A Blog from Hell

Good-bye Ronnie James Dio

2010-05-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

The War on Neuroscience

2010-02-11T18:57:00.000-08:00

YouTube's system needs to be fixed

2010-01-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

Atheism is... by Richard Coughlan

2009-12-14T22:42:00.000-08:00

Richard Coughlan's channel is being threatened by false DMCAs:

A new epistemological tool

2009-12-03T16:45:00.000-08:00

The Voices of the Damned

2009-10-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

Want to become one of the voices of the damned?

Record your opinion of the concept of hell, post it on youtube, and then email or PM me with a link to your video.

I want to make this a series.

No More Gods on this Earth

2009-09-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

A shout-out for three atheists:

2009-08-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

The Christian Mafia

2009-08-05T06:01:00.000-07:00

Horror Movie Metal

2009-07-14T21:48:00.000-07:00

Vampires come full circle.

2009-07-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

I've been watching "True Blood," if you haven't seen it - check it out because you're in danger of being spoiled. So, proceed with caution into the rest of this post because there will be spoilers.

I'll probably be blogging the series like I blogged the re-imagined "Battlestar Galactica," right up to its disappointing last show. So far "True Blood" is missing a lot of the elements that made Battlestar such a standout series. There is no character here comparable to Baltar. The music is okay, but it in no way compares to the fantastic music that Bear McCreary composed. The special effects are kind of cheap and the characters sometimes get stereotypical and cliche.

However, in spite of those weaknesses this show has some great writing, and in that department I think they might top Battlestar. The show also is yet another evolution of the vampire genre, a genre that just won't stop evolving. When Bram Stoker wrote "Dracula," the most popular of the first vampire novels, he wrote it for a Christian culture. Dracula was turned away by crosses, burned by holy water and communion crackers. A crucifix protects Jonathan Harker in the movie version when he cuts himself shaving and Dracula lunges for his throat but stops when he sees the crucifix around Jon's neck.

One measure of the way our culture has been changing is what has been happening with vampire fiction. In "True Blood" not only are the vampires (as in Anne Rice's books) not harmed by Christian symbols some of the villains seem to be fundamentalist Christians, in particular, televangelist Steve Newlin and his wife Sarah, and some of the vampires are the noble and moral heroes, in particular Bill Compton.

The explicitly Christian elements of Vampire fiction have been gradually draining out of the genre because more and more fans find that part of the story to absurd for even the willing suspension of disbelief. "True Blood" isn't unique in this, Alan Ball, exec producer, has only pushed the envelope a tiny bit farther, and only for television. If you really want to push the envelope you'd have a vampire con artist who was Jesus 2,000 years ago, and that was already done by J.G. Eccarius in his novel "The Last Days of Christ the Vampire."

One of the delights of the series for me is its mess of complicated subtexts and allusions. In the background of the series the Vampires are trying to "come out of the coffin" and become accepted by mainstream society (much like gays and atheists). This is possible because a Japaneses firm perfected a synthetic blood known as Tru Blood that was meant for transfusions but then vampires discovered they could live off of it and the company began bottling and marketing the synthetic blood for sale to vampires. This lead to vampires letting their existence be known to the rest of the world in an event that has come to be known as "coming out of the coffin" movement, or "The Great Revelation."

I'm not sure Alan Ball knows what he's done here, I think he meant to make gays coming out as a subtext for vampires (I predict there will be a character modeled after Ted Haggard who preaches against vampire sex but turns out to be a gay fangbanger who is addicted to vampire blood), but there's another group that fits the subtext too; atheists. Note some of the things the religious leaders say in the "True Blood" show and promos about vampires being immoral. That's something I've heard from youtube Christians talking about atheists, and it gets lots of responses.

Just take all those videos, Christian and atheist, and replace the word "atheist" with the word "vampire" and your halfway towards creating a scene for "True Blood." The idea of vampires coming out of the coffin would be the Nightvision Phantom's worst nightmare. It sounds like liberal "moral relativism" accepting pure evil because vampires of the Bram Stoker type really were spawns of Satan.

I've been toying around with the idea of doing a youtube video where I create a character who comes out as a "True Blood" type vampire. Think about it, there already is an atheist "out" campaign. They have this red letter "A" you could turn upside down to make a "V" once you got rid of the cross line:

Alas, I'll need a webcam for that, so, until then I'd like to pass the idea on to others. Let me know if you do such a video and I'll do a shout out for you.

There are also other areas of writing in this series that have some stinging criticism of religion. One of those areas is the character of Jessica. Instead of telling you, let me just show you. The first two vids are set up for a funny twist in the third video:

Note how in the first two vids Jessica claims to be "a good Christian girl" but then, after she becomes a vampire she is all "Whoopie! I'm a vampire" and "there are people I want to kill." Is that the original Jessica saying that, or something demonic inside her?

Eventually she does visit her parents:

Accepting gays and atheists into mainstream society looks far easier after you consider accepting demonically possessed killers. This brings up a bunch of issue I did not note in my "Where do rights come from?" video talking about abortion:

"True Blood" raises a lot of neat issues about moral relativism, rights and the limits of tolerance that would never come up in any other context, but yet the issues resonate to all the other contexts. Whether vampires should be accepted into mainstream society depends on whether that acceptance can encourage the vampires to change their ways. If it does, then such acceptance is a benefit to society. If they can't change their ways, then it will have a negative effect.

It's the best subtext for a TV show I've ever seen. No matter how the dice fall on what vampires are, those issues get raised. So, is Jessica going to be too much a prisoner of her own bloodlust:

You'll have to watch the show to find out.

A YouTube Creationist: Geerup - and a question for my readers near the end.

2009-06-15T14:40:00.000-07:00

The fellow in the above video is called Geerup. He's the guy who took over VenomFangX's channel. Surprisingly, in this video, "The Lame Link Lemur," he says a lot of things I agree with concerning all the hype about the Ida fossil, Darwinius masillae, and the subsequent TV shows and book being promoted.

He's right, all the Ida hype is about making money with over inflated claims. Several of the claims made are clearly impossible to justify. For example, he captures a quote from some promoter/narrator saying: "She could re-write science... She could confirm Darwinian theory and debunk creationism. She could also question religion itself."

Re-write science? Well, maybe a tiny, rather uncontroversial, chapter in the huge story of primate evolution. Confirm Darwinian theory? I thought that theory had been solidly confirmed back in the 1950s when Francis Crick and James Watson discovered DNA? Debunk creationism? If anyone thinks Ida will get creationists or anyone else to question their religion they have seriously underestimated the stubborn ignorance of creationists and the hold of religion on people's minds.

Geerup wasn't the only one slamming these guys for over-hyping Ida. Some of my favorite atheist and scientist bloggers were saying similar things, that includes Carl Zimmer, PZ Myers (twice), and John Wilkins.

All of the science bloggers attacked the idea that there was a single fossil that was THE missing link. There is no missing link. There are missing branches. The link metaphor is all wrong. To have a missing link you must think of evolution as a chain. If there's a gap in the chain, then you have a missing link. But evolution is more of a tree. However, reporters and television producers are obsessed with the link idea. Newly discovered fossils help to resolve the order in which traits evolved, and how groups of species are related, and the more fossils discovered, the clearer the picture becomes, but no one fossil can tell the complete story.

The most Ida can tell is about going from a Lemur-like primate to a more monkey-like primate and that is not going to mean any more to a creationist than claims about whales having once been land animals. When it comes to human evolution the creationists have a problem with other fossils of which there are plenty:

We have hundreds of fossils of pre-human, near human, primates: Australopithecus robustus, Australpithecus boisei, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, etc. etc.. If Ida is so important, then what are these fossils, chopped liver:

Consider what we know about the Paleolithic and Neolithic age just from the stone tools. That's the prehistoric period when people made stone tools only by chipping and flaking rocks, before they moved to polishing and grinding. There is a contradiction with Genesis right there. In Genesis chapter 4 we are told that Eve, who knows how long after they're out of the Garden of Eden and its Idyllic conditions, bore Cain and his brother Abel and that Abel became a keeper of flocks, and Cain a tiller of the soil. Remember, Cain's offering to God was "from the fruit of the soil," while Abel brought one of the best of his flock. The overwhelming evidence of anthropology clearly contradict this story. The first proto-humans didn't have farming, they were hunter/gatherers with very crude stone tools. There is even some serious doubt as to whether early humans had a controlled use of fire for those altars and the "offering up a sheep on an altar of sacrifice."

The Paleolithic Age, when the development of the first stone tools took place, covers about 99 percent of human history. It starts with the introduction of stone tools by hominids such as Homo habilis, about a million years ago, and ends with the introduction of agriculture. Genesis would have us believe man had farming and controlled use of fire soon after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden.

During the Paleolithic, humans grouped together in small societies and subsisted by gathering plants and hunting or scavenging wild animals. They had only crude stone tools, with perhaps a bit of wood and bone used also. Humankind only gradually evolved from early members of the genus Homo, such as Homo habilis, who used simple stone tools and into the fully behaviorally and anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, depicted in Genesis.

Homo habilis lived in tribes entirely by hunting and gathering, before plant and animal domestication were introduced. The time interval between the earliest appearance of stone tools, more than 2 million years before present and the end of the last glacial period, 12,000–10,000 years ago is longer than recorded human history. But Genesis depicts a time when man had domesticated both animals and plants. There are also altars with fires. Yet the first evidence for human use of fire comes from the Peking man at Zhoukoudian in north China, 500,000–240,000 years ago.

If there was ever a "most important" fossil find that should have gotten creationists to question the Genesis story it was Lucy. But where was the big hype and news story when they found another Lucy-like fossil?

Lucy was discovered in 1974 by anthropologist Donald Johanson. She was an Australopithecus afarensis that lived only about 3.2 millions years ago and almost half of her skeleton was found. That find really did transform our views of how we became human. Like a chimpanzee, Lucy was small in size and had a small brain, long, dangly arms, short legs and a cone-shaped thorax with a large belly. But the structure of her knee and pelvis showed that she walked upright on two legs, like us. That is an important difference between humans and apes, making Lucy part of the human family. A transition between an earlier monkey-like species and man. Thus bipedalism became the most distinctive, apparently earliest, defining characteristic of humans.

If Lucy or other fossil evidence of Ausrtalopithicus afarenis and africanus don't convince creationists that humans evolved from a more monkey-like primate then how can anyone expect the lemur-like fossil of Ida to convince them?

So, how do creationists deal with this kind of evidence? Well, one creationist on youtube simply declared that Lucy and all the Neandertals were frauds and hoaxes. I wonder, does he also think the moon landings were faked? Another youtuber creationist said "scientists are just atheists." And what happens when a youtube creationist reads a scientific journal?

All the over-inflated hype for Ida was just fuel for the creationist propaganda machine. If you want to change minds you're not going to do it that way. In fact, that hype is going to erode some necessary trust it takes to change minds.

What I don't know is if the hype worked for selling books and TV shows. How were the ratings on that show "The Link." I don't know. I didn't bother to watch it. That's not the area of evolution that interests me. What I fear is that the hype did work and made these guys a lot of money and they're not going to stop using it until it stops working.

My guess is that it works precisely because it does get all the creationist sites buzzing and that stimulates conversations here on my blog and others. Thus were all talking and curious enough to see what they've got. No publicity is bad publicity.

Here's my question for my readers:

What convinced you that Darwinian evolution was true?

I'll answer that question for myself in my next post, but I can sum it up by listing the essentials: 1) Deep fossil evidence. 2) Genetic algorithms and evolutionary programming point to the mathematical inevitability of evolution. 3) Our DNA has ancient viruses in it.

UPDATE:

I made a video response to Geerup:

some pictures from my trip

2009-06-07T21:59:00.000-07:00

I expect this will bore most of the readers who come to my blog. Sorry about that. This is just a fairly random collection of pictures taken on my trip to Washington DC with a long stop over in Atlanta.

Currently I don't have the time to blog or work on the Kompoz music. I have access to a computer, but not to my musicc software. I may download some tonight however.

Right now I can't get to sleep so I'm going over the photos I took on the trip.

For some reason, tonight, this seems to be my favorite picture:

An attractive girl sleeping in the chairs at the airport terminal in Atlanta.

This next one features a weird book I was tempted to buy just because of the title: "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."

I found it at this bookstore I'd never heard of before, Buckhead Books. Is it some new chain? It was in the Atlanta airport:

Next, well, I've seen clouds from both sides now, top and bottom, and still somehow it's cloud's illusions I recall.... cotton candy ice bergs floating in a milky blue sea.

Pop Fest in Uptown Charlotte, North Carolina

2009-05-28T19:44:00.000-07:00

Just letting you know, there's a Pop Fest in Uptown Charlotte, North Carolina:
http://www.charlottepopfest.com/

They are donating their proceeds to The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science to support rational and scientific education, and to oppose the subversion of scientific education, for example by the well-financed efforts to teach pseudoscience in science classes.

I found some of the grounps that will be performing on youtube, here's the video I used:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFumA_8od9o

Night of the Zombie -- Cut Me Now

2009-05-28T19:05:00.000-07:00

I seem to be starting a Black Metal group on Kompoz. This is a little thing I did with one other collaborator, known as wyrdness1 on youtube.

If you would like to audition go here:

Join Kompoz, then upload your audition here:
http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/home.project?projectId=10501

The project is called "Zombie movie score."

My Kompoz site is:
http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/userName-NormanDoering/profile.member

You can be anywhere in the world, just as long as you can upload your music.

I have a video on YouTube

2009-04-15T01:08:00.000-07:00

Well, three videos, but the first two are just goofing around and trying to learn what I can do without a web cam or mike.

The third one, however, actually got a half-way decent rating, about 4 stars after 3 reviews but it may not stay there.

The tiny group of people who have read more of my blog might remember a couple of old posts I did called "If Hitler was an atheist..." and "If Hitler was a Darwinist..." If so, you might remember seeing some of these pictures before:

The music comes from a Kompoz group, it's called "Powertrip."

Yes, I'm on Kompoz and Youtube. Blog posting may suffer in the future because of that.

The Banana Man still wants Dawkins

2009-04-07T07:29:00.000-07:00

Ray Comfort is still pushing for a debate with Richard Dawkins:

I wish Dawkins would take Ray up on the offer. It would be a rather devious way to make Christianity look bad by letting Ray Comfort be it's voice.

I already dealt with Ray Comfort's claims about his banana video here, in "Pretending to think like Ray Comfort" and in "Ray Comfort's continuing sex problems."

There's really nothing new in the video.

More.

Pat Condell and NonStampCollector youtubes

2009-04-05T19:02:00.000-07:00

Since I started this "atheists on youtube" shtick I'm going to finish it. So, here are some Pat Condell and NonStampCollector youtube videos that were recommended to me:

The two videos above are thematically linked. Pat Condell talks about what a murderous bastard the God of the Old Testament was and NonStampCollector gives you some Bible verses where that violence happens, and they did all that without bothering to mention Numbers, Chapter 31, which was about how the Midians are killed, all of them except the virgin girls.

On God's instructions, Moses sent soldiers against the Midianites in response to some of the Israelite men having had sex with some of the Midianite women. Moses then ordered them to slaughter all the captives, saving only female virgins. The latter were apparently kept for purposes of rape. Verse 35 talks about 32,000 virgin captives; this implies that there were probably about 32,000 young boys killed (but I don't think fundy Christians would give it that interpretation).

Ah yes, the obscure art of Biblical interpretation. The Bible, like a person, will say anything you want if you torture it enough. Christians can pretty much dump all the bloody Old Testament insanity by saying Jesus changed the game plan, but it's hard to get around some of the things Jesus said, as NonStampCollector points out. If you really want to be saved you're supposed to give all you have to the poor and follow Jesus. Lucky for Christians Jesus isn't around any more. These days they only have to tithe ten percent of their income (not all) and from the looks of things a lot of that money goes into the local churches and salaries for local functionaries. Then they send missionaries, saving souls being more important than saving lives, and then finally a bit of money does wind up in the hands of the poor, and yet, amazingly, in a world where 2.1 billion people are Christian, the largest religion on the planet, we still have a huge problem with poverty. All that economic power seems surprisingly ineffective.

When it comes to those New Testament verses about wives submitting to husbands, commands about hair length, and verses condemning homosexuality, liberal Christians will find another way of translating the original Greek. For example, some have claimed that Paul doesn't really condemn homosexuality, because in the original Greek he's really only talking about pederasty. Yet other Greek-reading Bible scholars will say they are just twisting an ancient text to fit modern values. If you can choose any passage that says one thing and say it means the opposite by backing up your reasoning with a Greek lexicon then how badly was the Bible translated the first time?

I usually like most of what Pat Condell has to say, and for the most part I agree with it. However, in the above video I think Condell is being a bit too optimistic. The polls don't show any big shift away from religion.

Style-wise the above videos sound angry, irritated and ranty. I suspect that turns a lot of people off, and those would be the ones who most need to get his message. I wonder what he's really after. Is he out to change the world, or is he just trying to get an atheist audience to buy DVDs and tickets to his comedy shows?

Maybe all the religious bullshit is getting to him as it’s starting to get to anyone with an ounce of common sense in them.

UPDATE:

I guess my little dig about the response to my request for atheist youtube videos being pathetic must have motivated J Random Atheist to come up with a great youtube atheist I'd not yet heard of, ZOMGitsCriss. She's playboy bunny hot and she's funny and creative:

And for those who have suggested Edward Current, well, you haven't been reading my blog, I've got his youtubes embedded already, see "Pretending to think like Ray Comfort."

As for ThunderFoot, I'll get to him later. I haven't decided yet what to say, nor have I made it through enough of his videos yet.

A youtube atheist: coughlan666

2009-04-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

The response to my request for atheist youtube videos was pathetic. I got only one comment, so far, from John Morales who suggested Non-stamp collector's youtubes. Compared to the response I got from my request for music, which got 27 comments from 15 different people commenting on the post, and more importantly some very interesting music, it was pretty lame. The atheist youtube videos I've been linked to were not as interesting as the music.

I've now given people about an equal period of time and made roughly the same number of announcements on other forums and blogs (PZ Myers' site, James Randi's site and Richard Dawkins site), to justify the comparison. It perhaps indicates that more atheists are interested in sharing their favorite music than in sharing their favorite atheist youtubes? Either that, or no one, not even other atheists, are all that impressed by atheist youtubers.

Next time I'm going to ask for atheist blogs. I suspect I'll get a better response. Atheist arguments work better in writing than in videos. If you're going to do videos, especially ones where all you do is look into your camera and rant you're going to need something more. My featured youtuber, coughlan666, has it.

While I only got one blog comment I did get a few more responses on James Randi's forum and it was there where TX50 suggested Richard Coughlan, also known as coughlan666. After checking out only a few of coughlan666's youtubes I decided to feature him as my first find of interest. That doesn't mean I think he's better than Pat Condell or Non-stamp collector. It just means he's got something I can talk about, something intresting you might need if you're going to do rants on video. He has an emotional quality that makes him involving and empathetic to watch. On that level, his strongest video here is the last one in this post. His arguments aren't really that good, but they're far more emotionally involving than better arguments you might read on a blog where our emotional reactions are hidden. I'll point out some of Coughlan's lapses in reasoning and then show you where you can find a blogger making a more coherent argument to illustrate this point.

The first thing that struck me about coughlan666 was the thought, "Holy shit! It's a real life Baltar!" He looks a bit like Baltar, he sounds like Baltar and his attitude should have been that of the first season, or miniseries, Baltar. It would have made Baltar a more interesting character if he had some of these emotional reactions to people. So, Battlestar Galactica fans, think of coughlan666 as what the Baltar character could have been like.

Let's start with Coughlan's rant against other atheists, both TX50 and coughlan666 seem to be agreeing that atheist youtubers are not doing impressive work. In fact, calling coughlan666 a youtube atheist will probably piss him off. Here's his rant against atheists. Some of it would even apply to me:

I've been guilty of repeating that "if atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color" line myself. The first time I heard it I thought it was a great line. It was, but now it's a cliche that does, indeed, get repeated too often. I will never use it again. However, the claim "atheism is just another religion" is made, sometimes by Christians who will insist that Christianity is not a religion, far more often than the retort. I've seen variations on that "bald is a hair color" retort too: If atheism is a religion, then health is just another disease, if atheism is a religion, then off is a TV channel, if atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby (also a cliche now), if atheism is a religion, then not playing football is a sport, if atheism is a religion, then a dolphin is a fish (won't work with most young Earth creationists who probably think dolphins are fish)...

It's not that you can't define the absence of something as simultaneously being the presence of that thing, because atheism is only the lack of god-belief not of religion. There are apparently atheist Buddhists. Not all religions require a belief in God. It's just sloppy thinking. They're using the word "religion" in a way that is too broad. You might say that atheism is another "world view" and get closer to the truth, but even then it's not a "world view" either, it's just an aspect of some world views.

Where I think coughlan666 goes off track is thinking that because someone introduces a comment with "well, as an atheist, I think..." or "I'm an atheist" it means that they define themselves in only that way. I am an atheist, yes, that's relevant to a lot of discussions if the subject being talked about is religion, gods, spirituality, transhumanism, Battlestar Galactica (it turned out to be a very religious show) or life after death, it's an important bit of information and very relevant. I'm also an artist and when I did my hub page on my art I never said anything about my lack of religious beliefs. When I recently set up a site on Kompoz for showing people some of my weird music and composing with others I never said anything about my atheism. It just wasn't relevant in that context.

A person's atheism or religion is only relevant when you choose to talk about certain subjects and it would seem to be those subjects that Coughlan talks about most. In fact, I've seen few youtube posts from him that don't talk about his atheism in some form. He has chosen to talk about it more consistently than I do on this blog. Atheism is important to both of us, it is the dark truth about this world that few people can face. It may not be scaling Everest, but accepting atheism is rare enough that it's noteworthy. However, I must note one remarkable exception where Coughlan puts the subject of his own atheism aside and there may be more (I haven't seen all his videos). But do any of his regular listeners have any idea what music or art Coughlan likes? As far as I can tell this is a typical example of one of his youtube videos:

What you'll see in the above video is the start of a recurring theme with Coughlan youtubes; he flounders and gets frustrated over a basic epistemology question. In this case Coughlan is reacting to Jason's "try to believe" and "chose to believe" statements and pointing out how he just can't chose to believe something, it doesn't work. He acts constipated and grunts as if he is trying to believe something. I liked it, it was kind of funny, but was it an effective argument?

Some more subtle and effective arguments, I think, would be Dan Sewell's "The Choice to Believe," Debunking Christianity's "Impossible to Believe," and Sam Harris used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to do an experimental exploration of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty at the level of the brain.

Harris found that the final acceptance of a statement as "true," or its rejection as "false," seemed to rely on primitive, hedonic processing in the medial prefrontal cortex and the anterior insula. That means that we do, as Coughlan said, have no choice in our reaction on first encountering a proposition, things thought true will please us, things we think false can disgust us and the reaction is involuntary. However, that's only in the short term.

Every atheist I know has dealt with the question and the clearest example of why they do is the popularity of "Pascal's Wager." A lot of Christians use the modern, stripped down and distorted version that goes something like this: "Since you can't know if God exists, you should believe God exists anyway because then you'll get the rewards religion promises and if you're wrong and God doesn't exist then you haven't lost anything." The problem with that statement is that you have to be insane to make it work. If not insane, you have to have zero epistemological ground rules and no standard of telling truth from lies and delusions. Sane people do not decide to believe things because they want to believe them or because they find some advantage in believing them. Sane people reserve judgment until enough evidence is found to be convincing.

If you want to trim Pascal's Wager down to essentials it would be better to say: "Since you can't know if God exists, you should act as if God existed anyway because then you might get the rewards religion promises and if you're wrong and God doesn't exist then you haven't lost much." That would be closer to what Pascal was saying. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal was a lot more sophisticated in his understanding of beliefs than the modern evangelicals and fundamentalists we deal with.

"Acting as if" is not quite the same thing as "believing," though it might lead to believing eventually. Pascal didn't tell people to just believe things, he told them to try and convince themselves. He wrote:

"Endeavour then to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions. You would like to attain faith, and do not know the way; you would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound like you, and who now stake all their possessions. These are people who know the way which you would follow, and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you-will quiet your proudly critical intellect..."

What Pascal knew was that even our most rational convictions are build on flimsy foundations, limited human experience, trusted sources that might not be trust worthy, a history of ever changing scientific theory, and when it came to questions about things so far beyond our limited human experience as God, it would require either faith and trust in those books and people who made such claims, or an experience so far outside what we've already experienced that we might be convinced.

In this sense, Coughlan is a bit wrong in saying "I can't chose to believe something." Sure, you can't snap your fingers and change your beliefs, but you could start moving in a direction where belief becomes easier. That protesting bit of rationality and common sense is a lot easier to quiet than Coughlan lets on and his request for "something new" might be more dangerous than he thinks. I've seen it happen. Case in point, the Derren Brown "Messiah" youtubes linked here, or what happens to people on Sci-Fi Channel's "Scare Tactics."

Derren Brown was able to show how easily people can be fooled into believing things that aren't true by getting a group of atheists together and telling them he could give them an experience of God with just a touch. Sure enough, he touches a couple of them and they start reporting subjective experiences they think might be God. In a sense that was a "choice" those "atheists" made.

Fear will apparently override common sense as is often demonstrated on the Sci-Fi Channel show "Scare Tactics." On that show victims fall for the most absurd pranks, horror movie scenarios that they've certainly seen on TV by the time they're pranked. However, while the victims are indeed afraid, while they "act as if" it were true, no one ever commits to the belief entirely. No one picks up a club and tries to kill the murderer. They never make the extreme choices that someone entirely convinced would make. (It's a phenomena you'll see in many Christians.)

Next time you read one of my posts on Ray Comfort, imagine me reacting to Ray the same way that Coughlan is reacting to VenomFangX in this next video:

There's that recurring theme again, this time he floundered and got frustrated over the epistemology question implied by VenomFangX's claim that "naturalism refutes itself." He can't even decipher what VenomFangX means. It might help to know that VenomFangX stole that argument from Dr. William Lane Craig who stole it from C.S. Lewis, who stole it from G. E. Moore, and all three present it better than VenomFangX's garbled version but it is still flawed and it has been refuted.

Let's deal with this next video fast because I've saved the best for last. All the previous stuff has been a set up, and so is this one:

Just keep in mind that little insight from the above youtube about "why is it you guys always want to save us from the fire pits of hell and not the joys and wonders of heaven? You know what that tells me, it tells me you're a believer out of fear," it ties in nicely with this next video, the best of the lot:

Most of the anger and sarcasm has faded in the above video, and just like with Ray Comfort, what initially seemed funny suddenly becomes incredibly sad and tragic.

I think I'll shut up now and just let you think about what you've just heard.

Atheists on youtube

2009-04-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

Just some almost random selections of atheists on youtube:

Use the comments section and send me your favorite atheist youtube link.

A good skeptic video is okay too:

This is madness

2009-03-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

Randi's site.

Some of Bear McCreary's Galactica music

2009-03-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

Those of you who have read my posts on Battlestar Galactice might have picked up on the fact that I mentioned film composer Bear McCreary's blog and his music quite a bit. He's the young guy who scored the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica TV series. You may or may not have been impressed by what you heard on the TV show but take a listen to what's on youtube:

The youtube versions sound better to me.

Hear that electric violin? For me that was the sound I first started responding to. If I can remember Bear's blog on that correctly, that violinist is Paul Cartwright. Bear must have used some electronic trick to soften out the tone, in concert those violins wind up sounding like electric guitars or they're too harsh.

It was the first sound I tried to imitate.

These are some of my favorite, roughly in the order of how much I like them.

Does anybody think that without Bear's music setting the tone that Battlestar Galactica would have become the breakout hit it became? That's not a rhetorical question. I wonder about that, what influence music has on these shows. Would I have ever thought that Forbidden Planet or The Day the Earth Stood Still were sci-fi classics if not for Bernard Herrmann?

Ray Comfort's continuing sex problems

2009-03-28T07:52:00.000-07:00

What is it about religion and sex? Catholic priests bugger choir boys, Ted Haggard got thrown out of his church for buying the services of a male prostitute and methamphetamine and now Ray comfort is having his own sex problem; he just doesn't get it. He can't grasp how sex evolved. As demonstrated in his most recent post, Keep it Simple. Ray again exposes his tiny intellect to the whole world by asking this question:

There are an estimated 1.4 million species on the earth. Each species has both male and female (not counting worms and a few others). Let’s believe that each species did evolve. Let's then zero in on the giraffe. After the big bang, there was a pre-giraffe animal. Millions (perhaps billions) of years pass until today, and now we have a male and female giraffe. Evolutionists believe that the two didn’t evolve separately. Such a thought is "bizarre."

I know that you think I am intellectually slow, so please be patient with me and explain to me in very simple terms where you believe the female giraffe came from, and then explain how and why the other 1.4 million species ended up with both male and female.

I once considered this kind of remark comedy gold, but it's not so funny any more. It's just sad. It has been explained repeatedly to Ray, but yet he cannot comprehend. No matter how well the people who comment on Ray's blog explain this to him he never seems to get even the basic facts right, like what the term "common descent" means. And then there is this inherently biblical sexism implied by Ray asking "where do you believe the female giraffe came from" and not the male.

There are also a lot of missing steps in Ray's timeline, it goes from the big bang, to a pre-giraffe and then millions or billions of years pass and then you get male and female giraffes. Some steps not included there would be the first simplest cells evolving, then complex cells and then sexual reproduction followed by every plant and animal on Earth being evolving descendants of those first sexually reproducing organisms. We're all family. We're all related. Giraffes, men and potato plants. The organisms that didn't use sex like we do got stuck at the single celled and/or worm level of evolution. They evolved too, but along a far different trajectory, and today they are germs, fungi, microscopic worms and virii.

One comment on Ray's blog noted that what Ray was saying was like saying: "Linguists would like us to believe that English and Spanish and French are all descendants of Latin, but that's absurd. Who did the first English-speaking person have to talk to? Isn't it convenient that he found an English-speaking mate so that they could have English-speaking children?" But then Ray probably believes in the Tower of Babel theory of language differentiation too.

Why is it so hard for some people to grasp the concept of "common descent"? Perhaps if every animal could breed with every other animal this wouldn't be a hard question, even for Ray. For example, according to Carl Sagan's "The Dragons of Eden" the ancient Romans didn't quite have a handle on this speciation thing:

In earlier times it was widely held that offspring could be produced by crosses between extremely different organisms. The Minotaur whom Theseus slew was said to be the result of a mating between a bull and a woman. And the Roman historian Pliny suggested that the ostrich, then newly discovered, was the result of a cross between a giraffe and a gnat. (It would, I suppose, have to be a female giraffe and a male gnat.) In practice there must be many such crosses which have not been attempted because of a certain understandable lack of motivation.

If a male gnat really could fly up into a female giraffe's uterus and spawn something like an ostrich it would be easier to see that we could all be related through common descent, but no matter how many dead gnats one might find in female giraffe parts this has never happened. Gnats and giraffes just don't breed together.

So, maybe a better way to approach this problem Ray has with sex is to point out how it is that speciation occurs, because that is why it is that gnats can't impregnate giraffes. And like many evolutionary changes, speciation happens gradually. As I pointed out some time ago in my post, "Dealing with the abysmal ignorance," Ray and many other creationists have a comic book concept of evolution, via X-Men and Spiderman. They don't grasp speciation as a gradual process and they don't understand what transitional forms are. They are under the impression that either adult animals can mutate drastically or they buy into some weird version of the "Hopeful Monster" concept.

Ray's concept of evolution, if he even has one, seems to be that some instantaneous-speciation event must occur and not small gradual changes. He seems to think there must be more rapid evolutionary change than what biologists think of as rapid, which is tens of thousands of years from a geological perspective. Perhaps some comic book style mutation where such a monster would have a hard time finding a mate. But evolution doesn't quite happen that way. First, what makes a monster different than a critter with only a slight mutation? The monster cannot be so grossly different that it cannot breed with anything else alive. If that were the case it would be an evolutionary dead end. Any change or mutation still requires a sexual animal to breed.

Consider dogs, are Chihuahuas and Great Danes really members of the same species? In theory, they are members of the same species and they should all be able to breed together (but I want to see what a cross between a Chihuahua and a Great Dane looks like before I'm one hundred percent sure of that). There you have a gross difference in size as well as fur length and other factors. If paleontologists came across the bones of specimens that different they probably would think they had two different species. So, in theory one could get major structural differences to occur as rapidly as they did in dogs without some series of intermediate species that can't breed together.

To a species of Chihuahuas a Great Dane might appear to be a hopeful monster. However, the creation of the Chihuahuas and Great Danes from some original wolf or fox stock wasn't caused by some sudden mutant genes producing monstrosities. Human beings produced those changes through many generations of dog breeding. That doesn't mean, however, that a small genetic change couldn't, if expressed in early embryonic processes, produce a large effect embodying considerable parts of the organism and yielding profound differences among adults of the same species. It is however, unlikely and evolution favors small mutations which are much more likely to be beneficial than large ones and are then built upon to produce an accumulation of small changes resulting in drastically different and well adapted forms.

We could tell Ray all about giraffe evolution. The giraffes branched off from the deer just after Eumeryx. The first giraffids were Climacoceras (very earliest Miocene) and then Canthumeryx (also very early Miocene), then Paleomeryx (early Miocene), then Palaeotragus (early Miocene) a short-necked giraffid complete with short skin-covered horns. From here the giraffe lineage goes through Samotherium (late Miocene), another short-necked giraffe, and then split into Okapia (one species is still alive, the okapi, essentially a living Miocene short-necked giraffe), and Giraffa (Pliocene), the modern long-necked giraffe.

There is fossil evidence for such evolution of the giraffe, but the creationists don't buy it. They still claim that there are not enough transitional fossils to prove that.

One of Ray's partners in ignorance, Kirk Cameron, once claimed that a horse cannot produce a non-horse. In at least one respect, as I noted before, that is a false statement. A horse can produce a non-horse if it mates with a donkey. Mules and hinnies are the offspring of horses and donkies. Hinnies are the offspring of a male Horse (stallion) and a female donkey (jenny). The hinny and mule are usually, but not always sterile. And that is how speciation gradually happens.

Horses and donkeys are closely related but they are different species. Their close relationship allows them to mate and produce the hybrid mule or hinny, but since they are not quite the same species the hybrid mule or hinny is most often sterile. Sometimes, though rare, a female hinny can still mate with a horse or donkey and produce offspring. That is an example of how species slowly separate. It is evolution in action and it is very gradual. There is no suddenly you can't mate aspect to it. Instead you get phenomena like ring species and parapatric speciation.

Alas, like the sex life of bananas these concepts will never register in Ray's brain.

It is finished: Battlestar Galactica: "Daybreak" - Part 2

2009-03-23T18:20:00.000-07:00

And I am saddened on many levels, some good, some not so good.

The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica is now over.
Spoilers for Galactica's "Daybreak Part 2," follow:

Some of what happened in the last episode was great stuff. Bear McCreary's score and the tear jerking emotional moments were all good. There were such touching moments here, Bill Adama and Laura Roslin on Earth just before and just after Roslin died were beautiful and sad, that I can't just rant against this ending. However, in spite of the good stuff a lot of what happened in this final show was extremely disappointing in exactly the way I feared and predicted it would be in my previous posts. The journey towards the end was fantastic, but the destination sucked and it started sucking mostly in the last half of season 4. That's not just my opinion, but a general consensus I've been picking up in other blogs and forums. For example, PZ Myers, who didn't even watch the show, put up a "Battlestar Galactica open thread" where a lot of people are complaining about the ending but still expressing love for the show.

What a waste, the show was almost building up to be this great combination of Shakespearean tragedy and intelligent science fiction but then ultimately failed on both fronts. Instead we got some good music and expertly handled emotional manipulation and character development which are only nice ingredients but don't make a whole stew.

The roots of my disappointment on the science fictional content go back to some things I said in some of my earlier posts, "Six of One" : The disappointing part, being one example.

It was then that I noticed that there was a failing on the part of the writers to understand some of the basics of certain transhumanist themes that Galactica stumbled into but that had already been handled much more intelligently, sometimes decades before, by science fiction writers like Greg Egan and Bruce Sterling. Greg Egan's "Permutation City" and "Diaspora" would be good reads.

Apparently the writers absorbed some half-assed transhumanist ideas from the science fiction culture around them but did no research on transhumanism itself. You could start this research here on the Transhumanist Reading page.

One example of a half-assed understanding of a transhumanist concept was the idea of "uploading." That idea comes from some early science fiction (for a few early examples try Roger Zelazny's 1968 novel "Lord of Light," Frederik Pohl's 1955 story "Tunnel Under the World" and Philip K. Dick's "Ubik") and then it was refined by the transhumanists and futurists into something far more interesting than what the Galactica writers imagined. What the Cylons did in Galactica, when one died their memories were uploaded into a new body, they even called it "uploading," has dramatic implications the writers failed to grasp.

In most science fiction the uploading is done into virtual realities, like Star Trek's holodeck except there in no human body on the deck. For example Frederik Pohl's "Gateway" series (Heechee Saga) had a man uploaded into a virtual computer world in the 1976 novel, before William Gibson coined the word cyberspace in his novel "Neuromancer." Galactica's technology is necessarily more advanced than anything in either of those novel's. There was, however, the 1982 novel "Software", by Rudy Rucker, that got closer, in that novel a human mind is uploaded into a very human-like android body and the process was sold as a way to become immortal. If you read any of those works you were probably surprised by how badly the Galactica writers screwed up the concept and its implications.

In Galactica uploading is magical and undetectable, but in more sophisticated and scientifically literate SF the odds are that even our modern technology, like x-rays, could detect, though not replicate, many proposed devices that could be used to transfer memories, even if genetically constructed. (In Greg Egan's "Jewelhead" stories the human mind was transferred from an organic brain to a small, immortal backup computer at the base of the skull which could be removed and placed in an android body after death. It would have been something a doctor with our current technology could have found on an x-ray.) More damning is the fact that some heavy duty signal would need to broadcast those memories to a distant Cylon Resurrection Hub. Such a signal might have been detected and jammed, but such things were never considerations by anyone on Galactica, including Baltar the scientist. This is no doubt because the writers didn't understand that aspect of uploading, that it relies on physical substrates you can guess at without knowing exactly how to build them.

In order to have an undetectable stealth technology that is able record Cylon memories stored in a brain that the best people on Galactica can't tell from a human brain and then broadcast them across vast distances in space you must necessarily imply god-like technological abilities the existence of which would necessarily challenge many religious assumptions. (But in the Galactica universe no such conflict is ever implied and both their religions and technologies are so vaguely described that you couldn't tell if such a conflict would arise.) So god-like and astonishing are the implications the Galactica writers failed to grasp about such technology that many SF writers make these transhumanist technologies part of future religions. (For example, in the "Requiem for Homo Sapiens" novels by David Zindell there is a church that calls it soul-preservation technology.)

“It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.”
-- Arthur C. Clarke

Consider some other implications of such a technology, like the computer processing power that's implied. Today there is a Project Blue Brain that is struggling to create a biologically accurate, functional model of only part of a mouse's brain, a single neocortical column, using the most advanced supercomputers we now have. And Cylons can not only get all that kind of information from a brain and transfer it across space and into a body that a doctor (Cottle) and a scientist (Baltar) cannot tell from human.

When you imply technology that god-like you can't easily slip in actual gods because there would be no way to tell the gods from the Cylons except by whatever intentions and motives you can detect in their actions. And then you can only deduce those motivations, not whether the abilities are supernatural or technological. To quote science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” -- Arthur C. Clarke

That basic principle was missed by the writers of Galactica and in the end it was that basic ignorance that undermined the entire series as far as plot and theme go. One implication of understanding the brain at a level where one could transfer memories and make artificial Cylon brains in a goo tub is that such a level of understanding of what a brain is and how it works should make it child's play to create visions and mystical experiences.

When you go up against that kind of technology the last thing you should trust is vague visions and mystical experiences where the motives for the vision are unclear. Indeed, Baltar did not trust his head-6 early on and her motives were indeed suspicious. Keep in mind it was an "angel of God" who told Baltar not to tell Adama about Boomer being a Cylon and you'll begin to see the problem. But she also told him where to attack a Cylon base to destroy it. Baltar wound up merely not fighting her and not so much actually trusting her. She was giving him useful information which he used selfishly and he couldn't really fight her, just ignore her when he didn't like what she had to say. She could only manipulate him with that information it seemed, so it would always be information that seemingly served Baltar's own ends.

Neither Baltar nor I ever guessed her motives and we still can't. The Galactica God's "beyond good and evil" schemes remain as mysterious as ever even in the end. That brings up the next level of failure, the use of "God" as mere cheat to get around explaining the mysteries one has created. Again I saw it coming in my post, "The poo-barge mutiny begins." I'll quote myself:

... the hand of the gods made itself known in this episode and it was a bad thing because we all know who the real gods of the Galactica universe are, they are Ron Moore and his writers. That's the way fictional universes are, they all have gods and those gods are the writers who risk spoiling the illusion they want to create when they inject such plot driving miracles into their stories. And Starbuck's seemingly all too correct faith in Leoben's claims are just such an intrusive miracle.

There's a reason that even writers who preach their religious beliefs at writers conferences have shied away from the use of supernatural events and prefer psychological pain to demonic affliction, and dark nights of the soul to the voice of God echoing out of the whirlwind. They write about what they know. And they know they themselves and most other people don't really experience the voice of God like it happened in the Bible. They know that for every tear drop of wisdom to be found in religion there is a vast ocean of stupidity and insanity behind it. In our world people don't seem to come back from the dead like Starbuck and our miracle workers can often be caught using simple magician's tricks. Even Mother Teresa, a potential Catholic saint, was running on only a few weird experiences she had early in her life where she literally heard God’s voice directing her to go to in India and help the poor. However, as soon as she did start her mission, God's silence began and she spent the rest of her life feeling abandoned by God. Was it all just a couple potent brain farts that changed her life?

God in Evelyn Waugh or Graham Greene is more often a significant absence than a presence. Actual encounters with the divine or the demonic in literature, such is in Philip K. Dick's last books, are usually the product of a writer who has actually become subject to what they think are paranormal visitations. And Dick had been abusing amphetamine for years before that.

There's just something incredibly arrogant (not necessarily a bad thing) about making God a character in your story because the real gods in these fictional universes are the writers (or in television, perhaps its the producers). You can pull it off if God himself is actually a character and you have something to say about the nature of godhood, but not if that God remains utterly mysterious and just advances the plot when convenient for the writers. Starbuck's trust in Leoben may yet be explained by whatever force brought her back, but right now it doesn't feel like it.

In the end the use of God was a big cheat on the mysteries they set up. God's motives and abilities remained utterly mysterious and did nothing but advance the plot when convenient for the writers. The meaning of the Opera house vision was merely that it was a vision hinting vaguely and opaquely at the future. Baltar is thus inspired to give the worst speech ever given on Galactica. Here's Baltar's speech, copied from some other blog, it sounds right:

Baltar: I may be mad, but that doesn't mean that I'm not right. Because there's another force at work here; there always has been. It's undeniable. We've all experienced it. Ever one in this room has witnessed events that they can't fathom, let alone explain away by rational means. Puzzles deciphered in prophecy. Dreams given to a chosen few. Our loved ones, dead, risen. Whether we want to call that God or gods or some sublime inspiration or a divine force we can't know or understand, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's here. It exists. And our two destinies are entwined in its force.

Cavil: If that's true, and that's a big if, how do I know that this force has our best interests in mind? How do you know that God is on your side, doctor?

Baltar: I don't. God's not on any one side. God's a force of nature, beyond good and evil. Good and evil, we created those. Want to break the cycle? Break the cycle of birth, death, rebirth, destruction, escape, death. Well, that's in our hands, and our hands only. It requires a leap of faith. It requires that we live in hope, not fear.

There's a lot I object to in that short speech, more than I'll go into right now. But let's take that claim that they have all "witnessed events that they can’t fathom, let alone explain away by rational means." That, my dear readers, is nothing but what Professor Neil DeGrasse Tyson would call "a philosophy of ignorance":

Well, yea, the viewers did experience things they supposedly could not explain away by rational means (not necessarily characters like Cavil) because the writers, the real gods of the Galactica universe, set it up that way. I feared exactly this in my last Galactica post, Battlestar Galactica: "Daybreak" - Part 1, and I'll quote myself again:

... but worse, maybe we won't get an answer for how it is Starbuck got resurrected in a new body and viper because some writer thinks that sometimes incredible things happen for no good reason. (That omission I won't forgive them for. How Starbuck came back demands an explanation.)

That is essentially what Baltar's "let alone explain away by rational means" says to us, that sometimes incredible things happen for no good reason. So shove the reasons off on some inscrutable God and claim that you have an explanation when all you really have is merely a philosophy of ignorance. This is only partly about being an atheist. I am not always turned off by the supernatural or spirituality in fiction, but this ending was a cheat, a way to explain away things they really had no explanation for. The whole point of setting up mysteries is to have rational explanations of some sort for them in the end, otherwise no one is ever going to trust your mystery set-ups again.

The problem is, I can still imagine rational explanations in the context of transhuman technologies. Baltar's God could still be a Cylon mainframe that didn't like Cavil's plan. So Baltar's claim is false, the mysteries are not beyond potential rational explanations. Granted that is only speculative, but that's how critical thinking about such mysteries begins. And what else is there beyond reason and critical thinking when it comes to dealing with such mysterious events? Without reason and critical thinking to lead you then one has nothing but visions or if not that people who claim to have visions to lead one. Just keep in mind what kind of people in our world actually do claim to be guided by visions, mysticism and the voice of God and you'll see the problem. They include people like Pat Robertson, Sherri Shepherd, Marshall Applewhite, David Koresh, Jim Jones and other leaders of a thousand other doomsday cults.

And when Cavil asked how could he know this force had our best interests in mind? How do you know that God is on your side? Well, Cavil, of course, like me, doesn't know that. He wasn't given any visions that led him. So, where does Cavil fit into God's plan? Well, Cavil, you're the evil villain who gets blamed for wiping out the human race in spite of other Cylons, like Caprica-6, playing a part and the real God of the Galactica universe is Ronald D. Moore, so you're just going to kill yourself for no good reason. You're like Pharaoh in the Moses story (you know that other work of really bad science fiction, the Bible) and you don't even have the free-will it takes to use common sense. In the Moses story Pharaoh had his heart hardened by God.

But don't feel too slighted Cavil, God's plan also involved nuking several billion innocent humans out of existence (and you were okay with that). Was that god's plan? If so, that God seems like a monster and the real villain in the show.

So, maybe the writers are setting up another story that will correct these errors? Not likely. Ron Moore talked about his writing process on his last pod-cast, about how he trusted his instincts and was really proud of how he handled Baltar and religion. Yet it is exactly those elements of the show that I thought were just awful and that reflected the full failure of what was wrong with how this show ended. Ron was proud of how the Opera house visions worked out and then, what they led too, Baltar's speech about "God." Proud of the fact that he didn't do any real critical thinking or research.

With that attitude on Moore's part, don't expect things to improve on "The Plan" or on "Caprica" in those terms.

I've hardly scratched the surface of what was wrong with the ending, but this would go on too long if I talked about how bad an idea it was to ditch the ships and go all Luddite, or how like most Trek villains, the Cylons may have been set up to look impossible to defeat, but they were really paper tigers with glass jaws. None of that will matter to Ron Moore now that his series has spawned two new spin-offs. I may give them a shot, but I won't expect much.

Battlestar Galactica: "Daybreak" - Part 1

2009-03-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

In the writers’ room, we spent the first day [of breaking that episode] in a lot of difficulty, a lot of frustration. We sort of knew what the plot was, we knew the action story, we knew the plot of the finale. We spent that whole first day just struggling with the mechanics of the plot, how you got from A to B. We were spinning our wheels. I went home and I was in the shower and I had this “Duh” moment – the show was never about that. That’s not why I love the show. It’s not about the plot.

I went into the writers’ room the next day and wrote on the big dry-erase board, “It’s the characters, stupid,” and the writers laughed and we all sat back and said, “Who gives a [expletive] about the plot? Let’s just talk about these characters.”
-- Ron Moore

So, there you have it, everyone who has been wondering:

What the hell do a crotchety old man, a baby-shower, and a pigeon have to do with the survival of the human/cylon races? Anyone?
-- Hack&Slash

Of course, the problem with Ron Moore's take on things is that all the big questions most of us have are "plot" questions, not "character" questions. Most viewers think they know these characters pretty well already. What we don't know, at least I don't, is who is manipulating things behind the scenes - if anyone? What is that Opera house vision that Roslin, Athena and Caprica-6 had been sharing all about? Who or what brought Starbuck back to life? etc..

One possible meaning of focusing on the characters rather than the plot is that we may not get any explanation for many of the things we want answers too. Remember when Bill Adama told Roslin, in "Six of One," about her drug induced hallucinations giving her clues to finding Earth, "You're afraid you may not be the dying leader you thought you were. Or that your death may be as meaningless as everyone else's." Also recall the episode called "Faith."

In "Faith," Roslin was in the hospital next to another cancer patient, Emily. Emily listened to Baltar on the radio talking about life after death. Emily had some dream or visionary experience that got her believing in Baltar's afterlife. After being told about this, Roslin has her own dream, finding Emily and herself on a boat, then, looking towards shore they see their dead friends and family (where her sisters there). I pointed out in my review that how you interpreted that episode depended on how hip you were to why people had such dreams.

There is something called "Dream Incorporation" where a sound from reality is heard in our dream and incorporated in some way. If you thought about the things Roslin must have heard as she dreamed then you had some huge clues. When she woke up, Baltar was still preaching about the river and the afterlife, so she was hearing that while dreaming. And Emily was gone when she woke and that meant Roslin must have heard of her death while asleep.

You have to wonder why the writers would include these skeptic's clues that point to the dream as being an induced wish-fulfillment fantasy. Why do that when Roslin lives in a world where she also has had seemigly paranormal shared dreams with Caprica-6 and Athena in the Opera house? And she found Earth too.

Maybe Roslin's Opera house visions are just another side of her escape from meaninglessness and Ron Moore is an existentialist. But, but... how could her crazy visions be shared with Athena and Caprica-6? How could she really find Earth?

I don't know. But is that the real test of a vision, that you can't figure out where some bit of correct information slipped in? Or figure out why others share your vision? Maybe the Opera house vision is ultimately meaningless? Maybe it is essentially a delusion shared with some Cylons because Roslin got a dose of Athena's and Hera's Cylon blood that allowed her to plug into the projection psychology of those Cylons.

I bring this up because I don't see how that Opera house vision can mean much now as the final hours approach. They certainly can't get Roslin, Caprica-6 and Athena back to the actual Opera house. So, maybe the Opera house is a Cylon projection they'll share or something purely symbolic? Maybe Roslin really will see Baltar and a 6 taking Hera off just before she and Athena die? Maybe that's all it means? A fuzzy, symbolic glimpse of the future.

That I could live with and even enjoy, but worse, maybe we won't get an answer for how it is Starbuck got resurrected in a new body and viper because some writer thinks that sometimes incredible things happen for no good reason. (That omission I won't forgive them for. How Starbuck came back demands an explanation.)

THE FLASHBACKS:

If you think about it, the flashback scenes early in this episode were some nice little micro-stories all by themselves. Except for maybe Bill Adama being asked to do something he didn't want to do. So, what was it? Was he being sent to that remote space station that was built so that cylons and humans could meet and maintain diplomatic relations? Every year, according to the old miniseries intro, the humans sent an officer, but the Cylons sent no one for over forty years... that is until the day of the attack. What would it add if Adama had sat there waiting? Was the intro to the miniseries a lie and they sent a cylon to meet Adama, but Adama never said anything?

Every other flashback may have been nothing more than a little self-contained micro-story not really meant to plug into the big picture. Yet, I can't help trying to do just that. I will be disappointed if those flashbacks are just pointless little micro-stories. For example, Roslin gave her sister a baby shower and then woke up to some police knocking at her door. They had come to tell her that her father and sisters were killed by a drunk driver. It was a touching and effective scene, you could feel the gut punch that caused Roslin to get a little crazy and walk out into a fountain and just stand there. But what did I really learn about Roslin, after three seasons of watching her, that I didn't already know? Will her sisters show up in some later vision? Was that story meant just to underline the fact that other events in Roslin's life were drawing her to the edge of insanity?

We saw Gaius Baltar living a life of limos and pretty women, drinking with Caprica-6 and about ready to get it on when Baltar gets a phone call. Turns out that Baltar's dad has stabbed his nurse in the hand with a table knife. Baltar calls off the sex to deal with the crisis. He yells at his dad and we learn this is the third nurse his dad has scarred off. So, Baltar is selfish and belittling towards his dad? Is this really a new side of Baltar? Did we need to see that for some reason? Then we learn that Caprica-6 had helped out Baltar's dad. Baltar would have forgotten her if she hadn't done something like that.

How are any of those stories going to be relevant to the ending? I can't tell you, but I hope they have some relevance beyond being nice little micro-stories stuck in for no other reason.

BALTAR'S CHOICES:

After the flashbacks there was a bit more coherence as far as putting together the end-game, or "plot," of this final 3 hours. It is still character-centric rather than plot-centric though. For example, Lee Adama posed a great character question for Baltar. Apollo asked Baltar if he had ever done anything selfless. Baltar stared at him a moment and then said, "I wouldn't trust me either." Yet Baltar has done some selfless stuff, minor as it was. Remember that old lady back on Caprica in the very first shows? Boomer and Helo had to raffle off seats on the Raptor that would get people off the bombed planet, Caprica. An old lady asked Baltar to read her number. Baltar could have switched tickets. Baltar could have easily stolen a seat on that raptor. He would have been stuck on Caprica had not Helo executed a greater act of selflessness by giving his seat to Baltar.

What Baltar can't do, I think, is brag about such a little thing or even personally align with Apollo's philosophy that selflessness is this great thing by which to determine who is the best leader. And yet by answering that question honestly rather than just lying to Apollo, as Apollo almost begged him too, he was being selfless and trustworthy. Nice paradox. In spite of all Baltar's selfishness, there are limits to it.

The question gets asked again of Baltar when Bill Adama asks everyone to decide to go or not go on a suicide mission by asking them to step to one side of a tape line. Of course, Baltar stays on the side of the tape for those who want to stay behind, but there is a part of him that seems to want to go. He keeps looking over at Caprica-6 during Adama's speech and then as others start deciding which side of the line they want to be on he looks like he wants to go, but can't.

EXPOSITION DUMPS:

Something I may have been wrong about is Sam Anders doing another exposition dump. They snuck their way around his exposition dump by having him reveal whatever he revealed off screen to Starbuck and Bill Adama alone. I almost wish for the exposition dump instead. We're going to have to either get an exposition dump or very few questions answered. There's no time left for the characters to play detective and figure things out slowly.

Again, the choices here are character-centric, Adama's decision to talk to Anders starts with a conversation between Adama and Hot Dog near the memorial wall. Hot Dog dropped some pictures he had taken off the wall and he tells Adama that the only pictures left are people who no longer have anyone to care about them. Looking at the wall of fallen shipmates, Adama sees a picture of Athena and Hera, he takes the picture and heads right over to Anders' goo-tub where he finds Starbuck.

Adama and Starbuck come out of the goo-tub room with knowledge of where Hera is, which is where the Cylon colony is. A Raptor is sent ahead to explore the area and they find a black hole guarding the colony with only one safe point to jump in. Thus the plot actually does move forward.

A lot of side-shows they seemed to have set up now look like they won't happen. For example, it now seems the long-term effects of giving Baltar's balcubines those big guns isn't going to be a fight with the "sons of Aries," but to fight Cylons.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I don't see how they can wrap it all up in the last two hours, especially if those last two hours are mostly a big action packed space battle. I don't think, like a lot of others, that we will get answers to every single lingering question. But, in the final analysis, my speculations on where they are going have not been good. Nor has anyone else's that I've been reading.

The choices they've made in this last episode were really baffling. That is good thing, though. It means I could be really surprised when this ends.

Turn me on to your music

2009-03-13T16:33:00.000-07:00

What do you listen to? Is there some band out there I've probably never heard of that really excites you? If so, drop me a link in the comments here, or just a name and I'll look them up on youtube or myspace.

I've asked this favor of my readers before and I got a couple interesting new groups to listen to. For example, Michael (MPhil) turned me on to Cynic:

Cynic - Adam's Murmur

Cynic - Evolutionary Sleeper

Cynic - Integral Birth

Cynic - Traced in Air

sinned34 turned me on to Opeth:

Opeth - Circle Of The Tyrants

Opeth - In My Time Of Need

Shadowstreak turned me on to Mortification and Paramecium:

Look Away - The Paramecium

Just reading Bear McCreary's blog I found a couple interesting groups named, Muse and Ozric Tentacles:

Supermassive Black Hole - Muse

Ozric Tentacles - "Coily"

I don't know what the odds are that you've heard any of those bands but I think I can come up with some groups you've never heard of. For example, here's an interesting little Christian Death Metal band called "The Drama Scene."

They're just now putting out their first album it seems and you won't find them on youtube. They've just got thses samples on myspace. I liked "The Devil's Among Us" and "My Razorblade."

And what are the odds you ever heard of Hawkwind:

Hawkwind - Master of the Universe

Hawkwind - Space Is Deep

Hawkwind was a group I liked when I was in high school but never listened to again after I got to college... until recently when I looked them up on youtube.

Another group you may not have heard of, Eyehategod:

Eyehategod - 99 Miles Of Bad Road

Eyehategod - Lack Of Almost Everything

Of course, obscure groups aren't the only kind I listen too, they're just the only ones I'm noting in this post. But I will mention Ozzy because Ozzy's music has been with me since I first heard Black Sabbath in high school and I've never stopped listening:

So, tell me what music you listen too.

UPDATE:

Wow! Lots of music to check out thanks to all you people. And following your links on youtube and myspace leads to yet more related bands. If you're a Death Metal/Black Metal fan the numbers of groups out there is overwhelming. It's a world wide phenomena.

There is Russian Black Metal and also Death Metal:

There is also Japanese Death Metal and Chinese Black Metal:

And does any of this look and sound familiar?

And here's an interesting artist you can find on Kompoz.

UPDATE 2:

This band recommendation comes from Bear McCreary:

Bear wrote:

Captain Ahab - This guy works with me all the time, but his records are incredible. In fact, I’m actually doing orchestral arrangements on his upcoming album. But, the last two are outstanding. It’s crazy, insane, occasionally very offensive techno and dance music, but there is a sadistic sense of humor to all of it. Like songs by the South Park guys, his music is funny and also intelligently satirical all at the same time.

A summary of Bear's other recommendations with semi-relevant links (see the comment on his own website for more details but no links): Boingo, 1994 album by Danny Elfman’s band Oingo Boingo, also their previous album “Dark at the End of the Tunnel” (1990). (A lot of “BG” musicians (Bartek, Avila, Vatos, Doug Lacy) playing on both these records). Ozomatli, 2001 release “Embrace the Chaos,” especially “Vocal Artillery.” Warning: their most recent record is to be avoided though. Bt4, his brother. Raya Yarbrough, his wife. Buckwheat Zydeco, and then of course bands we all should know: Queen, Pink Floyd, Guns n’ Roses (not so much the new record), Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy, Al Green, Supertramp, The Specials, Elvis, Michael Jackson and The Band. Film and TV scores, his stock in trade, favorites are: Elmer Bernstein: To Kill a Mocking Bird and / or his RPO Pops “Best Of” CD. Jerry Goldsmith: Alien, The ‘burbs, Gremlins 2, Stark Trek: The Motion Picture. Bernard Herrmann. Lalo Schifrin: Enter the Dragon. John Williams, Temple of Doom and Empire Strikes Back were always my favorites.

The Zeitgeist, it's darker than you think

2009-03-12T05:48:00.000-07:00

"Zeitgeist," it means "the spirit of the age and its society." It describes, according to Wikipedia, the intellectual, cultural, ethical, moral and political climate of an age. Supposedly, the Zeitgeist can only be interpreted for past ages. Of course, everyone who knows the word still tries to interpret the Zeitgeist of their own age. For example, Christopher Hitchens called the election of Barack Obama a "Zeitgeist Election."

Richard Dawkins talked about the shifting moral Zeitgeist:

That word, "Zeitgeist," does seem to be popular with a lot of so-called "new atheists." Which is a bit odd when you consider that the German Romantics who coined the word took the "spirit" part of its definition a bit more literally. Yet there certainly does seem to be a huge cultural shift in progress. It's why Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins and Dennett are selling more books now than they could have just a decade before. After all, it's not like no one had been publishing atheist books before.

Prometheus Books had been publishing atheistic books for decades before Sam Harris hit it big with "The End of Faith." A book that he wrote soon after 9/11 dealing with the dangerous nature of irrational and violent religions and adding a new vehemence in the atheist critique:

George Carlin could, in a way, sum up some of that a lot quicker:

Long before Sam Harris wrote his books, George H. Smith wrote "Atheism: The Case Against God," (1980) and James Porter Moreland and Kai Nielsen wrote "Does God Exist?: The Debate Between Theists & Atheists," and Lloyd M. Graham wrote "Deceptions And Myths Of The Bible." None of those books sold as well as anything written by Dawkins ever did and those few Prometheus books are just a tip on an iceberg of atheistic books that most of us don't even know about.

Prometheus Books still publish such books and they still don't approach the sales figures of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris in spite of the times we live in. In the meantime the slow trend toward American unbelief continues with the latest polls and surveys noting that "More Americans Say They Have No Religion." Those of us saying we have no religion have gone up from 8.2 percent in 1990, to 14.2 percent in 2001, to 15 percent in 2008. While there are more Catholics in California, Texas and Florida, the increase is attributed mostly to Latino immigration. Christians who aren't Catholic are now a declining segment of the country. While still growing, the growth of non-belief has slowed a bit. Alas, at this rate, a percentage point or so per decade, I won't be around any more by the time non-belief is the majority opinion... if that ever were to happen.

Sam Harris's question about whether we can expect to survive our religious differences indefinitely is still an open question. And there is no real cure for the condition in sight. The only thing that has changed is that people who are asking that same question are now making money for being willing to voice it in public. It would seem that books decrying religion’s negative influence on the world becoming bestsellers is a good sign.

Another good sign might be Christian Science Monitor author, Michael Spencer, worrying about "The coming evangelical collapse." Spencer's predictions only apply to evangelicalism, only one group of protestant Christians now slowly losing ground.

In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

I wish... sort of. I just want them to be a lot less politically influential.

And this was one of the reasons Mr. Spencer identified for the coming collapse:

Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

And, indeed, I do think they are bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society. But the unstable mix of Christianity and Ayn Rand style libertarianism was doomed to failure and loaded with potential conflicts from the beginning. We'll now, I think, see those conflicts surfacing in the GOP.

However, Mr. Spencer's concept of a coming "anti-Christian age in Western history" is off the mark. Christians are still a big majority and the numbers of non-believers is not growing fast enough for any kind of "anti-Christian age." What is more likely is that new politically influential Christian leaders, like Rick Warren, will come under the sway of Barack Obama and work on Obama's policies, forcing concessions from him. As more light is shed on the Bush Administration's failures, and perhaps even crimes, the GOP will be abandoned by large chunks of what was once the Christian right. Then we might wind up with something worse -- a Christian left.

For awhile it seemed that evangelicals had gained a lot of political power and the Bush administration was the representation of that power and influence. Rove once talked of a permanent Republican majority. But the mix was unstable and Obama made a clear effort to appeal to fundamentalist and evangelical Christians. It was a key to his success. And his political move could create a new, more stable and less conflicted, political force that still embraces all the scientific ignorance we saw in the Christian right.

It really depends on the outcome of the "science wars." A slightly increasing number of non-believers is irrelevant if we are recruiting them only from the already more rational side of the Christian faith. What you want to really see is a shift in science literacy and you want to see opinions on things like evolution changing. But they're not. Religioustolerance.org has a page showing that as of 2007 the creationist view seems to have gained ground when compared to earlier polls. Yet, at the same time, support for naturalistic evolution had also increased. It suggests that we are becoming more polarized and belief in the compromise "theistic evolution" position, evolution but under God's guidance, lost ground.

The forces of ignorance as represented by people like Ben Stein, Ray Comfort and Vox Day have their counterparts on the left, like Tony Campolo and Deepak Chopra.

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
-- Carl Sagan

If you'd like to get an idea of how deep that ignorance goes then I suggest taking a little internet trip over to Ray Comfort's site and checking out the comments of some of Ray's followers. For example, Chris Geiser who writes:

They are not lying they are just misinformed and blinded by their own lasciviousness and concupiscence and probate minds. They won’t even allow creationists to have any public say in what they have discovered scientifically without any bias. I am not surprised, however, that scientists discredit creationists, because ‘science’ back in the day did not agree with peoples’ theories of how the Earth is a sphere and I believe they made quite an effort to shut them up. They only got credit when the world found out they were right all along. They believed it to be true and they had enough faith to journey out onto uncharted ocean to prove their theory, and I am sure they didn’t go on those seemingly suicidal expeditions because they had a death wish, but because they had faith. They did not go with the crowd and play it safe.

As they say on PZ's blog: "The stupid - it burns!"

I don’t swallow any lies. I only take in Truth. I do not rely on any man to give me truth but only God from His Word and from having faith and by praying. If a man says anything that aligns with scripture than I know he is telling the truth. Science books today are written by men who seek to hide information on how God’s hand has a place in history. I believe Ray posted a while ago on how it is possible that the Grand Canyon was formed during and shortly after the great flood and it sure seems reasonable to me and it aligns with scripture.

How can such ignorance not be part of the Zeitgeist when polls show such opinions are horrifyingly common in America?

If only it were a Poe.

Whoopi Goldberg is going to moderate a "Battlestar Galactica" panel discussion at the United Nations.

2009-03-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

I told you that Battlestar Galactica was going to be important.

On March 17, according to Maureen Ryan, there will be a "Battlestar" retrospective at the U.N. followed by a panel discussion on how the show examined some issues that certain U.N. appointees (Radhika Coomaraswamy, Craig Mokhiber and Robert Orr at least) thought were deserving of a deeper look.

A Sci Fi Channel representative says that the network will record the session and a transcript will be made. "Once the content becomes available, we will let the fans know," the representative said. When anyone knows of any video of this event showing up online, drop a link here in my comments. I don't expect the U.N. to act like this:

So, Baltar sees angels, eh?

2009-03-07T01:01:00.000-08:00

Spoilers ahead for "Islanded in a Stream of Stars":

"So say we all," blog carnival up here.

There are only 3 more hours of Battlestar left to go, one regular show and then a two hour show the week after. I can see the pieces moving into place for the end-game. Hera is with Cavil. Darth Boomer is starting to cry and suffer empathically for Hera, not quite being the cold-blooded machine she thought she could be. "There is still good in her." No doubt she'll soon be throwing evil emperor Cavil down a shaft crackling with lightening at the heart of the colony after she's chopped off Athena's hand with a light-saber.

Galactica needs to be abandoned because she's too dangerous to live in or hyperjump with. We may have even been given a foreshadowing of her fate when Hera was playing with the model Battlestar, seeming to ram it into a Cylon basestar.

More critically to one possible end-game: Sam is hooked up like a hybrid in his goo-tub and that means he's linked to the best excuse for a Deus Ex Machina machine the writers have got and he's getting in touch with all that exposition-dumpitis kind of information hybrids seem to know but can't explain in adequate terms. Remember, if it happens, I predicted it:

Sam's brainwaves have gotten weird. The Doc says he is in a comma, but the harmonic complexity of those brainwave patterns looked familiar to me. I think they might herald a chronic case of Deus Ex Machina accompanied by another acute bout of exposition-dumpitis.
-- Norman Doering

It sure looks like they're trying to make temporal lobe Deus Ex Machina and acute exposition-dumpitis into a condition we can live with through a careful set-up.

And Baltar is talking about seeing angels. Which is a weird coincidence because just before the show started I was reading Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica (the reason why is here) and it's huge section of seemingly psychotic ramblings about the nature of angels. And the guy I started the argument with about Aquinas, Kenneth Hynek, had this to say about Battlestar Galactica:

I’ve commented that the show has a certain Catholic ethos to it before, in that it not only explores the question of whether humanity is worth saving, but that it more often than not answers: “no, it isn’t — yet somehow, it will be saved in spite of itself.” There’s something very Christian, and especially very Catholic, about the idea that a totally undeserving humanity will come to salvation in spite of its own best efforts to avoid arriving there.
-- Kenneth Hynek

I'm not so sure the "ethos" is Catholic but it does appear that Ron Moore's experiences as an ex-Catholic are having an influence on the show. So much of Baltar's and the Cylon religion uses Christian terminology and concepts, as I've noted before. But I suspect that "humanity" will not really be saved in spite of itself by the end of the show. If it is, it'll be way too much of a Deus Ex Machina at this point. Whoever survives the end of this show, if anyone, isn't going to have a lot left to make a life with. Cavil may be defeated. The survivors might find a new world where Cylon and human can live together, but that's not "saving" by Christian terms -- that's just surviving the latest threat. More will come.

Battlestar Galactica seems to be a tragedy like Hamlet and Macbeth are tragedies. The end is death for almost everyone involved. However, religion is playing a big role in these events. They went to Earth following Pythian prophecies, Baltar really is experiencing something he can't account for in rational terms without resorting to either religion or madness or the dark manipulation of his mind by some outside technology. And almost every major character in this last episode was shown involving themselves in some religious ritual, all the funeral services for the crewmembers killed in the accident.

But it was the once vilified Baltar who made the strongest pro-religion statement in this episode when he declared to everyone that Starbuck had crossed over and returned from the dead. He betrayed Starbuck's implied confidentiality to support his religious claims. That's the kind of "saving" religion offers, from death, not the continued existence of humanity. I doubt that the existence of that kind of "saving" will get resolved at the end of the series. It's not that kind of show. It's not about that kind of subject. All the religion is just a reflection of the character's beliefs. Some people are religious, others aren't, and some, depending on the evidence switch back and forth, like Bill Adama.

Well, Starbuck has, in a sense, returned from the dead. But is it supernatural and religious, or something akin to Cylon resurrection technology? Is supernaturalism really how they're going to explain Starbuck's return from the dead? I doubt it.

The writers, when interviewed over at Maureen Ryan's Chicago Tribune "The Watcher" column, keep saying it's about character, not end-games or metaphysics. And this episode was really about the internal conflicts within various characters. Almost all the characters featured in the episode struggled with letting go of something in order to make difficult decisions. Adama and Starbuck do let go. Adama emotionally lets go of the ship that his been his home and source of identity for most of his life. Starbuck lets go of Starbuck and she was ready to let go of Sam. However, Baltar and Helo can't let go of their big hope. Saul Tigh might be regarded as another failure to come to terms with his true identity, as a Cylon. On the other hand all his loyalty to Adama and the Galactica might be a different kind of success in holding onto what he wants to be. Their are all kinds of hopes and expectations, which ones are futile and which are worth holding onto?

Starbuck lets go of Starbuck? I think I need to explain that one. Recall the scene where Starbuck puts her own picture on the memorial wall. That was her letting go of something, but I'm not sure what. There is, as I've already suggested, a sense in which the featured characters have to come to terms with the difference between who they thought they were, who they wanted to be, and who they really are that is in conflict. This is especially true for Starbuck and Baltar. There is something almost confessional about Baltar's talking about angels in his radio sermon, he’s almost admitting to everyone that he has been seeing Head-6. That near candor about his, perhaps insane, secret gets Starbuck to admit what happened to her on Earth and then she gives Baltar her bloodied dog-tags.

Originally Baltar was thinking of angels as something akin to Head-6. Baltar seemed to imply that others besides himself, like Starbuck seeing her dad, were seeing "angels." Why would he think that? Are there more head characters than we know of? It's interesting that when Baltar talks to Caprica-6 or Starbuck we realize that all of them have had head-characters and have never admitted this to each other. The characters barely understand each other. Baltar makes Caprica-6 a seemingly (to me) sincere offer to help her, but he comes across to Caprica-6 like a sleaze and is put down, "I don't want to be a member of your harem." Baltar got closer to admitting to having a Head-6 with Starbuck, and Starbuck would have been able to tell him about her dad -- but they can't talk about it to each other. It suggests insanity. And here is Starbuck admitting for the first time what she found on Earth to Baltar, probably because of that stuff about angels and how it relates to head-dad.

However, after Baltar studies the dog-tags and figures out that "blood from necrotic tissue" thing (I don't think that's for real) he changes his ideas about angels a bit it seems and claims "Starbuck is an angel walking among us." His new ideas about angels are a little closer to the Bible's depiction of angels and in a way, also Thomas Aquinas's speculations. So excuse me if I indulge in a little bit of Biblical lecturing (in my experience many people, even most Christians, don't seem to realize what a weird and psychotic book the Bible is).

You see, in the Bible angels aren't things you only see in your head. They are always showing up as human-like characters. In the Sodom and Gomorrah story there are some angels that visit Lot and some other inhabitants of Sodom want to, apparently, rape the angels. Lot refuses to give the visiting angels to them and even offers them his daughters instead. That seems to speak against those particular angels being head characters or having significant supernatural powers. Why can't the angels defend themselves? Though, the Sodomites are later struck blind, allowing Lot to escape, it's a pretty wimpy miracle.

Also in the Bible Jacob physically grabs an angel to wrestle with "him" and will not let him go. He does it in order to plead promises from God. Apparently the angel had little supernatural power and couldn't escape from Jacob's grasp, or else did not choose to do this. Jacob would not let go of the angel until the angel blessed him. Eventually the angel gives him the blessing and tells Jacob his new names is Israel (Jews are the children of Israel).

The concept of the dead becoming angels, as far as I know, isn't in the Bible, but Mormons I think have some doctrine like that. And there are Christians who think that. But where is Baltar getting these ideas from? Is he making them up or is Head-6 feeding them to him? And why do these beliefs of Baltar's always get so close to biblical ones? Is it just Ron Moore playing games with Christian Galactica fans?

At any rate, Baltar could have gotten closer to Starbuck, but he blew it. He betrayed an implied confidentiality and called her an angel in public, something she doesn't think she is. That, I think, is Baltar failing to come to terms with who he really is and what he's trying to be, a religious leader. He is clinging to a hope for an afterlife and trying to justify it -- and he's doing it at the price of forming deeper connections with the people around him.

Helo might have the opposite problem, his connections themselves might be too emotionally deep to let go of. Helo begged Adama for a raptor to search for Hera. Adama told him to, more or less, let it go. I don't think he did -- I got the funny feeling he's going to be stealing a raptor soon. And maybe that's not really a "failure" because maybe there are some things you shouldn't let go of. But boy would he be in trouble if he actually did find Cavil on his lonesome.

All in all, with all these characters letting go or struggling to let go of something the whole episode felt like a sad good-bye. Sadness and mystery and letting go dominated the show.

Off topic: Here are some screen shots inside "The Colony."

He'll argue with me, but he won't tell me about it.

2009-03-05T15:12:00.000-08:00

As you might see if you check the comments on my post, "Aquinas and Plantinga, part 1", there has been no comment from Kenneth Hynek about debating the issue. However, he did write a post, “Everything grows clear in the reflections from the Infinite,” where he addresses me:

No doubt the likes of recent commentator Norman Doering will object to the proposition that there is something inherently Christian about the Western scientific notion that rational inquiry will be rewarded with rational information, but it must still be said: at the core of modern science, the belief is still very much alive that it is only by seeking that we shall find, and only by knocking that we will see things opened unto us…and that our seeking will be rewarded with findings, that our knocking will be rewarded with openings.

As a matter of fact I do object to the claim that there is something inherently Christian about the "Western scientific notion" that rational inquiry will be rewarded with rational information. The idea that Rational inquiry will be rewarded with rational information is human, not Christian. I think I can demonstrate the falsity of his claim by pointing out that it was Pagan Greeks who really got the process of scientific inquiry off the ground for the West:

And while the West was slumbering through a scientific dark age after Christian culture had demolished Greek science Muslims had a big contribution to make. And India had some remarkable scientists.

"I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has continued to put out of sight our obligations to the Muhammadans (Muslims). Surely they cannot be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancour and national conceit cannot be perpetuated forever. The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Europe. He has indelibly written it on the heavens as any one may see who reads the names of the stars on a common celestial globe."
-- John William Draper in the "Intellectual Development of Europe"

The claim that Western science owes, perhaps its entire existence, to the Biblical underpinnings of Western society is seriously exaggerated to say the least. His claim that supernatural revelation, as registered in the Bible, is germane to science is unsupported.

It was under the influence of the arabs and Moorish revival of culture and not in the 15th century, that a real renaissance took place. Spain, not Italy, was the cradle of the rebirth of Europe. After steadily sinking lower and lower into barbarism, it had reached the darkest depths of ignorance and degradation when cities of the Saracenic world, Baghdad, Cairo, Cordova, and Toledo, were growing centers of civilization and intellectual activity. It was there that the new life arose which was to grow into new phase of human evolution. From the time when the influence of their culture made itself felt, began the stirring of new life.

It was under their successors at Oxford School (that is, successors to the Muslims of Spain) that Roger Bacon learned Arabic and Arabic Sciences. Neither Roger Bacon nor later namesake has any title to be credited with having introduced the experimental method. Roger Bacon was no more than one of apostles of Muslim Science and Method to Christian Europe; and he never wearied of declaring that knowledge of Arabic and Arabic Sciences was for his contemporaries the only way to true knowledge. Discussion as to who was the originator of the experimental method....are part of the colossal misinterpretation of the origins of European civilization. The experimental method of Arabs was by Bacon's time widespread and eagerly cultivated throughout Europe.
-- Robert Briffault in the "Making of Humanity"

Modern science does not depend on the assumptions that the universe itself is rational, only that it is intelligible to rational minds and that is not really an assumption, that was demonstrated long before Christianity existed.

Also, on the blog post where I left my previous comment Kenneth Hynek decided to insult me after he declined the debate while continuing to argue his point:

...when you ask this:

Why must a “First Cause” be simple or immutable? And what does simplicity and immutability even mean in this context?

You demonstrate not only that the works of Plantinga and Aquinas are several degrees above your pay grade (I am speaking here of the difference in pay grade between janitor and CEO, in fact), but also demonstrate that your own position — whatever it is — is fundamentally unmoored from a basic understanding of reason itself.

Actually, I think it's Mr. Hynek who perhaps doesn't grasp what reason is and that he has chosen this insult option because he knows he can't explain his assertion that a “First Cause” must be simple and immutable. Though I must confess that I'm no big reader of Plantinga or Aquinas and I often don't have a clue as to why they make the screwy assertions they make.

Instead of dealing with Plantinga and Aquinas he is proceeding on his own into the realm of quantum mechanics. To my assertion that "if the first cause is merely a quantum fluctuation, then a quantum fluctuation is God. But quantum fluctuations do not have mental qualities, they don’t have emotions or thoughts," he replied:

Given how little we even understand about the intricacies of quantum fluctuations, your statement is speculation at best, despite your presentation of it as hard fact.

While it's true that I can't be one hundred percent certain that quantum fluctuations don't have emotions or thoughts it's not mere speculation that they don't. After all, Mr. Hynek also can't be sure that the chair he is sitting in doesn't have emotions and thoughts and that it doesn't like the smell of his farts. Would he consider it rational to speculate that his chair resents his farts?

It is rather off the wall to suppose that chairs and quantum fluctuations do have such things. There is simply no good reason, aside from trying to shoehorn in a religious supposition into physics, to assume that a quantum fluctuation has emotions or thoughts. What magical, supernatural replacement for neural circuitry would generate their emotions or thoughts?

In fact, by stating this possibility it is in fact Kenneth Hynek who has demonstrated that it is he who lacks a critical tool of rational scientific thought. That tool is called, rather loosely by its enemies, "the assumption of naturalism," or by its friends, "methodological naturalism."

Does he really want to argue that quantum fluctuations do have emotions and thoughts? Probably not, but he might be trying to claim that they are how God acts in the world.

And while I appreciate that your position is so flimsy to begin with that it requires this kind of sleight of hand, don’t expect me to let said sleight of hand go unremarked upon.

Asserting that quantum fluctuations do not have emotions and thoughts is sleight of hand? Seems like common sense and the assumption of naturalism to me. I could tell Mr. Hynek a lot about the use of methodological naturalism in scientific reasoning, but apparently he can explain nothing about his methods of reasoning.

We know that a quantum fluctuation is a temporary change in the amount of energy at a particular point in space, in apparent violation of the law of conservation of energy. But what does that really tell us? Could a change in energy not be a function of will, albeit a will beyond our ability to comprehend or accurately articulate a description of?

We have ways of testing for mental abilities in animals, perhaps we should have physicists test for this ability in subatomic particles?

In response to my statement: If you think God has mental qualities like “intention,” “knowledge,” “will,” “emotion,” “desire” etc. then how can you even imagine those are simple? You’re talking about some magical form of human-like intelligence that needs no material substrate and of which there is no example to point to. He wrote:

Or I’m talking about something that clunky human language cannot serve to adequately describe, using the clunky human language that is my only means of offering a cogent attempt at a description.

It's not so much, I suspect, a concept that cannot be adequately described as it is an ancient mistake about the source of our mental attributes that religious people refuse to explore rationally. Before neuroscience began to locate mental activity in the brain the ancients assumed that there were "souls" and "spirits" that gave men their mental attributes and animated their bodies. Interestingly, some of the ancient words often translated into soul or spirit in the Bible could also mean wind and breath and ghost. It suggests that the concept of soul and spirit was a biological misunderstanding. The ancients thought that breath, spiritus in Latin, was the force that differentiated a living body from a dead body. Living people breathed, dead people didn't. Breath is a physical event, your breath also exists outside your body momentarily, so spirits can exist outside the body. And you can have spirit possession and invisible ghosts floating about in the air and acting like the wind.

Neuroscience doesn't use the words "spirit" or "soul." Neuroscientists talk about receptors, and neurotransmitters, and electrical circuits, and so forth. Do you think we should go back to talking about spirits?

You assume, I think, a certain blindness to these cosmological forces; from whence do you get this erroneous notion that these forces are in any way blind?

From their statistically predictable regularity. What about the behavior of quantum fluctuations would suggest otherwise?

Could it be, instead, that you feel a deep-seated fear at the idea that things may exist which defy human observation or description?

Maybe you're the one who is afraid?

there’s no way at all we could even begin to have a meaningful discussion, because your position is grounded in several levels of irrationality and unreason. And I, for one, don’t see the need to attempt to forge something meaningful out of something that will only ever rise to the level of a dog’s breakfast.

Well, there you go. He is saying that my poor little god-given brain can not comprehend and grasp the vast mysteries that he understands. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a sadomasochist when I asked why they liked such things. I was told something similar to:

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.

Just replace the word faith with desire.

Aquinas and Plantinga, part 1

2009-03-05T00:05:00.000-08:00

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power.
-- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

What I'm going to demonstrate in the posts that follow is that modern science has dealt a serious blow to what Thomas Aquinas once thought was sound reasoning. Cosmology, Evolution, quantum mechanics, neuroscience and research into artificial intelligence have shattered many of Thomas Aquinas's first principles and led us to a picture of the universe, and our place in it, that is profoundly at odds with what the ancient theologians thought. Modern religious apologists, like Alvin Plantinga, have not been able to get beyond some of Aquinas's worst errors because Christian theology (and Islamic and Jewish theology) are rooted in and depend on those wrong assumptions and presuppositions.

However, before I get into that, I want to explain why I'm going to be doing this. It started when I was visiting another "So Say We All" Galactica carnival blogger's site, Kenneth Hynek's to be precise, and stumbled upon his post, "On following a religion." I left a comment there and his response finally led to his dredging up of the arguments of Thomas Aquinas and Alvin Plantinga. He didn't restate their arguments, he just pointed to them as an explanation for why he thought his religious beliefs were well founded.

I seriously disagree, but if I'm going to dig through Aquinas and Plantinga yet again then I'm not going to just leave the work on the comments section of someone else's blog. No, I'm leaving a record here on my blog that I, and others, can point to the next time someone brings up arguments by Aquinas or Plantinga. I'll post a link on Mr. Hynek's blog that points here. He can leave links to his blog in my comments section if he really wants to get into this.

If we were to just point to the arguments of others, like Mr. Hynek did, without even giving a coherent summary of those arguments, then we'd fail to communicate our own ideas and reasons. There is already too much writing on the web about this now. Here are just a few of the pro and con arguments on the cosmological arguments for the existence of a God from infidels.org. There's plenty more like it to dig up. Before we can really get into this Mr. Hynek is going to have to point to specific links and explain why he is making bizarre claims like this:

There is the potential for error in attributing certain qualities to the First Cause, which must satisfy (at minimum) two conditions — simplicity and immutability.

Why must a "First Cause" be simple or immutable? And what does simplicity and immutability even mean in this context?

If you think God has mental qualities like "intention," "knowledge," "will," "emotion," "desire" etc. then how can you even imagine those are simple? You're talking about some magical form of human-like intelligence that needs no material substrate and of which there is no example to point to.

Obviously the first thing to do in such a situation is define terms. For example, if you ask me if I believe in God, I’ll usually say "No." However, that's likely to lead to the theist using the most open-ended definition of God he can get away with, like God is the first cause. But if the first cause is merely a quantum fluctuation, then a quantum fluctuation is God. But quantum fluctuations do not have mental qualities, they don't have emotions or thoughts. You may have, by some rules of the game, proved a kind of "god," (a first cause), but you've disproved the concept of God that Catholic theology is founded on.

So we must ask Mr. Hynek, "What do you mean by God?" Even deistic religions must answer it and define the term.

Also, lets settle on some texts if we're going to talk about Aquinas and Plantinga. We're not going to get anywhere if we're reading different writings even by the same authors. I'll be quoting Aquinas from the Project Gutenberg version of Summa Theologica, here:

Part I
Part II A
Part II B
Part III

If forgers and malefactors are put to death by the secular power, there is much more reason for excommunicating and even putting to death one convicted of heresy.
-- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

For a sample of Alvin Plantinga's thought process, check out "The Dawkins Confusion" (also on Dawkins' site), "Naturalism vs. Evolution: A Religion/Science Conflict?" and "Against 'Sensible' Naturalism."

If Mr. Hynek wants to get into this then let's start by defining terms and settling on which texts we're going to talk about. Once done then I can move on to giving a simple outline of my arguments against Aquinas and Plantinga. More details will follow later.

That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.
-- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

Pretending to think like Ray Comfort

2009-03-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

The perverse and ungodly sex life of bananas

On the header to Ray Comfort's blog he claimed that his old video comparing a coke can to a banana was intended as a parody. No, this video is an intentional parody:

And this:

Can you see the difference? (Actually I have a hard time with some satire because there are so many religious believers whose beliefs sound like satire).

Ray also says:

Atheists edited the coke can from a video clip and sent it around the world, saying that I believed that the banana was proof of the existence of God.

But that's exactly what Ray did say, that God created the banana. And he still says it having never grasped what critics meant. Ray is an amazingly bald-faced liar (and I'm not sure if he knows he is lying he is so deeply immersed in the world of his delusions). Does he really think the coke can part added anything to his point? He was comparing one man made product to another. The old video is on YouTube and Ray comes right out and says it:

Note those words: "You'll find that the maker of the banana, the almighty God... Just like soda can makers, God has placed a tab at the top..." etc.. As many of my readers probably know already, that's not how things really happened, but stick with me, I'll take you deeper into Ray's mistakes. Ray clearly didn't know that bananas, like many of the other plants we eat (and animals for that matter), are a product of thousands of years of human selection. Man designed the banana. As far as being natural and wild goes, Ray could hardly have picked a worse example.

His fundamental point was that God designed modern bananas, and evolution isn't true, and on that point he is dead wrong. Wild bananas have seeds, ancient bananas were barely edible, but the common banana Ray used in the video was cultivated and made seedless. His banana example cannot sexually reproduce. It's a clone. Those bananas are grown from offshoots of the parent plant rather than through the process of sex and fertilization that might otherwise take place.

One result of that is that the banana's genetic information hasn't changed as much as it could have if it were mixing its genes up sexually and evolving that way. The problem is that the world of plant diseases has evolved and changed and our commercial bananas were in danger because they haven't kept up. However, genetic engineering may come to the rescue.

That ties into another question Ray doesn't understand -- why sex evolved. Recall Ray's comically inept understanding of sexual evolution:

"Darwin theorized that mankind (both male and female) evolved alongside each other over millions of years, both reproducing after their own kind before the ability to physically have sex evolved. They did this through "asexuality" ("without sexual desire or activity or lacking any apparent sex or sex organs"). Each of them split in half ("Asexual organisms reproduce by fission (splitting in half)." Ask A Scientist, Biology Archive, http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/bio99/bio99927.htm.)" -- Ray Comfort

Darwin theorized no such thing. Ray just bald-face lied to everybody again. Ray reads a few sentences from a science article and then thinks scientists are postulating that men and women were two separate species before sex evolved? How ignorant can someone get? There was no 'mankind', or anything remotely close to it when sexual genders evolved.

All sexually reproducing organisms derive from some very ancient common ancestor which may have been a single celled eukaryotic species. Many protists reproduce sexually, as do the multicellular plants, animals, and fungi. At the latest, sex may have developed in primitive ancestors that more resembled sponges and worms because there are some species of worm and sponge that are not quite sexually differentiated. Some worms are asexual. Plants haven't even differentiated much from each other as many plants can reproduce asexually. There are only a few animal species which have lost gender differentiation.

However, Ray isn't entirely wrong to point to sex if he wants to baffle "evolutionists" for there are indeed some profound mysteries to why sex evolved. Wouldn't parthenogenesis have a reproductive advantage over sexual reproduction? After all, with sex, half the species can't have babies. Well, Wikipedia's "Evolution of Sexual Reproduction" has some information about what scientists are actually proposing, but it's mostly rather abstract. And I could show you a good bit of probable answers to when and how sex evolved, but one of the big mysteries for me was why it evolved -- that is until I did a bit more research on Ray's bananas. With the banana we get a pragmatic example of why sex is necessary and why it dominates the animal kingdom.

As noted above, Ray, if geneticists (almost always "evolutionists") can't save the banana, may no longer have bananas to use in his videos. Ray's modern world would fall apart if there were no evolutionists.

Ray makes comically asinine remarks on his blog and his television series, regarding subjects about which he knows nothing. When Ray is called on his ignorance, instead of admitting he was ignorant of all this science, he simply lies, just like when he said the banana bit was him doing comedy on purpose. He obviously wasn't because the real story of the banana is a powerful argument for evolution which he doesn't believe happened.

By not admitting to his mistake he has clued us all into the fact that he will lie to cover his errors. Why? His ego perhaps, or perhaps he wants to keep his reputation among his followers who appear to be dumber than he is. When Ray is factually wrong, as he often is, he refuses to admit it (take his banana video, please). If he really wanted to convince us that he had some important truth to impart he wouldn't try to lie his way out of these jams he gets himself into. It's rare to find a Christian one can argue in good faith with. You'll note that none have shown up in the comments section on my blog to argue my points in a long time. Too many sacrifice my potential faith and trust in at least their honesty to protect their egos and cover over their ignorance, a task they generally fail to accomplish. They rarely enter into the arguments in good faith or with a sense of mutual exploration of reality. They always come apreachin':

Battlestar Galactica: "Someone to Watch Over Me"

2009-02-27T20:03:00.000-08:00

This was a damn good episode (at least for one with no Baltar)!

[This weeks music, by a guest from the Galactic Water-cooler]
[The "so say we all" Blog Carnival is up here]

With only three shows left, things finally seem like they are beginning to tie together and the show feels again like it is moving towards a well thought-out ending that ties up all the loose ends... but boy are there still a lot of loose ends. The show has had so many cryptic predictions of events to come, dreams of the Opera House, cryptic prophesies from hybrids in goo tubs, etc.. Then there were the mysterious "head" characters that Baltar and the Cylons see, they seems to be manipulative and in contact with some hidden source of information.

What frustrated me about the last episode, Deadlock, was that it didn't seem to move the final end game story forward, but instead added more loose ends. Though I might be proven wrong about that. Adding to that frustration was the knowledge that the writers had winged it through much of the series. People had been calling them out on apparent errors. The writers seemed to have retrofitted a missing 7th Cylon, Daniel, because the Boomer/Athena was model number 8. Caprica-6 used to have a Head-Baltar which apparently they've forgotten about. They apparently changed Tyrol's son into Hot Dog's bastard because they needed there to only be one half-Cylon. If they've made any more errors, they will not be able to retrofit anything now.

However, in this episode things do seem to be rapidly moving towards an ending that does pick up all the loose threads and ties them together, though few of those loose ends actually got tied this time... but at least they finally got picked up and used.

There were basically two stories in this episode, one involving Starbuck and the other involving Boomer. The Boomer story is the one that seems to be driving the end game plot while the Starbuck story remained cryptic and ultimately unresolved and leaving us with only a tiny bit more information than we had before. Yet it was the Starbuck story that was the real emotional and story worthy triumph of this episode. And a lot of the credit for that goes to Bear McCreary who has three detailed posts on his blog about working on this episode:

1) PRE-PRODUCTION
2) PRODUCTION
3) POST-PRODUCTION

Bear's blog may eventually become required reading for the next generation of TV and film composers. The blog should probably be re-packaged as a book and and used as text in music schools for any classes that might be about film and TV composition (do such things exist?). Maybe Bear intends to teach one and is trying to use his blog to attract students?

The Starbuck storyline:

The episode begins with the Starbuck storyline. A close-up on a pair of hands as they remove a red velvet covering to reveal a set of warped and yellowed piano keys, and then the hands start to play and they cut to a montage of Starbuck’s repetitive and dreary daily routine while the piano music continues. After the intro we are shown Starbuck in the bar, drinking away her pain and confusion, and listening to the same guy play piano.

Starbuck has some huge loose ends hanging over her. Her viper blew up back in season three and, presumed dead, she somehow came back to life and to the Fleet piloting a factory-fresh Viper. Then the Cylons get spooky feelings about her viper and then Starbuck found a signal on one the vipers instruments that led them to Earth, which turned out to be a radioactive wasteland. And there on Earth, presumably light years from where her old viper blew up, she finds that old viper and her charred body with dog-tags still attached.

How any of that could possibly be is a mystery, a loose end that needs explaining. So far, little light has been shed on that mystery. Only a tiny bit was shown in this episode.

Starbuck got annoyed at the piano player for continuing to play "the same Lame-Ass Song." The guy looks up from the piano and tells her that he's trying to compose a sonata. Their conversation eventually leads them to talking about their life stories. It turns out that the piano player is a lot like Starbuck's father who was also a piano player and Starbuck has flashbacks of taking piano lessons from her dad. A happy memory of her father. They are of course dealing us some clues that this guy is her father.

But for some reason, in spite of all the speculation, it didn't really hit me that this was where they were going until Starbuck had a nightmare about walking through an empty hangar deck towards a young girl who seemed to be her childhood self from the flashbacks. I've been calling it the "Phantom of the Opera" scene because that old movie had this famous unmasking scene:

However, Starbuck's nightmare also uses a bit from Psycho, and Psycho also borrowed from "Phantom of the Opera":

When Starbuck spins the child's chair around we see the charred skull of Starbuck with her viper helmet on, something like the Psycho scene. At that point the piano player had a stronger emotional connection to Starbuck's childhood and to the mystery of what had happened to her after her viper blew up. I was even starting to suspect that I'd hear "All Along the Watchtower" by then. Nothing says you're a Cylon like finding one of your old dead bodies and they had just reminded us that this had indeed happened to Starbuck.

I think they should have had the young girl playing a version of "All along the Watchtower" or the "Final Four" theme and underlined that Cylon aspect for us. We've been strongly suspecting that Starbuck is Cylon ever since she found her body on Earth, and even before that. Bear said he had planned on scoring the scene with something like "Chopin-Meets-John-Zorn-Meets-Trent-Reznor." Oh, I wish he had. Alas, Bear felt that the cliche of a kid playing a creepy song had been done to death in horror films and that the child-like simplicity of the young actresses' real playing was more spooky and unnerving. Well, yea, kids playing spooky tunes is a cliche, but so was the whole Phantom of the Opera nightmare scene. The way to transcend cliche isn't always to run away from the cliche elements but rather to infuse them with a new layer of meaning they've never had before.

One of the elements of Starbuck's storyline that did catch me by surprise was Hera's "star drawing," just a line of dots. The drawing turned out to be a musical score, and it was supposedly "All along the Watchtower." That reveal would have still been a surprise and having heard it in a nightmare previously would have given it more emotional resonance, making the reveal even more chilling I suspect. It also would have linked childhood Starbuck to Hera more strongly. Perhaps Hera's drawing should have been in the lap of the girl in Starbuck's nightmare?

Toward the end of the episode, when Starbuck began to play Hera's score, Saul Tigh was in the bar and he recognized the music that switched him on. The music picked up percussion and other instruments as rocking version of the Final Four theme played (it wasn't Watchtower at that point). Next, Tory says, "That’s the song" and then Starbuck finally recognizes her father as her father. Tigh rushes up to the piano and asks where she heard that song, Starbuck looks to her dad as she begins to explain, but her dad isn't there, he was just a "head-dad." Starbuck had played the music all by herself.

Bear and the writers had worried that the audience would guess too early about Starbuck’s dad. I don't think this was as big a deal as they feared. Bear saw on his own blog that fans had speculated that he would be Starbuck's father. We didn't need to be completely surprised by the revelation. Guessing isn't certainty. The trick is to load our guessing and speculation with foreboding and make us fear and hope for that very reveal. It's not mere surprise that makes for a chill.

The Boomer storyline:

The episode’s other major plot line was the Boomer story which was weaved in and around Starbuck's story. It began when Tyrol learned that the Cylons wanted to execute Boomer for her role in the Cylon Civil War. Tyrol had just informed Adama that the Cylon silly putty they've been using to fill the cracks in Galactica's hull wasn't going to hold the ship together for much longer (no wonder he wanted to leave Galactica in Deadlock). Then one of the sixes dropped the news bomb, they wanted Boomer for a trial.

Tyrol eventually decides to break her out of the brig. There was a lot of good stuff here, Tyrol being taken into Boomer's projected fantasy of domestic life and freaking out, then his remembering her with lots of flashbacks, etc., but I'm not going to recap all that. You'll read about it elsewhere if you want. The point is that Tyrol got used by all that. Boomer was still on Cavil's side and before she left Galactica she frakked Helo while Athena, tied up in a closet, watched and then Boomer stole Hera from some daycare center. Tyrol even unknowingly helped Boomer carry the crate with Hera in it onto the raptor.

Some comments I've read show that some people are having a hard time buying that Boomer has become "evil" because Boomer fought for humanity in Downloaded, she argued for the Cylons to stop being butchers on New Caprica and she was unwittingly used as a sleeper agent in the first season and she tried to commit suicide to protect the fleet. So, how is she now a bad guy? Boomer turned into a villain seems out of character to some fans.

I suspect one clue to her motives was in Tyrol's flashbacks. There was a scene where Tyrol told her that, I paraphrase, "you're a machine. You don't have feelings, you have software." I think Boomer took that to heart. Remember what Cavil was teaching her -- how to be more of a machine. She repeated Cavil's rhetoric about humanity and Cylons to Ellen. Boomer would also realize that, even if she wanted to go back, she'd never be accepted by the other Cylons nor by many of the humans.

Now she can easily steal babies and sleep with Helo. She not only treats her own "illusory" humanity coldly, she treats other people's humanity coldly too. To her, it's not just her own Cylon feelings that are an illusion, but human feelings too. Thus she seems to have no more sympathy for human beings.

Oh, and what she just did to Tyrol. What a gut punch for him. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions then Tyrol just paved himself a four lane highway down into the freezing seventh circle of Hell.

By the end of the episode the two stories are put together when Ellen figures out that Boomer had been set up by Cavil all along. It was his intention from the beginning to use Boomer to steal Hera. And Hera is somehow connected to whatever force is manipulating them because of the music score she had drawn.

And then there was Sam Anders:

Another scene I should mention is that Starbuck checked on Sam Anders in sickbay. Sam's brainwaves have gotten weird. The Doc says he is in a comma, but the harmonic complexity of those brainwave patterns looked familiar to me. I think they might herald a chronic case of Deus Ex Machina accompanied by another acute bout of exposition-dumpitis.

I CHALLENGE RAY COMFORT TO A BLOG DEBATE!

2009-02-26T10:30:00.000-08:00

I will pay Ray Comfort two dollars and sixty-three cents, or $2.63 if you prefer, if he will come to this blog post and debate me for about fifteen comments or more if he wishes. Each comment must be under 2,000 words. Once the comment number hits fifteen, I will pay Ray his money no matter what he has said.

No other comments will be allowed in this one post. It waits here for Ray alone. Others can comment here.

I believe that offering Ray $2.63 is equivalent to Ray first offering Dawkins $10,000 if one compares the projected incomes of Ray Comfort to Richard Dawkins based on book sales.

Ray may start the debate on any subject he wishes.

If Ray refuses this offer, at least he'll understand why Dawkins isn't going for Ray's offer.

All Ray has to do is make a comment on this blog post right here. No traveling or other expenses. That's it, and it's far less effort than he is asking of Dawkins.

Please, dear readers, inform Ray Comfort that this challenge has been made.

What's a matter Ray, are you chicken? Afraid I'll defeat you without your editing tricks and censorship?

UPDATE - DAY 2:

It's now the second day after making my challenge to Ray Comfort and the lying chicken shit refuses to even acknowledge that he has been challenged.

They hired a Science Consultant?! Why?

2009-02-25T11:03:00.000-08:00

Yep, Dr James Kakalios, a teacher at the University of Minnesota, was the Science Consultant on the upcoming feature film, "Watchmen." The first question that popped into my mind was "why bother?" It's a comic book. The science is expected to be absurd. Spiderman, Superman, the X-Men ... They are highly improbable to say the least, and I do mean the least. Even the Watchman's Dr. Manhattan is pretty much a scientific impossibility.

This is not a bad thing until one starts making claims for scientific accuracy or "reality." I love movies with skewed realities, like Pirates of the Caribbean or X-Men or some crazy vampire flick, but I'd balk if someone claimed that the supernatural elements of Pirates was how the world really worked. And if they told me that Superman was grounded in real science, well, they'd get an argument from me.

So, what exactly could a scientist contribute? Just like Pirates of the Caribbean benefited from some research into British Naval vessels of the period, a film that shows a scientist at work in 1985 will benefit knowing what an actual physics lab of the period would look like. Just don't tell me that Dr. Manhattan's superpowers make sense or that they're physically possible.

Unless you're Dr Kakalios that is, because when he says that Dr. Manhattan's superpower makes physical sense it turns out that it's fascinating in a totally geeked out way and it does make sense if you pay attention to his quiet "ifs" and realize he is really talking on a metaphorical level:

He used people's interest in comic books and movies to teach a little basic science about waves. Good for him, but in a way he's making a fool of himself. How does Dr. Manhattan make himself disappear and reappear magically? Well, "he's a wave and out of phase waves cancel." He can appear in more than one place at a time? Diffraction patterns. There are things that can do those things for the reasons he states and they're called atoms. Atoms have been "seen" to be in two places at once. Atom lasers can make atoms disappear.

As a physicist Dr Kakalios knows better, and he says so, but a little too quietly, "if intrinsic fields existed, which they don't," then this could be. Right, and if wishes were fishes then beggars would be kings. People are not atoms, they're a highly structured pattern of atoms and these quantum tricks destroy those patterns.

Another little problem I have with that video, I don't think analyzing the science in comics is the most useful thing you could do with a knowledge of physics if you don't go on to get a job in science. If you're a musician it could be quite useful to know about those waves, sound is waves. The usefulness of that knowledge is more true today than in the past because of the technology being used; computers. Computers can draw the wave forms and they're described by mathematics, the language of science, and that could be damn useful. For example, there is a feature in my Audacity Audio Editor that will let me program my own sounds. I think I could make my own software version of a Theremin. Right now I can't quite figure out the language, the Nyquist programming language, but I think I'll be able to make some use of it in the future.

Also, according to some published research, listening to some beat frequencies can cause brainwaves to "align" with that frequency through a phenomenon called entrainment. The result is a different state of awareness, like increased relaxation or alertness, lucid dreaming or many other states.

The four most familiar brainwave frequencies are:

* Beta (14-21 Hz and higher)
* Alpha (7-14 Hz)
* Theta (4-7 Hz)
* Delta (0-4 Hz).

There are variations on these bands as well as other brainwave frequencies, and that different states may be associated each.

That, and you don't want to wind up so ignorant of basic science that you're willing to believe Ray Comfort when he claims to "disprove" evolution. That kind of ignorance is just pathetic today.

Saying how science can help a non-scientist analyze comic books is really selling knowledge of science short.

The other thing I want to note about this video is that it's just a tiny sampling of the internet buzz that's circulating around the up coming film, and that I've now become part of. I predict a box office landslide the buzz is so heavy. Every sci-fi site I visit has something on the film. This is odd for a film based on such a dated comic book, it's full of Cold War paranoia.

Maybe Ron Moore and the new crew of "The Thing" should consult PZ Myers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris. PZ could probably help generate a lot of buzz.

And one more thing before I close this, here's Alan Moore, the writer of the original comic:

Ray Comfort's devious ignorance amazes me yet again

2009-02-23T09:27:00.000-08:00

This is kind of funny, Ray Comfort is challenging Richard Dawkins to a debate – and he is sweetening the deal by offering Dawkins $10,000:

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=89453

Dawkins' last book, The God Delusion, sold over 1.5 million copies, and has been translated to 31 other languages. His books have been selling well since 1976 when he published The Selfish Gene, the book that put Dawkins on the map as an intellectual heavyweight. He has TV specials on British TV.

$10,000 is just chump change to Dawkins. It's probably asking for a bargain in light of Dawkins' speaking fees. And Dawkins has already said that he will not debate creationists because appearing with them gives them too much credit.

Ray Comfort is just an annoying nobody, a street corner preacher who would get too much undeserved credit from even appearing on stage with Dawkins. If you don't know who Ray Comfort is, check out this post and this one.

I, however, would debate Ray for half of what he is offering Dawkins.

I challenge you Ray to save $5,000 and debate me instead. Are you chicken, or does $5,000 mean nothing to you, Ray?

UPDATE:

PZ Myers, at Pharyngula, reports that Dawkins has heard about the challenge and made a counter offer. Dawkins will do it for $100,000, to be donated to the RDF. Comfort upped the ante to $20,000. It's not enough for Dawkins.

All My Cylons ... these are the days of our fives ... As The Galaxy Turns

2009-02-21T08:41:00.000-08:00

DEADLOCK comments:
Spoilers ahead:

[The Galactica Blog Carnival is here.]

[FIRST A LITTLE MUSIC, click here to get this week's tune]

The show does not feel like it is coming to an end. We're down to the Final Five episodes and things are still getting complicated in ways that make me feel the show is turning into an old fashioned Soap Opera. With the show closing they continue to weave intricate and convoluted stories, now involving Soap Operaish elements like sex, pregnancy, falling in love and adultery. Ellen Tigh very much seemed to belong in a Soap Opera. You could literally plop the actress into a soap and she'd do great there playing the same character.

This episode featured one clearly standard old fashioned Soap Opera element; Saul Tigh's extramarital affair with Caprica-6 and that bit of cheesy sexual drama that followed. On learning about Tigh’s relationship with the 6, Ellen confronted Caprica about it, even telling Caprica how she and Tigh fracked the minute she got back to Galactica. Ellen then changes her tune and tells Caprica that Tigh loves her, Caprica, more than almost anything else, but then goes on to play a head game on Tigh and Caprica that proves this isn't quite true.

[CAN YOU NAME THIS TUNE? OR TELL ME WHY I CHOSE IT?]

Ellen pretends to vote to for leaving Galactica and Saul insists on staying, even if both Ellen and Caprica-6 go. Thus it is, according to Ellen, revealed that it’s Bill Adama and Galactica that Saul loves more than either Ellen or Caprica-6 or his own baby. Over at cinemablend.com they celebrated Tigh's bromance with his boss using this fan video from youtube:

I say old fashioned soaps because I haven't watched a soap in decades and I understand they've evolved. I'll have to check. But some other old fashioned soapy cliches I can find in Galactica: Amnesia (the Final Five had their memories blocked) previously-unknown children (Ellen only recently learned that the Cylons are in a way her children), siblings and twins (of the evil variety) are there in more abundance on Galactica than you'd ever see on a soap. Established characters come back from the dead to upset and reinvigorate the relationships (a character's death is not necessarily permanent even when you see an on-camera corpse in both soaps and on Galactica). Unexpected calamities disrupt weddings, childbirths, and other major life events with unusual frequency in both soaps and on Galactica.

On the flip side, my sister has told me that science fiction elements started creeping into the soaps back in the 90s. Someone who knows both mediums will have to confirm my speculation about the soap influence on Galactica. And unless there is a soap about an ex-scientist turned cult leader I don't think you'll find anyone like Baltar on the soaps.

Baltar's arc is starting to get scary again. He returned to his harem/cult to find some angry balcubines who were feeling that Baltar and God abandoned them. They are now armed and hoarding food. Gaius is lucky they let him back into his own cult. While on a lower deck to do some trading, Gaius sees how badly some of the people are suffering and decides to become charitable and give away some of the balcubine's food. Those thugs, the Sons of Aries, show up and take what’s left of the food they brought.

Now in danger of losing control of his cult, Head-6 reappears to give Baltar the right words to influence the women and regain control of his cult. Paula seemed to be in charge and Head-6 whispered in Baltar’s ear that, "the sheep have a new shepherd." The plan that Head-6 gives Baltar involves getting more guns and so Gaius talks the Adamas into giving him such guns... Wait! How did he do that again? Crates of guns were delivered to cult quarters and this makes the women happy, especially Paula.

I've been wondering for awhile if Baltar's religion is some form of Cylon Creedocide:

Important Things with Demetri MartinWed 10:30pm / 9:30c

Power - Creedocide

Joke of the Day
Stand-Up Comedy

Free Online Games
More Funny Videos

A hungry religious cult with some big guns... What was Adama thinking? When the food runs out they can start killing each other and solve their food shortage problems by decreasing the demand? Has Adama finally decided that the human race doesn't deserve to survive?

UPDATE:

Ms. SP, Also known as Marie, has a comment below with a link to Maureen Ryan's interview with Jane Espenson. In addition to the comments on Adama giving guns to Baltar's group, Ms Espenson also remarked on the soapy quality of Ellen's scenes:

I never thought of it as soapy, but as emotional. Fights over love probably feel soapy because these are the sorts of stories that were traditionally told about women, while men got workplace stories. Now these two types are just some of the stories we tell, but they're still worth telling. And they don't have to be soapy. I hope the Six/Ellen scene isn't too close to Dolly Parton's song "Jolene," because I suppose that is the danger. I just tried to write an exchange I believed, about emotions as complex as I could muster.

The term "soapy" is subjective. What makes a scene soapy to me isn't quite the same as what makes a scene soapy to someone else. As for Ellen's character, I can now name who she reminded me of: Erica Kane from "All My Children." Erica used to play exactly the same kind of tempestuous head games on people as Ellen did on Saul Tigh and Caprica-6. I only watched a few episodes of that old soap and perhaps what I saw was atypical. Does the comparison ring a bell for anyone else?

A few Pieces of a Puzzle

2009-02-13T22:07:00.000-08:00

Battlestar Galactica: No Exit

The Galactica Blog Carnival for this week is posted here.

[CLICK HERE FOR MOOD MUSIC: "Ode to a tub of Cylon Goo"]

The episode, "No Exit," was an exposition dump, but through that method they finally did give us a few good pieces of the puzzle that will be the real history of the Cylons. The constant talking came mostly from Ellen and Anders, who are now recovering their memories, and then Cavil, who explained his "evil" motives in a way not too dissimilar to a comic book villain, or a James Bond villain. All this talk broke one of the rules of good drama called "show, don't tell." It is probably the effect of trying to compress too much back story into too few episodes. Even Bear McCreary noted "... the unusual amount of fast-paced and essential dialog in these two shows left little room for big musical statements."

On the other hand, they had me so hungry for this information with the previous buildup that I didn't mind. However, I think the people who liked the mutiny story might find this episode slow going and curse the fact that there are fans like me who want this stuff. There's a reason that exposition dumps are the bane of science fiction.

We've crossed over into new territory and one of the ways they signaled this was with a new series introduction. The episode began with a new retelling of the history that featured some new Cylon robots that look a lot more like the old ones from the original series. They even put up some new texts, one saying that "this has all happened before."

The episode began with Ellen drinking the poison booze Tigh gave her on New Caprica, she has a psychedelic memory trip and then finds herself waking up in a bathtub full of that Cylon "amniotic" goo. At first she is horrified to find out she is a Cylon, but then a strange calm begins to come over her and she starts acting familiar with her surroundings, even asking one of the chrome toaster models to help her out of the tub.

Ellen was apparently resurrected immediately after her death on New Caprica. Cavil had locked her up and let no one but himself and his pet 8 talk to her. So they have to encapsulate months of time with Ellen and Cavil in mere minutes, starting from her death, through the Cylon civil war, to finding Earth and up to the present.

When Ellen started talking to Cavil she called him "John" and told him that "I named you after my father." She even calls the Cylons "her children." This gives that sex scene between Cavil and Ellen back on New Caprica a whole new twist. Father and Daughter and Mother and Son at the same time, Oedipus and Electra in one frack.

Next we are shown Anders in sick bay with his bald head screwed painfully into a bulky device, called a "head frame" I think, while the doctor starts preparing to drill into his skull. Anders has a bullet in his brain and it has effected his memory blocks. His hidden past is coming back to him. Starbuck is with him when Anders starts rambling, he tells Starbuck to gather the other Cylons because he has begun to remember. We get a lot of additional Cylon info from him and I'm going to have to watch the episode again on Hulu and do an update just to keep all this exposition straight.

What did you get out of Ander's exposition?

There was too much stuff, lots of disconnected bits and pieces. There was something about traveling around at sub-light speed before they invented jump drive to explain how they came from Earth 2,000 years ago without having 2,000 years worth of memories. They had a ship in orbit around Earth to upload their memories and then they traveled at relativistic speed... somewhere? Time slowed down for them as thousands of years passed for the rest of the universe. Ah, yes Einstein's time dilation effect. I wonder if they'll give us a starbow in any flash-back scenes?

There was information about all of the Final Five Cylons being involved in some project to recreate the resurrection technology. They all worked in the same research facility. They didn't invent resurrection technology, they re-invented it. Ellen made an intuitive leap that brought the resurrection system back online. Tyrol and Tory were lovers, they lived together and were madly in love, planning to get married. Ellen liked the beach and the water. Tigh and Ellen were married.

Resurrection technology is also "organic memory transfer" and it's ancient and came from Kobol. It fell out of use after they started to procreate. Wait! Stop there. Why would people give up on immortality in order to have babies? I wouldn't do that. That does not make sense as a stand alone statement. Were there laws and over population problems leading to the repression of the technology? Was it done for religious reasons, like George Bush restricting embryonic stem cell research?

More weirdly, it was the robots, the centurions that evolved the concept of a single loving God.

The information coming from the Ellen and Cavil dialog was more coherent and one thing I did get was the motivation for Cavil. Cavil was the villain from the start, he turned on the final five, blocked access to their memories and then introduced them into colonial civilization. His motivation is worthy of one of the great comic book villains. "I am a machine," said Cavil. He hates his humanity and he has vision of a better kind of existence as a machine. He found sleep to be unproductive and he got rid of his need for it.

He gave a great super-villain speech about watching a supernova, calling it "the moment of creation," and how he wished he could see it with something better than the pathetic and ridiculous eyes Ellen had given him. Cavil wants to feel the solar wind, to smell dark matter and to be more than human.

Human eyes are indeed limited in the spectrum of light they see. They are mere gelatinous orbs to Cavil. But in a way we can "see" in the full spectrum of light when we use scientific instruments. And that's what Cavil wants for eyes in order to see supernovas:

That raises a question... why can't Cavil do that himself? Why can't he upload into a machine of his choice and become the kind of machine he wants to be? He could, in theory, upload into anything from a basestar to a robocop/terminator type machine to a Cylon heavy raider with some tweaking of the technology. (Maybe some versions of Cavil already have?) It's not unrealistic that he is currently limited somehow, he needs Ellen's help just for recreating the resurrection technology that the rebels have destroyed. But if becoming a machine is his goal, why not strive for it? Considering the fact that Battlestar Galactica producer Ron Moore is now working on a "backdoor pilot" for Fox called Virtuality it's within his bag of tricks to do something with that.

Cylons already download their minds into other humaniod bodies, and that should imply what a lot of SF already does, uploading into computers and machines. We're already working in that direction... check out project Blue Brain.

I think this means a prediction is in order, and that Cavil will eventually figure out how to upload into a big machine, like a basestar, and become a real monster. If knowing he could be so much more is what drives him, expect him to try it.

Ellen told Cavil that being human had its advantages, she gave him "free will," thus tossing around that term like it had some concrete meaning. It doesn't. What does she mean by free-will? Are we talking metaphysical free-will, free-will as a legal concept, free-will as a psychological concept, free-will as some aspect of consciousness, or what?

It's also here at this confused metaphysical level where we are in danger of falling into a bad old sci-fi/horror movie cliche. All this talk of "free will" was the horror/sci-fi cliche I feared and wrote about in "Six of One" : The disappointing part.

[CLICK FOR "Horror Movie Cliche" music.]

In a way, Ellen Tigh is our Doctor Frankenstein and Cavil is her monster. The others making up the final five are apparently just a collection of Igors. Will Ellen also be punished by her creation for "going against the laws of nature" and creating a monster. That's what Cavil was suggesting... except our concept about "going against the laws of nature" has undergone a dramatic shift since Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft wrote Frankenstein. In Cavil's mind that nature now includes some kind of "machine nature" that is ill defined. Cavil talks about "Justice" and the Cylons being the "slaves of humanity," but can I really enslave something that has no "free-will"? Can I enslave my computer? My toaster? What would happen if I set my toaster free?

Again, we get back to the bane of science fiction, expository lumps that are needed to clarify concepts like "free-will." What does that term mean to the Galactica writers? I'm not sure. Right now it's just an ambiguous bit of Galactica technobabble.

I'm going to wrap this up without talking too much about another major plot point introduced in this episode; there was apparently a Model Seven, Daniel, that Cavil killed. Cavil corrupted his DNA or something. Also, towards the end Cavil's pet 8 has a falling out with Cavil (finally saw a newer shiny thing?) and when Cavil threatened to extract the information he needed from Ellen through brain surgery, the 8 took Ellen away on a Raptor and flew her to the fleet.

It seems Ellen will be joining up with the fleet judging by the previews. And Tyrol is back to being Chief, and using Cylon technology help fix the cracks in Galactica's hull. I'll pick up those threads if I need to when the next episode, "Deadlock," airs.

How I make music, part 1

2009-02-12T01:08:00.000-08:00

If you take a look at my box.net files, here:
http://www.box.net/shared/16vmbxot2g

You'll see I have some .wav music files there. A couple of those .wavs are getting more hits than my blog, something over sixty downloads already on one file, "Zarek's Dead." I think that's because I posted a link to it over on Bear McCreary's blog and Bear said, "Awesome performance of the Zarek theme! Very spooky." But he also noted that I goofed one note, in the fourth bar, the whole note D# was played as a C#.

Take a listen to a few pieces, and if you like, read on and I'll show you how it's done so you can make your own music.

My music is all done with free software. I haven't played a musical instrument in over a decade (in high school I was in a rock and roll band). The most important bit of free software is the Audacity Audio Editor. Several pieces were done with nothing but the Audacity Audio Editor (scifi001.wav, scifi0e0.wav, SCIfiFX00.wav and aliendeep.wav) and some plug-ins to that editor.

Some of those plug-ins are going to create the instruments needed to play Squid Metal.

The others, the Zarek .wavs and computer_heaven.wav required two other pieces of software; a trial version of "Notation Composer" and the trial version of "AudioConverter Studio 5.9." I have limited time with the trial version of "Notation Composer," but there are more such programs out there.

The "violin(s)" in the Zarek files were originally just MIDI instruments, actually they're a stack of MIDI instruments, a few violins, a distortion guitar, an overdriven guitar, etc.. The weird sounds in the computer_heaven file are several different stacks, an xylophone in one ensemble, a flute in another. They all got so distorted by the processing I put them through that they sound alien and weird.

If you use any of the music composition software I've so far seen then you'll have already seen that you can create any kind of ensemble of instruments you like from a standard MIDI collection. You should also be able to output a MIDI file (.mid) from your software. The problem is that MIDI instruments don't sound that good. So, I then take the MIDI file and convert it to a .wav file using AudioConverter Studio and then I use the Audacity Audio Editor to manipulate the .wav file. After that it no longer sounds like MIDI because I can add some human expressive qualities to it with Audacity.

I can, and will, describe some of this process in future posts if readers comment here and ask for more. It involves adding "echo fifths" and "gong model distortions" and I doubt that those terms mean anything to many readers out there. I'll need to know where my readers are as far as their knowledge goes before I can describe more.

The background_sinister.wav is the only one I haven't mentioned yet. It was made by distorting the noises of a construction site.

Now, before I ramble on and on about how I made the music I'll just let any interested readers out there ask questions and my next music posts will answer them. I suggest getting the software and just playing with it -- that's all I really did. Maybe someone out there can teach me some even better tricks. I've only been toying with this software for less than two weeks. I can't know that much.

Does anyone want to know more?

Anyone out there know where I can get more music software or any neat tricks?

News flash! Ray Comfort likes Sadistic Movies!

2009-02-10T10:39:00.000-08:00

I went over to Ray Comfort's blog to get a few laughs and I found this post, "If you are an atheist, please watch this..."

Here's the little short film he linked:

Under it was just one sentence: "This is the logal result of atheistic evolution."

I thought it was a well done little film, but Ray's point in posting it completely escapes me. What is the result of atheistic evolution, Ray? Interesting little sadistic short films? Cruel sociopathic and/or psychopathic human monsters who like to torture and kill people? What exactly is Ray trying to say?

I suppose a case, the most generous one, could be made that religious belief holds back a few socio-psychopathic monsters who might be inclined to torture and kill if they weren't afraid of hell. Perhaps Ray Comfort is such a monster himself? After all, he has made a god of an imaginary entity he believes will torture me for eternity.

On the other hand what about the costly crimes religion has inspired:

And what if one day Ray heard God's voice telling him to kill children?

A less generous case could be made that Ray is trying to say that if we believed the world was different, like he does, it actually would be different. That if we stopped believing in the idea that to a large degree that behavior and temperament are hereditary, then hereditary monsters would not exist either. There is no reason to suppose that such psychopaths don't exist just because it would be so unpleasant if they did. It is simply the way the world is whether we accept that reality or not. It is not dependent on evolution or on atheism. If you can't argue successfully against a psychopath, well, that's the way it goes. You also can't argue successfully against cancer or hungry lions either, that would be like trying to argue successfully against God.

Does Ray think that because he believes in God he would have a better argument to stop the psychopath? Considering the arguments on Ray's blog they might have just the opposite effect.

What exactly is Ray's point? Can anyone explain?

What scales? Blood, yes, lots of blood, but no scales.

2009-02-06T20:35:00.000-08:00

Spoilers ahead:

I assume that the "scales" of the title refer to the balancing scales seen in those statues of blind justice. Those scales weren't here. Everyone who died in this episode merely died for pragmatic reasons, even Gaeta and Zarek.

Also, if you want even more opinion and insight into Battlestar Galactica, check out the blog carnival, "So Say We All."

Before you read the rest of my analysis of this week's Battlestar Galactica episode, 'Blood on the Scales,' I would ask you to get in the mood by downloading some science fictiony synth music I've created and put up on box.net:

1. RIGHT CLICK HERE
2. Select "OPEN LINK IN NEW WINDOW"
3. You should see a blue box with the name "computer_heaven.wav" on it.
4. Click the download button.
5. Play the music while you read:

The mutiny is over, and I am so happy about that. I was afraid it would take a few more weeks. There are now only 7 episodes left to go and I was frustrated with the mutiny storyline because it didn't get us any nearer to answering what should be the biggest questions on everyone's mind. Also, this kind of action story is just too common in TV scifi (if not done so darkly before). The writers, actors, directors and the rest of the crew did a great job, but this isn't the real test of good science fiction. It's just what Hollywood has turned science fiction into.

Science fiction is supposed to be the literature of ideas, not action and adventure and war stories. Yet Hollywood keeps putting out heroic action stories with silly upgrades on modern technology without really understanding the kind of ideas DARPA is even now working on. There may yet be a new and great science fiction idea buried at the heart of this re-imagined TV series, but presently it's shrouded in too much mystery. What we do know is that the Cylons have approached godhood with their technologies. That has implications that real science fiction writers have been dancing with for decades, as well as futurists like Ray Kurzweil.

Hopefully by next week the colonial fleet will realize they've got some important questions they need to ask about, ...no, more than that, they need to actively investigate, the true origins of both Cylons and humanity. Alas, by the looks of next week's previews it seems they may not have to investigate, much less ask questions. They just might have the answer handed to them on silver platter... by Helen, the fifth Cylon, whom I saw rise from a tub of goo in those previews. There's now another resurrection "hub" somewhere.

But that would be too easy. I get the feeling that people in the fleet don't really want to know the answers.

[CLICK HERE FOR DARKER MUSIC]

In the meantime a lot of people are dead; the whole Quorum and, of course, Zarek and Gaeta too. By next week they may tell us Anders is gone (well, as gone as a Cylon can be), for he was shot and nobody would help him but Starbuck and a reluctant Lawyer going by the name of Romo Lampkin. The last time we saw Anders, Starbuck and Romo were going to help him get to Doctor Cottle. If that weren't enough, there are big cracks showing up in the hull/walls of Galactica. I think soon the ship will start breaking up and spitting people into space.

[CLICK HERE FOR SOME SINISTER AMBIENT SFX]

They had me feeling sorry for Gaeta by the end of the show. I thought Gaeta and Zarek would get shot or blown-up in battle when, and if, they went down, but it was surprisingly bloodless the way Adama took back his ship. This was in part because Gaeta realized he was wrong half-way through the show and he lacked conviction. As the show went on it became clearer and clearer how stupid and irrational Gaeta was in deciding to go through with the mutiny. He was conflicted about it from the start of the show and he became more so as the show went on. There was no clue to this that I noticed in the last show. But there was a clue in "Face of the Enemy," the online webisodes. In those webisodes an 8 scolds Gaeta for his willful blindness and his inability to see how she was killing the prisoners Gaeta gave her lists of.

The same blindness now keeps Gaeta from seeing who Zarek is. However, once Gaeta realized that Zarek had the Quorum cold-bloodedly killed he started having doubts about Zarek and he said that they had now lost "having the truth on our side." Zarek said some version of "truth/history is written by the winners" thus demonstrating he didn't care about what was true. Gaeta also seemed to have doubts about Adama and wanted Adama to have a trial. It felt like a stall, like he didn't really want to kill Adama (that may not have been intended). He also wanted to see Adama admit that he was wrong (he clearly insisted on it).

Having Gaeta lack resolve undercut the action part of the show and it also half masked Adama's own irrational stupidity. Gaeta may or may not have been trying to stall by asking for a trial, but why wasn't Adama trying to stall? He shouldn't have been such a prick who almost dared Gaeta to shoot him. Adama should have been in there arguing for why he wasn't wrong, why it was smarter to befriend the Cylons. He should have taken the trial as his right and insisted on more rights. He could have insisted on a real trial with a jury and not just to stall, but to finally express clearly why they needed to join with the rebel Cylons and undercut the motives of other mutineers. The fact that Adama and the president went right for the rebel Cylon basestar when they ran also made it look like they defected, or at least Zarek could have made it look that way.

If there was ever a good argument about siding or not with the rebel Cylons, they left it on the cutting room floor. There was not a hint that such arguments ever happened outside the Quorum which we saw little of. And even with that gone they still went low key on the action; a few fight scenes in hallways and a Churchill-like speech from Madame President. Instead of fighting to the bitter end, Gaeta and Zarek were quietly arrested near the end of the show, they went without a final fight once they realized the game was up. Both Gaeta and Zarek smiled at each other before they died by a firing squad. I respect that.

What made the show was the smaller scenes that they hung around the mutiny storyline. For example, Baltar talking with a new 6, a non-blond who is ready and willing to give Baltar all the sex he wants. But Baltar says no. He is feeling bad about leaving his flock behind. I'm glad they kept that scene, but why keep it if there were more important ones missing?

My favorite nice little scene was Baltar and Gaeta sitting at a table smoking, drinking coffee and talking. It was the only scene that brought me close to tears, as Baltar seemed to be. Gaeta said that he just "wanted someone to know who I am," and Batlar listened to Gaeta tell a bit of his life story (I think that trivia bit about wanting to be an architect meant that Baltar listened to much more of Gaeta's life story, or maybe it was just writerly indirection). Again, they showed us nothing with Gaeta talking to Baltar about why he wanted to mutiny, no argument about the Cylons not having real human psychology, no. No sense of "I was wrong and I was stupid," no he bragged about his silly ideas. Instead we heard Gaeta talk about some fairly trivial things from his childhood; he wanted to be an architect and he thought he would design buildings that looked like food.

And then they shot him.

Instead of giving condemned prisoners last rites, on Galactica the atheistic crew talk to Baltar not about their sins, but about their lives overall. It gives the concept of confession a whole new meaning.

ABOUT THE MUSIC:

If you like the music I linked, there is more here:
[MORE MUSIC]

Testing... 1... 2... 3..., testing

2009-02-04T14:27:00.000-08:00

Do you see any SciFi .wav files when you click here?

You should be able to click and play them.

Let me know if it works.

"The Face of the Enemy," the Galactica webisodes

2009-02-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to watching "Face of the Enemy," an "online only" bit of Battlestar Galactica. Each webisode is about two-minutes plus a few seconds. Other people (like Annalee Newitz who wrote "Why Is Gaeta So Bad?") have been telling us these webisodes were critical to understanding Gaeta's motives. I don't think that they're critical, and they could be misleading. However, there are some revelations here that are not on the TV-only version of the show. And if you're a hard core Galactica fan you'll want to check them out, they do give one of the main themes of Galactica a bit more depth.

While I found a lot of the episodes on YouTube, it lacks a couple of them, so you might want to use Hulu (click here to view first Hulu webisode, the other webisodes are on a menu near the bottom of the page).

Watch the Galactica webisodes before reading the rest of this analysis for spoilers will follow.

This video series will figure into my analysis later:

One interesting bit of Galactica trivia we learn early on, Gaeta is either gay or bisexual and he has a boyfriend, Lieutenant Louis Hoshi. They even kiss after Hoshi gives Gaeta some "morpha" before Gaeta takes off in a raptor for another ship with some "red shirts" and two 8s. The fleet has to jump and the raptor gets stranded in space with only a limited supply of air because they jumped to the wrong coordinates. Then people mysteriously start to die, probably murdered to save more air for the survivors.

Spoiler: It turns out it's one of the 8s who is killing them and the first victim is the other 8. It wasn't obviously a murder, the other 8 was killed trying to fix a CO2 scrubber with pliers that had the insulation stripped off. Until near the end all the murders could be accidents or suicides, but still the paranoia sets in as one by one they die under suspicious circumstances. Those remaining automatically suspect the Cylon.

Weirdly, she seems to be doing it to save Gaeta, not herself. It turns out that the 8 and Gaeta knew each other on New Caprica, we get flashbacks to this history. And this is one of the reasons people think that these webisodes are critical. It's because we learn that Gaeta, thanks to the 8, was unknowingly complicit in the death of some people in the resistance back on New Caprica that the 8 pretended to help him save.

On New Caprica the 8 seemed to have betrayed her own kind and was helping Gaeta to get the resistance people out of jail. However, it turns out she was killing most of the people on Gaeta's list of people to rescue. She had tricked him. After she has killed everyone on the raptor but Gaeta and herself, and after Gaeta discovers this, she tells him what really happened on New Caprica.

At first Gaeta doesn't believe it, saying, "I saw them... I saw Jenkins... I saw Heather Redman and her baby, they were playing together..." He's having trouble accepting the reality of his blind complicity in the murder of his friends.

"I didn't seduce you," said the 8. "Hope seduced you. And the more you ate of it the less you saw. You ate yourself blind... You chose not to make the connection, to blind yourself... There is a fine line between ignorance and hope..."

It's close to something I wrote over a decade ago, in a very different context:

For some people, once the Biblical seed of unreal hope and uncertain fear has been sown, a process of desire, expectation, and imagination begins in the hidden workings of the unconscious mind, in a secret world of mystical ideas, a world of ignorance and enormous possibility.

The above quote is from "Hope is the Bait," a little essay I wrote in 1992 and put on the web when it was just a collection of linked bulletin boards and before the network of loosely linked boards became the organized web. It's now been reproduced on several different sites.

It speaks to the same kind of psychology that the 8 was talking about when she said things like "There is a fine line between ignorance and hope."

Sometimes, in this often ugly world, as in the Galactica's universe, it can seem that the more you know the less room for hope you can find. Knowledge has a way of limiting what we can consider possible. This is not what I was saying though, knowledge can also open up doors to new and more realistic hopes. However, the 8's philosophy seems a bit more twisted and fatalistic. The 8 was basically saying that Gaeta had always suspected what she was doing and had done nothing to stop her because he was so blinded by hope. The hope was his "Sine Qua Non."

"I trusted you," Gaeta complained as if that excused him. Then Balter shows up in a flashback. Baltar knew about how the 8 had used Gaeta to get resistance people killed and whispered in Gaeta's ear, "I know about what your 8 did." Gaeta freaks and attacks Baltar. That's from way back in Season 3, "Taking a Break From All Your Worries," when Gaeta interrogated Baltar and it tells us that Gaeta had been repressing his knowledge of what happened on New Caprica all along, so it wasn't just trust that blinded him. Deep down he suspected his own complicity in the deaths of the people he tried to save.

Saying what she said, while Gaeta had a scalpal in hand, cost the 8 her life. Gaeta killed her.

Later, of course, Gaeta is rescued to appear in the next TV episodes and they start setting up Gaeta's first moves toward becoming a mutineer. If you saw these webisodes before you saw the TV shows you might think you had some critical information that the TV-only viewers didn't, but you don't. The reason these webisodes are probably not critical (I didn't need to see it to get the last TV-versions) is because being betrayed by a Cylon isn't news any more. A 6 betrayed Baltar, Boomer shot Bill Adama... Everyone on Galactica has known that Cylons were like that. So Gaeta's once hopeful dealings with a Cylon are revealed to actually be a betrayal? All these webisodes did was take what everyone knew abstractly and make it personal for Gaeta. But even as a personal experience it doesn't justify Gaeta's fear and hatred of Cylons now. It happened in the past, during a war, and while the 8 was cold blooded enough to kill the other people on the raptor to survive, such acts are not beyond a desperate human's and that doesn't condemn all of us.

If there's an important revelation here it's not what the 8 did, it is Gaeta's state of mind, his capacity for blocking out things he doesn't want to know about. And this brings us to the Nova video clip I embedded at the top of this post. The very fact that Gaeta is going into this mutiny with that bit of guilt on his mind is not a clue that he is right about the Cylons. It's a clue that he is wrong. In the battle between faith and knowledge, faith has won Gaeta's mind. It's just not faith in Cylons. And that makes Gaeta dangerous. Gaeta, quite irrationally, put his faith in Zarek. You don't have to be a Cylon to exploit Gaeta's blindness.

Gaeta's experiences with the 8, as Tigh pointed out, may not even be real. They may be the result of lack of oxygen combined with guilt. In the Nova science clip we see V.S. Ramachandran explaining some very odd irrational beliefs emerging from neurological problems, a person thinking that their mother and father are impostors, another person thinking that they are god. The series also delves into blindsight and phantom limb sensations. While those are the result of odd neurological problems it would seem that the normal human brain isn't free of neurological illusions either. Religion seems to be one example of a natural illusion, playing the lottery and all kinds of social neurosis too are normal but irrational side effects of our neurobiology.

It's not irrational to distrust the Cylons to some degree, they may indeed be, as I said before, genetically engineered flesh puppets with only an illusion of free will. Deep down their very psyches may have been designed as weapons of war in ways the Cylons themselves cannot understand or anticipate. What is irrational is what Gaeta is doing with that distrust. All the motivators they've given Gaeta are emotional and not thought out. He lost his leg in a failed mutiny, he's insulted by Starbuck, he was betrayed by a Cylon. Sure, I understand Gaeta's and the colonials desire for revenge, the Cylons committed genocide (or specicide?) on a massive scale. The humans have been fighting the Cylons for years and now, without enough explanation, the people in charge want to be nice to the Cylons?

As viewers of the TV show rather than participants in the drama we've seen the Cylons fight among themselves, we've seen their desire to understand themselves and their 'humanity' and it seems real. We've seen that the distinction between Cylon and human was blurred. That may not matter if their unconscious minds were designed to do what is needed to destroy humanity and their feeling of free will is only an illusion. However, the only rational and pragmatic choice is still an alliance. Without that humanity is doomed. The trust gamble could be a loser, but the paranoia gamble is a sure loser. Even if they do find a planet to settle down on they'll still be sitting ducks for Cavill's ships. Only a lasting and meaningful alliance with the rebel Cylons can give them the technology they need to fight and then to end the war peacefully.

That's how things work here in the real world. Sure the Cylons committed many atrocities but America committed atrocities in Vietnam too, in Japan during WWII, etc.. Now we're at peace and we trade. We get over our pasts, our hatreds, there is no other way to peace.

Unless Gaeta's mutiny continues to make bold moves, like, for example, going after Cavil before he can finish building another resurrection hub, then what has it accomplished? Just getting rid of the local Cylons but not dealing with what must come in the near future is bad planning. The questions about what do they do next are ones I haven't seen Gaeta ask and no mutiny should have happened before they were answered.

If they were asked and answered, it happened off screen.

Battlestar Galactica: "The Oath"

2009-01-31T10:02:00.000-08:00

The new episode, "The Oath," confirms the suspicion I had in my last review. This mutiny storyline will eat up a lot of time I would have rather seen spent on solving the mystery of how Cylons can be an older "race" than we were told.

You can watch the episode here, without commercial interruption, if you missed it. And if you missed the other two episodes this season, you can go here for the links.

There is something regressive about this storyline. It would have been a great episode back when they were having stories like the one about Adm. Cain, the Pegasus and how Adm. Adama almost mutinied on her for reasons just the opposite of Zerak's and Gaeta's. Cain was too ruthlessness, she shot her own executive officer (XO) and she let her crew torture and rape Cylon prisoners. She had let them sink so far into savagery that it was doubtful they could ever again become civilized. In fact, two characters from Cain's ship have joined with the mutineers and they seem intent on picking up where they left off, raping the Cylon women.

When Tyrol and Helo killed one of the Pegasus's officers for trying to rape Helo's wife, Adama was ready to launch Vipers and a Raptor full of Marines in order to take them back from the Pegasus brig. Cain was ready to counterattack. Starbuck was ready to shoot Cain.

And there was another mutiny, on the poo-barge. The one that cost Gaeta his leg. As they keep saying, "all this has happened before..." This is the third mutiny. Come on, if even your robots can't follow orders like robots should and they rebel on you, why would you treat people like robots? A soldier's faith in your command decisions still has to be earned and you have to keep your ears open for doubts about your decisions so that you know when you need to explain or compromise.

This story worked in the same way as the other mutiny stories, it was visceral, angry, tense, raw and action packed. Everyone's old resentments and fears were on display. And I think it will be the best of the three mutinies we've seen. Gaeta and Zarek pulled off their mutiny in a much smarter and more devious way than Adm. Adama or the poo-barge mutineers. Gaeta and Zarek were meticulous in their set up. In fact, Gaeta and Zarek are so devious that it may undermine the trust of their fellow mutineers. Everyone on the bridge saw how callously Gaeta lied to everyone who trusted him to set up the mutiny. He's undermining their faith by doing that.

The problem is that we've already been there and done that even if this one is the best mutiny on the show. Another aspect of the show's regression was the way Baltar and Roslin snipe at each other. I thought they had gotten past that after what had happened in "Hub" episode. The writers seem to be slipping back into the old conflicts they know how to write instead of developing the new ones, like the conflict the characters should be concerned about but cannot be now. The conflict between what 2,000 year old Cylon memories and the fact that we've all been told that Cylons were of more recent manufacture. That's a mystery story instead of an action story, at least it could be if someone cared enough to investigate. They need to be thinking "is our whole history a lie?" By my calculations there are only 7 episodes to go and we are no closer to answering that question.

Now the characters don't even have time to think about that and previews for next week’s episode look like the show will still be dealing with the mutiny and leaving them only six episodes left for answering the questions they raised.

I hope they had an end game in mind. These last half dozen episodes shouldn't be retreading old territory like this unless they've got something I'm not seeing in mind. How does all this get us closer to understanding the shared visions of the opera house? How can they answer why Earth was like it was when they haven't left a scientific team there to tackle the questions and report back?

And remember, TV Tyrant has the BG blog carnival: http://www.tvtyrant.com/

Free music software; MagicScore Classic 5

2009-01-30T15:18:00.000-08:00

I just downloaded a free program for writing and playing music called "MagicScore Classic 5." If you're interested you can start here to learn more:

http://www.musicaleditor.com/

The version I have is a freeware version of "MagicScore Classic 5," it's music composing and composition software and the full package would cost somewhere around $59.95 or $69.95, a more expensive version, called "MagicScore Maestro 6," is selling for $109.65 if you want more advanced functionality.

Both programs use the same common musical grammar you might have learned in any music theory class. The kind of theory you can learn or, like me, brush up on, at Ricci Adams' Musictheory.net or at Think Quest.

That means that if you're following Bear McCreary's blog you can copy his little snippets of music notation onto the music bars and play the music in lots of different kinds of virtual instruments and even compose for an orchestra or band.

In fact, someone who can’t read music, The19thNervousCylon, on Bear's blog asked if Bear could do some type of HTML coding whereby the music notes Bear showed could be played as an audio snippet, something clickable. However, Bear said he was swamped just doing the blog and scores, but it was a revision he'd think about in the future.

It would seem that MagicScore has such a feature, an online player I can link through my blog. As soon as I learn how to use it I may subject my poor readers to the next evolution in Metal; Squid Metal. It will come from a band that doesn't exist, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis.

Other than that I'm not entirely sure what else the MagicScore software does, but it apparently does a lot. (I've only played with it for a day or so.) You can import and export scores in MusicXML, MIDI nd karaoke format. The standard editing features are there; copy, paste, delete, and transpose either a single note or entire selected blocks. You can do guitar chord tabs and most of what you might expect for such a program. It's like Microsoft Word for music notation.

I've also grabbed a couple of virtual synthesizers, Tekky Synths' PsYbAsSyX, a new free bass synth for Windows, and Physic Modulation's plug-ins for a synthesizer I don't yet have; Arptron, Meteorite and Pandemonium. Apparently Physic Modulation went out of business and is now giving away its software. Their website is now an archive for the freeware.

Anybody else out there using this kind of software? Got any advice?

Like the other music posts, on Bernard Herrmann, Devil music, and Christmas Metal, this one will probably get updated later with your help.

UPDATE:

I got some advice on software from Bear McCreary by asking, on his blog, what software he used. He uses Sibelius. I assume that means Sibelius 5. It sounds similar to the MagicScore programs as far as function, but I'd assume you'd probably get better sounding instruments to play your music on Sibelius. MagicScore has some really poor MIDI imitations of an electric guitar. Also, the price for Sibelius 5 is about ten times more, $599.00, which is more than I paid for this computer.

Am I that serious? I'm not sure yet. I'll doodle around in my spare time with the MagicScore program for a few weeks more and then see how I feel. Right now it does feel like I've got some creative fire burning in my brain. I feel inspired now but it may not last. I get creative compulsions in every art form from time to time, painting and drawing, story writing... Hell, I've got an unfinished novel I haven't touched in over a month. The fire has to burn pretty hot before I'm willing to put up with the frustrations and the discipline of an art form I haven't taken seriously since just after high school. I used to play in a rock band, but I wasn't that good and my tastes in music are so out-of-the-norm I'm doomed to have a small audience... if any.

Part 2: Battlestar Galactica: "The Disquiet That Follows My Soul"

2009-01-25T12:44:00.000-08:00

Check out the Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival, "So say we all" to get other opinions.

In the first part of my review I expressed some disappointment with this episode, but there were still a few crumbs of some excellent stuff even here.

First, Baltar has taken another major shift in his world-wiew. We see him preaching an angry sermon aimed at God saying things like this to his flock; "what have you done to deserve this punishment?" Bear McCreary in his blog called it a "sermon brimming with atheistic rage."

Which makes me wonder if McCreary understands atheism. You can't be angry at God unless you believe that God exists. It would be like being angry at Santa Claus for not giving you a new car for Christmas. If you're angry at someone, then you believe that someone exists. However, there is a kind of empathic anger that one can feel at God which is more like the anger you feel at fictional villains in movies, but that is not what Baltar was doing. Another kind of anger that Christians think is anger at God is when atheists express anger at the Christian in question. That's really more like Starbuck's anger at Gaeta. Starbuck doesn't really hate Gaeta, she hates his bigoted and paranoid ideas about Cylons. If Gaeta changed his tune, Starbuck's anger would evaporate. You can see plenty of that kind of atheist anger on Ray Comfort's blog, I've dealt him a few insults myself.

Baltar's anger may lead to his followers and himself questioning God, but it wasn't explicit. McCreary says that Baltar "questions the existence of God and tries to understand the tragic revelations of Earth." I didn't see that. I saw Baltar merely react to that revelation with a kind of childish and self-centered way which was very revealing of Baltar's character for such a brief slice of time. It's that very self-centered, egocentric attitude that you really have to question to become an atheist. It is religions like fundagelical Christianity that preach that you are so special and important that you are loved by the creator of the universe. It is science that has shown us how small and insignificant we are.

However, McCreary probably saw a different cut of the show for he also says; "...Head Six appears and attempts to comfort Baltar." That never happened in the version I saw and when a commenter asked why not, McCreary said:

You might be right. The version I scored was the director’s cut. To be honest, I’ve never even seen the shorter version that went on the air! So, yeah, I’ll bet that wasn’t in the episode last night. Too bad, too, it’s a great musical moment.

McCreary also says nothing very important was said by either, it merely reinforced Baltar’s despair and that Head Six disapproves of his blasphemy.

WTF! I think I would have rather have seen that Baltar/Head-Six scene than the one between Gaeta and Starbuck where they just insult each other. I had no idea that Head Six was still with Baltar much less that she disapproved of his "blasphemy." Since when are expressing real emotions and questioning God "blasphemy"? Why doesn't McCreary know that's an important clue we were not given. If Head Six said that it would be another clue that Baltar was a Cylon tool because that is nakedly manipulative. "Do not question me! Just fear me." Maybe they should fire the editor.

McCreary says another scene cut from the aired show was between Gaeta and Tigh where Tigh tries to put Gaeta in his place and you see the anger broiling up in Felix. Sounds like the scene between Gaeta and Starbuck. If the Tigh and Gaeta scene was really good, then why cut it and replace it with the Starbuck and Gaeta scene? That scene was one of the weaker ones in the show. The acting was good but the dialog was pretty weak, especially Starbuck's insults.

Another thing Baltar's sermon accomplishes is that it gets the crowd worked into a frenzy, even before a fight breaks out between Tyrol and Hotdog (which has nothing to do with the sermon, it was because Hotdog fathered the child that Tyrol though was his). If Baltar were rational enough to think about what he's doing he might realize that he's near to blowing an opportunity to increase his flock. Now that the Pythian prophesies look bogus there might be a lot more people looking for a new religion.

Baltar might become a conscious fraud as he gains power from his religion while he ceases to believe in God. He could invent reasons why God might not be happy with them and one of them might be that they don't serve Baltar enough. Start passing around that collection plate and see if you want to vocally doubt God now, Baltar.

The second really nice tid-bit in this episode was what has begun to happen to Roslin. She's getting tired of being president and she wants out. She's lost hope and wants to stop and smell the roses before she dies. Let me quote again the anti-hope argument from H.L. Mencken I used in my post "The Dark Side of Hope":

"Despite the common delusion to the contrary the philosophy of doubt is far more comforting than that of hope. The doubter escapes the worst penalty of the man of faith and hope; he is never disappointed, and hence never indignant. The inexplicable and irremediable may interest him, but they do not enrage him, or, I, may add, fool him. This immunity is worth all the dubious assurances ever foisted upon man. It is pragmatically impregnable. Moreover, it makes for tolerance and sympathy. The doubter does not hate his opponents; he sympathizes with them. In the end he may even come to sympathize with God. The old idea of fatherhood submerges in a new idea of brotherhood. God, too, is beset by limitations, difficulties, broken hopes. Is it disconcerting to think of Him thus? Well, is it any less disconcerting to think of Him as able to ease and answer, and yet failing?"

Roslin is arriving at the same conclusion.

UPDATE:

Bear responded to my comments on his own blog:

Norman Doering…

I was skimming your blog and saw your comments regarding my “atheistic” adjective for Baltar’s sermon.

You pointed out the obvious, that to be angry at God means you must acknowledge his existence. But I always interpreted this episode to show that Gaius, in fact, no longer believes in God. (And as you correctly guessed, there are lines of dialog in the extended version that would suggest this.)

Baltar only believed in God in the first place because it gave him an ego-boosting God-Complex, allowing him to feel he was somehow instrumental in the inner-workings of the universe. In “Disquiet,” he’s reached this new low, and realized that all the prophecies are bullshit (a conclusion Roslin now shares with him apparently).

The way I saw it, Baltar was preaching anger at God not because he, himself, was angry at God, but because it would be the quickest and easiest way to get the crowd really pissed off. He was venting his frustrations and wanted to stir up trouble. And it obviously worked.

However, my term “atheistic rage” was probably an exaggeration. I’ve never, in my life, met an atheist who was angry at the universe. That is, after all, one of the points of atheism: to strip away the personification of the cosmos that is implied in so many religions.

Duly noted and corrected, sir. :)

- Bear McCreary on February 1st, 2009

Bear got it exactly right, "...one of the points of atheism: to strip away the personification of the cosmos that is implied in so many religions."

Also, since Bear talks to the writers and producers, and he sees what the editors have left on the cutting room floor, his interpretation that this shows that Gaius no longer believes in God is most likely correct. Alas, what showed up on TV in the Disquiet episode wasn't enough by itself to show this in my opinion. It is, however, beginning to show in Baltar's relationship to his female followers which we saw in "Oath." Baltar seemed annoyed by their continued religiosity.

Battlestar Galactica: "The Disquiet That Follows My Soul"

2009-01-24T11:26:00.000-08:00

SPOILERS BELOW, watch out:

So, this is how they're going to wrap it up in these last few episodes? They're going to create a violent conflict between Adm. Adama and Tom Zarek with Felix Gaeta joining up with Zarek near the end of this episode.

Of all the dormant storylines one might have left dangling, Tom Zarek's would have been one I would have left behind. For the most part his character's conflicts had seemed resolved once he had a voice in government, yet Bear McCreary's blog says that this conflict is the essential one to go forward.

I'm not so sure about that. There is a clue there when Bear quoted Ron Moore as having said that Moore "found him [Hatch] incredibly professional and prepared on the set." This storyline might be based on the fact that they discovered that Richard Hatch had more acting chops than they had expected and they wanted to use them better. Alas, this takes us farther from the questions I wanted to see answered, the mysteries that I think cry to be resolved.

I want to know how the four new Cylons are getting along with the old Cylons. I want to know that they are trying to solve the mystery of why five Cylons were there in the fleet, with repressed memories from 2,000 years ago, in the first place. If they weren't sent by the original Cylons or whatever computer intelligence instructs them, then how did they get there?

Early in the series I had assumed there was some monstrously intelligent mainframe kind of Cylon computer, or something like "Skynet" from "The Terminator," that had genetically engineered the human-like flesh puppets to do its bidding. These humanoid Cylons might have felt like they had free will but deep down their very psyches would have been designed as weapons of war in ways they couldn't understand or anticipate, as exemplified by Boomer when she was compelled to shoot Adm. Adama. I'm still not sure that isn't true, but ever since those four new Cylons were activated they've never been given a destructive mission, most of them, except for Tory, have done a lot to help the fleet.

Now, if they were not designed by some Cylon mainframe then where do they come from? Why are they different?

In the last episode we were told something astonishing: Earth was inhabited by humanoid and centurion Cylons 2,000 years ago. Tigh, Tory, Tyrol and Anders have memories from 2,000 or so years ago and those couldn't have come from a computer less than a hundred years old. It contradicts our expectations provided by the first history of the Cylons we were given. During the opening of the show each week we were told that the Cylons were "created by man" and that they "evolved." We were even told, I thought, that humans made the chrome plated robots, the centurions, less than a hundred years ago and that Saul Tigh served in the first Cylon War 40 years ago when there were no human-like Cylons known.

Tyrol and Tigh should be asking the old Cylons, "What do you know about us? Who told you we were here? What other intelligences in Cylon civilization know about us, what triggered us? What do you know and how do you know it?" And our old Cylons should be asking of the new group, "What kind of memories have you had? What can you tell us?"

Did something get skipped over or done behind our backs?

Nothing was added to answer those questions in this episode, except maybe the fact that Tigh and the Six have a baby, and Cylons aren't supposed to breed except with humans. Instead, those questions are swept under the rug while the writers cook up what, to me, looks like an unnecessary conflict that intelligent and rational people should be able to resolve through voting and debates instead of mutiny.

If they wanted to show growing tensions between human and Cylons why not show us that instead of just dropping in a few clues? I can imagine Tory hanging around almost exclusively with Cylons now. She might have a little orgy with three or more Leobens. She could be having interesting and revealing problems adjusting to life as a Cylon. Would she be finding life on a Basestar a bit sterile and boring and want to go over to that bar on Galactica only to find herself rejected there, facing fear and bigotry, and in her case partly deserving it? If the Cylons socialize with humans I'd expect them to show up at Baltar's religious services (Baltar's God is supposed to be the Cylon God). Doesn't at least a Six or two believe in that God Baltar preaches about? Couldn't she tell him more and confuse him by being too much like his head-Six vision? Wouldn't she be asking questions about Baltar's relationship with God? Does Caprica Six even listen to Baltar on the radio now?

I don't think the writers have quite got a grip on what it means to be a Cylon and they avoid the problems as much as they can. Instead of showing us the Cylon side of this tension we are only shown the human side. We see Gaeta reacting to Tigh and the Six watching their baby on some sonogram-like device and he resents how they are being so accepted now, so does a nurse. We see Gaeta argue with Starbuck, they share insults and it becomes very clear that Gaeta doesn't trust the Cylons -- why would he? One of them shot him in the leg and he lost it. He probably hasn't been informed on some recent developments. Starbuck really shouldn't be insulting him back, she should be trying to explain and save the insults for when he turns out to be too dense to get the explanation.

There's been some decision about Cylons giving the fleet their jump drive technology in exchange for full citizenship in the fleet, but we were not let in on the full explanation of this deal. It happened behind our backs.

The problem with the deal is that many people in the fleet aren’t happy with extending their alliance with the Cylons. Zarek gives a speech to the Quorum, convincing them it’s a bad idea to accept the Cylon technology. They vote to give each ship’s captain permission to refuse Cylons to board their ship. The new rule is soon tested by an uprising on the fuel processing ship. When Athena tries to board the ship, Zarek gives them the go ahead to jump away, they do, leaving the fleet without fuel.

Zarek is arrested and Adm. Adama bluffs him into, apparently, giving him the jump location for the runaway ship so they can find it. Great scene that, but they had plenty of conflicts to deal with without cooking up new angles on mostly old, and I thought resolved, conflict. I thought Zarek had turned a corner once he got his position as vice president and that he had the power he sought. Instead of violence he used debate and votes. Why turn back to an active rebellion now?

Well, it seems Adm. Adama and Apollo are being ignorant and authoritarian pricks. They are not telling people everything they know. Apollo had told the Quorum that they had reason to believe the 5th Cylon was dead, he referred to her as she, and the Quorum erupted with questions that Apollo and Adm. Adama refused to answer.

Big mistake, hinting at an even bigger mistake. If the citizens of the fleet don't know about those 2,000 year old Cylon memories they probably still think Cylons are nothing but weapons of war.

I can see why Zarek and Gaeta would be suspicious of the Cylons, I would be too, but it's not rational of them to be cooking up a violent rebellion at this point since they would most likely loose more than they gain. What are they afraid of at this moment? Do they fear that the Cylons will turn on them after some goal is achieved, like getting the Cylon jump drives installed on all the fleet's ships? Do they fear that if the jump drives are installed then the Cylons (or a crazy hybrid living in a tub of goo) will be able to control where they jump? Do Zarek and Gaeta even know much about hybrids?

Isn't this a problem that could be resolved with a bit of public education, a press conference, on the matter? If all their jumps are going to be controlled by a hybrid I'd be saying "no!" too, but that shouldn't be the case. And if it is the case that would make Adm. Adama worse than Baltar. Baltar didn't know that Caprica Six was a Cylon when he gave her codes he shouldn't have, but Adama knows full well he's installing Cylon technology without proper precautions. Adm. Adama and Apollo shouldn't be keeping secrets about why they know the 5th Cylon is probably a dead female. How much else have the citizens of the fleet not been told? Have they not been told the biggest revelation yet, that the 4 new Cylons have 2,000 year old memories of Earth? Do most people in the fleet still think the Cylons are just weapons of war?

Zarek apparently wants power for power's sake and he is exploiting the fear and bigotry of people like Gaeta, but the president and the Adamas are stupidly setting things up so that the people will side with Zarek. They are keeping secrets that it would be better off if people knew about.

There was a lot more going on this episode, but that's the big problem I have with it. I may do a part 2 for this review to cover those things later, but this post is long enough.

UPDATE:

I've added part 2 now.

Check out the Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival, "So say we all" to get other opinions.

Have I been a big Bernard Herrmann fan all this time without knowing it?

2009-01-23T03:02:00.000-08:00

Does the name Bernard Herrmann mean anything to you? Does it sound familiar for some reason? If you're a fan of movie music it probably does.

Since I've already done a couple posts on heavy metal it's time to look at another form of music, movie music.

I found the name Bernard Herrmann on Bear McCreary's blog, in his post about composing the music for Battlestar Galactica's "Sometimes a Great Notion" episode. Bear mentions the name only twice, once to say: "The orchestral session was a chance to play in the Bernard Herrmann musical soundscape that I’ve adored since my youth," and later to let someone accuse him of ripping off Bernard Herrmann.

I could only associate the name Bernard Herrmann with one work at that time, the original version of the Twilight Zone. I enjoyed that Twilight Zone music so I decided to use wikipedia and youtube to find out what else he had done and... Holy Shit!! He composed the music for a lot of my favorite old movies. Psycho, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Vertigo, Fahrenheit 451, and Cape Fear to name a few. I had to ask myself "what movie scores didn't Herrmann do that I liked?"

Thus I began researching who composed the music for my favorite old science fiction films. The results follow:

There were many other old science fiction films whose music and imagery left a mark on my psyche, for example, Forbidden Planet. Bebe Barron and her husband Louis composed a completely electronic score for the film and it's hard to tell the music from the background sound effects, they merge into one. The sound of that film, as far as I know, remains unique in its strange and alien sound even today.

Another film with a score that impressed me was Creature from the Black Lagoon. Turns out that was the work of several composers, Henry Mancini being one of them. The three-note leit-motif BAH BAH BAHHHH was originally written by Henry Stein and it was used every time the Creature appeared in a scene in order to give the monster a unique musical identity. Before Jaws came out that theme was the one kids would shout out before jumping on their younger siblings, BAH BAH BAHHHHH!

Mancini was a staff composer at Universal-International and he wasn't really known for science fiction, just good movie music overall. Early in his career he did the Bonzo films, Francis the Talking Mule flicks, with Donald O'Connor, and a few of the Ma and Pa Kettle films, but he was later noted for his work on Peter Gunn and Love Story. I didn't know if he ever did another science fiction or horror ever again, but then I found out he worked on It Came From Outer Space along with Irving Gertz.

Unlike the name Bernard Herrmann you can't drop the name Henry Mancini into a conversation to describe the style of music used in It Came From Outer Space and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. You'd have to name the film.

Looking further I found John Scalzi's article over at SciFi Scanner,
"Sound + Vision: Scores That Make Their Science Fiction Films," and absorbed some of his information and opinion. He reminded me of John Williams and the Star Wars score, which he called "monumentally and monolithically successful."

Okay, Star Wars had some good music, but in my opinion John Williams' score lacked something that makes composers like Herrmann, McCreary and a few others that I could now name more appropriate for "real" science fiction. Composers like Herrmann, McCreary, Vangelis and Danny Elfman will experiment with sound textures and different instruments.

Recall Star Wars' "Throne Room" scene. Did you hear just a tiny bit of "Pomp and Circumstance," the music they play at graduations, in there? Williams is using a very familiar and traditional orchestra you can find at a high school playing national anthems. Such orchestras come with all sorts of historical and non-science fictiony associations.

Imagine if Star Wars had been done with a different set of instruments. Then the historical associations fade away.

The weird and unearthly sounds from both The Day the Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet sent a shiver down my spine the first time I heard them, but The Day the Earth Stood Still still does, though not as much as when I first heard it, the score was, to my tastes, stronger than the one for Forbidden Planet. Could there be anything more effective? What do I know of film and TV music composers? Before I began my research I could only name a handful of film composers after looking up Bernard Herrmann. Aside from Herrmann and McCreary I could name only two others, Danny Elfman and Howard Shore.

I had liked the music for Silence of the Lambs and found out it was done by Howard Shore and again that now leads me to other films he's done, and he too, like Herrmann with Hitchcock, worked with one of my favorite directors, David Cronenberg. Again, some of the qualities I loved in Bernard Herrmann's work are there. Yet Shore also did the music for Lord of the Rings which is good, but not exactly hitting the kind of psychological and emotional buttons in me that makes Bernard Herrmann stand out. Whatever those buttons are I'm still trying to figure out.

Another bit of movie music I liked was Danny Elfman's "Ice dance" from Edward Scissorhands and also the music in The Corpse Bride. In the Bride he mixed up the traditions for characters sake. You got jazz, orchestra, a piano duet and more. He isn't afraid to use a bit of Heavy Metal influence either and he did the music for Batman too.

And another movie score I liked a lot was Blade Runner. It combined a classical composition style with futuristic synthesizers and felt like part of the environment in a way a traditional orchestra wouldn't.

UPDATE:

Because of Swashbuckler's comments, and refreshing my memory on youtube, I've edited the above post in regards to Howard Shore and the Lord of the Rings score. I was just dead wrong about him not using ancient instruments like a lute or harpsicord. Shore actually did use unconventional instruments, the bodhrán, cimbalom, monochord, ney, sarangi, hardanger fiddle, taiko drums and hanging Tibetan gongs, but having little familiarity with those instruments at the time I couldn't pick them out. Actually, even after listening to samples linked in this paragraph I would still have a hard time picking them out in a crowded orchestration. And each instrument comes in a variety of sounds and styles it would seem based on what I found on youtube. For example, this is a Sarangi and this is a Sarangi and this too. These are taiko drums, and these, these and these taiko drums sound a bit like bongos to me. This, I think, bad recording of the drums sounds like musical static from a synthesizer. And this is, as far as I can tell, PVC pipe. I have no idea what this is.

Well, those samples weren't hard to find on youtube. Let's dig up Bernard Herrmann's instruments. According to the Golden Scores page on Day the Earth Stood Still Herrmann used:

...a brass ensemble of trombones, trumpets and tubas with a large percussion section and double pianos [prepared pianos according to this wikipedia entry] and harps, complemented by a church organ and two Hammond organs, electronically amplified violin, cello, bass and guitar, and, perhaps most importantly, a theremin. The legendary electronic instrument features prominently all over the score, extremely successfully placing an aura of other-worldliness over the music...

Here are some Moog Etherwave Theremin samples.

UPDATE 2

If we're really going to guage Bernard Herrmann's talents then we need to look at more film composers to make comparisons. The Golden Scores site gives us some names to look up on youtube, so here is a selection of movie composers I looked up on youtube:

Max Steiner: Except for a couple notable pieces the brief stuff on his youtube "greatest hits" is mostly a mixture of waltz-like and military band sounds. However, at about 1:06 you'll find his music for She, that snippet was excellent. Erie, evocative of things sensual and disturbing. I never saw She but I found this trailer, which doesn't look good. Then at 5:16 you get King Kong, 1933 version of course, and that's one year before 1934 when Herrmann joined the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) as a staff conductor and 8 years before he composed for Citizen Kane (1941). So, Max Steiner's work on King Kong might be an influence and at least a sort of precursor to Herrmann's thriller/sci-fi style.

NEXT I'LL LOOK AT:
Maurice Jarre:
Doctor Zhivago, No Way Out (interesting, something I might associate with Bernard Herrmann), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Topaz and Jacob's Ladder.

MORE TO COME

Something to think about:

2009-01-18T08:53:00.000-08:00

Ever since I volunteered to help out on the Obama campaign I've been getting tons of email from them. The latest emails have been pleas to get involved in community service. They come with video links:

And links to websites like http://usaservice.org/, http://www.USAservice.org/content/home and http://www.USAservice.org/calltoservice. Visiting the websites I found a "find an event" link where I could type in my zip code and see what volunteer requests were being made in my area. There were blood drives, food drives, clothing drives, "Teacher for a Day" volunteering, parties and other just social meet-ups.

At the moment I'm only thinking of going to a near-by blood drive, but that's something I've done before and it's no venture into new territory for me. Because of my mother, who use to drag me to the church food drives when I was in high school, I've also been lightly involved in both food drives and clothing drives before and I'm not really excited by those. Maybe if the need is great, but I don't really sense that in my community because the drives always seem to have plenty of volunteers who enjoy it more than I do. Even with the current recession and the economic hardship that these times are suppose to be bringing my mom often comes home with food from a food drive that nobody wanted. Lots of bread tending toward the stale side which actually makes better french toast than fresh, moist bread because it absorbs more of the milk and eggs.

Still, the idea of grass-root movements that make use of the election volunteers and that extend beyond the election seems to be a smart move for Obama. If he can awaken a "spirit of service" in people it could do a lot to take the edge off of a serious recession or out-right depression.

I'm not going to tell you that you have a "responsibility" to help your community and fellow citizens or that you should make a commitment to your neighborhood, no, Obama's emails do enough of that and I don't think many of my readers will respond to those buzz-words. I'm just going to say think about it. Try it and see if you like it. In helping others you can help yourself. Food drives can be social gatherings where you meet interesting people, perhaps a better class than you're meeting at your local bar or pub. If you're looking for work you might meet up with an employer or you might find a date.

We do live in an interconnected world and your community, like it or not, is your life support. Whether you get robbed or not might depend on how potential crooks feel about the others in their community and how in need they are.

UPDATE:
They're still emailing me videos:

Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.5 : “Sometimes a Great Notion”

2009-01-17T03:26:00.000-08:00

SPOILERS FOLLOW:

The hiatus is over and the last we saw of our intrepid Galacticans was many months ago during the mid-season finale of Battlestar Galactica called "Revelations." The fleet, together with the Cylon rebels, had finally reached Earth and discovered that it was a radioactive wasteland. I swear I could hear Charlton Heston off in the distance screaming, "You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!"

The new episode picked up right where we left off. Everybody is wandering aimlessly around on the desolated planet they call "Earth" and looking devastated and depressed. In fact, for the most part, this episode is all about despair and it's the darkest, most grim and foreboding episode of Galactica yet. We're informed that the low-level radiation permeates everything and it suggests that the Earth was nuked about 2,000 years ago. Other reports come in finding no human life on the planet, but there's obviously plant life.

The interesting plot developments in this episode are, first, the flashbacks that the four new Cylons have started having. Tyrol found a wall with a shadow burned onto it and when he is drawn to lean over and touch it, he has a vision of walking through a crowded produce market and as he picks up a piece of fruit, a nuclear blast goes off. He later informs the other Cylons that the burned in shadow is himself.

Sam Anders had a similar experience after picking up a guitar fretboard out of the sand. He positions his fingers on the fretboard as if ready to play a chord and semi-sings a line from All Along the Watchtower, "...because the hour is getting late." He then joins up with Tyrol and Tory and they start to remember things, they knew each other, Sam Anders is some kind of reincarnated Bob Dylan or Jimi Hendrix who played for them all. They used to live on Earth 2,000 years ago.

Anders asks the obvious question; how did they live on Earth 2,000 years ago and die in a nuclear holocaust and then come back to be in the human colonies? Why did they think they were human?

This is both a why and a how question. The how I can speculate on and feel confident about having a reasonable chance of getting it right, like the other Cylons, the memories of the four new Cylons were downloaded during the nuclear blasts and stored until someone or something that controlled the technology uploaded them into new bodies, buried their memories and placed them in the human colonies with cover memories.

It's not the only how answer available, another how answer could be some unexplainable supernatural/spiritual phenomena involving souls and actual reincarnation but that would dictate that the motive is the motive of gods or God and thus they would have created a god who is as cruel and sadistic as a Battlestar Galactica writer is with fictional characters. After all, the writers are the gods in these fictional worlds.

For example, if real gods wrote the prophesies that led the colonials to Earth, then those gods led them to a nuked Cylon world that crushed their hopes. That was a rather cruel joke. If the final five Cylons aren't a product of technological reincarnation like the other Cylons then some gods/God put them in among the colonials and buried their memories until they arrived on "Earth."

The why part of the question, why would anyone or anything want to store their memories and plant the Cylons among the colonies, is not a question I can even speculate on with any assurance of getting it right. All I could do is play Galactica writer myself and invent my own motive. For example, it was their own choice to buy into some resurrection technology available to the Cylons of "Earth" and that technology saved their memories and, trying to interpret their wishes as best it could, inserted them into the human colonies with their memories buried.

Secondly there is a related how and why mystery involving Starbuck and Leoben finding Starbuck's old Viper and her corpse. Starbuck and Leoben followed the Colonial signal that lead them to Earth and find some pieces of a Viper, including a panel that contains the same number as Starbuck’s Viper. Leoben becomes very uncomfortable. They find the viper cockpit and Leoben tries to stop Starbuck from going over to it. Does he know what she’s going to find, her dead body sitting in the Viper. Starbuck rips off the dog tags from the body and her name "K. Thrace," is on them.

As soon as Leoben sees it, he backs away. Starbuck remembers the Hybrid who called her the "harbinger of death," and then she asks, "If that’s me lying there, then what am I?" Good question. I would think that makes Starbuck some kind of Cylon since Cylons can do that sort of thing. Starbuck rolls her dead body up in a shroud and burns it on a funeral pyre.

The last clue in this Cylon mystery is when Saul Tigh, near the end, starts remembering his life on Earth. He is in a different, civilian, suit and picking through some rubble, either in a ruined bank or post-office, and he finds his wife, Ellen. As she dies she promises Tigh that they will be reborn together. Is Ellen Tigh really the fifth and final Cylon as Tigh thinks? Here though is one clue as to why it was the choice of the new Cylons to be reborn.

Another important clue in this mystery was when D'Anna and Number Six dug up some seemingly human bones and found a Centurion head. The head is not one of their models, it's a different model, looking more like one of the Cylons from the original series. Later Baltar reports that the seemingly human bones are also Cylon. What!? The 13th colony was a Cylon colony?

There are more questions I can't really answer: Is it "our" Earth that was devastated and our music? Who nuked it? How did Starbuck's Viper and body get from the Maelstrom to Earth? What is Starbuck now? A Cylon? Was she made from the surgery on The Baby Farm on Old Caprica? How, when and why did the final five Cylons get recreated? Were they born in the 12 Colonies or were they inserted secretly?

As I noted before, the rest of the episode is about the despair of the humans. Dualla commits suicide, President Roslin doesn't show up for her cancer treatment but instead hides in her room and starts burning the book of Pythian prophecies. Admiral Adama can't cheer her up he starts to drink and then tries to provoke Tigh into killing him:

I'm not going to bother to recap much beyond that. The darkness of this episode is one of the bravest things I've seen on television and it's conveyed far too subtly to do it justice with a summary. You'll have to watch to get it. They had been chasing a dream of Earth for years, relying too much on religious prophecy, and now they've discovered Earth is a nuclear wasteland. The dream of Earth is shattered. Lee Adama made an uplifting speech, saying they're now free to chase a new home (like New Caprica?) "we can see this as either a catastrophe or an opportunity," he told Dualla before she killed herself. "We are free of the prophisies of Pythia." However, the crushing blow is too much and many people are not going to rebound, Dualla being only the first I imagine.

Whatever "gods" handed them the prophecy didn't give them a land of milk and honey on a silver platter (thank the gods, because that would have been so lame from an artistic viewpoint). And now, with their faith in those old prophesies crumbling I think we should logically expect Baltar's religion to pick up some real steam and for Baltar to become a much more powerful character.

Introducing Derren Brown

2009-01-11T09:52:00.000-08:00

If you don't know who Derren Brown is, then what follows is going to be me playing a bit of a trick on you for I am taking the following video snips out of context. So, without any explanation, here are the clips:

The video embedding was disabled because out of context the above clip is so misleading. Here it is:
Derren Brown - Messiah - 4/8

If you didn't already know, then about halfway through the second clip you'd have realized this "conversion" business isn't what it first appears. James Lawrence is really Derren Brown, a popular mentalist in the UK with a book to sell, "Tricks of the Mind". (He may be coming to the sci-fi channel.) This isn't about converting people to Christianity, but rather about how easily people can be fooled into believing things that aren't true.

And look how easily the first person Derren "converts," the red-headed woman with the glasses, seems to take to it. What's going on here?

The first thing to note is that she took the time and made the effort to go to such an event in the first place. The second thing to note is her reason for disbelief, she lumps God in with ghosts and angels and Derren puts her at ease saying "I don't believe in those things either." However, more importantly, her first named reason for doubt is because various relatives have been Catholic, Protestant and Mormon, and she felt she had all that forced on her. Such a summary has holes in it. Catholicism, Protestantism and Mormonism aren't just belief in God, they're detailed dogmas and the fact that she brings this up as her reason is very telling about her psychological state.

The most important factors in this seeming conversion are supplied by the red-headed lady rather than by Derren, the perpetrator. In the case of all the atheists left at the end there were two levels of filtering that had happened. First, just bothering to go to the event means they were open to the possibility, and then staying after a quarter of the group left meant they were open to the possibility of Derren's method. The ones left behind are the ones who want to be convinced. These atheists were probably in an early stage of atheism and they seem young.

Such psychological trickery requires a certain kind of victim. Those who approached Derren's con game with a skeptical mindset wouldn't be impressed. The "atheists" left at Derren's event probably want to believe, try to believe, and they probably hadn't yet met someone who was dogma free and not arguing with them about their reasons for rejecting faith. Derren isn't offering faith, he's offering an experience, but it's the willing victims who create their own experience. All Derren has to do is set up the expectation.

In the case of the second "convert," the tall and dark haired male, he tells us that he can't believe in, I paraphrase, "a god or higher being who is supposed to be all loving yet lets children die." Derren doesn't even bother to argue this theological problem, he just asks the guy to go through an elaborate performance with him. After which he says; "I wouldn't be doing the right thing if I didn't consider the possibility that I might be wrong..."

There's a problem with this statement. It's not a real change in his attitude, why else would he have gone to such an event in the first place if he wasn't willing to explore? What "reason to explore" made him show up in the first place? What made him stay? There was no change, just a shift in focus, an opening up to subjective feelings we normally put aside because they're useless to us in our everyday lives.

Towards the end, when Derren tells them to stand up and then starts telling the room full of atheists to "close your eyes... there is something here... feel it like a pressure... feel that moving into you... let that feeling get stronger... just embrace it," it's a bit like a hypnotic induction. And from the Bible onward radical experiences have been promised:

Now, if some of the people who think they're plugged into God weren't such black holes of utter ignorance the absurd demonstration above might have some weight. But consider Ray Comfort who tries to argue for believing in talking snakes and who can't even comprehend the evolutionary theory he tries to argue against. Instead of being a light unto the world they're more like light absorbing shadows that carry ignorance and delusion with them where ever they go.

It would also be instructive to read up on the case of Professor René Blondlot and his N-rays.

Derren tells us a little more in this interview with Richard Dawkins:

At first consideration it may not seem that "Barnum statements," which, as noted, are attributed to P.T. Barnum, would have much to do with the conversion of atheists in Derren Brown's little con, but if you pay attention to the things Derren says to the atheists you'll note that he tries to say as little as possible about the god they'll experience. He sticks to purely physiological symptoms and lets people fill in the meaning for themselves. He tells them to feel vague, physical things.

Pop music often uses Barnum statements. For example, Matthew Sweet's "Dark Secret," which is linked in my previous post under the words "heralding SOMETHING EVEN DARKER THAN OURSELVES." The lyrics are:

You are sickened by the weakness
Of a heart that's filled with fear
And if the world won't understand you
You can make it disappear

'Cause there's a dark secret
Carry with you
Carry with you

And deep inside, the way you hate them
On the outside, doesn't show
And oh, they think that they defy you
They are slaved to what you know

It's a dark secret
Carry with you
Carry with you

And it's a dark secret
Carry with you
Carry with you
And it's a dark secret
Carry with you
Carry with you

It's a dark secret
Carry with you
It's a dark secret
Carry with you
It's a dark secret
Carry with you (dark secret)

Who isn't at least a little sickened by the weaknesses that are our fears? And often those fears are themselves our dark secrets. Some atheist bravado is a bit like whistling past a graveyard in the dark just to convince yourself that you're not afraid. While there is plenty of evidence that all these religions are frauds and delusions that evidence alone can never be one hundred percent convincing.

But who is going to take on the real price of Pascal's wager because of a tiny percentage chance that God is the asshole that fundamentalists think he is? Christians, apparently. Just imagine how much worse their fear must be behind their whistling through the graveyard.