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'.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Becoming a Twister board

I spent yesterday evening in an old factory building off Brick Lane playing kids' games with an organisation called Fun Fed. The idea is that a bunch of adults get together and act like children for a couple of hours. We played tag and stuck big coloured discs on ourselves so that we could become human Twister mats. There was an awful lot of running around and I was thinking that I ought to get to aikido a bit more often. Being a child is very hard work.

When one name isn't enough

You may have heard the news reports about the turmoil in Kingston, Jamaica, resulting from the government's attempts to pin down a notorious drug lord on behalf of the US. I was struck by the number of self-styled monikers this guy has given himself. He is, depending on the channel you listen to, known on the street as 'Dudas', 'The Big Man' and 'The President' - worshipped by many impoverished Kingston residents as a benefactor to slum dwellers. It's his real name that seems most appropriate, however. If you were a drug baron called Christopher Coke, wouldn't you leave it at that? It's certainly not a name to be sniffed at.

Captain Birdseye and other people of rank

Regular readers may recall that I once doubted the existence of Yeo Valley. I'd never heard of the Yeo mountain range and I therefore rated the likelihood of there being a valley at somewhere between 0 and 5%. Of course, I had yoghurt all over my face when I discovered that the place really does exist. Somewhere in Somerset, I seem to recall. Today, having read an article in the latest edition of The Marketer magazine, I'm astonished to discover that there really was a Captain Birdseye. Well, I need to qualify that just a little. There was a Mister Clarence Birdseye who invented the fish finger back in 1955. The avuncular, uniformed figure who dominated our TV screens for about thirty years may have been an invention of over-eager advertising creatives, but he didn't blow in on a trawler during a squall. There was actually some connection to a real human being. These revelations about fish and yoghurt are causing me considerable disquiet, because I'm wondering h...