I'd might as well review these episodes as they air since they annoy me so much lately. This one was a bit better than the previous three, but there were still some shit-kickers. First of all, and I've muttered this before, if BSG wanted "realism" then the entire fleet would be under marshal law with Adama or a puppet-Roslin as absolute dictator. Their situation -- the very existence of their species -- is far too dire to entrust to the capricious whimsy of democracy. In the "real" Galactica fleet those striking factory workers would have been shot on television as an example to other malcontents. Not to mention an actual Fleet NCO acting as their ringleader; that guy would have been shoved in front of a firing squad before breakfast. But anyway.

The main question I have is how a civilization sophisticated enough to travel FTL through space in flawless artificial gravity must rely upon a Dickensian manufactory for the production of its fuel. Presumably that powder they use has one hell of an energy content (as in gigajoules per ounce how about) in order for it to power starships (and are we to believe that the Galactica is powered by some kind of combustion engine?), but even the very notion that they would still rely upon a limited resource for fuel is dubious, not to mention one so difficult to store and process. They have to scoop it up in buckets from a bigass mound, then dump it through a screen onto a wobbly conveyor belt; the process looks more like a nineteenth-century gold mining operation than starship fuel production.

Meanwhile, wild-eyed Balthar scribbles out some pseudo-Marxist / Mein Kampf manifesto that his "lawyer" distributes to a fleet apparently eager for social justice. It's just free-speechy enough for Roslin to descend to the murky brig and force the former President to produce volume 2 from the depths of his boxer shorts. Then there's some incredulity about Balthar having come from an agricultural world, and how terribly humble and humiliating such a thing is, so that he even altered his accent in order to fit in with the elitists on Caprica. These guys are terribly British, aren't they? I can't imagine a Nebraska cornhusker adopting a New York accent. And most farmers I've ever known or heard of were justifiably proud to be farmers. But anyway.

Finally, Roslin and Adama flirt some more. I felt a little ill from it. Especially when visions of a younger, fitter Edward James Olmos swam across Roslin's girlish imagination. Eegh. At least I got to shout, "Too bad she won't live!"

Five minutes of story, thirty-seven minutes of ponderous sentimental crap. And to be honest, the last thing I wanted was a story about a crazy chick losing control; I've had enough of those, thanks. Ah but her mother was difficult to get along with! Yeah, I think I saw that on Grey's Anatomy. But Starbuck has a special spiritual destiny! And can't sleep! Saw it on Lost. B-but Starbuck's crashing into a planetary atmosphere! Yeah I saw it on Battlestar Galactica last year. Send rescue teams! Nah, why bother. She's toast. Or a toaster? Who even cares. I can't find anything compelling out of this, whether Starbuck is dead or electronic or alive in a green meadow wrapped in swaddling parachute, I just want to move on. I'm yawning over here!

Well but at least the love polygon has been smashed. "Wha' 'bout you and us?" sez Kara. "Blech," sez Apollo. "You skanky ho bitch now. Too many tats. Go mope that a-way!" "Frak," sez Kara, frowning, all makeup smeary and stinky. "Maybe I just take the pill then. The one with all the bright mandala colors, swirling coriolis clockwise around my sexy omphalos down there." "Blech," sez Apollo. Farts.

I see now that Jean Baudrillard is dead. I didn't particularly love that dude, found many of his ideas and comments a little offensive even, but he was not entirely without insight. Moreover he had ideas that were adaptable to other areas, and so he was a *useful* philosopher (unlike many others). I guess his main line was about adjusting to a pseudo-collective social environment where media makes a thing real. Whatever, he was French.

I'm happy today because the new Modest Mouse album (We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank) has a song on it called "Parting of the Sensory", and this song is the best new song I've heard in at least a year of listening to new songs. It's so good it makes me want to write about how good it is, which is why this.

Someday you will die somehow and something's gonna steal your carbon!

TightVNC is a free version of RealVNC, both of which are cross-platform remote administration apps. At home I run a TightVNC server on my multimedia Windows PC (the one hooked up to the television) so I can admin it from my Ubuntu desktop or my chair-side Tablet PC. At work I use it to sneak into any number of development servers. It works much like Remotely Anywhere or Radmin or etc; not as good as the commercial ones but good enough and free enough to install everywhere. Just saying.

There's an epidemic of exploding lawyers on the Galactica these days, so it's up to Mr. Mumbles (formerly of the Firefly universe) to step up and defend old Gaius Baltar Caesar. Mr. Mumbles has lots of important things to say, especially to Apollo, and spends most of this episode mumbling. And since daddy took the viper keys away, sad Apollo, looking dejected and mushy of face, has nothing better to do than listen intently, preferably with a glass of Colonial Bourbon in one hand. Meanwhile, that guy who married Starbuck is going all Irish wake in the hangar deck, flipping a two-headed coin and getting in everybody's way. He weeps a bit, then falls off a viper. "Forget about it, Sam," sez Potato-faced Apollo, "it's Karatown."

Mr. Mumbles, who may or may not be blind judging by his dark glasses, nearly explodes several times, there's something about a cat, the President's glasses, and a magic fountain pen. That's about it for Battlestar Legal this week. Next week, a long conversation takes place. Hurrah for the greatest Sci-Fi er... what was this show supposed to be again?

Neal Stephenson reviews 300 in a NY Times op-ed and points out how ridiculous most non-geeks are. I think I hate them all, the non-geeks.

One of my personal heroes, Robert A. Heinlein, was born 100 years ago this July. There's a big celebration planned in Kansas City featuring a few SF luminaries and spaceflight groups, as well as this year's John W. Campbell Award. And Buzz Aldrin too! Sounds like a hell of a party.

Let's see if this works. (Why people do this I have little idea, but anyway.)



That up there should be the last 10 songs I listened to in Amarok. If it's not, then who cares anyway?

So now, this page will have the last 10 songs table. The only thing is it doesn't update immediately; it's not a database query, it's an image file saved periodically (not sure what the period is either).

I wonder if people would like to display their last 10 google searches on their weblog? I could make that happen! Or um... their last 10 bowel movements? Shit, I bet somebody *is* doing that somewhere. Sick internet, sick!

These guys are counting the number of Ubuntu adopters. I'm number 12856, which kind of pisses me off since I've been using Ubuntu for about a year now and just found out about the counter. I should be much lower! I wonder if I can appeal my status somehow. I am, btw, Linux user number 444717, which is also embarrassingly high. And I'm Slashdot user number 590671, which used to be really high but isn't so bad anymore. And I'm the very first wearer of this shirt that I'm wearing.

Can the government force a doctor to treat a patient he doesn't want to treat? Can the government send armed goons to a hospital to compel a nurse to take some blood? No? Then why do so many Democrats insist we have a "right to healthcare?" Slavery is no longer permitted here.

"It's in the frakkin' ship!"
"Exception!"

This weekend I installed Linux Mint onto my previously dormant sda2 drive. Mint is basically a rebranded Ubuntu with all the quasi-proprietary and quasi-legal stuff pre-installed (multimedia codecs, decss, java, flash, etc), which makes setting up a bit easier. This time I tried out a script called "Envy" in order to install display drivers, but had some problems after adding kernal modules (driver went out of synch, X wouldn't start), so went back to using apt pointed at this very obliging repo. Then I spent at least an hour trying to get fonts right (this always happens; I'm a psycho about fonts -- and they're still not right either) using intel gathered here.

Who was that character who always expressed enthusiastic approval by saying "Mint!"? Damn. Anyway, mint! At least until Feisty is out of beta.

What a hairy sloppy mess. What a belligerent kick in the balls. It had to be the stupidest, most ridiculous ten minutes of television I've ever expected to not be stupid and ridiculous.

All Along the Watchtower? All Along the Watchtower?! And it's not Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower, it's not Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower, it's not even the Grateful freaking Dead's All Along the Watchtower, it's some wacko new All Along the Watchtower nobody's ever heard before, some 12 Colonies cover version -- maybe Starbuck brought them back a CD from Earth so they could learn how it went, or maybe of all the radio noise from Sol, *this*, this lousy new cover of All Along the Watchtower is what bled through to the pink nebular antennae (which, given the distance of the closest nebula to Earth, would date the show at about 4000CE -- hey maybe they *are* us in the distant future! Blech!). And apparently there's some code in this version of the song that tells Secret Cylons to march to an empty gym, stand staring at each other all fidgety, and figure out that they're Cylons. "Aw, crap!" "But I predate the existence of Cylons!" "Just face it, man, you heard the song!" "Does this mean I get my eye back?"

Exception! Exception, your honors! I must throw an exception!

Battlestar Galactica can blow me. Thank the gods for HBO. Thank the gods for Rome.

Here they is, you were waiting so anxiously. Some interesting choices there, some tired ones too. (I'm getting annoyed by the perennials like Gaiman and Stross -- they're good but not super-good, just well-liked, get it?) I'm actually reading Peter Watts' Blindsight right now, but I haven't read any of the other novel noms. Finally, some direction in life!