The Prime Directive

There's a two-story house I pass sometimes that used to be painted purple. It was for sale for a long time, and one night I looked it up. It was nearly half a million dollars and had 5,000+ square feet of space and an elevator. The road it's on is set lower than the house. You have to look up at it, when you drive past. Aside from its size and odd purple color it wasn't exceptionally remarkable.

One day someone finally bought the big, purple house. They painted it. I'm not sure if the purple is reflecting through the new paint or if the new color is deliberate. It's now flesh-colored. Whenever I take that route, the house looks like a huge box of skin staring down majestically over the road.

I used to watch Star Trek back in the day. I grew up watching reruns of the original series with Captain Kirk. I watched The Next Generation, when that came out, but it had too much left-wing preaching in it. BBC America occasionally shows Star Trek Voyager. I've seen a few of those lately. It was one of my favorites among the Star Trek shows. It had a lot of time travel and didn't preach like TNG. It was about exploration instead of politics.

Starting with TNG, the Prime Directive became a major plot device. According to the Prime Directive, Starfleet isn't supposed to interfere in the development of alien cultures, especially ones of lower technological levels. It was kind of based on advanced countries on earth who go to places where people live in huts and hunt with bows and spears. Driving up in a Jeep drinking a bottle of Coke with rock and roll playing on the radio supposedly damages those cultures.

The Prime Directive was actually in the original series. It just wasn't that important. Kirk was a real man not a politically correct diplomat. He nevertheless kept a copy of the Prime Directive close at hand. It was  printed on a 2-ply roll in his bathroom.

Have a great weekend.