this is cool too:

Improved measurement of the shape of the electron - 2011
- J. J. Hudson,D. M. Kara,I. J. Smallman,B. E. Sauer, M. R. Tarbut & E. A. Hinds

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7348/full/nature10104.html

briefly

"Here we use cold polar molecules to measure the electron EDM at the highest level of precision reported so far, providing a constraint on any possible new interactions. We obtain de = (−2.4 ± 5.7stat ± 1.5syst) × 10−28e cm, where e is the charge on the electron, which sets a new upper limit of |de| < 10.5 × 10−28e cm with 90 per cent confidence. This result, consistent with zero, indicates that the electron is spherical at this improved level of precision."

Since it ate Kara already, I think I'll go ahead and get in...it's definitely not hungry any more. Who's with me?

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by campionidelmondo.

Anton Karas, the composer and performer of this piece, died 25 years ago.

I'm with dag for once. By Ron Moore's own admission, the writers painted themselves into a corner without a game plan, which I might be fine with if it wasn't so painfully obvious. I loved the mystery behind various things (head-Six's existence, Kara's apparent death and reappearance, the dreams and prophecies, etc.), but I expected an answer that made sense and wasn't completely out of place and so unsatisfying.

I don't resent them for a supernatural explanation, but I do for abandoning everything that was so good about the writing and settling on a pathetic and hollow deus ex machina. If you're going to write a show like this, for fuck's sakes, come up with a game plan. Ron Moore said the show was envisioned with a beginning, middle, and end, but I'll eat my liver if this was the ending he had in mind.

Well, yeah, of course she was brought back as an angel, but as a show that prided itself on keeping itself more realistic than other scifi, by using technology that was closer to our own and not completely, completely unfeasible it just makes no sense.

Everything that's wrong with religion if it were true out here suddenly applies in that universe, because ultimately in the show there is a god, and the god does have influences in the world, and can basically do anything, like create an extra kara thrace out of thin air, and poof her gone again.

It makes no goddamn sense!

The whole show had a nice ambiguity to its religious context and myths, which was good, but in the end all the bullshit myths - everything - was true! This carries a hell of a lot of repercussions to all the actions in the show and in the end it is just completely unsatisfying.

If they had not played with being closer to our own reality and introduced the supernatural elements more deeply intertwined in the story, then I'm sure I would have been more forgiving - like, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or True Blood for that sake, which handles its demons and gods and all that stuff fine within its own universe. BSG really, really wants to be our universe, which just makes it invalid, because it very clearly is not our universe. Its internal consistency is shot to hell and makes me want to punch a puppy in the face.

I rate it 10 sturgeon faces.

NERDS!

Kidding. Just watched it. I think when Kara Thrace left the first time (what was it, season 3?) she did fly to the 13th colony Earth and crash landed. She was then brought back as an angel.

Her being the 'harbinger of death' was confusing. I think it's that way because she's the one that brings them to our Earth to start the whole process over, which will eventually lead to the same demise of humanity? Dunno, just a hunch that's what they meant.

I have to admit, I kind of saw this being the precursor to our current human timeline from the get-go. The use of Greek gods/Zodiakos tipped me off in the beginning, and somehow I had a strong inkling they would be the start of our world leaving behind mythology as their legacy. I did think Baltar was shaping up to be Jesus, though. 150,000 years is a far cry from 2000, so I suppose that theory doesn't hold much water now seeing the ending.

I didn't think it was as bad as everyone keeps saying. It was not horrible. Sure, it could've been better, but it's a TV show. They have to stretch it out, which always leads to plot holes and loose logic.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

No, we just promote hypnotoad to the front page every few months.

(BTW, Osaka kara, konnichi-wa, mina-san.)

Kara Finnstrom filed this report for us, all by herself!

Seriously, she sounds exactly like Tricia Takanawa, no?

>> ^Edeot:
The only thing I was mad about as far as loose ends would be Kara being the "harbinger of death."

Kara's vision lead her to leoban after outbreak of the cylon civil war, this lead to the destruction of the hub, which brought death to the cylons, not destruction, only death, mortality.

That ties up much better than what happens to her when they get to earth.

The whole "We screwed up with technology, so we should dispense with sterilization" thing is full bore stupid. Even the staunches technophobe understands that some basic knowledge about physics/medicine is worth having.

The only thing I was mad about as far as loose ends would be Kara being the "harbinger of death." Technically, she did lead the human race to its doom, since now they'll mate with cylons and Earth natives, thereby mixing the gene pool and killing off the human species as they knew it.

But what I was really pissed about wasn't so much the climax, it was the denouement-

1). Really? Chief wants to live on an island all alone for the rest of his life? Doesn't he realize in three years he'll go completely insane and start talking to a volleyball?

2). What? Adama, too? Just cuz his chick died, he doesn't ever wanna see his son or friends again?

3). Everybody is tired of technology?? Call me insane, but I like my central air and medicine! I like comfortable living! I like knowing that the average human won't die off at age 40! All this progress they've made, ruined. Not even 150k years later have we even come close to what they had.

Starbuck is an angel. She has been, perceivably, since the very beginning of the show. We cant really know for sure, wether it was real kara up to the eye of juptier, and then an angel, or if it was angel kara all along. Most theories ive read, see Kara as being the one true angel since day dot.

Hera was the best DNA of the last of the colonial technological genus. She represented everything that was good in both the colonials, and the skin-job's (who were ultimately a re-creation of the final 5's race of cylons).

Her role in the film was to impart these beneficial traits onto the rest of humanity on earth, in the hopes that they can break the cycle of humans and non-humans going to war with one another every few thousand years. Instead of just telling humanity to stop building machines of war, without regard to safeguards, and hoping for the best....change humanity, attack the root of the problem. Thus, Hera.

Angels don't always have to be pure and good

The other skinjobs didn't get resurrection, as Tyrol killed Tory, which prevented Anders from unifying the 5 minds of the final 5 to regain the knowledge of resurrection. Presumably a large chunk of the skin jobs died in the last moments of the colony fight (the Cavil's side certainly was wiped out, as his entire fleet was parked at the colony, and the nuclear missiles from the dead raptor pushed its orbit into the event horizon shortly after galactica jumped to earth.)

All along the watchtower wasn't anything meaningful other than as a method for starbuck to plot the correct jump cords. That it was a well known song has no bearing on the storyline at all, just a cool song.

Well, Homo Sapiens should evolve on any planet that's very similar to earth, so its not that much of a shock.

Starbucks rotting viper/corpse may of been an event to trigger her into finding the way back to earth...the REAL earth, and not the final-five's home planet. Either way, the last Starbuck we all saw, post-juptier, was an angel.

Lost is superior in every way. BSG was good up until, well, basically everything with Hera was for naught. "Angels" or whatever they were. Kara Thrace ended up just being crap. I like things that make sense and as weird and fucked up Lost is, it makes much, much more sense than BSG. Rest in Piece, BSG, you died a horrible death. Hopefully no one is going to resurrect your stinking corpse in a spin-off.

(oops..)

>> ^EDD:
I'm sorry I only have the time to downvote a couple of pretentious tossers' comments, and sorry that I don't have the time to delve into the revelations at the moment, but rest assured I will take the time in the next 24 hours or so to express how I felt/feel about the finale.
And gwiz, what the frak is that, equating Lost and BSG?... You are dead to me.

I read this on EW.com, and it does a good job of explaining why I disliked Kara's exit so vehemently:

"For all of its religious overtones and prophetical trappings, Battlestar Galactica has been a show rooted in the real. It was defined by a very real holocaust and the harsh realities of a world lost, of shattered hope, that gave the show its shape. For characters to die, and come back from the dead, and vanish into thin air...feels like a betrayal of that fundamental premise. Is she an angel, as Baltar would claim? A collective figment of everyone's imagination? I know that Ron Moore has said that Kara is whatever we want her to be. I want her to make sense. (And who, exactly, was Kara the Harbinger of Death for? The Cylons? Not for the humans, clearly.)"

Ultimately... I think the writers just wrote themselves into multiple corners, plain and simple. It's a pretty big fuck-up when you take such an amazing television series and just write stuff because it seems cool, without any plan or vision as to where it will lead, or how you're going to tie it up and explain it.

Kara being an angel? Bullshit. They painted themselves into a corner after they decided to "resurrect" her (or perhaps when they had her drawing the Eye of Jupiter throughout her childhood). Even so, couldn't they have done better? I saw someone suggest the idea that the resurrected Kara could actually be a clone, created from Kara's ovaries (from when Kara was in the Cylon hospital on Caprica). I don't like that idea just for the fact that it wouldn't truly be Kara, but it strikes me as a more interesting, more reasonable explanation. But perhaps it would've been best to not kill her in the first place.

Head Six and Baltar being angels? They painted themselves into that corner way back in season 1, when Shelly Godfrey showed up. I remember thinking, after watching that episode, "there's no way they're going to be able to adequately explain this." No surprise: I was right.

Kara being the harbinger of death? They'd been repeating that over and over again, but I didn't see it. Same with Hera being essential to the story. I didn't see either of those things. I've heard it theorized that the vast majority of the colonists would've died on Earth 2, and in that sense, Kara was a harbinger of death. And perhaps Hera being a hybrid made her and her descendants strong enough to survive in those conditions. Which I might actually accept, except that I didn't see any hints of either of those in the finale.

Those are the main ones, I guess. I'm sure I'll think of more.