When I was growing up in New Hampshire, I used to go hiking a lot with a group of friends. One of our running jokes was to announce that we had to go “due North”, which always meant up the mountain, no matter what direction it really was. I’m not sure why it was so funny, but it was.<\/p>\n
Last night my Anne and me were watching Star Trek Enterprise because for some reason, this is one of the shows we agree on. (Sidenote: have you noticed that they jazzed up the theme song a little bit this season? They sped it up a bit and added some drums. It’s still pretty melancholy, but what do you expect from Diane Warren<\/A>? It could only be worse if Celine Dion was singing it. OK, it isn’t quite Deep Space Nine depressing, but it’s up there.)<\/p>\n The whole crew seems like they need some sort of group anger management therapy session this season. The captain is torturing people and they’re all making brash decisions go after the Xindii, some new race that burned a big hole through Florida in an act of galactic ‘terrorism’. Now Enterprise is sent on a mission to find these Xindii and I assume bomb the hell out of them. Sound familiar?<\/p>\n Anyway, the captain is barking his usual obvious reactive commands: Then maybe all this anger gets him confused because he says this: Umm, North? What exactly is North way out in outer space? If you haven’t been paying attention “North” is defined as the direction towards Earth’s North Pole or usually as we measure it, towards a particularly magnetically attractive area of earth someone near the North pole.<\/p>\n So how exactly do you define North in outer space? If they’re using Earth’s notion, then any direction is going to be directly back to Earth for a few light years. <\/p>\n ‘Years’ have their own set of problems too. What planet? Why should Earth be the definition? <\/p>\n I hope we never encounter beings from another planet. Integration is going to be a bitch. We can’t even get computers with different software running on them to work properly together. How are we going to get machines made by different species working together?<\/p>\n
\nEnsign: They’re hacking into our computer!
\nCaptain: Block them!<\/p>\n
\nCaptain: Change our course 22 degrees North!<\/p>\n