Investing

Beam Me Up Scotty, Vulcans Have Taken Over Planet Finance

Can you out-geek me? When J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot first came out, I saw it not once but twice.

The first time, I took my eldest son (“Thing 1”). The second, I dragged along his younger brother (“Thing 2”). And while in public, I hid behind the explanation of, “I need to go again in fairness to Thing 2, who couldn’t make it last week,” the truth was, it was my thirty-plus years of Trekkiedom that had me aching for a second showing. (And by the way, before you sic social services on me, I mean “Thing 1” and “Thing 2” as in The Cat in the Hat, not as in I didn’t get around to naming my kids.)

If you are not a Trekkie, feel free to indulge in a moment of smug superiority at my pathetic need for subterfuge to justify seeing the movie again.

But what can I say? It was 2 hours and 6 minutes of immensely satisfying, visually stunning, action-packed drama. It was during the second showing that I had an epiphany about the popularity of Spock. As you probably know, Spock struggles with an oddly compelling identity issue: he’s the son of a human mother and a Vulcan father.

As you are also probably aware, Vulcans are ubernerds — humorless and boring in their slavish devotion to logic.