I see that humility is not your strongest character trait, but will allow you the courtesy of not being condescended to in response. I appreciate your contribution to this discussion and will leave my personal opinions of said contribution in my thoughts and prayers. For what is understood not need be discussed. IF that is how you truly wish to present yourself, mine is not to sit in judgment of that. It makes a statement of its own.

You are a common acquaintence of both Shatner and Nichelle. You claim to speak to them on the first name basis while pointing out their missteps in their careers, both of whom fully appreciate your insight – despite it’s tough love approach. As an expert on the culture of Africa, both today and in the 23rd century, you have awarded me the most prestigious “Gold Star of Ignorance®” for my outdated midwestern education and alcohol-hazed swiss-cheese brain mass.

I’ve been working all my life for that, man.

Why? Because I am humble… and that’s just how I roll. I don’t claim to know everything and everyone. But I am meeting them, and learning along the way. And in meeting you, I have learned much. For this, I thank you!

BEST!!

=h=

hitch1969© – June 30, 2008

… In Africa, the tribes down there or “Afrikaaners” as they were called during the “Apartheid” period of the ayyyyties. Anyway. These dudes and chicks in the Nyrobi and whatnot, along the Sudan, did not have formal names and surnames. It was more akin to the American Indian thing where they have phrases for names, if they had names at all. You see, in that culture, names were not as important as the jobs they performed in each tribe. However, the more affluent tribes could afford such luxury as nomenclature and spent their days crafting phrases, not surnames, that would eventually change when a better name came along …

… The names Nichelle and Nyota are improper, as is Uhura or Uhura. Only Nichols is a proper and accurate name. But it is not a name of the Afrikaaners.

BEST!!

=h=

END QUOTE.

You get the gold star for ignorance in this case, as obviously we’re talking about an Earth of the 23rd Century which is by CIVILIZED standards are not only citizens of the United States of Africa, and designing and operating fusion reactors and boosters to carry their population into space as tourists, but far more capable of doing what in your aaaighty’s mind the Blacks (and Whites) of Africa are capable of doing … like carving bamboo into spears to poach elephants. I know a great many people from Africa, a few from Nigeria (including Cardinal Arinze, long a likely candidate for Pope), a few from the Congo, a few from Kenya, but most from Tanzania. They are not the bush tribes you envision for the world of today, to say nothing of the 23rd Century.

Nichelle told me long ago she wanted Uhura’s first name to be Leeshia … or later as I understood it, Alicia. Some writer came up with “Nyota” and in the translation Uhura’s name is “Star of Freedom.”

Maybe not proper to you in the early 21st Century, but give it a few hundred years … maybe the civilized convention of civilization, and not your fantasies of primitive tribes wearing grass skirts will stick.

Bones was in Encounter @ Farpoint (TNG)
Spock was in Unification (TNG)
Scotty was in Relics (TNG) and Generations
Kirk was in Generations
Checkov was in Generations
Sulu was in Flashback (VOY)

i think she deserves her due