Ponies and Trekkies

FAMILY PORTRAIT: As I was working on cookies this morning Annabelle was creating a family portrait. She made a pony for each member in the family. I'm "Silver Word" because of my writing. Christian is "Water Works" because of where he works, Annabelle is "Paintbrush" because she likes to do art, and CJ is "Tech" because of his penchant for computers and gaming consoles.

Annabelle told me she made me purple for the Huskies with blue hair, representing the Mariners. Very nice touches. :)

KEEP ON TREKKING: This morning we watched a 90-minute Webcast from the National Air and Space Museum called "Star Trek's Continuing Relevance."

One of the panelists was Margaret Weitekamp of the museum's space history department. She shared some of the Star Trek-related items in the museum's collection, including a large model of the Starship Enterprise used in the original series and some authentic Tribbles. It's kind of amazing this stuff is even still around, because when Star Trek ended it wasn't the juggernaut it is today, with millions of Trekkies/Trekkers, conventions all over the globe, multiple spin off series, successful movie franchise, lucrative merchandising and more. Rather, it was 'just' a failed television series, canceled after three seasons. I'm glad somebodies somewhere thought to hang on to the artifacts, they're true treasures today.

Another panelist was Dan Hendrickson of the Aerospace Industries Association. Hendrickson spearheaded a campaign to get pro-space exploration ads to run before "Star Trek Into Darkness," the newest Star Trek movie, released this week.
Revenue to pay for the ads was raised through a crowdsourcing campaign (asking people who share the passion to demonstrate that with their donations). The group had hoped to raise $30,000, enabling them to screen the promo in a handful of cities. Fortunately, they ended up raising so much money (nearly $53,000), they were able to buy spots in all 50 states.

When I learned about the campaign, I immediately thought, "Well they should just use 'We Are the Explorers,' " a NASA-produced video making a compelling case for continued space exploration. And that's exactly what they did!

Unfortunately, they couldn't afford a 2.5 minute ad, which is the length of the original video, so it was whittled down to 30 seconds. Here's the edited version:

But you really should see the full length-one. :)