Skip to main content

West London... the final frontier

If you thought that you'd have to wait until 2161 to apply for Starfleet Academy, I have some good news. The Federation has kindly beamed it down to West London a century and a half before its scheduled opening.

Space Studio is an 'Aspirations Academy', which prepares kids for careers in the aerospace and space industries. For the moment, the former probably offers a few more real-world opportunities than the latter, although that could all change after April 5th 2063, when we have first contact with the Vulcans.

It's not Zefram Cochrane we have to thank for this initiative, but rather Dr Russell Quaglia, who - according to the website blurb - developed the Aspirations Framework to 'unlock students (sic) unending academic, personal and social potential'. Although there's sadly no mention of the prime directive, there are three guiding principles of 'self-worth, engagement and purpose', which are 'lived out through 8 conditions that make a difference', including 'Heroes' and 'Spirit of Adventure'.

As an earthling born in the 20th century, it's obviously hard for me to make head or tail of any of this, but I have no doubt that Captain Jean-Luc Picard would have a clear message for the Headteacher of Space Studio: 'Make it so'.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Fawlty Towers script? Si, senor!

Ok, so I gave ChatGPT the following scenario: "Imagine a theatrical script for a situation comedy set in a hotel in Torquay, England. The proprietor is called Basil, an eccentric man who believes the calibre of guests to be low. His wife, Sybil, is often frustrated by Basil's incompetence. They employ a Spanish waiter called Manuel, who struggles to understand English. Basil suspects that two guests, who claim to be married, may be lying." Here's what our favourite AI came up with: Scene: The hotel lobby in Torquay, England. Basil is standing behind the reception desk, looking at a piece of paper. Sybil is standing next to him, looking annoyed. Manuel is hovering nearby, trying to look busy. Basil: (to Sybil) I don't know why we get such low-calibre guests at this hotel. Look at these two - Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They claim to be married, but I suspect they might be lying. Sybil: (sighing) Basil, it's not our job to judge the marital status of our guests. Just m
Post a Comment
Read more

It's been a tough year. Let's give ourselves a clap.

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at
Post a Comment
Read more

The race for bogus Olympic stats

Of all the dubious statistics thrown around in relation to the London Olympics, the claim that there are '47 tube journeys in central London that can easily be walked' is surely one of the most misleading. I suspect it is based on the relative proximity of one station to an adjacent one. Embankment is walking distance from Temple. Charing Cross is a stone's throw from Leicester Square. But what exactly is a 'tube journey'? As I've understood it - and I'm only going on three decades' experience of using the network - it is a journey that takes you from any one place with a tube station to another. My journey from Leicester Square might take me to Charing Cross, but it might also lead me up the line to Camden Town or down south to Morden. In fact, from any one tube station - thanks to the wonders of interconnections - there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of options available to me. Now, I don't claim to have a PhD in mathematics, but the number of p
1 comment
Read more