My father was an abusive alchoholic rage monster who’s one contribution to my upbringing was a desire to “make me tough” with a Darwin/Nietzsche approach and my mother was so wrapped up in surviving him that she more or less left with zero attention. Readers of this blog back when I did a lot more writing on it and most of my friends will have gleaned that my childhood was not exactly a Norman Rockwell-esque wholesome love and kisses with fireworks on the 4th of July clone of the Wonder Years. I was going to write this last night but honestly needed some time to collect my thoughts and feelings regarding the death of my all time favorite actor. Most of the nerdosphere heard it within about an hour. I’m sure by now you have heard the news regarding the death of Leonard Nimoy yesterday. “Live Long and prosper” is featured on many Star Trek t shirts.īy Dave / 28th February, 2015 / star trek t shirts, T-Shirts / No Comments Various phrases in ancient Egyptian and medieval English literature have phrases that are not exactly the same as “Live long and prosper” but are fairly similar to it. The phrase “Live long and prosper,” while not sourced to any particular historical text, does have some antecedents. Nimoy created this gesture when he decided that the Vulcans were a race for whom the hand was very important. The hand position mimics the Hebrew letter “shin” which is short for one of the names of God in Hebrew. He saw that they made a gesture where the ring and middle fingers were separated and the thumbs extended, and that they used this gesture when placing their hands on something to bless it. Leonard Nimoy is Jewish and he based the gesture on something he saw Orthodox Rabbis doing when visiting an Orthodox synagogue as a child. Leonard Nimoy himself invented the gesture and put the words to it. The writers of Star Trek did not conceive of the gesture, nor the words. One of the big contributions to the cultural lexicon from Star Trek is the Vulcan salute, a hand signal typically accompanies by the words “Live long and prosper.” You’ll see this gesture and its accompanying phrase on Star Trek t shirts.īelieve it or not, the Vulcan salute was not created by the show’s writers. That’s because Star Trek was such a good show that it wound up giving birth to many pop cultural phenomena that made it over the gap and became permanently part of our culture. Go find a teenager who has never seen Star Trek and ask them if they recognize the hand sign with “Live long and prosper”. One of those pop cultural phenomena is the Vulcan salute. But some pop cultural phenomena endure and take on a life of their own, living far beyond the bands, franchises, and brands that gave them life. ![]() Maybe it gets a snippet of air play here and there. Today’s flavor of the week pop song fades away after a few months and that’s that. Many pop culture phenomena are ephemeral and eventually fade away. What starts off as a joke or a meme or a tv gag eventually finds its way into the common language. One of the interesting things about popular culture is that popular culture eventually just becomes culture. By Felix Graves / 9th June, 2021 / star trek t shirts / No Comments
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