Going where no one has gone before: Star Trek, A First Review

I don't want to spoil or influence the experience for anyone who will be seeing it in the next few days. All I will say at this point is that the show was all I could have hoped for, and more. And I'll be seeing it again in the next few days.

Once the initial surge has died down, I'll post some more detailed impressions.

Edit
A blurb on Entertainment Weekly posted 5/8/2009:
"J.J. Abrams' Star Trek is on its way to boldly going where no Star Trek movie has gone before: to a huge opening weekend. The film bowed at 7 p.m. Thursday night and grossed an impressive $7 million in 3,849 locations. Sure, those numbers were boosted by the geeky fanboys who were salivating to catch the movie as soon as possible. Still, such a great start should help propel Star Trek's weekend gross to as high as $75 million. Quite impressive for a franchise that was considered dead a few years ago."

Darn right. And proud of it!

Stung, stung, and stung again.

As I traveled the world over a period of 20 years, I would always bring back little souvenirs to my then-wife. When that relationship ended, some of these trinkets found their way back to me.

I sold a number of them on eBay, and in the process discovered that a number of items that had been represented to me as being solid 14 karat gold or better, were something else altogether.



Each of these pieces were purchased at "reputable" jewelry stores, not street-vendors. I did what was necessary to make the eBay transactions right, but it makes me wonder how much else that is sold in these stores is just plain jiggery-pokery.

It has made me look at jewelry stores in an entirely different light, and I will certainly be much more careful in future, particularly in other parts of the world.

Immigration: Trashing the Rule of Law, and Loving it

In an article recently published on CNN.com, Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote:

"In a stunning rebuke of how the government has previously gone about prosecuting illegal immigrants, the Supreme Court this week unanimously ruled that a heavy-handed federal identity-theft law cannot be used against illegal immigrants who simply use fake Social Security numbers to get jobs."

Somehow, the Supreme Court felt that if you're issued a phony Social Security Number, you have to know that it belongs to a real person and that you intended them harm in order to be prosecuted for identity theft.

Just another example showing how attorneys, unions and businesses who thrive and profit from the continued presence of illegal workers in this country are bound and determined to circumvent immigration laws at any and all costs. Just follow the money.

We need guest workers in this country; I, for one, don't want to pay $20.00 for a head of lettuce. But blanket nullification of our laws for the benefit of those who would profit most is not the answer. It's also an insult to every citizen of our country who went through the arduous but normal process of naturalization, such as my Italian grandparents.

We need a viable and implementable guest-worker program which will serve to meet our labor needs and also protect the basic rights of the workers. In the meantime, those who break the law should be dealt with as the law requires.