Category: "Hmmm…"

Is that a real thing?

"From Research Organizations…"

I wish I could track down the original article this was drawn from, because it sounds legit.

Never mind. Found it. ?

I love his explanation of Liminal Spaces. Who among us has not experienced those feelings?

The first thing that came to mind in his description of Liminal Spaces were the settings used in the television adaptation of Steven King's The Langoliers. (Roundly panned by King aficionados, but not being familiar with the source materials, I found it quite creepy.)

Thinking back over my own life, it's amazing how many Liminal Spaces of the mental/emotional variety I've found myself in—and equally surprising the exact feelings he describes when being in physical Liminal Spaces.

William Shatner, in his new book, writing about his trip with Blue Origin:

I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film "Contact," when Jodie Foster's character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, "They should've sent a poet." I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn't out there, it's down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna … things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.

That's more than a bit of a surprise coming from the quintessential Captain Kirk.