Utopia, you are standing in it!

Stardate: 5431.4 (2268)
Original Air Date: September 20, 1968
Writer: Lee Cronin (Gene L. Coon)
Director: Marc Daniels

“What have you done with Spock’s brain?”

At last, we arrive at the infamous season three opener which many fans regard as the worst episode in the whole series! A strange object is rapidly moving through space toward the enterprise via ion propulsion at a high velocity. Scotty marvels at its beauty –it even has its own internal atmosphere. Suddenly, a female humanoid lifeform appears on the bridge. She pushes a button attached to her wrist which essentially renders all lifeforms on the Enterprise unconscious –we later learn her name is Kara (Marj Dusay).

When the crew awaken, they find that Spock is missing. He is later found in sickbay on a table. Is he dead? No, he is “worse than dead” –his brain missing! Thanks to his Vulcan autonomic…

Stardate: 4842.6 (2268)
Original Air Date: October 4, 1968
Writer: Margaret Armen
Director: Jud Taylor

“I am Kirok!!”

Kirk, Spock, and Bones beam down to an idyllic planet rife with pine trees, a lake, honeysuckle, and orange blossoms –it appears to be exactly akin to earth only half a galaxy away. Suddenly, the crewmen spot a strange object composed of alloy and featuring a complex language scribed upon it. Who could have constructed such an obelisk? This planet known as Amerind (only in the script, not in the episode), has primitive tribes who seem to live peacefully alongside the banks of the water. The tribes carry a mixture of “Navajo, Mohican, and Delaware” characteristics. However, we soon learn that a massive asteroid is en route to destroy this planet, and the Enterprise crew have only thirty minutes on the surface before needing to depart and hopefully…

If it looks and sounds like a deranged cult, it probably is. The latest wheeze is pretending that functional, civil societies can live without coal, oil and gas. It’s perfect nonsense, to be sure, and symptomatic of an uneducated cohort who haven’t the faintest idea about what makes their safe and utterly privileged little lives possible.

This is a class of resentful, miserable misanthropes who live by an edict that fossil fuels are an unadulterated evil to be driven back to the earthly depths where they shall remain. None of which applies to their own selfish energy needs. Think pontificating actors, wannabe princesses and their royal beaus lecturing us about our energy use, as they traverse every inch of the globe in their private jets.

Amongst this brand of New-Age Puritan, ranting about oil, coal and gas, is all the rage. Sanctimony and outrage have overtaken logic and reason.

Theodore…

One of NZ’s leading economists Cameron Bagrie told the TV3 AM show on Tuesday the increase in wages in NZ is a “success” but we are getting to a point of too much success.

His warning came as the Dominion-Post reported what it called “an avalanche” of fair pay applications are expected to be made over the next few months as unions gather momentum to launch bids for better pay for workers under the new fair pay agreement law.

Fair pay agreements set out specific conditions and deals betweenworkers and employersin an industry or occupation, with the regime for establishing them coming into effect next month.

They can be triggered by support from 1000 workers or 10% of a workforce. The fair pay legislation stemmed from a major plank in the Labour Party’s election policy.

So how will that “avalanche” fit with what the Reserve Bank is trying…