Tag Archives: Star Trek

March 28, 2024 · 3:07 PM

10 Everyday Phrases with Nautical Origins #4

Picking up from where I left off in February, here are a few more everyday phrases that have been gleaned from the times when ships at sail were the most influential source of importing new ideas, foreign words and catchy tunes (such as shanties). The first of these phrases might be recognized by Star Trek fans, as the captain usually used this term or something similar to hand over the authority of the ship whenever he left the bridge.

Take the Conn: A term used to take over navigational duties on the bridge of a ship (this comes from the mid-1800s, during the age of iron-clad warships). Idiomatically, it means to take control of a situation. The word conn is either a noun or a verb and comes from conning tower – a raised platform from which the entire deck and surrounding environment can be observed.

Sailing Close to the Wind: Strong winds can be just as problematic at sea as no wind; strong winds can unexpectedly shift and take control of a boat’s direction, and many sailors will lower their sails until more favourable conditions exist. To use strong winds for sailing is risky and unpredictable but sometimes necessary; the modern term refers to taking risks that may be unreasonable, being close to breaking the law or going too far.

All Hands on Deck: A call to action – everyone must assist in resolving a problem or addressing a situation. During inspection or trouble, all hands were called to the deck; everyone needed to be present or accounted for, and working as directed.

On the Right Tack/Track: The correct course while sailing requires you to tack or move the sail to catch the wind to keep you on course. To take the wrong tack means to be off course, heading in the wrong direction. Tack has changed to track in a more modern language. Today it refers to Taking the line/course of action that leads to the correct conclusion.

Overboard: If cargo or people went overboard when sailing, the call “overboard” would be yelled out to draw attention to the event. With luck, the items or people could be recovered, but unfortunately, this was not often the case.

Abandon Ship: When a ship was sinking or being overrun by an enemy ship, sailors would need to abandon their posts and escape. The call to abandon the ship was considered a last resort.

As the Crow Flies: After crossing the oceans, sailors would watch for birds to detect nearby land. Following the direction of birds, such as a crow or seagulls, got them closer to shore to follow it to a port. Crows fly straight, and so it refers to the shortest distance between two points.

Tide Over: When a ship could not get under sail due to poor winds, they would ride the tide until the winds returned. If something tides one over, it will last until new provisions can be obtained or until conditions change.

High and Dry: If a ship was caught in low tide or ran up on the shoals, it might end up being stranded with no hope of recovery. The term was to be caught high and dry, as in up out of the water. It’s used today to describe the feeling of being abandoned, stranded, or helpless.

Sink or Swim: Tossing a person overboard resulted either in them sinking or swimming. The term was made popular in swashbuckling movies featuring pirates deciding on whether they should spare their captives or not. Today, it refers to either failing (sinking) or succeeding (swimming) in a task or an endeavour.

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January 10, 2019 · 6:02 PM

Columbus’s Egg

1200px-columbus_breaking_the_egg'_(christopher_columbus)_by_william_hogarth

Columbus Breaking the Egg, by William Hogarth, 1752

At the end of December, I began a new training course in crafting short stories; this has renewed my interest in finding good writing prompts. By focusing on something, you usually begin to see things related to it everywhere you go. For instance, if you’re doing a puzzle and focus on the edges, you’ll begin to see them right under your nose where they’d been all along – you just hadn’t seen them before because you’d been focused on a specific colour or a particular section.

My brain is usually on rapid-fire mode; in any given second, dozens of topics flash through my thoughts. Reaching into this stream and pulling out one particular topic to focus on can lead to interesting, related issues, and Columbus’s Egg is one of the results.

The original thought that I plucked from the stream this morning was, “How do you actually spell Kobayashi Maru?” (I know, right? I’m sure you had exactly that thought as soon as your feet hit the ground this morning; it’s just that my “morning” began this afternoon as I wrote through the night and got to bed at 9:30 this morning…) By looking it up, I came across the apocryphal story about Columbus:

The story goes that Christopher Columbus, while attending a dinner, was confronted with Spanish scoffers who said that, had he not been the first to discover the Americas, someone else would have done so. He made no answer but asked a servant to bring him an egg (presumably a boiled one). He then challenged everyone present: They must try to get an egg to stand on its end, with nothing to support it in that position. Everyone tried and failed; when it was Columbus’s turn, he tapped the tip of the egg on the table, and the crushed, flat end made the egg remain upright. the moral was that a solution is obvious to everyone, but only once it has been found by someone else.

brunelleschi's dome, duomo of florence

the dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral

The story is recorded in Girolamo Benzoni’s History of the New World, published in 1565, as he related it to Columbus, but it is likely apocryphal as the same anecdote was circulating 15 years previously about the architect of the dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral in Florence, Italy.

My original thought’s term, Kobayashi Maru, is a term that any Trekkie will be familiar with: It was a no-win scenario designed to test Star Fleet cadets’ characters in the face of certain defeat. The term has gone beyond Star Trek and is used in business to illustrate the importance of changing the rules of the game in order to win, i.e. re-evaluating the foundation of a particular business scenario.

There are other such related terms, such as the Gordian Knot,  Catch-22, and the Archimedean point. All of these concepts are about thinking outside the box, which is exactly what I try to do as a writer.  If you’re also a writer, catch those thoughts – write them down, and let them foment into something interesting! Keep writing!

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February 4, 2018 · 7:52 PM

Space: The Final Frontier

For you Sci-Fi buffs out there, that title will be very familiar, as it is the opening line of the Star Trek manifesto.  The novel I’m working on at the moment is just that – Sci-Fi, albeit not Star Trek.  It nevertheless takes me into space, and that’s always a fascinating thing!  So here are a few fun facts about what lies beyond our atmosphere:

  • Jupiter’s Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System, and is even larger than the planet of Mercury.
  • Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, with a surface temperature of 460°C. A day on Venus is 243 Earth-days long, but its year is only 224.7 days; Venus spins backwards on its axis.
  • Oxygen is the third most common element on the Sun, after helium and hydrogen.
  • A neutron star is the strongest known magnet in the universe, and such stars are among the fastest-spinning objects observed, spinning up to 500 times per second.
  • Since 1992, when the first exoplanet was discovered, there have been 3,728 confirmed planets in 2,794 systems, with 622 systems having more than one planet.
  • About 1 in 5 stars comparable to our sun have an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone (known to scientists as the “Goldilocks Zone”). It is assumed that there are 200 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy alone; based on that, there would be 11 billion potentially habitable Earth-sized planets in our galaxy (and up to 40 billion if you count red dwarf stars as well).
  • Proxima Centauri is the nearest star to us beyond the Sun.
  • Russia is larger than the entire surface area of Pluto.
  • The largest known star is Westerlund 1-26, which is 2,000 times bigger than the Sun.
  • Olympus Mons, on Mars, is the largest volcano in the solar system. Due to the low gravity of Mars and the lack of plate tectonics, it has been able to grow to three times higher than Mount Everest.
  • Dark matter and dark energy are thought to make up nearly 95% of all matter in the universe.
  • The Boomerang Nebula (also known as “the Bow Tie Nebula”) is the coldest known place in the universe, with a temperature of 1 K (−272.15°C; −457.87°F).
  • The Sun is growing, but we won’t have to worry about it for a few billion years, when it will become close enough to swallow the Earth.
  • On Mercury during the day, the Sun rises, stops, and then sets where it rose.  It rotates on its axis exactly three times for every two revolutions it makes around the Sun, meaning that, if you lived on Mercury, you would only see one day every two years.
  • The Sun’s core releases the equivalent of 100 billion nuclear bombs every second, and its energy is emitted as heat and light.
  • The storm on Jupiter known as the ‘Great Red Spot’ has been going on for at least 350 years; it’s so large that dozens of Earths would fit into it.
  • A supermassive black hole is thought to be present in the centre of nearly every galaxy, including our own (ours is a runt compared to the average size).
  • Shooting stars really aren’t stars; they’re meteors – and even then, they are often only dust particles falling through our atmosphere that vaporize due to the heat of friction with the atmospheric gases. If they are large enough to survive the journey through our atmosphere and impact on the ground, they are called meteorites.
  • We are in constant motion; planets move within the solar system, the solar system moves within the Milky Way Galaxy, which in turn moves within The Local Group of Galaxies; the local group is moving toward the Virgo Cluster.
  • Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard left two golf balls on the Moon in 1971.  They’re still there:  One is in the Javelin Crater, and the second fell near where the ALSEP (Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment) was deployed.
  • The Moon’s Javelin Crater gets its name because on the Apollo 14 mission, fellow astronaut to Shepard, Ed Mitchell, threw the Solar Wind Collector staff as a make-shift javelin.
  • Uranus has 27 known moons, all of which are named after characters from the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.
  • Jupiter has 69 known moons.
  • Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have no solid surface to land on, being comprised of gas.
  • Did you know that the Earth is actually a ringed planet by now?  At the last official count (2013), more than 170 million pieces of space junk debris smaller than 1 cm (0.4 in), about 670,000 debris 1–10 cm, and around 29,000 larger debris were estimated to be in orbit; these clouds (in both the geosynchronous Earth orbit and the low Earth orbit) make it hazardous for spacecraft, due to the dangers of collisions; they basically sandblast craft, which makes the launch of equipment like telescopes or solar panels extremely susceptible to damage.
  • Below 2,000 km (1,200 mi) Earth-altitude, debris are denser than meteoroids; most are dust from solid rocket motors, surface erosion debris like paint flakes, and frozen coolant from RORSAT nuclear-powered satellites (according to Wikipedia).  Maybe it’s actually a good thing that we can’t make it to other planets to colonize…

Below are images from APOD – enjoy!

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February 20, 2017 · 6:20 AM

Imagination vs Knowledge

Some say that imagination is more important than knowledge; to a certain extent, that may be true because imagination leads to new discoveries, inventions, and revelations.  But knowledge is often the basis for such discoveries; that which has been passed down by others who’ve researched, discovered, identified and recorded are the foundational stones upon which things are often built, whether in science, technology, or life in general.

beware-of-the-half-truth-wrong-halfIn this day and age, however, sometimes imagination overtakes knowledge (or simply ignores it).  An informed mind is a powerful tool; an uninformed mind can be a dangerous weapon.  This is true whether writing non-fiction, fiction, or passing on something on social media.  We should beware of the half truths – we may have gotten hold of the wrong half.

It’s now more important than ever to test the veracity of reports and even images; anyone can make an ass out of an angel, so to speak, with photoshop, et al.  How much misinformation is spread by simple carelessness or wilful misdirection (that includes, unfortunately, mainstream news media)?  Or by assuming that since something is from a trusted friend it must be true?  How often have you gotten upset by an article you’ve seen and commented on it, or passed it on, allowing it to form an opinion in your subconscious at the very least, and in your active thoughts at worst, only to find out later that it was a false report, a hoax, or sloppy journalism?

abraham-lincoln-internet-quote

As you probably know, I love to learn; I have a steel trap of a mind for little bits of trivia, like the fact that certain microbes concentrate and disperse (read “poop”) gold, or that all living creatures, including you and I, emit visible light (probably a byproduct of biochemical reactions).  As a writer of fiction that comes in handy; I can extrapolate knowledge and use it as a plot detail or a character quirk; but when I’m writing a blog, e.g. about a historical detail, I want to make sure I get it right.  A case in point was an article I wrote in 2014 about post-mortem photography in the Victorian period; it was by far the most popular post to date on that blog and continues to generate interest.  In particular, two points from the article were addressed, researched, and edited/corrected either in the article itself or in the comments and discussion that ensued.  Mistakes happen, but when I catch them, I will do my best to correct them!

For writers, it is important to cross-reference anything you find online, especially if you’re basing something significant on it such as character development, location, or plot.  Assumptions can also get you into trouble; I know that Geneva is part of Switzerland, but in writing 18th-century fiction, I need to be aware of the fact that it was merely an ally of the Swiss Confederacy from the 16th century, but only became part of Switzerland in 1814.  Any reference I have to it in my trilogy needs to reflect that fact.

I recently read a collection of short stories on Kindle, and on nearly every single Kindle page there were mistakes (that adds up to a lot of mistakes per manuscript page!):  Missing words that the authors assumed were there, typos, commas 2 or 3 words off-position, stray quotation marks, and countless words they assumed were the correct ones but obviously were not (e.g. catwalk instead of rampart for a castle).  This is where imagination overtook the writer, and knowledge gave way to ignorance…  I have understanding for one or two such errors in a manuscript of that length, but none whatsoever for several per page; that simply smacks of laziness and poor-to-no editing, and it boils down to an unintentional slap in the face to any reader who’s taken the time to read their story.

Knowledge without imagination is like a rusted hinge; imagination is the oil that makes the knowledge come to life, and the writer is the door handle that opens the door to new worlds, new ideas, new discoveries, and inventions. It sounds noble, doesn’t it?  But did you realize that many of the electronic gadgets we take for granted today were at one time birthed in the imaginations of men like Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek?  It inspired countless children who went on to become astronauts, scientists, and engineers, who made those science-fiction inventions become reality and discovered distant worlds (now known as exoplanets).  I’m waiting with bated breath for the transporter to replace airline security queues…

Those hinges are necessary, as is the oil, so that the door handle can do its job and get out of the way, allowing the world beyond to unfold.

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