Spock

Dr. Benjamin Spock, 94, father of the modern school of baby and child care and godfather of the baby boom generation, died Sunday at his home in San Diego. Survivors and mourners include his second wife, two sons from his first marriage, a stepdaughter, his grandchildren . . . and tens of millions of those who read and were reared on the "trust your own common sense . . . you know more than you think you do" precepts of Baby and Child Care, the parenting bible that has sold 50 million copies in 30 languages and is the biggest-selling nonfiction book in the world except for the real Bible.

Modern innovations inspired by the old "Star Trek" show: the cell phone, the flat-screen TV, and the Obama presidency. The latter occurred to me as I watched J.J. Abrams dandy new "Star Trek" movie, which arrives amid polls showing that 80 percent of Americans continue to find President Obama personally likable. The findings jibe with the phenomenon that led to his electoral landslide - the feeling among people, all sorts of people, that somehow they knew the guy. I now believe this is because Obama is Spock.

Mr. Spock, the impassive and enduring co-star of the original Star Trek series, makes his first appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation in a two- part episode starting at 7 tonight on Channel 29. Spock, portrayed by Leonard Nimoy in the most famous role of his career, is now 130 years old and serving as an ambassador for the United Federation of Planets. As tonight's hour opens on Stardate 45233.1, Spock has been missing for three weeks and has just been photographed on the planet Romulus.

They called him "Spock" because of his funny ears. But Michael LaCava was no joke in the drug-savaged Hunting Park neighborhood where his presence was a scourge and his arrest a relief, according to residents and police. LaCava, accused of fatally shooting an off-duty police officer Wednesday night, was both scorned and feared in the neighborhood he inhabited - except possibly among the children, said police and residents. "Any time a kid needed some money, he could get it from Spock," a police source said.

Leonard Nimoy's next project is set. It's the biographical film about Mel Mermelstein, the Auschwitz survivor who did legal war with the so-called Institute for Historical Review, a revisionist group that maintained the Holocaust was a Jewish lie and offered to pay $50,000 to anyone who could prove it had actually happened. The actor has not yet decided whether he will act in or direct the NBC-TV movie - or do both. The script is being written by Stephanie Liss ("Second Serve")

"Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home. " A sci-fi adventure starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley and Catherine Hicks. Directed by Nimoy. Produced by Harve Bennett. Screenplay by Bennett, Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes and Nicholas Meyer. Photographed by Donald Peterman. Music by Leonard Rosenman. Special effects by Industrial Light and Magic. Running time: 119 minutes. A Paramount release. In area theaters. One complaint to get out of the way. Just one. Those uniforms.

Picking up newspapers and magazines on Monday, I found in them an eruption of memories about the 1960s, about Robert Kennedy and hopeful times gone. But a few pages over I saw that Dr. Benjamin Spock is celebrating his 85th birthday, a remembrance that the bringers of hope and change are, some of them, still with us. Spock was the father not of a permissive age, but of an imaginative one. He had a respect for individuality, in babies as in grown citizens. Like most respect, it grew from a sense of his own dignity.

Milk is the perfect food. Not. That's the message from Dr. Benjamin Spock and several colleagues, whose concerns about cow's milk vary from a warning that it can be harmful to infants to a demand for a flat-out boycott of the white substance by people of all ages. Spock, 89, once a proponent of milk, now says that "breast feeding is the best milk feeding for babies. I want to urge parents, especially with subsequent babies, to use breast milk. " "This does not mean that every child that's been on cow's milk is doomed," Spock said yesterday.

He wrote the best-selling child-care book of all time but was harshly criticized for being responsible for a generation of hippies. He later joined those hippies in protests against nuclear technology and the Vietnam War and was jailed for views that today seem less radical than sensible. But perhaps the greatest legacy of Dr. Benjamin Spock, who died Sunday night of respiratory failure in La Jolla, Calif., at age 94, is his great character and integrity, two virtues that seem in short supply in America today.

You hear that voice. You envision those pointed ears. You think, maybe, this is Star Trek VII: Cosmic Discovery. Well, you'd be half right. A new planetarium show, "Cosmic Discovery: The Shape of Exploration," opened this week at the Franklin Institute. And narrating the 35-minute feature is none other than Leonard Nimoy, better known as Spock, the half-human science officer of the starship Enterprise. The show focuses on man's discovery of shapes - the shape of his planet, his solar system, his galaxy and now his entire universe.

This review appeared in yesterday's Inquirer. If you doubt that there is life after death, consider the perennial rebirth of Star Trek. Through five TV series and 10 feature films, the short-lived television show (1966-69) has enjoyed a robust afterlife. In J.J. Abrams' rousing prequel, the franchise takes a refreshing chug from the fountain of youth. Simply titled Star Trek, the film shows how Kirk met Spock and how the Enterprise crew bonded on its maiden voyage. The result is more exciting than the last four ST pictures put together, more fun than a barrel of Tribbles, and the most satisfying action-adventure since last year's Iron Man. Back in the day, the message of Star Trek: Generations (1994)

Modern innovations inspired by the old "Star Trek" show: the cell phone, the flat-screen TV, and the Obama presidency. The latter occurred to me as I watched J.J. Abrams dandy new "Star Trek" movie, which arrives amid polls showing that 80 percent of Americans continue to find President Obama personally likable. The findings jibe with the phenomenon that led to his electoral landslide - the feeling among people, all sorts of people, that somehow they knew the guy. I now believe this is because Obama is Spock.

If you doubt that there is life after death, consider the perennial rebirth of Star Trek . Through five TV series and 10 feature films, the short-lived television show (1966-69) has enjoyed a robust afterlife. In J.J. Abrams' rousing prequel, the franchise takes a refreshing chug from the fountain of youth. Simply titled Star Trek , the film shows how Kirk met Spock and how the Enterprise crew bonded on its maiden voyage. The result is more exciting than the last four ST pictures put together, more fun than a barrel of Tribbles, and the most satisfying action-adventure since last year's Iron Man . Back in the day, the message of Star Trek: Generations (1994)

NANCY AND SUSAN Holson say that their musical-sketch comedy, "Parenting 101 - The Musical," has been about 50 years in the making. Growing up in suburban Westport, Conn., they routinely entertained, thrilled and sometimes exasperated their parents, which, they found when they became parents, is pretty normal - and maybe even fair. "Being a parent, well, you do the best you can," said Nancy Holson by phone from her home in Manhattan about "Parenting 101," which opens Friday at the Kimmel Center's Innovation Theater and runs through Sept.

Beam him down, Scotty William Shatner has not been invited to reprise his Capt. Kirk role in the new Star Trek, although Leonard Nimoy will be back as Spock. Shatner is not taking his exclusion well. "I couldn't believe it. I'm not in the movie at all. Leonard, God bless his heart, is in, but not me," Shatner, 76, told the Associated Press last week. "I thought what a decision to make, since it obviously is a decision not to make use of the popularity I have to ensure the movie has good box office.

Three decades ago, ion propulsion was too advanced even for the Starship Enterprise. But today, it already has succeeded in gently propelling a spacecraft to an asteroid 120 million miles away. NASA scientists last week toasted their futuristic spacecraft's success in reaching asteroid Braille powered by the ion drive and controlled by an automatic on-board system capable of navigating by the stars. The mission also tested a computer capable of taking over control of the craft.

Dr. Spock's advice on nutrition is worth heeding The expression "Que sera, sera" - whatever will be, will be - made for charming lyrics in Doris Day's lovely signature melody. But when it comes to cutting American children's risks of heart disease and cancer at least in half, the best philosophical advice comes in the Latin exhortation "Carpe diem" - seize the day (Inquirer, June 24). To best accomplish that, parents should follow the excellent dietary advice clearly and simply explained in the newly revised book Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care.

For someone who was routinely blamed over three decades for saying things that he didn't say and for sowing ills that he sought to forestall, Dr. Benjamin Spock remained a remarkably cheerful fellow. He also showed admirable willingness to sift the fair criticism from the unjust and to benefit from it in his continual revisions of the work that made his fame, Baby and Child Care. The good doctor, who died Sunday at the age of 94, was at once the helpful, trusted friend of millions of anxious parents - and the target of jeremiads from both ends of America's political spectrum.

He wrote the best-selling child-care book of all time but was harshly criticized for being responsible for a generation of hippies. He later joined those hippies in protests against nuclear technology and the Vietnam War and was jailed for views that today seem less radical than sensible. But perhaps the greatest legacy of Dr. Benjamin Spock, who died Sunday night of respiratory failure in La Jolla, Calif., at age 94, is his great character and integrity, two virtues that seem in short supply in America today.