« Adventures in Parenting - 'bad words' | Main | Johnny Carson - class act »

January 22, 2005

Saturday reading - bits and pieces

We are having some beautiful weather today in So. Cal. It's about 70 degrees out, sunny. I hit the ground running this morning -- dropped off the car for new tires and alignment, hit the hardware store for gardening stuff (unplanned purchase, saw a cute little wood/wrought iron bench sized just right for the twins - now I have to put it together), filled bird feeders and more going on ... so some quick stuff and back for serious writing later.

Battlestar Galactica's third episode, Bastille Day aired at 10 pm on sci-fi last night and I enjoyed it. So many threads are shaping up and this episode felt a bit more transitory even as it had a story that resolved itself in 60 minutes. One of the ships that made it into the "rag tag fleet" was a prison transport ship with 1500 prisoners. The episode revolved around possibly using them to help in the hard/dangerous job of securing fresh water for the fleet (majority lost in last week's Water episode through sabetoge by Boomer). The conflict comes with the consideration that the prisoners not be used as "slave" labor but offered the jobs voluntarily to earn their probation. However, one "celebrity" prisoner is a terrorist, Tom Zarek (played by Richard Hatch, the original 'Apollo'), has surreptitiously organized the prisoners who riot, take over the ship and take Lee 'Apollo' Adama and his group hostage. There is some nice overlapping of themes - Cmdr Adama who mutters under his breath that Lee hasn't chosen 'sides' and then Zarek stating the same thing. IMO this episode begins a possible change in the rather vanilla, laidback Lee who does seem to gain a bit more edge by the end. If this signals a character development trend in Apollo, I'm heartened and can be patient. One of my problems with the original BSG is that Apollo never really changed (so much of 70's programming was cast-in-cement 1 dimensional characters). I find the brief shots of Helo and Sharon on Caprica intriguing in the questions it raises about the evolved Cylons. The brief interplays between XO Tigh and Starbuck hint at a back story I'd like to see more about and the scene where XO Tigh orders Boomer to end her relationship with Tryol foreshadows all sorts of upcoming conflict. I don't really watch much episodic TV any more (I'm in love with HGTV and History Channel) but I'm definitely sticking with BSG.

Other things:

The true face of the "antiwar" protesters is again revealed in this WaPo piece where anarchists (in truth, vicious anticapitalist leftist totalitarians) deliberately destroyed property.

Citizen Smash has an entry on his band of Protest Warriors in San Diego whose mere presence causes Leftists abandon their pretense at "peace, tolerance and free speech for all." Smash also points to here and here about anti-democracy Seattle college students who took their anger at American voters out on a couple of Army recruiters on campus -- assaulting them and succeeding in getting the recruiters escorted off campus. Fine little Brownshirts the taxpayers of Washington are training now, eh?

Eric Scheie at Classical Values poses a few questions about consorting with unsavory characters ... or at least unsavory opinions in this Shame on me post. He wonders what animates those that create "attack blogs" and why merely linking or taking notice of the otherside in a debate "taints" one. Have we truly become a society where the Easily Offended hold all social sway?

I ask this because #4 daughter, Siobhan, is in the midst of a bit of a controversy right along this line at her high school. Seems the advisor to the school newspaper allowed two sides to a controversial subject to be published, and a whole bunch of teachers/students/parents were "offended" at one side and now the admin has come down with both boots on the school newspaper. The issue? Gay marriage. The side that brought out the pitchforks and torches? The side that argued against gay marriage. While Siobhan is for gay marriage, she is incensed at the people who are demanding a pound of flesh from the advisor and full censorship of the school newspaper for allowing the anti-same sex marriage article to run. She and a couple of her friends are contemplating starting their own underground newspaper. Developing story ...

And as terrorist front groups like CAIR in the United States froth at any hint that moslem extremists are anything but kind, loving, PEACEFUL people, Charles Johnson posts on exactly what CAIR refuses to address ...

MOGADISHU, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Somali militiamen, allied with Islamic clerics who rule by sharia law, have dug up hundreds of skeletons from an Italian colonial-era cemetery and thrown them in the trash, sparking anger in the Italian and Somali capitals.

The motive for the mass exhumation by gunmen allied with the clerics who rule northern Mogadishu remained unclear on Friday. Witnesses said hundreds of corpses were dug up over the past five days and thrown away at a dump near Mogadishu’s airport, which drew a strongly worded protest from Rome.

“The profanation of a silent and historical place, sacred to all civilisations, is a vile and particularly hateful act which can have no justification whatsoever,” the Italian government said in a statement.

Gunmen told residents near the cemetery in south Mogadishu that the courts ordered them to clear the site of non-Islamic elements, witnesses said.

Anyone still unclear what Islamists are talking about when they say "From River to Sea, Palestine will be free"? The Left's support of Islamists can no longer be consider innocent.


Posted by Darleen at January 22, 2005 10:54 AM

Comments

I'm glad to hear that you liked "Bastille Day." I have to say that I think it's probably one of the weakest episodes of the show's first season. There are two episodes that I thought just didn't bring the same game that the other 11 brought, and "Bastille Day" is one of them. That said, I'm saying that it's an eight among nines and tens. (And one eleven.)

My roommate, who is a surgical resident and has too much to do all the time, watches just a few hours of TV a week. She has a habit of sitting in front of the TV with a textbook or her laptop (or sometimes both) in her lap, watching the parts that interest her and reading a paragraph or two when she gets bored. She'll get up, grab a snack, have a soda, whatever. She's not a 100%-devoted-attention kind of girl.

Friday night, I watched her sit motionless during "Battlestar Galactica." She had her laptop and her textbook and all that, but they were sitting off to one side. She didn't open either of them. She didn't have a snack, she didn't go to the bathroom, she didn't play with the dog. She was transfixed.

I didn't tell her that it only gets better from here. I think I'll let her find out for herself.

Posted by: Jeff Harrell at January 23, 2005 10:06 AM