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.)"

WTF is wrong with people.

There is a story about a lose animal. And Bush is know as Chimpy, but you automatically assume it means Obama is a ape and it's a racist overtone?

Why would cops be shooting an animal unless it was loose and threatening. The joke is that a loose animal is smarter than Congress.

The quintina is simply an harmonic singing you can hear a similar effect much more clearly in this sift http://www.videosift.com/video/Overtone-singing. Note that he's not whistling while singing he's reinforcing particular harmonic with is mouth, like we do in a less accentuated way when pronouncing particular vowel.

Good post, great to see common sense articulated so well. I'm listening to the Quintana Illusion but I don't hear the 5th voice, is it some sort of high-pitched overtone or something like that? If anyone has an example of that "voice" being isolated that would be nice to hear.

I don't think Bush's statement is THAT wrong & naive. The Muslim fundamentalists certainly hate the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard because he is free, ie, free of Muslim dogma regarding cartoons. The Palestinians hate the Israelis for a completely different reason though.

I agree that social & political aspects play a huge part as well as religion in the Gaza troubles, I just want to point out that there are subtle distinctions between "justice", "social justice" and "fairness" and so on, but that these terms are used more or less interchangeably in the media.

Fairness, for one, belongs in games & sports. Despite this, It's often heard in regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict as the argument "The Israelis are evil because they have such powerful weapons. The Palestinians don't stand a chance". Clearly a silly argument.

Social Justice, as I've so far understood it, carries overtones of a sense of justice extraneous to the legal system, but by which people somehow are entitled to be treated. Usually this is heard in the context of social inequality, as an argument for redistribution. This is why I call it envy.

I don't understand it the way you use it though.

It's reasonable to say that they're acting violently out of poverty & desperation, but how does that have anything to do with justice?

Seriously though, this was nothing less than an excellently made advert for christianity, and no one realises it!

Seriously! The first guy he met with a different cupboard? Horizontal black and white. That's right, he places BLACK (devil) and WHITE (god) on the same level! They both show up at Sanjeev's house wearing identical suits, clearly indicating overtones of the sterile perfection in "Equilibrium". He's got a microwave on his dressing table, clearly used to torture small animals. He tells Sanjeev that "if you want you can borrow my manual" and what does Sanjeev do? That's right, he flips out, starts talking in tongues, he's clearly possessed by some sort of demon.

He goes round to his uncle's and he sees a purple drawer. The colour of the tempest, bringing disarray and wild commotion into his life. It's clearly the colour of the dreaded gay. Calling up his nephew to play football? Sounds like a paedophile to me.

So he builds his own cupboard, and we see the inevitable result - he has become such a twisted terrible person that people are disgusted by his presence. Shunned by his own family and strangers on the street he takes to mindless acts of violence. He experiments with cupboards, makes a deformed monstrosity which the devil compells him to destroy and finally settles on a cupboard with all the colours OF THE GAY FLAG. He puts his own cupboard on a public walkway to try and advertise his travesty to others, and when someone trips over his cupboard, he kicks theirs into a river. Vandal. Probably raped one of those girls too.

Eventually the sad ending to the story, he begins to disregard and disrespect his parents even more, he's beyond help. They probably got him a little starter cupboard set from matalan but he didn't care. You can clearly see him locking them in a devilish prison made from their own cupboards at 6:56. They become old and die in this prison and never see the light of day again. He keeps a picture of them on his GAY CUPBOARD for ever more, torturing their restless souls which were never allowed to find peace.

Then he showed all of his gay friends.

Christianity, guys, it fucking works.

I hear overtones!

>> ^quantumushroom:
The problem with labeling anything 'fringe' is yesterday's normal is today's fringe and vice versa.

Totally agree. The Overton window moves around all the time, and for the last 2-3 decades, liberals haven't been systematically trying to push it in any direction.

That's changed.

Thanks for showing us how to do it, by the way.

I missed it myself, but Don (my husband) has had the honor of hearing this kind of overtone singing in our living room by a man named Mark Patterson. Says it was amazing and beautiful.

I completely agree with you - man creates all of these problems. Religion is one of the tools which man uses to shape cultures and ideaologies around the world.

This leaves us with incompatible religions which are all incompatible with modern rationalism, leaving us with conflict between all the world cultures.

Religion is responsible for a much wider change in a believer's perception of reality than a simple following of the teachings of Jesus/Mohammed/Buddha. It is an ideaology which creates boundaries with other conflicting ideaologies.

The irony is that Jesus/Mohammed/Buddha and every other great thinker of the last 3000 years has been preaching the dissolving of boundaries and hierarchy.

The felt presence of a higher reality or an inner intent to all of nature is at the heart of ancient religion and shamanism. This is not what modern religion is. What modern religion is needs to be finished with.

Thanks for your comment

In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
Hitler was an atheist, Stalin was an atheist. Martin Luther King was a Christian. The problem isn't religion, the problem is man (imo). In other words, if god isn't real, then there is only man. And then that makes religion a man made institute. Thus, its man that is the problem, not religion. Depends on what you mean by religion as well. If you are saying that following Christ's rule of the golden rule, do onto others as you would have them do onto you is a bad thing that causes evil I would have to say what is good then? If you are saying that men corrupt the heart of what that religious body stands for and then uses his power to distort all that he has influence over, then yes, I would agree that is a problem. But the problem still lays with man at that point, not religion.

I don't mean to be adversarial or anything, just trying to stress a point.

But on the topic of the video, I don't agree with his sentements that the only good trooper is a Christian one, lots of people of different faiths and non-faiths have died for this country.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
Religion is one of the most powerful recruting tools available to the US military.


Why else could it be that they so badly want to have creationism taught in schools?
Why else could it be that Commander in Chief must be a christian?
Why else is it that the illegal invasion of Iraq is seeping with religious overtones?

9/11 was a huge message to the world that the problem of religion really must be addressed.

Hitler was an atheist, Stalin was an atheist. Martin Luther King was a Christian. The problem isn't religion, the problem is man (imo). In other words, if god isn't real, then there is only man. And then that makes religion a man made institute. Thus, its man that is the problem, not religion. Depends on what you mean by religion as well. If you are saying that following Christ's rule of the golden rule, do onto others as you would have them do onto you is a bad thing that causes evil I would have to say what is good then? If you are saying that men corrupt the heart of what that religious body stands for and then uses his power to distort all that he has influence over, then yes, I would agree that is a problem. But the problem still lays with man at that point, not religion.

I don't mean to be adversarial or anything, just trying to stress a point.

But on the topic of the video, I don't agree with his sentements that the only good trooper is a Christian one, lots of people of different faiths and non-faiths have died for this country.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
Religion is one of the most powerful recruting tools available to the US military.


Why else could it be that they so badly want to have creationism taught in schools?
Why else could it be that Commander in Chief must be a christian?
Why else is it that the illegal invasion of Iraq is seeping with religious overtones?

9/11 was a huge message to the world that the problem of religion really must be addressed.

Religion is one of the most powerful recruting tools available to the US military.


Why else could it be that they so badly want to have creationism taught in schools?
Why else could it be that Commander in Chief must be a christian?
Why else is it that the illegal invasion of Iraq is seeping with religious overtones?

9/11 was a huge message to the world that the problem of religion really must be addressed.

>> ^deedub81:It's obvious what they do; They attempt to "balance" the news by reporting with obvious conservative overtones.


That is not "obviously" what they do.

Nothing that they do is related to "balance."

But explaining that to you is time wasted since I've got a pretty good idea of what you're all about, anyway.

Amen, MG!

A major problem we have in this country: Close mindedness.

"They probably invited those two women on their show because they wanted to hear some dirt about Russia. Fox News is disgustingly one-sided and any instance of the truth or impartiality leaking from its airwaves is purely coincidental and in all likelihood completely unintentional."

Just because you don't like FOX News, doesn't mean they did anything wrong in this situation. I think Fox is a joke and I'm a hardcore conservative. It's obvious what they do; They attempt to "balance" the news by reporting with obvious conservative overtones. It's the opposite of most news organizations and a lot less subtle. Still doesn't mean he was cutting them off.

...and he definitely didn't cut off a twelve year old like the title claims. She was done speaking long before.

Who's making stuff up now?


>> ^MarineGunrock:
As much as I dislike Fox, they did nothing horrible here. They did not cut anyone off. They have a schedule to keep, and they told the girl and her aunt that. He then respectfully told them he had no more time.
So downvote for painting a situation.
I fucking hate it when people do that.

I'll start with saying I'm glad I misread you -- there are so many people here in the US who repeat these kinds of things out of pure partisanship. What was in that clip was no reasoned debate, condemning Obama's use of fear, it was two propagandists for the right-wing party trying to spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about the opposition party's candidate for the Presidency.

I agree with your assessment that the low point of Obama's trip was the Israel leg. He always steps up his rhetoric about Iran, and that makes me nervous. He did the same thing when speaking to AIPAC here in the states (the pro-Israel lobby), and he caught a lot of flak for it from his base.

I think the main thing Europeans have to worry about is the echoes of 9/11 that are still ringing here in this country. They're no longer clearly audible, but it's just below our register, affecting our subconscious. The public in this country will not elect anyone who would not make the appeal to the world to aid us in our so-called "fight against extremism".

However, if you look back at his earlier comments from the beginning of the primary, you'd see he spent a lot of time talking about the need to "change our mindset" and to not act out of fear. That's part of why he's got Hope and/or Change emblazoned on his signs and bumper stickers. Hillary (and the rest of the Democratic field) blasted him for being "weak on terror", and he made a clear turn about a year ago to make sure he kept sounding a tougher line about extremism.

I think he's now in a place where he has to keep the momentum on this going, because he can't win without doing that.

That said, he has made it clear he will listen to our allies more -- so even if he does get carried away, I do think pressure from Europe would affect him. I think if he wins, he will begin the long process of trying to reverse the pervasive fear running through the populace -- fears that Bush amplified for his own purposes.

John McCain on the other hand will happily give Europe the middle finger if they protest an American plan to invade Iran, because many people here think that shows "good leadership" and "independence". He'll also happily continue to perpetuate those fears about terrorism. He has said on many occasions that the "fight against Islamic Extremism is the transcendent challenge of the 21st century."

From what I see, Bush has pushed this country a great distance towards fascism. McCain's a member of the same political party, and it's clear that all the same advisers have gotten their hooks into McCain, because he's gone from a moderate that I actually kinda liked, to being in lock step with Bush, not only on issue positions, but also the combative, disrespectful, fear mongering overtones. He's also got the media propagandists helping him (like the ones in your clip), who dig up ridiculous claims like Obama is a muslim, or a terrorist, or that he wasn't born in the US (which would make him ineligible for the Presidency).

That's why I reacted the way I did to your post.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
I hope you're following my line of thinking, I'm brainstorming it all right out in full flow...

To Americans, these events will be soaked in pride, hope and patriotism, there is nothing wrong with that.

But to a British politician or to the Lords who have reign over the politicians, it paints a very different picture. It's one thing when Luther King makes speeches about civil rights in this way, it's another when Obama talks about uniting forces against extremism, and even goes as far as talking about Iranian nukes. That's the language of fear, that's the kicker, that's the alarm bell - and I mean that in the most literal sense, this language of fear is one of the things Winston Churchill warned about in the tomes of books he wrote after WW2, about how the world must avoid the same thing happening again, and how he regretted that Britian didn't move sooner against Germany.

These are very specific things contained in Obama's speeches, and I really don't know what to make of it. I think you should be thankful that at least somebody in American media saw this from a perspective of history. WW2 is very fresh in the minds of people in England, the country is soaked in the history of that war in every town and city and bit of countryside and Obama's words are very potent and a bit scary to be frank in that context.

That's why I say it's all about persepective, and what makes it frightening is that Obama's speechwriters couldn't have made it any more potent in the context of WW2.

Phew.