of the desktop-computing industry. Macs will be "PC compatible", and Apple will be just another brand of PC.

Of course the key difference is that only Apples will be able to run Mac OS X. Apple has promised to make it impossible to do this on anybody else's PCs (though it remains to be seen how successful they'll be at that). OS X is a really great operating system, so I don't expect much of anybody who buys an Apple will really erase OS X and replacing it with Windows. But some of them might still replace it with Linux. In fact, some already do; there's a version of Linux engineered specifically to run on Macs.

But whether or not OS X gets hacked to run on Dells or HPs, this will point out to consumers that: PC ≠ Windows. People (even technical people who should know better) refer to the "PC version" of a program such as Photoshop, when they really mean the "Windows version". That's an important distinction, because there are PCs out there that don't run Windows. More than a few of them, in fact. Most of them run Linux, a smaller number run FreeBSD or one of its cousins, a few run BeOS, and so on. I have a bunch of PCs on my network; only two of them run Windows-compatible application software.

I can see a lot of future Apple owners installing both Windows and OS X on their Intel-powered Macs, and selecting which OS to run depending on whether they want to surf the web safely or do video editing (OS X), or play games or run some specialised shareware app (Windows). Owners of Dell or HP PCs might respond by installing both Windows and... Linux (second cousin of OS X, with similar anti-spyware/virus advantages), or a revitalized BeOS (a great multimedia OS that Microsoft conspired to keep locked out of the market).

The bottom line may be that people stop thinking that buying a PC necessarily means using Windows. And that can only be good for the technology industry, by poking a hole in the Microsoft near-monopoly and perhaps even restoring competition to the software market.

Sparta, Michigan is one of those places where if Forrest Gump were visiting for the day, the average IQ in the town would go up.

At least that's the impression I get from the actions of their Village Council, which (with one dissenting vote) is forcing a couple to spray herbicide all over the developing meadow in their back yard, and to replace it with grass. Mowed and watered grass.

Scott and Keri Greenup decided a while back that rather than wasting untold gallons of water and gas trying to keep their back yard looking Astroturf®, they'd develop it into a more natural native meadow with native grasses and wildflowers. (To keep the neighborhood looking suitably uniform, they kept the vegetation in the front yard all dark-green and stubby.) A couple of the retards in their neighborhood complained, apparently believing that Kentucky Blue Grass is what God intended to be grown here in Michigan. And it turns out there's an ordinance on the books in Sparta that aims to enforce that commandment.

The Greenups didn't give in without a fight. They took the matter to the appropriate government panel which actually recommended a change in the orinance, to let these people make that reasonable choice about how to manage their property. The Sparta Village Clavern voted 7-1 against that.

Village Idiot (or "Councilman" or whatever they call them) Bob Whalen said, "If you're going to allow one person to do it, you've got to allow anyone to do it." Duh. That'd be a stroke of brilliance... except that he apparently thinks that's an argument against repealing the brain-dead ordinance.

Fellow Idiot Todd Johnson said of their recovering meadowland, "It's not my idea of a manicured flowerbed." No shit, Sherlock. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be healthy and practical, not an artificial hobby showpiece.

When it comes to the whole "property rights" topic, I tend to be a skeptic. I don't abide by the radical anarcho-libertarian viewpoint that "owning" a piece of land means you can do whatever the hell you want to do with it (e.g. dumping toxic waste). The community ought to have a say as well. But only if they're smart enough, and willing to consider reasonable requests to do something "different".

In the U.S. Southwest, where the general scarcity of water has made the idiocy of golf-course-like yards obvious even to the local Villiage Idiots, natural yards are catching on. But not even the obscene current price of gas is enough to get the retards in Sparta to grasp that landscaping of this sort should be encouraged, not banned. I'm not about to go around demanding that people stop mowing their lawns, cease irrigating their faux fairways, and let their property return to the way God created it. But if someone wants to make that very sane and practical choice, the law shouldn't stand in their way. You don't need to be a genius to grasp that. Normal intelligence would be enough.

If I hear another veteran arguing that we need to protect the American flag from protesters who might burn it, I'm going to punch him in the face. Anyone who says that is a disgrace to the uniform he once wore.

Understand: I have a great deal of respect for veterans. My uncle flew combat missions in Vietnam, and I'd salute him in a heartbeat. Vets deserve appreciation for their service. But when someone says that the physical banner of the United States is more important than the principles embodied in its Constitution, they are demonstrating contempt for their country. And in the case of a veteran, they're violating the very first article of the oath they took, swearing to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States". Whether they like it or not, the Constitution (as upheld by the Supreme Court) says that the right to burn the flag as a form of protest is protected by the First Amendment. I don't agree with everything the Supremes say, but a soldier challenging their authority is flirting with treason.

There's nothing in the military service oath about protecting the flag; that's just a bit of conditioning they use in boot camp to enforce discipline and promote team morale. Honoring the flag and protecting it from physical harm are noble things. But they don't take precedence over the Constitution and their oath to uphold it.