A Disquiet Follows My Soul—Hard to Rate, Hard to Hate

Battlestar Galactica probably reached an all-time emotional low last week with Sometimes a Great Notion and they continue to wallow in that emotional trough this week as well. Despite its darkness, this week's episode is surprisingly quotable. I don't know how much of the dark humor in this episode was intentional—Ron Moore's podcast this week suggests that at least some of it was—but I found myself strangely amused by everyone's pain in this episode.

"Try looking with your eyes...eye."
—Doc Cottle to the one-eyed Saul Tigh

Unlike last week's episode with its many revelations, this episode was a more slow-paced mood piece. And while the mood is largely foul, little things tended to stand out; little things like Bill Adama stooping over to pick up trash—quick trivia bit, in the podcast for this episode Ron Moore says that he had the wardrobe department fit Adama's costume with pockets so he'd have someplace to put the trash he was picking up and Edward James Olmos loved lording the fact that he finally had pockets over the other actors whose uniforms lack them (military uniforms without pockets, talk about unrealistic)—a sign that he's finally back after descending into despair last week. Cottle and Tigh smoking in front of a pregnant Caprica Six was particularly hilarious.

This brings us to Felix Gaeta who is about as bitter and angry as a one-legged man who has been systematically robbed of all his hopes and dreams and seen his die one by one can get. His increasing distrust of the Cylons builds gradually through this episode leading to a pretty impressive conclusion. His verbal brawl with Kara was hard to watch but helps to prepare us for the reveal where we see Gaeta cooperating with Tom Zarek. Zarek's return as a political antagonist is exciting both because of his history with both Bill and Lee Adama and because he is played by Richard Hatch who played Apollo in the original BSG. Hatch has grown a lot as an actor in the thirty years since the original series and it really shows in his performance this week.

"Their technology—our technology—is way ahead of ours. Yours."
"Maybe you'd like a chart to keep it all straight."
—Tyrol and Tigh

Galen Tyrol has been on a pretty rocky road since discovering that he is a Cylon and has only become more and more isolated from his human crew mates as is seen by his pronoun troubles. This only continues as Tyrol advocates for citizenship for the Cylons in exchange for using Cylon technology to upgrade the fleet. It's interesting how as his arc has progressed, Tyrol has remained an advocate and an activist. When we first meet him in the pilot, he stands up to Tigh and is outraged when his plan to save the ship costs the lives of eighty-five of his Tyrol's own deck hands. On New Caprica he is a union leader as well a leader in the resistance against the Cylon occupation. Back in the fleet, he leads the Tylium ship when they form a union to fight for better working conditions. And here he is again this week fighting for the Cylons to be included in the colonial fleet. While the circumstances of the character have changed drastically since the pilot, the man remains the same. His trust and respect for Admiral Adama also remains the same.

Tyrol's discovery that Nikki isn't his son serves two purposes, it helps to further isolate him and push him into the Cylon camp and it keeps Helo and Athena's daughter Hera as the only Cylon-human hybrid.

Laura Roslin is still pretty low but as she stops taking her cancer drugs she finds that she has more energy and slowly begins to climb out of her pit of despair with a little help from Bill. She's basically neglecting her duties as president to jog, work out, and be happy and Bill is letting that happen. It's an interesting look at how the "old man" thinks. He's very sentimental and is willing to let the rest of the fleet suffer a little for the sake of his loved ones. Even from the first season, he deployed the entire fleet to look for Starbuck when her Viper was shot down. Now he is letting the situation in the fleet get worse to give Laura time to feel better. Even Tyrol trusts that he'll sacrifice the fleet to keep his oath as an officer.

"So I guess a pity frak is out of the question then?"
—Felix Gaeta

If there is someone more bitter and angry than Gaeta, it's Kara Thrace. Starbuck is also perhaps the one person whose life is in greater turmoil than anyone else on the ship. She's angry and mean and bitter and it's not a pretty sight.

Zarek uses Roslin's absence to manipulate the Quorum into passing an anti-Cylon resolution which allows ship captains to resist Cylon upgrades. There is a lot of emotional appeal to his argument and not one bit of reason to it. But it works and Lee as the lone dissenter on the Quorum is outvoted. It's precisely this chaos which makes Laura's unwillingness to return to duty so critical. And while Adama tries to make her face this reality, he ultimately relents and lets her go on ignoring her duty a little longer.

"What manner of forgiveness are you seeking? Is it that of disobedient children? Are you children? Obviously you're a child. We have some children here. But to the rest of you..."
—Gaius Baltar

Baltar and his cult are back and with the recent setbacks, his hedonistic message is growing more popular. It also makes a fine backdrop for Tyrol to confront Hotdog, Nikki's real father. Emotions are already running high and Tyrol and Hotdog's fight triggers a near riot. Baltar just sits back and smiles at the chaos—a subtly masterful bit of gallows humor.

"I don't know anything about being a father."
"It sucks, except for the parts that don't."
—Hotdog and Tyrol

Tyrol introduces Hotdog to his son. They will take turns watching him in the hospital. Hotdog gets the first shift which Tyrol informs him will last until he sobers up. Ah, alcoholism and child neglect—it's comedy gold!

"You know there are days when I really hate this job."
—Bill Adama

Zarek's resolution triggers a crisis as ships start refusing Cylon help. The Tylium ship mutinees, killing a Cylon and two marines. The Tylium ship jumps away with Zarek's support. Adama has Zarek arrested. In the brig, a game of chicken ensues. Adama tells Zarek that he has enough dirt on him to ruin his reputation. His logic is that Zarek will happily die or go to prison as a martyr but is terrified of being outed as a corrupt politician. He wants the location of the Tylium ship and Zarek gives it to him. Again a serious scene ends with a comedic beat as Tigh takes a peak at the Zarek's crime file. "Laundry reports?"

But Zarek has one last card to play as it is revealed that Gaeta is planning a mutiny with him. But again the seriousness gives way to a moment of levity or at least relief. As the news of the Tylium ship's surrender arrives, Adama and Roslin are in bed to together it's both sweet and weird at the same time. Usually depicting sexuality among older people is used a joke on television. And the depiction of a cancer victim in bed with a lover is pretty unheard of. It's a remarkable end to a difficult episode. After having hit bottom last week, the crew of Galactica is slowly coming back.

Boing Boing links to an interview with environmentalist James Lovelock which is a curious mixture of pessimism and optimism but makes for interesting reading:

Do you think we will survive?

I'm an optimistic pessimist. I think it's wrong to assume we'll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It's happening again.

I don't think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing's been done except endless talk and meetings.

It's a depressing outlook.

Not necessarily. I don't think 9 billion is better than 1 billion. I see humans as rather like the first photosynthesisers, which when they first appeared on the planet caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen - a nasty, poisonous gas. It took a long time, but it turned out in the end to be of enormous benefit. I look on humans in much the same light. For the first time in its 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent, communicating species that can consider the whole system and even do things about it. They are not yet bright enough, they have still to evolve quite a way, but they could become a very positive contributor to planetary welfare.

Lovelock came up with the controversial Gaia Hypothesis in the 1970s. It's a theory which suggests that our bio-sphere, that is every living thing on Earth, acts like one giant organism to regulate the planet's climate to maintain ideal conditions for life. The theory gathered a lot of attention from science fiction authors and from counter-culture types but has been strongly criticized by scientists. It's hard to know what to think when dealing with ideas which as far as I know are pretty far out of the scientific mainsteam. But sometimes it is interesting to keep an open mind and look at new ideas.

The Wrath of Ron Moore

I think that if last night's episode of Battlestar Galactica proved one thing it's that Ron Moore is a heartless bastard of Whedonian proportions. After having ruthlessly dashed humanity's hopes last may with them finding Earth as an uninhabitable radioactive rock, the BSG writers pick up where they left off by examining the wreckage of what they created. No reset button here.

But it was more than just a really gloomy mood piece. This episode was fast paced and full of big, shocking revelations. If there had been a big space battle, it would have been the perfect prototypical BSG episode.

---

First we have Earth. Earth was nuked -- we found that out last year. Last night we got some more details. Earth was nuked 2,000 years ago and it was populated by Cylons. This works on two levels for me as a fan of the original BSG. First, it stays true to premise of the original and second, it gives it enough of a twist to provide the writers with wiggle room to get around the fact that the premise of the original series was flat out wrong.

We know that the human race evolved on Earth and that it wasn't seeded by von Däniken-style ancient astronauts which is part of the premise of the original Battlestar Galactica. So by making the thirteenth colony a race of Cylons, Ron Moore and company can have it both ways. Earth was a legendary colony of Kobol just like in the original series but there is wiggle enough room to push the origin of humanity back in time on a more ancient Earth.

It also works well with theme that "all this has happened before" that has been interwoven into this series. Humans on Earth build Cylons and they turn on them and Earth is abandoned. Humans on Kobol build Cylons and they turn on them and Kobol is abandoned. Humans on the twelve colonies build Cylons and they turn on them and the twelve colonies are abandoned. And now we learn that the Cylons who repopulated Earth turned on each other (or humans turned on them) and left the planet uninhabitable.

---

We also get Starbuck who continues her increasingly twisted journey. Everyone thought that she was dead and mysteriously came back but Kara Thrace herself was still certain that she never died. She went to Earth and could lead Galactica back. The latter was certainly proven to be true but the former, not so much. She discovers that the signal that led them to Earth is actually from her own ship. Kara finds the remains of her Viper along with her own corpse near the landing site. She cremates the body but there is no getting away from the fact that she has to be asking herself what she is and happened to her when she flew into that storm last year and was never heard from for months.

I'm actually pretty pleased with Kara's predicament because it fits well with a crackpot theory that I developed last year when Kara first came back. I believe that the storm that killed Kara last year actually concealed some sort of wormhole which was tied to Earth. It destroyed Kara's original body and ship but also duplicated them both and sent them back to Galactica's location. It's not exactly the most comfortable way to travel but the entity which set all this up probably wasn't planning with comfort in mind.

This development also opens up the possibility that Kara is actually a Cylon. It does fit in nicely with this show's emphasis on the numbers twelve and thirteen. There were thirteen colonies with a legendary thirteenth colony. The colonies worshipped twelve gods based on Greek and Roman mythology and feared a jealous thirteenth god who wanted to be elevated above all the others. And it has twelve humanoid Cylon models. So it makes sense for a previously unknown thirteenth Cylon to pop up.

---

But this episode is a lot bigger than its scifi tropes. Like BSG in general it is the story of human beings and an exploration of what it means to be human. They all deal with their hopes being dashed differently Roslyn is full of despair and burn the book of Pythia which she has relied up since the first season of this show. Dualla shoots herself. Adama wants to die as well. And the four Cylons begin to remember their lives on Earth 2,000 years ago.

Dee is especially poignant in this episode, breaking down in tears while on Earth, putting on a brave face, and finally blowing her brains out after having on last good day on Galactica. All in all, a pretty nice swan song for Kandyse McClure. Lee is the only one who seems to be holding up well, filling in for Roslyn before the Quorum and recounting his rousing speech to them to Dee during their date together. He is the only major character who doesn't have a major meltdown. It's and interesting choice as he is the one who was closest to Dee having been married to her. And maybe that's why he is holding up so well. With his father, ex-wife, and pretty much everyone else around him melting down, the ever passive Lee has too many examples of what wallowing in despair and is deliberately choosing to shut down emotionally.

While Bill Adama wants to die, he can't bring himself to pull the trigger. So he turns to his oldest friend, Saul Tigh. It's a heartbreaking scene. He taunts Tigh about his dead wife Ellen and accuses him of having been programmed to be his friend, daring him to kill him. But Tigh refuses. For once, he's the (almost) sober voice of reason. And he brings Adama back from the brink, giving him the strength to begin a search for a new planet for humanity to call home.

This sets up the ending of the show with its final and perhaps biggest revelation. Adama talks about how his uncle used to hunt foxes with his dogs. Some foxes would try to fight, some would flee and would try to escape by fleeing across a nearby river, but others would let the river's current carry them out to sea. Maybe they wanted to die maybe they were just tired of the chase but those foxes represent the entire human race and their Cylon allies in this episode.

D'anna, the Cylon model three makes this plainly clear as she's telling Tigh that she wants to stay on Earth, reminding him that Cavil and his Cylons are still out there hunting them all down and telling them that she wants out. We end as Tigh walks out into the ocean, like one of Adama's foxes and begins to remember his life on Earth 2,000 years ago during the great apocalypse. Ellen is there with him, dying in his arms. With her last breath, she tells him that "everything is in place. We'll be reborn again. Together." Ellen is or rather was the fifth and final Cylon.

---

It was a tremendous ending that really sets the tone for the final ten episodes of Battlestar Galactica. It also raises some exciting questions. How are these final five Cylons being reborn. The ending suggests some sort of resurrection technology that is very different from what the first seven Cylons were using. I'm actually reminded of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode about an ancient alien race that encodes a message in the DNA of many of the show's species. Maybe these Cylons learned some way to encode their memories and DNA in the human genome. It would be an interesting way to give the mystical and religious overtones of the show a scifi spin.

Will The Palm Pre Leave Me Cold?

Yesterday was a bitterly cold day in Chicago, with temperatures reaching as low as -11 degrees Fahrenheit. Today wasn't much better and it was fairly mild here compared to other parts of the Upper Midwest. That got me thinking about how I use my phone when I'm out in the cold which got me thinking about Palm's recent announcement of its new phone.

The Pre is a lovely phone with a cool new operating system and a sophisticated system of multi-touch gestures which promises to revolutionize smartphones. This last part is what concerns me on this cold day. One of the reasons why I never wanted an iPhone was because of the virtual keyboard. It was hard for me to type with and I really appreciate being able to type on my Treo and T-Mobile G1 keyboards even while wearing light gloves. Now the Pre does have a keyboard and its portrait orientation means that it would probably be good for one-handed typing—something that I've sorely missed since upgrading from my Treo to my G1. But the Pre is also going to be heavily reliant upon a system of gestures which will require bare hands. Without an alternative to these gestures for navigation, I'm not sure I'd enjoy using a phone like the Palm Pre during a cold January winter in Chicago.

My Favorite Android Applications

The great thing about my T-Mobile G1 is the power of its hardware combined with its Android operating system. Even though it has only been around for a few months, Android has already produced a handful of great applications which I love to use:

• The Weather Channel—This a nice application which does exactly what its name implies, it downloads and presents weather information. It shows the current conditions and with hourly, 36 hour, and 10 day forecasts as well as video along with video and weather maps. It also allows you to designate several locations for which it can download weather, making it a perfect for travelers. It can even take advantage of the G1's GPS capabilities to report the weather at your current location.
• Ring Toggle—One of the best features of my old Treo 680 was the ringer switch which allowed my to instantly silence the all the sounds on the phone. It really should be included on all cell phones. But the G1 doesn't have that feature. Luckily, Ring Toggle makes it easy to silence your phone with a simple menu of options for setting how your phone rings.
  
• Tunes Remote—This is a simple application which allows you to control iTunes on your Mac or PC. It's great for use as a remote control for a home theater PC.
  
• RemoteDroid—Couch surfing rules. This application allows your phone to act as a mouse and keyboard for your PC.
• ShopSavvy—There are at least three barcode scanners available at the Android Market and ShopSavvy is probably the best. ShopSavvy uses your phone's camera as a barcode scanner and can search the Internet for the best value available (both at local stores and on the Internet) for any product.
• WikiTap—A nice looking browser for Wikipedia. It has a built in keypad which uses predictive text for quick searches without opening your keyboard as well as links to videos about your query.
  
• Sky Map—A planetarium for your phone, Sky Map uses your phones GPS to determine your location and show a map of the sky which is constantly being updated as you move your phone. Beautiful and perfect for star gazers.
  

Palm Reaches Out To Developers

Now that Palm is set to release a new phone with a new operating system, the work of recruiting developers begins. To that end, they've set up a developer blog and are asking for input on topics relating to developing on their OS. It's certainly a refreshing change of pace for a company which has kept its hardware and software hidden under a veil of secrecy for so long.

My Favorite PalmOS Applications

All the hype about the Palm Pre and its new operating system has made me nostalgic for the old PalmOS applications which I've enjoyed on my various Palm PDAs and smartphones. These applications are the real reason why I still use my Pam TX and occasionally a Treo 680 even though their OS is ancient in gadget terms and I have a modern T-Mobile G1 which runs rings around them in many ways. One can only hope that when Palm's new OS premieres that it attracts the kind of developer support that leads to the creation of nice apps like these:

• DateBk5—Palm has some great built in personal information manager (PIM) applications, its Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, and Memo applications are all excellent, but DateBk takes them a step further. Utilizing the same databases as the PIMs, DateBk5 expands on them by adding features such as templates, Floating Events which are to do items on steroids, the ability to link your appointments to contacts, to do items, and memos, and icons. The original DateBk application was so good that Handspring used a stripped down version of it as the default calendar on its Visor handhelds and later on the first Treo smartphones. Sadly, Palm dropped it in favor of its own calendar app on later Treos when it bought Handspring. But DateBk is has survived and has only gotten better over the years. It's a must have application for anyone who wants to get more from their Palm.
• HandyShopper—A powerful shopping list which allows you to track your shopping by item, store, price, or even by aisle, HandyShopper allows you to estimate the cost of your shopping trip and can even account for local sales taxes. HandyShopper is a good example of what makes PDAs useful. No longer are you subject to the tyranny of your feeble memory or chicken scratch hand writing. You can just write down what you need in medium which is a little harder to lose than a piece scrap of paper.
  
• PalmFiction—Probably the best e-book reader available for the PalmOS, PalmFiction features custom fonts, screen rotation, autoscroll, and good-looking skins. It can also be configured to maximize your screen real estate.
• CorePlayer/TCPMP—CorePlayer spent a long time as a free beta called TCPMP but even in its beta stage, it was an excellent video player that could play videos off a Palm's SD card. I ripped a bunch of my old DVDs to watch on my LifeDrive during long commutes. This was at a time when the iPod was still new and still couldn't play video. Today, CorePlayer has added streaming Youtube videos to its repertoire and looks great a on my three year old Palm TX.
• OliveTree BibleReader—I was raised pretty religious and one of my biggest pet peeves has always been expositor who would jump rapidly from one verse to another during a sermon. BibleReader was the solution to this problem. It allows you to keep a complete copy of the Bible on your PDA or Smartphone. With a wide variety of translations in a number of languages available BibleReader is a great tool for anyone who is religious or just interested religion.
• Novii Remote—Back when everyone carried a Palm Pilot, it was a common sight to see business people "beaming" each other their business cards with the Palm's infrared port. Now that PDAs have declined and smartphones have ascended in popularity, the advent of Bluetooth and the fragmentation of mobile usage into different incompatible platforms, the IR port sees a lot less use. But it doesn't have to be that way. Most PDAs like the Palm TX have fairly powerful IR ports (smartphones on the other hand have fairly IR ports if they have on at all) and could be used as a television remote control if they had the right software. Novii Remote is that software. It's perfect for controlling multiple TVs and television accessories like TiVos, DVD players, and sound systems.
• Diddlebug—A simple drawing, note-taking, and alarm application, Diddlebug is so good that Palm tried to copy it but I never really liked their version. So I include Diddlebug here, its a great little application.
• PhoneSearch—Palm has always had very good search tools on it smartphones but this little application does one thing extremely well. It searches your contacts not by name but by number. It's a nice little simple application which can come in very handy.
• McPhling—I almost forgot this application because it's so unobtrusive but I probably use it more than any other program on my Palm. McPhling is a task switcher which pops up a menu of favorite and most recently used applications. Most newer Palms and Treos pop up a similar menu when you hold the home button but McPhling is much more comprehensive. It's list is holds more programs, it includes favorites, and it includes support for Desk Accessories, little mini-applications which can pop up in front of your current application and allow you to perform tasks without leaving your current application. It's about as close as you can get to multitasking on the ancient PalmOS.
  

Lie to Me—It's Like House With Perp Walks

The trouble with police procedurals is that there are so many of them that it's hard to stand out. Some resort to gimmicks to stand out. Fox's new show Lie to Me is a case in point. It centers around a police/FBI consultant played by Tim Roth who specializes in "deception analysis" who uses body language and facial expressions to tell when a witness is lying and his team. Tim Roth plays a cynical House-like character who likes to use his skills to shove peoples lies on their face. He's quite brilliant and always right. His team functions mainly as researchers and as a sounding board—a lot like House's team of doctors.

I don't think that this is a coincidence, House is one Fox's most successful scripted shows and it makes sense that they'd look for shows that duplicate it formula in some way. But does Lie to Me work the same House does? I'm not sure. House is very much an acquired taste. It took me a long time to get into it. And judging by the long time that House took to catch on with viewers I'm not alone.

But House did catch on and clearly Fox hopes that this show will catch on as well. And therein lies my problem with this show. Part of House's appeal for me is Dr. House's misanthropic personality. Dr. Cal Lightman by comparison is a fully functional human being with a precocious daughter and happy home life. His only real personality problem is that he doesn't seem able to turn off his knack for reading people's lies. While this makes abrasive and annoying at times, it doesn't make him particularly interesting.

Shark vs Zombie

Damn Cool Pics brings us the one of the coolest things things ever:

Awesome!

Pandora Developer On Palm webOS

Palminfocenter interviews Tom Conrad of Pandora Internet Radio. He talks about Palm's upcoming Pre phone and its webOS operating system and sounds excited about the new OS and its possibilities.