He had a minor part in Fringe, and if you watch it it's pretty clear he had advanced emphysema. I have to assume they did what they could to minimize how obvious it was, too.
I was kind of surprised to see him last this long.
Just started watching Star Trek with my 12 y/o daughter. We started with TNG, but she's well aware of who Spock is (and Leonard Nimoy). She's going to be sad.
"Ozymandias" will always be in his voice in my mind. It's one of the few poems I'm at all familiar with, and I like it a lot.
edit: Here's the poem, below, for anyone interested. And for anyone unfamiliar with what my parent's comment means: In the game Civilization IV, researching a technology is accompanied by a quote. Nimoy reads these quotes aloud, in this game, and '"And on the pedestal these words appear: / 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' / Nothing beside remains."' is the chosen quote for the "Construction" technology. You can probably find audio of it on the internet (which I recommend), but I can't youtube at work.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Unfortunately, my stupid sense of humor makes me remember his Sputnik the best of all those little quotes. Somewhere on YouTube there's a black screen with the audio looped for hours.
I don't know why, but that one got me. Maybe it's leftover grief from all the friends and family I lost last year. I'm not one to engage in celebrity worship. Indeed, I think it's a bit of a problem in our modern culture. But Nimoy and the character of Spock were both very inspiring. That has to count for something.
I'm also not for celebrity worship. But I know that Star Trek formed me as a person, it's not just responsible for my interest in technology, it made me the very person I am now, taught me to always solve things peacefully, made me believe in the future of prosperity through science and good parts of human nature. I feel grief now, and I know I will feel the same when Kirk, Picard and other of my childhood role models shall depart.
Farewell Spock. It's for us who are left to work towards the bright future you shown us.
TNG was the series that was on when I was a kid, so my attachments are much more oriented there. But I understand it completely. My favorite parts were always when Geordi and Data worked together to come up with a solution to a seemingly impossible problem.
And as I grew up, I started seeing all of the parts of the show: the way good leadership inspires the best in people, and how good leadership is about creating a sense of unity rather than being a God-like character demanding worship. How working together in diverse groups and hearing input from everyone can find solutions no one person would have found on their own. How saving the day doesn't have to be about violence, it can be about engineering, or just being there for someone. That the search for truth and knowledge is often the best motivation for anything.
It made me want to be the one who made the things and fixed the other things and save the day because of it. I call it "Wanting to Be the Guy". The go-to person. The one that can be counted on.
The entire run of Star Trek series' has a lot of flaws. I recently rewatched the first season of TNG with my wife: boy howdy does it stink. But I think a lot of that has more to do with the economics of serial television. The team that put together Star Trek gave themselves a phenomenal undertaking. And I think they covered a huge range of the human condition in an incredibly tasteful, nuanced manner. That's extremely commendable.
I personally haven't even watched the whole TOS. TNG was on when I was a kid as well, and this is the best and I think most true to the spirit part of the show.
But then the Kirk's crew were part of the show's legacy, so I grew connected to them as well.
> the way good leadership inspires the best in people, and how good leadership is about creating a sense of unity rather than being a God-like character demanding worship. How working together in diverse groups and hearing input from everyone can find solutions no one person would have found on their own. How saving the day doesn't have to be about violence, it can be about engineering, or just being there for someone. That the search for truth and knowledge is often the best motivation for anything.
Couldn't have said it better myself. This show was the embodiment of benefits of cooperation. It inspired me not only to love science and technology, but first and foremost to be the best person I can. To love the truth, to love the fellow men with whom I'm stuck together on the same piece of rock orbiting a giant gas ball. To always seek peace and progress. To stay helpful, and stay curious.
> The entire run of Star Trek series' has a lot of flaws. I recently rewatched the first season of TNG with my wife: boy howdy does it stink. But I think a lot of that has more to do with the economics of serial television. The team that put together Star Trek gave themselves a phenomenal undertaking. And I think they covered a huge range of the human condition in an incredibly tasteful, nuanced manner. That's extremely commendable.
True, it's hard to rewatch old series now, they just feel off - a lot of that is due to its age. And yet I can still clearly see the message these shows had. As someone once said, maybe TNG was the last sci-fi that was hopeful of the future.
And while I know the newest Star Trek series, Enterprise, was somewhat controvelsial among fans, I do believe it's intro is the best summary, the very embodiment of what is the spirit of Star Trek.
Hehe, I loved Enterprise. And I thought the same thing about its intro music. I think people just got caught up in their hero worship, again, and it prevented them from wanting to like the show. Then the ratings machinery took over and it really hurt the ending of the series.
I've similarly felt a lack of aspirationalism in modern sci-fi. That's one of the aspects that I like about Interstellar. It almost feels like a pre-warp, Star Trek universe Earth. It's gritty and bleak in a lot of places, but the overall message is one of hope. People also complained about the plot, but I thought it was pretty typical Christopher Nolan fair, so if you don't like that flavor of ice cream, you probably shouldn't have ordered it in a sunday, if you catch my metaphor.
I am far more troubled by his passing than I am openly willing to admit. No celebrity worship here either.
What got to me was his comment a year or so ago on Twitter where he said that he would be anybody Grandfather just for the asking. I asked him, because I never new my grandfather (either one) and darnit if having him for even a virtual Grandfather wouldn't be the best thing ever. But in doing that, I more feel like I've lost a member of the family than I did when I actually lost some members of my family.
Hollywood works really hard to create a portrayal of Ubermensch out of people who are just people. In some cases, those people aren't good people, and that's where the celebrity worship worries me. I think a lot of people confuse the characters the actors play, and the words they speak written by other people, for the actor themselves.
And even when you think someone looks like a good person, outside of what characters they've played, you don't know the whole story. Look at the allegations against Bill Cosby lately. Are they true? I don't know, and it's not my place to say--we have a legal system for that very reason. And people make mistakes sometimes, too (though, in this case, they'd be pretty big, awful, questionably-forgivable mistakes, if they turned out to be true, but the example is the only one I could think of off of the top of my head). It's just another good enough reason to adopt a general policy to not elevate celebrities so high.
But in the case of Nimoy, he really seems like he did his best to enjoy life and be a decent person towards others. I don't know if he ever did anything specifically humanitarian, but if the story of Mr. Nimoy ended there, it'd be a pretty good one, one that more people should emulate.
Yeah, it feels a bit like losing a grandfather for me, too.
I don't think it is celebrity worship. I don't know a thing about Nimoy outside his work, although other posts make it seem that he was a interesting, likable, and good man. We are affected by Nimoy's passing because we enjoyed his work, identified with his character, and because Star Trek and Spock represent ideas that we wish to hold on to.
The world of Star Trek TOS and TNG normally felt unambiguously better than ours, but it felt better in ways that were achievable. A world focused on exploration, with a society that did not shy away from conflict but worked to resolve it peacefully. It felt like what a steadfast belief in modernity could lead to. In the word's of Neal Stephenson (who I think borrowed the term from someone else) Star Trek and Spock serve as forms of cultural hieroglyphs, recognizable symbols of a great possible world developed from an unshakeable faith in modernity and progress.
I think we morn in part because we will miss our hieroglyph. While there have been a number of unamibigously pro-science/modernity movies lately, Spock stood out for generations. He stood for progress and goodness. He managed to be absolutely moral and absolutely logical. And I think it is the blow to those ideas we mourn as much as the man.
I do not expect I heard the word "logic" before I heard it on Star Trek. I still don't know what they meant by it (never explain, never explain... ) , but I caught something there.
If you are nerd enough :), you will have caught all you could of the interviews with Gene Roddenberry. Gene was caught genuinely by surprise that Spock was such a hit. If you look at how Nimoy played Spock in "The Menagerie", where they (rather crassly ) reuse footage from the rejected pilot, the evolution of the character is startling.
Leonard Nimoy simply hit that part and the creation of that character out of the park.
One of the things that Frank Zappa used to use to talk about the space-between-the notes in art was "put the eyebrows on it". Isn't that a Spock reference? Were there eyebrows in theater or film before Nimoy?
> Meh, he lived to be 83, which is really quite old. How much pleasure did he derive from smoking?
Clearly, not enough that, looking back, he thought it was worthwhile. And the cost isn't just years, its quality of life impacts of smoking-related illness (in his case, COPD.)
Well, certainly, you could live to a ripe old age despite your smoking habit, just like my maternal grandfather (gave up aged 70 - in his pomp, smoked 80 per day). Or my paternal grandmother (gave up around 70). But then again, her husband, my dad's father, also a smoker, died in his late sixties. And I've never heard of anybody who was a former long-term smoker - and that includes my grandparents, who weren't always in the best of health! - that didn't suffer from related complications in later life.
15 years later, I'm still not yet old enough for my chickens to have come home to roost, nor those of my school friends. But looking at my parents, and their parents too, it's very obvious that those who never smoked are in much better shape.
Moral of the story? That's easy - don't smoke. Like... duh.
But - if you really insist, at least smoke only the doobie doo, and without any tobacco mixer. Because at least that gets you high. And then, when you're old, and your lungs are fucked anyway, you can at least say that when you were young... nobody knew for sure.
It's easy to spot a smoker, because it also has a terrible effect on the skin -- even before it strikes you down dead of cancer, heart and lung disease, and chronic halitosis.
It's so nice to see that all the money and propaganda that was going into covering scientifically proven facts like that up is now going into global warming denial instead. We've come a long was, baby!
Beyond its known links to cancer, lung and heart disease, smoking is now thought to be associated with premature skin ageing and delayed wound healing, as well as a number of skin disorders, particularly psoriasis, hidradenitis suppurativa and cutaneous lupus erythematosus.
Smoking can accelerate the skin ageing process in the skin. Ageing of the skin means that it droops, develops wrinkles and lines and can become dry and coarse with uneven skin colouring and broken blood vessels (telangiectasia). Smokers can appear gaunt and develop an orange or grey complexion.
Since the 1970's studies have shown that smoking results in more premature facial wrinkling than sun exposure. Lines around the eyes called “crow's feet” can develop at an earlier age. Multiple vertical lines around the mouth also occur and are called “smoker's lines”. These effects continue into old age. By the age of 70 years, smoking 30 cigarettes a day could lead to the equivalent of an extra 14 years of skin ageing.
Maybe there is no fountain of youth, but there is a surefire way to make yourself look older. Smoking changes the skin, teeth, and hair in ways that can add years to your looks. It also affects everything from your fertility to the strength of your heart, lungs, and bones. Take a look at these side-by-side photos. Can you pick out the smoker? Check your pick and get a closer look on the next slide.
Molecular basis of tobacco smoke-induced premature skin aging.
Although it is now widely recognized that tobacco smoke has negative effects on the skin, the molecular mechanisms underlying its skin-aging effects remain uncertain.
Nimoy made a splendid adversary to LAPD detective Columbo in the 1973 episode 'A Stitch In Time'[1]. I'm surprised that the New York Times article doesn't mention it at all because it is one of the best Columbo episodes, with a couldn't-see-it-coming twist in the end.
Incidentally, William Shatner played the villain in 2 episodes of Colombo: 'Fade in to Murder' (1976) [2] and 'Butterfly in Shades of Grey' (1994) [3].
I was amazed to recently have found out that he played the voice of Galvatron in the original Transformers movie (which was amazingly not-sucky compared to the series).
The first one he had a fair bit of screen time. IIRC, in Into Darkness, the new crew contacted Nimoy to ask him about Khan and how to defeat him. I think that was the only time he was on screen.
My father of 77 years passed away last Sunday. My sister and I often called him Spock because he was a physicist and he looked like Spock. RIP my dad. RIP Leonard Nimoy. They both were the best Spocks.
Yeah, I'm sitting in my cube at work trying to choke back tears, and the best I'm accomplishing is keeping them silent. This hit me a lot harder than I expected it to.
168 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 256 ms ] threadI was kind of surprised to see him last this long.
edit: Here's the poem, below, for anyone interested. And for anyone unfamiliar with what my parent's comment means: In the game Civilization IV, researching a technology is accompanied by a quote. Nimoy reads these quotes aloud, in this game, and '"And on the pedestal these words appear: / 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' / Nothing beside remains."' is the chosen quote for the "Construction" technology. You can probably find audio of it on the internet (which I recommend), but I can't youtube at work.
Farewell Spock. It's for us who are left to work towards the bright future you shown us.
And as I grew up, I started seeing all of the parts of the show: the way good leadership inspires the best in people, and how good leadership is about creating a sense of unity rather than being a God-like character demanding worship. How working together in diverse groups and hearing input from everyone can find solutions no one person would have found on their own. How saving the day doesn't have to be about violence, it can be about engineering, or just being there for someone. That the search for truth and knowledge is often the best motivation for anything.
It made me want to be the one who made the things and fixed the other things and save the day because of it. I call it "Wanting to Be the Guy". The go-to person. The one that can be counted on.
The entire run of Star Trek series' has a lot of flaws. I recently rewatched the first season of TNG with my wife: boy howdy does it stink. But I think a lot of that has more to do with the economics of serial television. The team that put together Star Trek gave themselves a phenomenal undertaking. And I think they covered a huge range of the human condition in an incredibly tasteful, nuanced manner. That's extremely commendable.
I personally haven't even watched the whole TOS. TNG was on when I was a kid as well, and this is the best and I think most true to the spirit part of the show.
But then the Kirk's crew were part of the show's legacy, so I grew connected to them as well.
> the way good leadership inspires the best in people, and how good leadership is about creating a sense of unity rather than being a God-like character demanding worship. How working together in diverse groups and hearing input from everyone can find solutions no one person would have found on their own. How saving the day doesn't have to be about violence, it can be about engineering, or just being there for someone. That the search for truth and knowledge is often the best motivation for anything.
Couldn't have said it better myself. This show was the embodiment of benefits of cooperation. It inspired me not only to love science and technology, but first and foremost to be the best person I can. To love the truth, to love the fellow men with whom I'm stuck together on the same piece of rock orbiting a giant gas ball. To always seek peace and progress. To stay helpful, and stay curious.
> The entire run of Star Trek series' has a lot of flaws. I recently rewatched the first season of TNG with my wife: boy howdy does it stink. But I think a lot of that has more to do with the economics of serial television. The team that put together Star Trek gave themselves a phenomenal undertaking. And I think they covered a huge range of the human condition in an incredibly tasteful, nuanced manner. That's extremely commendable.
True, it's hard to rewatch old series now, they just feel off - a lot of that is due to its age. And yet I can still clearly see the message these shows had. As someone once said, maybe TNG was the last sci-fi that was hopeful of the future.
And while I know the newest Star Trek series, Enterprise, was somewhat controvelsial among fans, I do believe it's intro is the best summary, the very embodiment of what is the spirit of Star Trek.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yijcWsLda8
I've similarly felt a lack of aspirationalism in modern sci-fi. That's one of the aspects that I like about Interstellar. It almost feels like a pre-warp, Star Trek universe Earth. It's gritty and bleak in a lot of places, but the overall message is one of hope. People also complained about the plot, but I thought it was pretty typical Christopher Nolan fair, so if you don't like that flavor of ice cream, you probably shouldn't have ordered it in a sunday, if you catch my metaphor.
What got to me was his comment a year or so ago on Twitter where he said that he would be anybody Grandfather just for the asking. I asked him, because I never new my grandfather (either one) and darnit if having him for even a virtual Grandfather wouldn't be the best thing ever. But in doing that, I more feel like I've lost a member of the family than I did when I actually lost some members of my family.
Hollywood works really hard to create a portrayal of Ubermensch out of people who are just people. In some cases, those people aren't good people, and that's where the celebrity worship worries me. I think a lot of people confuse the characters the actors play, and the words they speak written by other people, for the actor themselves.
And even when you think someone looks like a good person, outside of what characters they've played, you don't know the whole story. Look at the allegations against Bill Cosby lately. Are they true? I don't know, and it's not my place to say--we have a legal system for that very reason. And people make mistakes sometimes, too (though, in this case, they'd be pretty big, awful, questionably-forgivable mistakes, if they turned out to be true, but the example is the only one I could think of off of the top of my head). It's just another good enough reason to adopt a general policy to not elevate celebrities so high.
But in the case of Nimoy, he really seems like he did his best to enjoy life and be a decent person towards others. I don't know if he ever did anything specifically humanitarian, but if the story of Mr. Nimoy ended there, it'd be a pretty good one, one that more people should emulate.
Yeah, it feels a bit like losing a grandfather for me, too.
The world of Star Trek TOS and TNG normally felt unambiguously better than ours, but it felt better in ways that were achievable. A world focused on exploration, with a society that did not shy away from conflict but worked to resolve it peacefully. It felt like what a steadfast belief in modernity could lead to. In the word's of Neal Stephenson (who I think borrowed the term from someone else) Star Trek and Spock serve as forms of cultural hieroglyphs, recognizable symbols of a great possible world developed from an unshakeable faith in modernity and progress.
I think we morn in part because we will miss our hieroglyph. While there have been a number of unamibigously pro-science/modernity movies lately, Spock stood out for generations. He stood for progress and goodness. He managed to be absolutely moral and absolutely logical. And I think it is the blow to those ideas we mourn as much as the man.
If you are nerd enough :), you will have caught all you could of the interviews with Gene Roddenberry. Gene was caught genuinely by surprise that Spock was such a hit. If you look at how Nimoy played Spock in "The Menagerie", where they (rather crassly ) reuse footage from the rejected pilot, the evolution of the character is startling.
Leonard Nimoy simply hit that part and the creation of that character out of the park.
One of the things that Frank Zappa used to use to talk about the space-between-the notes in art was "put the eyebrows on it". Isn't that a Spock reference? Were there eyebrows in theater or film before Nimoy?
Here's a fun video of him in a commercial with the "new" spock. Always love to stay positive when someone passes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UengULt6t7Q
Clearly, not enough that, looking back, he thought it was worthwhile. And the cost isn't just years, its quality of life impacts of smoking-related illness (in his case, COPD.)
15 years later, I'm still not yet old enough for my chickens to have come home to roost, nor those of my school friends. But looking at my parents, and their parents too, it's very obvious that those who never smoked are in much better shape.
Moral of the story? That's easy - don't smoke. Like... duh.
But - if you really insist, at least smoke only the doobie doo, and without any tobacco mixer. Because at least that gets you high. And then, when you're old, and your lungs are fucked anyway, you can at least say that when you were young... nobody knew for sure.
It's so nice to see that all the money and propaganda that was going into covering scientifically proven facts like that up is now going into global warming denial instead. We've come a long was, baby!
http://dermnetnz.org/reactions/smoking.html
Beyond its known links to cancer, lung and heart disease, smoking is now thought to be associated with premature skin ageing and delayed wound healing, as well as a number of skin disorders, particularly psoriasis, hidradenitis suppurativa and cutaneous lupus erythematosus.
Smoking can accelerate the skin ageing process in the skin. Ageing of the skin means that it droops, develops wrinkles and lines and can become dry and coarse with uneven skin colouring and broken blood vessels (telangiectasia). Smokers can appear gaunt and develop an orange or grey complexion.
Since the 1970's studies have shown that smoking results in more premature facial wrinkling than sun exposure. Lines around the eyes called “crow's feet” can develop at an earlier age. Multiple vertical lines around the mouth also occur and are called “smoker's lines”. These effects continue into old age. By the age of 70 years, smoking 30 cigarettes a day could lead to the equivalent of an extra 14 years of skin ageing.
http://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/ss/slideshow-ways-smo...
Maybe there is no fountain of youth, but there is a surefire way to make yourself look older. Smoking changes the skin, teeth, and hair in ways that can add years to your looks. It also affects everything from your fertility to the strength of your heart, lungs, and bones. Take a look at these side-by-side photos. Can you pick out the smoker? Check your pick and get a closer look on the next slide.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19675554
Molecular basis of tobacco smoke-induced premature skin aging.
Although it is now widely recognized that tobacco smoke has negative effects on the skin, the molecular mechanisms underlying its skin-aging effects remain uncertain.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069900/
Incidentally, William Shatner played the villain in 2 episodes of Colombo: 'Fade in to Murder' (1976) [2] and 'Butterfly in Shades of Grey' (1994) [3].
[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074328/
[3] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109458/
Apple fanbois will be interested to learn that Columbo loved to use the innocent-sounding phrase "Just one more thing ...." while faking an exit.
He has a long list of roles as a voice actor.
The first one he had a fair bit of screen time. IIRC, in Into Darkness, the new crew contacted Nimoy to ask him about Khan and how to defeat him. I think that was the only time he was on screen.
Not since John Peel's passing have I felt quite so sad about a "famous" person leaving this mortal coil.