Star Trek's LeVar Burton to Be Scientific American Guest Web Editor June 11

NuqneH! Buy' ngop! That's "greetings" and "good news" in Klingon. These otherworldly tidings seem like a fitting way to let you know that LeVar Burton, who played the U.S.S.

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LeVar BurtonCredit: Reading Rainbow

NuqneH! Buy’ ngop!

That’s “greetings” and “good news” in Klingon. These otherworldly tidings seem like a fitting way to let you know that LeVar Burton, who played the U.S.S. Enterprise‘s chief engineer Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation, will be guest editor of Scientific American‘sWeb site on Wednesday, June 11.


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Burton recently initiated a highly successful Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to relaunch his popular literacy-promoting children’s show, Reading Rainbow, on the Web and other platforms. The funds will also support bringing the show into as many school classrooms nationwide as possible. At SA we certainly support children’s literacy and education in all fields (see some of our education initiatives here) including reading, science, math, engineering and technology, so we were delighted when Burton agreed to sit in the captain’s chair for our Web site.

As guest editor, Burton will take charge of our home page, choose what should be featured as the news of the day, write and edit some stories on education and space, and tweet about his experience that day.

If you have any advance questions for Burton, please post them below in the comments or tweet them to @sciam, or @readingrainbow or @levarburton.

In the meantime we encourage you to check out his videos below that elaborate on what’s next for Reading Rainbow:

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