StarTrek

Every Star Trek fan knows about 3-D chess, a variant on the classic game that Spock and Kirk played in the original series, pitting Spock's logic against Kirk's instinct. But what if the Star Trek reboot -- where canon is thrown to the wind like ashes of an annihilated planet -- decided to go in a different direction with its board games...

-Still upset about the Star Trek reboot? Read about how Captain Kirk and Gene Roddenberry themselves debunked the idea of Star Trek canon, and why worshipping it made 'Enterprise' suck so hard. (Postmodernbarney) -After hope emerged that our childhoods might not be raped again, the news comes down that the 'He-Man' movie will blow after all...

With a name like 'Shatnerquake' and the tagline 'William Shatner? William Shatner. William Shatner!' it's not hard to imagine what you're going to get out Jeff Burk's fanfictiony action novel, and whether or not you want it. The story begins with Shatner attending the fictional Shatnercon where the famous characters he has played -- Kirk, TJ Hooker, Denny Crane, etc...

I blogged last week about the spectacular fanfiction that was the Star Trek/X-Men crossover novel 'Planet X,' but this New Scientist article about scientific mysteries shouts out the real Planet X -- or at least, the theory behind it. When you go past the (now non-planet) Pluto, space is littered with rocks from an asteroid belt until you reach what they call the Kupier cliff, where the rocks and

Seriously. Stop. Don't whine about Shatner not being in it, don't complain about how it's "too commercial," and spare me your endless pronouncements about how you will never see it -- because you will, if only so that you can complain about it in more pedantic detail...

Klingons have a lot of catchy sayings ("Revenge is a dish best served cold"), curses ("Your face looks like a collapsed star"), and of course that classic toast, "May your blood scream!" The literary webcomic Unshelved adds a new adage to the list with their new t-shirt, which admonishes you to either read, or immediately attack your local library with a bat'leth... R

CBS has episodes of the original Star Trek series up online, and they've put together a page with their Top 10 favorites embedded as videos, which could easily be your whole afternoon. Splash Page also has their picks up for the best of original Trek, and the one thing both sites agree on is that the Hugo Award-winning time travel episode "City on the Edge of Forever" is awesome... Read

Webcomic artist Kate Beaton takes a break from her usual historical subjects like President Garfield and the War of 1812 for a more timely topic: STAR TREK. On SWINGS. P.S. In case you haven't figured it out yet, it's freakin' Star Trek day at ComicsAlliance in honor of the first full day of the movie's release...

Salon.com has an article today about the similarities between President Obama and Spock from Star Trek, from his mixed race heritage to his passion for logic: "Like Spock, part of what makes Obama so appealing is the fact that although he's an outsider -- "proudly alien," as Leonard Nimoy once put it -- he uses that distance to cultivate a sense of perspective...

Fast food vendor and creepy commercial maker Burger King has released a new Star Trek advertising campaign that revolves around "Kingons," a cross between the Klingon race and BK's expressionless, plastic-faced King mascot. They're even launched a joke site called the Kingon Defensive Academy, but I'm much more interested in the cool Star Trek stuff they're selling/giving away at their s