Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Red-Shirted!

Whoops!

A Buffalo-based health care company promising to give clients "the redshirt treatment" apparently doesn't know what the phrase suggests to Star Trek fans.

AdRants reported on the campaign, including a photo of an Independent Healthcare billboard that reads, "You Deserve the RedShirt Treatment." The ad refers to the company's red-shirted staff, but the company is apparently unaware of the treatment of "red-shirts" on Star Trek, usually minor characters brought on to die and demonstrate the threat to the major characters.

According to Wikipedia, "A redshirt is a stock character, used frequently in science fiction but also in other genres, whose purpose is to die soon after being introduced, thus indicating the dangerous circumstances faced by the main characters." AdRants attributes the term to Star Trek, "in which security officers wear red shirts and are often killed on missions."

In addition to its negative science fiction connotation, the "redshirt treatment" is used in American education to indicate a student whose eligibility has been postponed or put off to allow that student time to develop. The phrase came out of college sports, where it refers to players who have been recruited and practice with their teams but are not eligible to play varsity sports. It also refers to students who are held back a year, most often from kindergarten, to give them time to catch up with other students at the same level.

Independent Health received top honors from U.S. News & World Report's study of America's best health plans, where it was ranked ninth among national HMOs.




From Trektoday.com

4 comments:

  1. "I'm reminded of the lame protestant"

    I suppose only Orthodox could see problems with Protestantism in a Star Trek reference.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We clearly need to send Orthodox to a Klingon penal colony to do hard time for his theological malfeasance.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm reminded of the lame protestant iconoclast argument that because in some situations in the old testament, doulia is used in a similar way to worship, therefore it must always be used that way. Of course, it isn't even used that way throughout the old testament, and even if it were it would not prevent the Church from defining the word suitable for its own purposes.

    Of course, that isn't the actual argument. The argument from the "iconoclasts" is that the veneration of images should have an exegetical foundation. What we have in Scripture isn't merely the 1st and 2nd commandments, but specific OT examples, like the people prostituting themselves before the ephod in the days of Gideon. The argument is the icons are snares.

    But we'll take this as a backdoor admission on the part of Orthodox that his Communion makes it up as it goes along and feels free to treat Scripture as a guideline, not the Word of God.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Of course, those were types and signs of what was to come in Christ.

    Is Orthodox a Jew looking to rebuild the Temple?

    ReplyDelete