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Battlestar Galactica Hosted At the UN
TheDopp writes "The United Nations hosted the cast and crew of Battlestar Galactica Tuesday evening in New York. Clips of the show were shown as discussion points during the event, touching on the morality of Suicide Bombers in war, Abortion and the use of torture on enemies of the state. At one point during the event an attendee mentions 'the "Old Man" launched into a passionate speech about casting off the idea of race as a cultural determinant, and said we were one race, the human race. His voice echoed throughout the chamber growing louder until — I kid you not — he was yelling, "So Say We All," and the crowd answered right back. Hell, even I yelled it, I was in the fraking United Nations with Adama, the gods themselves could not have stopped this moment.' The full video of the event is located on the UN website."
Real Media if FRACKED up.
So say we all?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This is the UN. They'd just put the Cylons in charge of a commission on human rights in the 12 colonies.
Seriously? The cast of a fucking space opera gets to address the UN? And the UN listens? Please tell me you're making it up.
That the whole story is essentially one 4 season long dissertation on the "wages of sin" and even "generational sin?" The recurring sins of sloth and bigotry finally keep coming back to haunt the human race. Sloth lead to two of the colonies being treated horribly until the Cylons could be created as a worker class. The Cylons eventually realized that they were slaves and revolted, and that pattern has repeated itself at least once already.
In a dark, twisted way, the series is more religious and conservative than the original one. A lot of fans of the original hate that because it's more like a Hobbesian/Calvinist take on human nature, sin, God's judgment, etc. with the human race not being portrayed as noble, but having its own sins come back to haunt it. As a Christian, I find it a very refreshing show in that it has a brutally realistic take on human nature, sin and other factors that are usually ignored by people looking to create a simplistic "good guys in white, bad guys in black" kind of moral dichotomy.
Jason Nesmith: Mathesar, there's no such person as Captain Taggart. My name is Jason Nesmith. I'm an actor. We're all actors.
Sarris: He doesn't understand. Explain as you would a child.
Jason Nesmith: We, uh, we pretended.
[On Malthesar's blank look]
Jason Nesmith: We lied.
Jason Nesmith: I'm not a commander. There's no "National Space Exploration Administration." We don't have a ship.
Mathesar: [looking at TV screen] But there it is...
Jason Nesmith: [gesturing with his fingers] The ship is that big.
Mathesar: But inside, I see many rooms.
Jason Nesmith: You've seen plywood sets that look like the inside. Our beryllium sphere is... is wire with plaster around it. And our digital conveyor is... it's Christmas tree lights. It's a decoration. It's all fake. Just like me.
Mathesar: But why...?
Jason Nesmith: It's difficult to explain. On our planet, we, uh... we pretend to... to entertain. Mathesar, I am so sorry. God, I am so sorry.
Um, because Slashdot wouldn't have a story on its front page if you were to visit the UN?
You know that RealMedia is deeply hated when people are thankful for the posting of a flash version.
People are too quick to cast off the idea that race doesn't mean anything biologically through ideological lens. It's true that people all deserve the same political treatment, but people are so scared of racial bigotry and eugenics and social darwinism that they sometimes can't see straight. For example, the authors of The Bell Curve were blasted for supposedly being racial bigots, however wrong or right they were, and E. O. Wilson of Sociobiology fame had water thrown on him because the the nuturist bias of many on the left makes them view any innatist viewpoint as being "right-wing" apologetics for racial mistreatment or whatever, which is completely wrongminded. Nature doesn't care about how you think the world is supposed to work.
You argue, however rightly or wrongly, that blacks may have a genetic TENDENCY towards lower IQs (I am not saying this is true, bear with me here) and people blast you, however, you say a minority group (Ashkenazi Jews) may have a heritable tendency towards higher IQs (apparently some study supported this hypothesis) and you don't see people rioting over it. People want "smile science", they want only nice things to be reported and they view publishing any negative or socially inconvenient data to be, well, socially irresponsible, no matter how true it even is. Remember, brain and body are one, as every physical change in the body is heritable so too are any structural changes in the brain which result in expressions of mental capacity and behavioral output.
I am not saying race does play a significant role in intellectual qualities. Clearly, it does play some of a role in some qualities (why all the tall black men in the NBA? Because they're physically built for the sport!) but it is not at all impossible that a race may have a tendency towards lower or higher IQs. And, as I've been sure to mention, this is all genetic tendency; variation among individuals still exists and even in a population with a mean IQ lower than the mean IQ of the average population you can still have IQs above the mean of the overall population.
It's also worth nothing that nature often cares little about the categories we've assigned to things for our human way of thinking. Evolution shows us that "species" is not at all easy to define as we think. A good video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb5OEw_q-II (made by rather intelligent shanek guy who laboriously fights idiots online. If you're reading this Shane, "Hi!"). The point of this is to show that yes, race is largely a human construct, much like species itself is, but that does not mean it is entirely meaningless. We know some racial groups are more at risk for certain types of disease, for example.
The overall fallacy here is thinking that behavior/mental processes are somehow different from physical one, when behavior itself is a resultant of the physical workings of the brain, and thus some races really could be different from others in a particular way.
That said, Battlestar Galactica is a great show because they don't shove a particular moral conclusion down your throat (insofar that the Cylon vs. Human dynamic is obviously a racial conflict in large part caused by human arrogance and inability to forgive) a lot of the time by making the issues difficult with no clear convenient solution, just as they are in real life, and also making none of the people on the show paragons of human virtue and morality. It doesn't seem to me like any character acts as a Lisa Simpson that serves as a mouthpiece for the writers to evangelize for their position.
The fact that the constitution is the supreme law of the land. This means that no treaty has the power to modify it.
Theoretically. The document itself has become more and more symbolic over time and it's been less held as "law of the land." It's been used more for political maneuvering among all three branches. That is inevitably what happens when you have a "Living Constitution" interpretation and not a strict "constructionist" one where any changes must be ratified, because you can just claim that your interpretation is the best for the times and thus not have to worry about procedure and dissent. When you're not held to a constant literal meaning of law, then the law simply means whatever the interpreter wants it to mean and whatever they can get away with through that interpretation. And it's not going to be just Bush. Obama will do the same thing, when it suits him or what he wants and believes.
I'm unsure that politicians and soldiers are more qualified. People did not applaud an actor. They applauded a beautiful idea told by a great orator. That is no acting, that is what politics is since the word exists.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
It's TV show, it is not how the real world works... oh, wait
It's the UN, it is not how the real world works.
Seriously. Why do actors and actresses who pretend to be politicans and soldiers for tv and movies get more influence over "real world" politics like the UN than I do?
Because they have an audience larger than the population of many UN member states. Seriously.
You can't take the sky from me...
Battlestar Galactica is a television show. It's a fine enough show I guess, but it is not worthy of wasting the time of a body that meets ostensibly to diplomatically resolve real world conflicts, forge various international agreements, and - at times - deploy troops for peacekeeping. That television show is fantasy. What's going on at Darfur is the real thing.
WTF?
If I understand him, the word "race" can't be used as a "cultural determinant" UNLESS you are blaming something on "the caucasian race", like he does at 1:42 in the video on youtube.
*spoiler alert*
Not true. Look at the problems caused by taking Valerri's daughter away from her, as one example. Hell, look at how both Cylon and Humans were planning on backstabbing each other when trying to find out the Final Five because they didn't trust one another. You must have also forgotten the fact that humans apparently were trying to provoke the Cylons into going to war with them. Neither Cylon nor Humans are necessarily the good guys, though some clearly are bad guys, or at least misguided. Not all humans are willing to forgive, either.
The whole point is that not all Cylons are bad Cylons, and yet the bad Cylons cause the humans to be paranoid of the good ones. You're looking at the show from a "go humans!" lens. Take a step back. Forgiveness on both sides is a pretty big element of the show, remember, the Cylons are still upset over enslavement, for example.
why the UN is never taken seriously by anyone, anywhere, at anytime about anything.
Ave Molech Setting
Indeed. Whether a political philosophy or better understanding about our living society comes from someone who was voted into bureaucratical power or someone who "merely" has cultural influence bestowed by science fiction, that philosophy and that understanding is significant on its own. They were not applauding "Adama" nor were they applauding Olmos. They applauded a proper philosophy about the being of man in the halls of a building that has been trying to make such strong assertions for decades-- if ever so impotently.
The people that made this entire event happen understood that, beyond all things, old people want to stay in power but they do not change. Society changes. And the only way society changes is by the growth and further education of the youth that will replace our now-ignorant elders. They understood that we as adults have been so very flawed and that our kids need to know our mistakes and errors lest they be doomed to repeat them.
Er, why would you want to stop a good thing from happening?
With the current SciFi channel changing their name to Syfy, there's a chance that someone who wants to make a real science fiction channel could finally come along and use the name 'SciFi'. You know, a channel that wouldn't air pro-wrestling, "reality" shows, and an unending stream of movies featuring giant snakes...
Couldn't have at least had a spoiler warning on your title?
If you're that far behind, why are you *reading* anything bsg related this close to the finale? You're bound to hit spoilers.
Why are you carrying on about this? Sure, different 'races' have ever-so-slightly different characteristics, but do you think that actually matters?
Many individuals don't fit in the middle of the bell curve, as you pointed out. So what is the point of having these profiles if they cannot be used to judge an individual? The only purpose they serve is to support bias and intellectual racism.
THAT is why so many find the ideas that you are peddling repugnant. It doesn't matter how statically correct you are, you are either: A) unsocially rational, or B) a closet racist. Either way it can be very distressing and/or destructive to the people that have to listen to you.
The white race started racism 600 years ago? That little pearl of wisdom pretty much invalidated the whole clip for me. I may have been a geeky Trek fanboy years ago, but just because I really enjoy BSG doesn't mean I'm going to swallow THAT.
I had a sucky sig.