September 11, 2001

Today is September 11, 2026. It's the 25th anniversary of the Islamist terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people when hijackers flew passenger jets into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon. A fourth flight crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers resisted the hijackers.

I've talked about people talking about 9/11. I reviewed conspiracy movies like Loose Change and 911: In Plane Sight, as well as Lawrence Wright's book The Looming Tower, about the failure to prevent the attack. But I haven't talked directly about 9/11 on this blog, even in an anniversary year like 2011, although at that time I was hardly writing, anyway. But in this milestone year, it seems apropos.

9/11 is to my generation what the JFK assassination or the moon landing was to my parents': it's that moment when you can remember exactly where you were and you realized you were witnessing world-changing events.

Happy birthday, Jimmy Carter

On December 12, 1952, the first meltdown of a nuclear reactor occurred in the National Research Experimental (NRX) reactor in Chalk River, Ontario. There were no fatalities or injuries, but radioactive material was leaked into the environment and vented into the atmosphere.

The cleanup took months and involved hundreds, including 150 American military personnel, led by a 28-year-old U.S. Navy submarine lieutenant named Jimmy Carter who was part of the fledgling nuclear submarine program. Disassembling the reactor involved donning protective gear and being lowered into it for only a few minutes at a time to avoid overexposure to radioactivity.

Supposedly, Carter's exposure to radiation was 1000 times what would be considered safe today: it's said that he peed radioactive urine for six months, and his ability to have children in the future was in question.

As it turned out, he had four children, became the governor of Georgia, and then was elected the 39th president of the United States. Following his presidency, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work. And today, Jimmy Carter turned 100. Not only is he the longest-lived ex-president and the former president with the longest post-presidency, but he's the first president to become a centenarian. Carter has outlived all his predecessors in the Oval Office, and two of his successors. It would appear that the comic books are right: exposure to radioactivity endows you with superpowers.

James Earl Jones, 1931-2024

James Earl Jones, legendary actor of stage, film, and television, died today at the age of 93.

Jones, a native of Mississippi, began acting on stage in the 1950s, becoming one of the best-known Shakespearean actors of the time. He made his film debut as a bombardier in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Notably, in 1977, he appeared in the blockbuster miniseries Roots as author Alex Haley, and in Star Wars as the voice of Darth Vader.

OJ Simpson, 1947-2024

Orenthal James (OJ) Simpson died yesterday at the age of 76.

Those of us of an age still remember Simpson as a football Hall of Famer and a sometime actor, perhaps known best for rôles in the Naked Gun series and the conspiracy thriller Capricorn One. But for everyone alive today, all that was upstaged in June 1994.

I Begg your pardon?

Recently, in an interview, radio pastor Alistair Begg (host of the Truth for Life program) recounted a conversation he had had with a Christian lady, whose grandson was going to marry a transgender woman. She didn't know whether she ought to attend the wedding. Begg counseled her to attend the wedding and provide a wedding gift.¹ Social media blew up, as social media is wont to do, with Christians roundly condemning this advice. The American Family Radio network also announced that it was dropping his program.

How climate change answers everything

First off, let me say I have no opinion on the USMCA. I'm not an economist, so I don't know if ultimately it would turn out to be a good or a bad thing. I'll wait and see. That said, this article makes a great springboard for my own point:

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats announced Thursday they would not support the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), citing the proposed deal's failure to address climate change.

"Despite the fact that it includes very good labor provisions, I am voting against USMCA because it does not address climate change, the greatest threat facing the planet," Schumer said in a statement.

[Full Story]

I like this approach. I like it so much, in fact, that I think the right should adopt it forthwith, and use it against any progressive objectives deemed ridiculous by the common-sense-based community. For example:

• Do you want to legalize more and later-term abortions? Or impose bubble zones around abortion clinics where free-speech rights do not exist? "I'm sorry, but your bill does not address climate change. I vote no."
• Do you think people ought to be subject to fines if they "misgender" or "deadname" transgender and so-called "non-binary" people, or refuse to use silly, made-up pronuns like "xir"? "Despite the fact that it includes good provisions, this legislation does not address climate change, the greatest threat facing the planet. I vote no."
• Perhaps you think we should legalize marijuana. "We have only ten years to save the planet from Climate Armageddon, and you want to increase carbon emissions by making it legal to set more stuff on fire? I vote no."

As far as I can tell, this approach has multiple positive effects: It uses the hysterical left's own tactics against them. It highlights the absurdity of both their social agenda and their climate hysteria. And who knows? Maybe something might actually (albeit accidentally) get done to reduce greenhouse gases and other pollution.

Fearing the abortion debate

I'm not Roman Catholic, but I know these conspiracy theories about the real loyalties of Catholic leaders are bunk.

So should Michael Coren, as he's been a Roman Catholic more than once in the life-long pinball game that's been his religious pilgrimage.

In a column in yesterday's National Post, Barbara Kay writes:

Pundits Michael Coren of Ontario and Richard Martineau of Quebec don't normally coincide polemically. But they have lately converged on one issue.

Both have elected to gin up fears that Andrew Scheer's campaign promise not to introduce an abortion law might, in the (unlikely) event of a CPC majority, yield to his fervent pro-life convictions. And both have justified their scaremongering through guilt by association.

In a late-August Maclean's article, Coren brings his insider knowledge as a former Catholic to bear on his claim that Canadian women's continued right to unfettered abortion might be compromised by a Scheer government. Scheer, after all, believes abortion is a "grave sin." Therefore, "(c)an we believe Scheer when he says that, given the power to stop it, he simply won’t do so?" Maybe we shouldn"t believe him, Coren muses. Because even though Scheer has not himself labelled abortion as the "crime of murder," "he has certainly associated with people who do."

[Barbara Kay: Stop the Conspiracy Theories About Canadian Catholics in Government]

In the last 50 years, nearly every Canadian prime minister has been a Roman Catholic. (The two who weren't are Kim Campbell [Anglican] and Stephen Harper [Christian and Missionary Alliance]). So what were these past (and present) Prime Ministers' positions on abortion over the years?

Pete Buttigieg tries to define when life begins

Last week, South Bend, Indiana mayor and Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg said on a radio talk show that he supported abortion on demand right up to birth.

In a September 6 interview on The Breakfast Club, Buttigieg told host Charlamagne Tha God: "There’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath."

A lot? Not really.

Do a search on the words "life" and "breath" (and derivations) on BibleGateway, and you come up with 15 verses. (I used the English Standard Version; other English translations may produce somewhat different results.) Of these, the majority use breath as a figure of speech representing life itself: for example, "Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life [i.e. that was alive] died" (Gen. 7:22). "Breath" also represents the shortness of one's life (e.g. Job 7:7), or the end of it (e.g. Ishmael, who "breathed his last and died" in Gen. 25:17). So we can dismiss these verses, as they neither prove nor disprove when human life begins.

That leaves us with three passages using the word "life" and "breath" that we can infer associate the beginning of life with the first breath.

In Genesis 2:7, "the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." Of course, "the man" is not all men: specifically, it refers to Adam, the first man. He was made, not born: God fashioned him out of inanimate matter and breathed life into him. So Adam is a special case; his origin story is not typical of all human beings. We wouldn't argue that all women are made out of a man's ribs, just because Eve was made from one of Adam's, would we?

Perhaps Job 33:4 is more helpful to Buttigieg's argument. Elihu, Job's friend, says to him: "The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life." Here, at least, Elihu is a normal man, not the prototype of the human race. But note what he tells Job only a moment later: "I am toward God as you are; I too was pinched off from a piece of clay" (33:6). Neither Job nor Elihu were actually fashioned from clay. He is speaking poetically, not literally, about their common descent from Adam. So it's safe to say verse 4 is also figurative. This passage does Buttigieg no good, either.

We're left with Revelaton 11:11: "After the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet." These are the two witnesses that prophesy to the world before the Beast kills them. Then, three and a half days later, they are miraculously resuscitated and raised into heaven. Revelation is a book of apocalyptic literature, meaning it couches its message in symbolism and metaphor. The whole book is, in fact, a supernatural vision, not something that has literally occurred in the real world. It is not a good idea to establish a firm point of doctrine based on this passage. Plus, like Adam, the two witnesses are a special case, not the norm.

I have seen one other passage used by the Left, for example on the Christian Left blog, in defense of the assertion that life begins with the first breath:

I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live." So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army."

However, like the passage in Revelation, this one proves nothing. First, it's a vision: an image Ezekiel was shown that represented the restoration of the nation of Israel following its exile by the Assyrians around 722 BC. Second, even assuming for the sake of argument that these bones had real existence, then again, they were miraculously brought back to life. This is another special case, not the typical birth of ordinary human beings.

Buttigieg, who identifies himself as an Episcopalian, has gone to heroic lengths to rationalize his positions as the only acceptable option for professing Christians. All he does is betray the terrible theological foundations of so-called "progressive Christianity." His exegesis of the Bible is execrable. Worse, it's cynical. He seems to think that Christians are stupid and gullible, and all it takes to "guilt" them into line is to quote a verse or two from the Bible.

The Democratic Party has, for some reason, been labeled the "party of science" over and against, supposedly, the Bible-thumping, climate change-denying, women's healthcare-defunding Republicans. Science tells us when human life begins: a new, genetically distinct human being comes into being at conception. The unborn human organism is undoubtedly alive: it is organizes, adapts to its environment, grows and develops, consumes nutrients, and so forth. And it is incontrovertably human, because it has human DNA inherited from human parents. Why won't Pete Buttigieg and the Party of Science defend life based on scientific definitions? Because i's not about science, but politics. The Leftist political dogma of "reproductive justice"—a euphemism for abortion, which is neither reproductive nor just—trumps objective truth. Simple as that.

Roger Moore (1927-2017)

Sir Roger Moore has died at the age of 89.

Moore is best known for playing James Bond in seven films (more than anyone else) from 1973 to 1985. He is the oldest actor to have played the character, and of the six actors to have portrayed Bond, the first to pass away.

Compared to the more serious portrayal by his predecessor Sean Connery--and certainly in contrast with Ian Fleming's brooding, nihilistic secret agent--Moore's James Bond was suave and lighthearted, almost cartoonish. It wasn't the best period for Bond movies. But when Moore played Bond straight, as he did in Live and Let Die or For Your Eyes Only, he was very good indeed, and we can forgive him for Moonraker and Octopussy. Besides, if not for seeing Moonraker on TV as an eighth grader, I would never have sought out the novel, and James Bond may never have become one of my favourite literary characters. I recently finished reading straight through Fleming's Bond books for the third time.

Moore was also well known for his six-season run on television as the Saint, based on another literary favourite of mine, Leslie Charteris' Master criminal.

Goodbye, Mr. Bond.

On the appropriateness of appropriation

A week and a half ago, the editor of Write, the magazine of The Writers' Union of Canada (TWUC), has stepped down after an article he wrote generated numerous complaints. In this article, Hal Niedzviecki argued that there is no such thing as "cultural appropriation."

This generated numerous complaints from other members of TWUC, which was formed to "promote the rights, freedoms, and economic well-being of all writers," leading to a statement from the union in which they apologized "unequivocally," affirmed that the magazine exists to "offer space for honest and challenging discussion," and having been so challenged by Niedsviecki's editorial, bravely threw him under the bus.

I am not a reader of Write nor a member of TWUC. It is clear I could not be, given how they ignore their own mandate in favour of the intellectual Zeitgeist of the day, not to mention their apparent lack of a spine.

Don't believe the hype

In the spring of 1988, while in grade 12, I traveled to Calgary for a high-school band competition. To pass the time en route, in addition to the homework assignments for the days I was away, I had a reading list for the grade 13 English literature course. I would be taking the course the following year, but my then-girlfriend was enrolled in it, and she gave me the list of books (and my teachers were happy to loan me copies).

The required reading included Brave New World, The Stone Angel, and Cannery Row; optional books included Nineteen Eighty-Four, likely one or two titles that I have since forgotten, and, notably, two novels by Margaret Atwood: The Edible Woman and The Handmaid's Tale. The curriculum had a distinctly dystopian edge for some reason. Over the course of the trip, I devoured them all. I distinctly recall reading The Handmaid's Tale in one or two sittings on the return trip somewhere between Calgary and Winnipeg; in my mind, the novel still evokes memories of sunny prairies, grain elevators, and wheat fields seen from a train window, in stark contrast to the novel's actual, bleaker subject matter.

Nothing to see here

Today on the Crusty Curmudgeon, we juxtapose, courtesy of Mollie Hemingway:

President Barack Obama told a group of young African leaders on Monday that harvesting organs from humans that are killed as part of an African ritual was "craziness" and a "cruel" tradition that needed to stop. He warned of dehumanizing marginal groups of humans and of the problems that arise when "you are not able to see someone else as a human being."

Meanwhile, back in the States . . .

On the topic of human organ harvesting, President Obama's spokesman Josh Earnest has said that President Obama has chosen not to watch the video footage of Planned Parenthood officials dissecting human fetuses for parts. Nevertheless, President Obama has vehemently defended the abortion group.

[Full Story]

Some humans are more human than others.

This week in moral panic

Ever since Dylann Storm Roof allegedly killed nine people in a black church in Charleston on June 17, the United States has been in the grip of mass hysteria. Somehow, the court of public opinion has tried and convicted not merely Roof, but also the Confederate flag, as morally culpable for the shootings, and ever since, everyone has been piling on the bandwagon.

First came the calls to remove Confederate flags from the flagpoles of Southern state capitols. Then, retailers such as Amazon and the Apple App Store banned paraphernalia displaying the flag—the latter going so far as to (temporarily) ban even Civil war-themed computer games. Then, the retro-themed TV Land network halted all broadcasts of The Dukes of Hazzard. Of course, Bo and Luke never did or said anything slightly racist in seven years on the air, though I'm sure the Flag of Evil on their car must have tried more than once to tempt them into a lynching, or something.

And now, golfer Bubba Watson is getting on the bandwagon. He owns LEE 1, one of the original three General Lee cars used for shooting Dukes. He paid $110,000 for it in 2012. Yesterday, he announced on Twitter:

All men ARE created equal, I believe that so I will be painting the American flag over the roof of the General Lee #USA

— bubba watson (@bubbawatson) July 2, 2015

Congratulations, Mr. Watson. I haven't awarded one of these in quite a while, but for a) ignoring the context of the way the Confederate flag is used, and b) converting a valuable and sought-after collectible vehicle into a cheap used car, you are hereby awarded the DIM BULB du jour. Wear it with pride.

In light of racially motivated crimes like the massacre in Charleston, of course it is completely appropriate to start a conversation about the meaning of symbols and their power, for good or ill, to convey a message. However, arbitrarily banning all Confederate flags from public view is not that conversation. Instead, it is emotionalism. Corporations and celebrities are climbing on the bandwagon because they want to be seen as someone who Cares. In their moral panic, they stampede over even the context of the flag and ignore that a Civil War re-enactment (of which a Civil War video game is the electronic equivalent) is precisely the appropriate place for a Confederate flag, or that the General Lee without it is just another old Dodge Charger. They fail to see that with or without the Confederate flag, Dylann Roof would still have committed his crimes. Flag-banning is an empty gesture that saves people from examining the true root of his atrocity: the evil that runs through every person's heart.

Instead, we get an emotional response instead of a rational one. Robert E. Lee's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but hysteria is marching on.

Dear church: Get your deep and sincerely held beliefs in line

From U.S. President Obama's speech in the Rose Garden on the occasion of the Supreme Court legalizing same-sex "marriage" in all 50 states:

I know change for many of our LGBT brothers and sisters must have seemed so slow for so long. But compared to so many issues, America's shift has been so quick. I know that Americans of good will continue to hold a wide range of views on this issue. Opposition in some cases has been based on sincere and deeply held beliefs. All of us who welcome today's news should be mindful of that fact, recognize different viewpoints, revere our deep commitment to religious freedom. But today should also give us hope that on the many issues with which we grapple, often painfully, real change is possible. Shifts in hearts and minds is possible. And those who have come so far on their journey to equality have a responsibility to reach back and help others join them. Because for all our differences, we are one people, stronger together than we could ever be alone.

Talk about speaking out of both sides of your mouth. For all the talk about "separation of church and state" that you hear from the illiberal Left, it's actually a one-way street. On the one hand, those of religious conviction have no business trying to "impose" their values on society.

On the other hand, it's apparently quite fine for the President to call for those same religious people to amend their "sincere and deeply held beliefs" if they conflict with the values of the current Zeitgeist, and for those same secular Leftists to make a call "to abolish, or greatly diminish, [churches'] tax-exempt statuses" if they won't pile on the gay-rights bandwagon.

These people want a comfortable, inoffensive church that won't rock the boat or tell them that what they are doing might be wrong. The majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges says, "The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths." But the First Amendment doesn't ensure the right merely to "teach" one's religious principles; it ensures the right to exercise them. A conviction held is nothing, if it is not a conviction lived out. That means that all those beleaguered Christian bakers, photographers and florists actually have a constitutional right to act on their convictions and to opt out of taking business that would require them to participate in a ceremony they believe is wrong.

Charles Colson once wrote, "[The church] does not settle into a comfortable niche, taking its place alongside the Rotary, the Elks, and the country club. Rather, the church is to make society uncomfortable."^[1] The present animus toward the Christian faith is evidence that, however halfheartedly, we are making society uncomfortable. And the principalities and powers don't like that, one bit.

---

1. Charles Colson, Loving God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 176.

On SCOTUS and same-sex "marriage"

I was contemplating what I could say in response to today's travesty of a ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States, which legalizes same-sex "marriage" in all 50 states. I decided two things: there's nothing 1) I can add to the conversation that hasn't already been said by better commentators, and 2) given that I'm sitting comfortably in a country that has had legal same-sex "marriage" for the past decade, I'm really not in a position to be offering critiques to the U.S.

So, instead, I'll just refer back to a post I made almost two years ago on the topic. God himself established the institution of marriage along with its attendant social and theological significance. Five judges, or even nine, have no authority to alter its parameters.

Banning racist symbols

Awkward

Brian Williams, the NBC anchor and professional fabulist who was suspended after claiming falsely to have come under fire in a helicopter while covering the Iraq War in 2003, has been moved to MSNBC.

In his new role, Mr. Williams will anchor breaking news stories and special reports for MSNBC and primarily appear in the daytime. MSNBC’s evening schedule is mostly political talk shows.

[Full Story]

Put another way: NBC isn't credible enough with him, and MSNBC isn't credible enough without him.

Trans-mania

Nearly two centuries ago, the Scottish poet and journalist Charles Mackay published an influential book titled Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, in which he recounts the histories of many popular follies, including such topics as financial bubbles, witch mania, quacks, and popular fads. In his preface, Mackay wrote, "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

I imagine that if Extraordinary Popular Delusions had been written today, Mackay would have had a few words to say about our own extraordinary popular delusion: transgenderism.

It's been two weeks since Olympic decathlete Bruce Jenner came out as "Caitlyn," posing for an interview and a cover photo for the July issue of Vanity Fair. The reaction from the media and the general public was predictable. Everyone remarked on Jenner's "bravery," and ESPN went so far as to instantly award him the 2015 Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at this year's upcoming ESPYs.

Most interesting, however, is the near-instantaneous switch to female pronouns to refer to Jenner. The usual crowd of social-justice warriors sprang up to offer the usual vicarious outrage at anyone who still insensitively spoke of "Caitlyn" as if he were a man. One person even programmed a bot to scan Twitter and automatically correct anyone who "misgendered" Jenner as male.

I noted this phenomenon last fall when American Atheists staffer David Moscato came out as "Danielle." Despite the evidence of his headshot that he is a balding, hirsute dude, and his position as director of public relations for an organization that supposedly believes in rationalism and the scientific method, hordes of supporters immediately accepted the change of pronouns on nothing more than Moscato's fiat declaration that it was so. The uncritical acceptance of transgender persons on nothing more than their own ipse dixit is, in fact, non-rational. It has a quasi-religious fervour. It's certainly a textbook example of the kind of herd thinking that Charles Mackay was writing about.

I'm a couple weeks late to chime in on the whole Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner thing, and I would have let it pass entirely, had the more recent Rachel Dolezal controversy not offered up a plum opportunity to juxtapose.

Dolezal is the woman who, until yesterday, was the president of the Spokane, WA chapter of the NAACP. Last week, a story in the Spokane Spokesman-Review quoted Dolezal's parents as claiming Rachel was not the black woman she presented herself as: in fact, older pictures of Rachel show her to be a pale Caucasian with straight, blonde hair. It was also discovered that in 2002, Dolezal unsuccessfully sued her alma mater, the historically black Howard University, for anti-white discrimination when she was passed over for a TA position. The controversy escalated over the weekend to the point that Dolezal resigned her position yesterday. Ironically, the NAACP has no rule that its leadership must be black; had Rachel Dolezal simply not pretended to be something she isn't, it's possible she would still be employed today.

I have friends on Facebook who complimented Jenner for being "brave," but then two weeks later, criticized Rachel Dolezal for being "offensive." This is just the mainstream thinking of the average person on the street. But I wonder: Why? If Bruce Jenner can be transgendered, then why can't Rachel Dolezal be transracial? If a man can repudiate an immutable biological characteristic like his sex and declare himself to be a woman in defiance of all his chromosomes, then why can't a blonde woman born to Caucasian parents also defy the immutable biological reality of her skin colour and declare herself African-American?

In fact, what was discussed satirically only a few days ago is already being discussed seriously. A Wikipedia page on transracial identity, created only today, offers an un-ironic discussion of the topic. I wonder whether this is because, positively, advocates for transgenderism realize that the logic of the one applies equally to the other, or negatively, because the illogic of transracialism exposes the folly of transgenderism.

The harsh reality is that all transmania, whether transgender or transracial or anything else, is a form of rebellion against truth and reality. And, therefore, it is a rebellion against the Creator who made us the way we are. As Albert Mohler has said in the past on his podcast:

The Bible says that we are not who we think ourselves to be, but who our Creator made us to be. And that means that no matter how we say we know ourselves, or what we claim about ourselves, the key issue for eternity is what our Creator thinks of us, because he knows us better than we know ourselves, because he made us.

If Bruce Jenner wants to be known as Caitlyn, then I'm OK with that. A name is an identifying label, and it can be legally changed. But while he is entitled to change his name, he is not entitled to change his pronouns, which describe not who he is, but what. Whether Bruce or Caitlyn, Jenner is a man, and no amount of plastic surgery, hormone treatment, lingerie, or Photoshop can change that. Maleness is embedded in his molecules. And Rachel Dolezal might surround herself with black friends, dye and perm her hair, or spray on a layer of can-tan, but that disguise can do nothing to help wish away her ancestry.

Scrubbing the Sin List

My latest post for Faith Beyond Belief is up.

In the aftermath of Indiana's RFRA law, while no one is calling for the lions, some secular thinkers are calling for Christian silence: for example, NYT columnist and gay activist Frank Bruni recently wrote that Christians need to take homosexuality off the "sin list."

(Read "Scrubbing the Sin List.")

Leonard Nimoy, 1931-2015

When news broke a few days ago that actor Leonard Nimoy had been hospitalized, I feared the worst, and it has happened: he has passed away at the age of 83, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which he attributed to his former smoking habit.

Like many people of a particular generation, I knew that Nimoy had had a long and varied career in the performing arts. However, I knew his work exclusively from one character: Star Trek's Spock, the role that defined his career for almost 50 years. (Nimoy wrote two autobiographies: I Am Not Spock [1975], in which he attempted to distance his own personality from the character's, and then I Am Spock [1995], in which he clarified that he was proud to have played Spock, and never meant to reject the role.) Nimoy also played guest roles on numerous television programs of the 1960s, including Bonanza, The Rebel, Get Smart, Perry Mason, The Twilight Zone (as did his Star Trek co-star William Shatner, arguably more famously), and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (in an episode where he and Shatner both appeared as enemies on either side of the Cold War, with Nimoy as the villain). After Star Trek, he had a recurring role on Mission: Impossible. Come to think of it, I may have seen the episode of the Outer Limits revival on which he was the guest, but apart from the various incarnations of Star Trek, that's it.

Three of Trek's seven stars have now passed on; Shatner, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, and Walter Koenig remain.

In addition to television and film acting, Nimoy also pursued other arts: directing, poetry, photography, and music—the last infamously including a novelty song titled "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins."

Leonard Nimoy's final tweet before his death was this:

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP

— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) February 23, 2015

Or, in the final words of Spock, in Star Trek II: "Remember."