(no subject)

[meret.livejournal.com]

I've posted new captions in my LJ here.

Ron Moore's newest blog

[selenak.livejournal.com]

...contains some extensive thoughts on an older controvery, the use of torture (and summary execution) in Flesh and Bone.

Choice quotes:

I firmly believe that what Kara Thrace did to Leoben in "Flesh and Bone" was wrong. I believe that a society which employs torture on the defenseless captives in its custody has crossed a bright shining line that civilized people should not cross. Likewise, I think that Laura Roslin promising a man freedom only to kill him in the end is abhorrent to the ways in which I want my president to behave. However, I also understand why each of them did what they did. I understand the emotional, psychological and moral quandries which can lead two moral, good people to take such ghastly actions. And, in the end, I also believe that it was true to who characters really are, and that trumps everything else.

Would I personally behave the same way in similar circumstances? I hope not, but neither am I so confident of my own immunity to the pressures felt by an interrogator charged with finding a nuclear weapon or to the enormous weight sitting on a chief executive trying to protect her citizenry that I can say I would absolutely have made the more "moral" choice.

(...)

These are the debates that I hope you have among yourselves, your families, your friends. I want the show to provoke you into thinking about the times you live in and the choices that are being made all around you every day. In a time when the President of the United States actually asserts that he has the power to arrest without warrant and detain indefinitely without charge or appeal, any citizen (indeed any person on the face of the Earth) simply by designating them as an "illegal combatant," we should all be engaged in a vigorous and energetic debate about who we are as a people and as human beings and exactly how we do intend to respond to the very real threat posed to this nation and to the foundations of liberal democracy posed by people capable of, and willing to, fly airplanes into buildings.

I hope this show makes you think. I hope this show makes you question the moral choices that are being made in your name and by your representatives. I hope this show angers you at times and makes you outraged at the actions that good people like Kara and Laura sometimes take. But the show is not a polemic; our aim is not to screech and demagogue these issues in search of facile answers. Good people can make bad, even horrific decisions, just as bad people can make noble, even righteous ones. Balancing civil liberties with security is a complicated, difficult gymnastic act which defies the easy, pat answers typically served up by an hour of episodic television.

If the show does have a single, consistent point of view, it is probably best summed up by something Lincoln said during his second inaugural address:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all..."

Think about that. Debate the meaning of that simple idea. For that, more than anything else, expresses this show and the politics behind it.

Help me be a better pimp...

[lage-nom-ai.livejournal.com]

Hi everyone!
Question for ya: Now that I have the whole series on tape and am gearing up to try and convert my cable-less friends, I wanted to know if anyone thinks it's better to start pimping with the miniseries, or with the first 3 episodes? I can't decide whether the faster pace of "33" and "Water" (and the excellent scruffiness of "Bastille Day") are better, or whether it's better to start with the full backstory of the mini, though that one can seem a bit slow in parts and a little grim... Any thoughts?