Do you watch Battlestar Galactica? No. Then you are an idiot.

– Dwight from The Office.

The show The Office has had many memorable moments, but it’s best moment came in reference to another show, the best show on TV right now, Battlestar Galactica.

Why is Battlestar Galactica the best TV show of all time? Ten reasons come to mind.

• 10. Season 3′s cliff-hanger

How intense was that cliff-hanger? I’m still on edge from it and it was over a year ago, that’s how intense. Starbuck comes through the clouds and looks at Lee Adama, tells him she knows where the mythical Earth is and we fly through space until we get a shot of that unmistakable blue orb we call home. Will they get to Earth? Will it be our Earth in present-time? So many tantalizing questions that I really hope get answered.

• 9. It’s a great example of how to make a good remake.

They paid tribute to the old Battlestar Galactica but at he same time didn’t simply update the special effects and call it a day. BSG is a complete revamping of the show to match current events. Countless shows and movies try, few succeed. BSG goes above, beyond, and past the original (which was also of top quality).

• 8. It’s the best genre ever.

For centuries, the best books have been written in the science fiction genre because it can encapsulate all other genres and has nearly no limitations. Battlestar Galactica is a shining example of political, philosophical, dramatic, and romantic story lines being given focus in a science fiction setting.

• 7. Awesome music – One of the best remixes of All Along the Watchtower ever.

• 6. It’s the 1984 of our time.

George Orwell’s 1984 was a critique on the British empire and a warning of the future written in that period’s most popular medium. BSG portrays the Iraqi occupation with through a flipped perspective and critiques our ever increasing reliance on science and technology over humanity and is a warning for us to not give over all power to robots.

• 5. They don’t milk it. One last season to rule them all.

Countless shows and movies go on for far too long, deteriorating into a mess far removed from the original fans fell in love with (The Simpsons). BSG is going out on their own terms without dragging on endlessly. You’ve got to hand it to everyone involved with the show for ending it while the content is still fresh and not simply beating the show to death to get a few extra bucks.

• 4. Smart, strong, and sexy women.

You can’t have good science fiction without sex and BSG has tons of it, even going so far as to give us some freaky-deaky robot human relations.



• 3. Awesome, amazing, breath-taking, photo-realistic special effects. Wow.

If you like explosions and fire-fights, you’ll love this show. Check out this clip of the Battlestars coming to the rescue of the humans who are under Cylon occupation. Youtube’s video quality does not do it justice but it’s impressive nonetheless.

• 2. Smart, strong, and sexy women that can be duplicated infinitely.

That’s right, there’s an endless supply of these three women in the BSG universe.



What, you want another reason?

• 1. Epic storytelling, epic acting, epic directing, epic producing, epic TV.

My words really can’t explain how well made this show is. Do yourself a favor, head over to scifi.com and check out this 8 minute recap of the first 3 seasons and then tune in to the SciFi channel tonight at 10 PM eastern and watch the best TV show ever made. I can’t over-hype this show.

Late to the Battlestar Galactica phenomenon? Don’t worry you can still catch up on previous Battlestar Galactica seasons (as well as the excellent mini-series and feature film) at Amazon.com:

• Battlestar Galactica (2003 Miniseries)
• Battlestar Galactica – Season One
• Battlestar Galactica – Season 2.0 (Episodes 1-10)
• Battlestar Galactica: Season 2.5 (Episodes 11-20)
• Battlestar Galactica – Season Three
• Battlestar Galactica – Razor (Unrated Extended Edition)

Their site streams all these episodes and the streaming happens quite quickly. The quality of the video is also very good. I did happen upon a glitch where one episode (Mystery of the Urinal Deuce –hadn’t seen it before and the title reminded me of an incident on my dorm room floor in my freshman year at USC, but that story is for another post, another day) skipped forward six seconds at the start but otherwise the site runs flawlessly.

So the site is cool and the idea works very well. I’m a big advocate of media such as South Park and other TV shows and movies being free and ad-supported. Another very sweet feature of the South Park site is the ability to create your own South Park avatars. The selection is a bit limited right now but you can still come up with some cool and unique characters.

Here’s me in the 4th grade:

Look how happy I am in my grunge gear, towering over all the other kids at the playground.

Let’s fast forward thirty-five years and check out future me:

My, how times have changed. Happy grunge me has turned into a balding vigilante with a gun living in exile in Mexico. Well, at least I’ve got a mohawk mullet thing going on. Chicks are sure to dig that look in the future for its maximized business in the front, party in the back, rebellion down the middle efficiency.

So, all in all, South Park Studios, even though it is still in beta, is already a sweet success.

Score 4/5

Another nice feature is the ability to edit clips right on Hulu and embed the trimmed down clips on a site. When you click the embed clip button, a screen comes up with a scroll bar at the bottom that lets you decide where the embedded clip should start and where it should end. Already I wish youtube had this feature, as it’s very handy when you just want to show someone a part of a clip, not the whole video. Here’s how the editing screen looks:

Pretty cool eh?

The same editing feature is available under the share button, where you can e-mail your friends a link to either the full original video or an trimmed down clip. It all works smoothly and quickly. Quite impressive.

Check out this clip from the end of the Family Guy episode, Play it Again Brian:

Hulu would be better if the advertisements just scrolled at the bottom of the screen or played in a sidebar while browsing the Hulu site, but as is they’re about as un-intrusive as can be. One very irritating part of the advertisements is that many times the same ad gets played over and over again through the course of an episode. While it’s not too annoying while watching a short 20 minute episode of The Simpsons or Family Guy because there’s only two or three ads, it becomes very annoying over the course of a 40 minute episode of The Office. Hulu needs to figure out someway to rotate ads around or require advertisers to submit more than one ad. In either case, seeing the same ad five or six, or even more times over the span of 40 minutes quickly destroys any urge to buy the advertised product.

There is also a HD Gallery on the site which streams high-definition videos. Right now this collection of high-def videos is limited to ten movie trailers but the quality and speed of the streaming is very, very impressive. If they’re able to upload full-length HD movies and shows Hulu is going to receive tons and tons of traffic from people like me who have a nice big monitor with a limited amount of HD content to view online. Though, if movies were to get interrupted every twenty minutes by an ad it might not be such a big hit.

It’s still early but my experience with Hulu has been great so far. Over time I hope Hulu alternates advertisements so it’s not the same ads over and over again. Another big concern is whether they’re able to stay afloat financially without increasing advertisements. Have you had a chance to explore Hulu? What did you think?If not, want to?

Score: 3.5/5

Check out the crazy resemblance John McCain has to Colonel Tigh, who I’m sure will be revealed as a Cylon in the final season of Battlestar Galactica, set to premiere in March.

What have you done New Hampshire! We might have a Cylon in office now!

Thanks to the Metamerist for the pictures.

The human survivors then rush around space, evading the cylons as much as possible and search for a rumored 13th colony, called Earth. Although the show’s premise seems to heavily science fiction, the show deals with many contemporary issues, such as the war on terrorism, and (from the wiki on BSG) “abortion, the use of biological weapons, and labour rights”.

One of the great aspects of the show, is the constant reference to the real world war on terrorism, such as when the humans find a new planet and occupy it, only to have the Cylons track them down and force them to live under their rule. The humans resort to suicide bombings against the Cylons; which really makes you think about whether it’s fair for the U.S. media to criticize the Iraqis for their use of suicide bombings.

Anyway the show normally airs on Sunday at 10:00pm but last week was the season 3 finale and season 4 doesn’t start until 2008! Aaargh! Anyone who hasn’t seen any of this show, I highly urge you to watch the mini-series and if you’re not immediately immersed, you simply don’t like good television.

This was intended to be a post about the essays I’ve already uploaded to this site but as it’s already a bit lengthy I’ll discuss those essays another day, for the curious the sidebar (the layout of this site maybe updated in the future), lists the schools I’ve attended, and the classes I have digital versions of coursework for. This collection isn’t complete and I’ll continuing updating it as I find more of my coursework from the last five years, although a lot of it is probably lost for good…