Roddenberry was known as the "First Lady of Star Trek" and had been involved in Star Trek since the show's pilot, when she played brunette Number One, and later took on small roles in the original show, ranging from the blonde Nurse Christine Chapel to the voice of the ship's computer. She recently completed recording the voice of the USS Enterprise for the ship's computer in the upcoming Star Trek movie directed by J.J. Abrams.

Roddenberry was also dedicated to keeping a Star Trek fan legacy and extremely proud of the show's fans, whose conventions she made frequent appearances at:

"Star Trek" and its successors often focused on political and philosophical issues of the day. Roddenberry and her husband, who died in 1991, believed in creating "thoughtful entertainment" and were proud of the show and the passionate devotion of its fans, Rossall said.

"My mother truly acknowledged and appreciated the fact that `Star Trek' fans played a vital role in keeping the Roddenberry dream alive for the past 42 years. It was her love for the fans, and their love in return, that kept her going for so long after my father passed away," her son said in a statement on the official Roddenberry Web site.

She was born Majel Lee Hudec in 1932, where she acted in small TV roles when she met her future husband in 1964 during a guest role for The Lieutenant, which he produced. The couple married in 1969 and had one son.

In a town where the wives of top executives are often rarely seen in the public outside of the charity circuit, Roddenberry embraced the Trekkies. Her level of involvement and dedication to the show's fans was and is rarely seen in Hollywood, and the Star Trek fans loved her for it.

Majel Roddenberry, 'First Lady Of Star Trek,' Dies [USA Today]
Majel Roddenberry, Widow Of 'Trek' Creator, Dies [AP]

"They were liberation songs,” she said in a videotaped interview with The New York Times in 2007 for its online feature "The Last Word." "You’re walking down life’s road, society’s foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can’t get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die, or insist upon your life." […]

Odetta marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and performed for President John F. Kennedy. Bill Clinton awarded her the National Endowment for the Arts Medal of the Arts and Humanities. She sang and performed well into the 21st century, and her influence stayed strong, and one critic called her voice a "force of nature."

Time magazine's Richard Corliss writes: "During the folk boom, each Odetta gig, in coffee house or a concert hall, was a master class of work songs, folk songs, church songs, and an eloquent tutorial in raw American history. Identifiable from the first syllable, her voice fused the thrill of gospel, the techniques of art song, — the wisdom that subtlety sometimes trumps volume — and the desperate wail of blues." Bob Dylan credited her first solo record in 1956, Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues, as "the first thing that turned me on to folk singing… [It] was just something vital and personal."

Odetta, Voice Of Civil Rights Movement, Dies At 77 [NY Times]
Odetta: Soul-Stirrer, 1930-2008 [Time]
American Folk Music Legend Odetta Dies At 77 [USA Today, via AP]
Odetta, 77; Sang the Soundtrack For The Civil Rights Movement [Washington Post]

Elizabeth Barry of the University of Warwick finds that widely-read obituaries were one of the first ways regular people attained celebrity — albeit posthumously. People's life stories were run as cautionary tales in the 17th century — showing the consequences of wicked or virtuous living — but quickly became a popular human interest read. Initially, the obits featured royalty and other public figures, but the genre grew to include all kinds of people who'd led interesting lives. Says Barry, "Different kinds of deaths came to be commemorated and you didn’t have to be something like a military hero or be a political player or be some sort of high person in society to get public commemoration on your death."

Eventually, the obit-mongers were criticized for catering to low-brow tastes hungry for scandal. But Barry feels the universality of death acted as an equalizer and created the sense of identification that characterizes the modern celeb-public relationship. Of course, by any standard this is a conveniently reductive definition of celebrity - weren't the "military heroes and political players" already kind of celebrities? - but the notion of a fleeting, arbitrary celebrity, manufactured for public entertainment and then discarded, is certainly a unique phenomenon. If Barry's theory holds any water, there's a pleasing neatness to the notion of a life, reduced to a few paragraphs for strangers' delectation, with the veneer of beneficence. Wholly public, yet completely selfish. When Rupert the Baby Deer died last month - only a day after we'd learned about his existence - our shared grief was overwhelming. A friend mused that in a sense this mini emotional roller-coaster was really our celebrity-obsessed age to scale: the emotion is no less real for its lack of depth, but as the stories end, so too does our interest. The tragedy is somehow a neat cap to the narrative. From death cars to autopsies, we feel a right to know how and why things ended - to know if the end was just or tragic. Maybe Barry's onto something.

Dead People In 1700s Were The First Celebrities[Live Science]

• A new study says that women are more stressed than men. We really don't have time to be reading and writing about studies like this because we totally have a big Powerpoint presentation to get and we are, like, about to pull our hair okay? Gawd! [Feminist.org]
  
• Dressing like a hooker for Halloween isn't just for adult women like us - now your kids can get in on the action. Feministing points out a costume website where there's a "Major Flirt" costume (filed under the "Occupation" category) for little girl. It's never too early to be a cock tease! [Feministing]
  
• Breast cancer survivors are among a huge percentage of women who start their own business, most of which are focused on helping fellow patients in need. [NY Times]

• Marie Curie's daughter, journalist Eve Curie Labouisse, has died at the age of 102. [NY Times]
• There's some controversy surrounding Oprah's recent show where she revealed she has hyperthyroidism. Apparently the expert she had on the show to discuss the condition offered up a bunch of wellness suggestions but never actually told women who thought they might have it to go see, you know, a doctor. Whatever. Why go see a shrink when you can just watch Dr. Phil? [Salon]
• Double suck. Your obesity risk increases after menopause. [Science Daily]
• All-girls boarding schools are on the decline in the UK, but administrators and students are still gung ho for single sex education. Lesbians! Kidding. Sorta. [The Independent]

• Apparently, many men are still following that archaic, women-as-property tradition of asking their future-father-in-laws for "permission' to marry their girlfriends. Something tells us Amy Winehouse's partner-in-crack-addiction, Blake Fielder-Civil, did not. [Salon]
  
• Researchers have discovered that a low-fat diet cuts your risk of developing ovarian cancer. Unfortunately the benefits only start to kick in after four years of depriving yourself of all the delicious things in life. [MSNBC]
  
• Antidepressants cool hot flashes? Awesome. That means we have an excuse to take happy drugs 4Eva! [NY Times]

• Give your grandma a hug! Experts say that post-menopausal women across the world actually do much of the work in society and in some cases, anthropologists find that 60-year old women are just as physically-strong as 20-year olds. [Salon]
• More women are blasting off into outer space than ever before. You know what must suck? Taking off that huge spacesuit in order to change your tampon. [CBS News]
• CBS' Early Show did a segment on how families can afford to have a stay-at-home parent, since 70 percent of those polled thought it was the best lifestyle for couples with kids. Of course, the show focused on mom staying home. Ugh. [CBS News]
• A French woman was overwhelmed with emotion upon seeing a $2 million painting and planted a big wet one on the canvas, leaving a lipstick mark. She said the red smooch made the painting better. Ha-ha, that bitch is crazy but sort of awesome! [Reuters]

• Older women, younger men, can it work? CNN investigates the truly tired topic of $500K-worth-of-plastic-surgery-cougars and the men who love them. [CNN]
  
• You know how when you have serious itching "down there" you assume it's a case of the crotch monkey's and start medicating yourself with Monistat? Apparently, most women who assume they have a yeast infection are, in fact, wrong and administering meds like Monistat only encourages yeast infections to fester in the future. Guh-reat. [Science Daily]
  
• Medical research shows that breast milk is far more nutritional than manufactured formulas. Remember that, Bill Maher, the next time you tell Maggie Gyllenhaal to put away her titties at Da Silvano. [Science Daily]
  
• P.S. Maggie check out the latest nursing top that's guaranteed to get little Ramona into Mensa! [Science Daily]

• You know those detox diets where you drink some bizarrely colored drink for five days and poo your brains out? Yeah, well, some of them are great for you and some of them aren't, so do your research before you spend a week on the toilet trying to lose five pounds. [CNN]
• Eight hundred anti-choice protesters picketed a soon-to-open Planned Parenthood in Aurora, Illinois this weekend. Another protest, this one a "Men's Vigil", is scheduled for tomorrow night. Ugh, fucktards. [Chicago Tribune]
• An 18-year-old man who stabbed a 16-year-old girl may claim that the acne drug Accutane drove him to it. If acne drugs made you homicidal, we would have hurt a whole lot of people between the ages of 14 and 21. [The Pittsburgh Channel]
• One woman was raped and three were sexually assaulted in their homes near the University of Maryland in College Park. Police think these assaults may be related to a series of Peeping Tom incidents earlier in the year, and believe that the culprit may be a student since the incidents stopped during the summer when school was not in session. [WBALtv.com]
• Eva Crane, who abandoned a career in nuclear physics to pursue her passion for bees, has died at the age of 95. [NY Times]
• The NY Times has a fascinating story about a 33-year old woman who discovered she has an extremely high risk of getting breast cancer and decided to get a preventative mastectomy. [NY Times]
• When it comes to getting a note from your doctor to take sick leave, male doctors are more likely to give the go ahead to male patients than female doctors are to okay sick leave for female patients. [Science Daily]
• One-fifth of male bosses in the UK won't give women of "child bearing age" a job. Coincidentally, 100% of women in the UK wouldn't give those men a blow job if their lives depended on it! [Guardian UK]
• Clinical evidence proves that exercise can help fight depression. So can a bottle of pills, which is our preferred route. [LA Times]

• Rumors are flying that Britney Spears might appear on Sunday's Emmy Awards to apologize for her performance at the VMAs. WTF? What does she have to apologize for? She gave a shitty performance, she didn't go on a racist tirade or run over a crowd of schoolchildren. Britney, babe, don't let those assholes convince you to humiliate yourself even more for their ratings pleasure. Go home, take a shower, and play with your kids. [US Weekly]
  
• A 16-year old buy trailed a group of girl runners from his high school and yelled, "Keep going, or I'll rape you." The girls showed the little fucker they weren't scared and took down his license plate number and called the cops. Take that, punk. [NBC5.com]
  
• Holy crap, Beth Ditto from The Gossip writes an advice column? Awesome! [Guardian UK]
  
• Teen girls who diet are more likely to become smokers. Well, duh. If there's anything Kate Moss ever taught us it's that smoking fights hunger pangs and looks super sexy. [Reuters]

• After our 72-year old grandpa had triple bypass surgery, the first thing he asked the doctor when he awoke was when he could "have relations" with his wife again. That's why the news that seniors are still into humping came as no surprise to us. [USA Today]
• African pop star Angelique Kidjo has launched a campaign in her native country of Benin to encourage girls to get an education. [Reuters]
• Is today Paris Hilton's birthday? Scientists are close to developing a vaccine for chlamydia. [ScienceDaily.com]
• Two badass female NASA commanders will make history next month as they become the first pair of women to lead their orbital missions at the same time. Punky Brewster would be so proud. [MSNBC]
• MSNBC calls out Myriad, a company which is marketing their breast and ovarian cancer tests in TV commercials, for using scare tactics to increase their stock price, alleging that these ads make more business sense for Myriad than for public health or for educating women. [MSNBC]
• The debate over how to teach sex education in India rages on. Bizarrely, the situation there is really no different than the sex education vs. abstinence debate in the US — except that we're a freaking first world country and should be beyond this shit. [Economist]
• Eighty-nine year old Sylvia Levin is awesome — for the last 34 years she's spent six days a week getting people to register to vote, for free. Government experts think the 46,700 voters that Levin has registered are a national record. Think how many scarves she could have knitted instead. [LA Times]

• Catherine Zeta Jones is not alone! More than one in ten pregnant women smoke, reports the AP (via MSNBC), and research suggests that many of those women suffer from depression, making quitting even more difficult. A Columbia University epidemiologist, tracked more than 1,500 pregnant women, and "22 percent smoked at some point during pregnancy" with about 12 percent classified as nicotine-dependent. [MSNBC]
  
• A bunch of spunky girl soccer stars urinated on the opposing team's synthetic soccer field. "I think it's unclassy," sniffed a rival. We think it smells like chicken soup! [Boston Herald]
  
• A 5-foot tall woman was cleared of charges that she raped a 6-foot tall man, after he accused her of spiking his drink with roofies. We know she's innocent and all, but that giraffe print sweater is criminal. [Daily Mail]
  
• Cuesta Benberry, a quilt historian an archivist who helped bring attention to the contributions of African-American woman to the craft, has died at the age of 83. No word yet if Anthropologie sends their regrets. [NY Times]

• Two women and a man are charged with smuggling over 20 women and girls from Togo in West Africa and forcing them to work at hair-braiding salons in New Jersey. Oh shit, we had cornrows five years ago. [International Herald Tribune]
• A controversial British Muslim playwright has turned the story of her mother's brutal honor killing into a play, which she hopes to also adapt into a feature film. In other news, we saw Grease this weekend and it was OMG Awesome! [Daily Mail]
• Hilarious Molly Ivins, who died in January and was totally one of our heroes, is being honored in an NYC Memorial Service tomorrow. We're sure Shrub will be there in spirit. [NY Times]
• A Harvard Medical student is fighting for the right to have additional time to pump her breast milk during the nine hour test she must take to get her degree. Are the examiners worried she's got a cheat sheet on the other side of her nursing bra or something? [NY Times]
• Post menopausal women who drink two or more alcoholic beverages a day may double their chances of getting endometrial cancer. [Science Daily]