Feb. 27--Oh, Spock, it was always you. It was you we needed. Captain Kirk and Mr. Sulu and Lt. Uhuru, they were great, but you were the glue that held that iconic TV show and all the movies that followed together.
You were the one who made sense of things. You were the voice of science. Of logic.
You didn't yell or hurl invectives. You calmly evaluated a wrong-headed idea and rendered judgment: "Highly illogical."
And you leave us now, just when it seems we need logic the most.
News of Leonard Nimoy's death today, at age 83, hit many of us like a phaser set to stun. He was an actor who fully lost control of his identity. He was Spock from Star Trek. We wouldn't let him be anyone else, and he seemed to be OK with that.
He signed all his tweets, up until the final one sent Feb. 23, "LLAP." Live Long and Prosper. Spock to the end.
He departs at a time when science is routinely questioned and logic is often ignored.
Scientists and doctors tell us vaccines are safe, but some still refuse to believe, putting children at risk.
Scientists reassure us of the low probability of Ebola transmission in this country, yet politicians and the populace freak out when a case or two is reported.
Science and common sense warns us of the harm pollution can cause the environment, but some stand up in defiance, advocating for relaxed environmental rules or tweaking diesel truck emission controls so they belch as much black smoke as possible.
All of it highly illogical.
On Thursday, Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe held up a snowball as he spoke on the Senate floor, supposedly making a point about climate change.
"We hear the perpetual headline that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, but now the script has flipped," Inhofe said.
Climate change doesn't mean no snow, Sen. Inhofe. And as NASA reports: "The year 2014 ranks as Earth's warmest since 1880, according to two separate analyses by NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists."
Your snowball stunt, senator, is highly illogical.
We're better than all this. We shouldn't create a culture that looks down on scientific facts or brands educated people "elitists." We should celebrate knowledge, follow it and be lucky it's there to guide us.
Back in November, Nimoy tweeted: "I turned off the talking politicos. Too much jabbering at each other. Not enough care about humans. LLAP"
He was a smart one, that Spock. He followed logic, he made sense of things, and that's what endeared him to us.
The best way to remember him now is to remember the logic he espoused while traversing a fictional frontier. And to apply it more often to the world we actually inhabit.
Live long, live logically, and prosper.
rhuppke@tribpub.com
