(no subject)

Christians plan response to Atheist bus adverts.

A trinity of Christian groups have created their own series of advertisements to run across London buses... The new campaign is organsied [sic] by the Christian Party, the Trinitarian Bible Society and the Russian Orthodox Church... In a somewhat cheeky move, the Rev George Hargreaves of the Christian Party has created a bus advert which proclaims: "There definitely is a God. So join the Christian Party and enjoy your life."

Now, I definitely have no problem with this. My one concern is that the Humanists had to put the 'probably' into 'there probably isn't a God' in order to cover themselves from complaints by any fundamentalist wackos that happened to be passing. Will there be any double standard if an atheist complains about the definitive nature of these pro-imaginary being statements? What if we have atheist bus drivers too 'shocked' and 'horrified' to drive buses with those advertisements on?

It's unclear whether the charmless bigots have a position on this yet as they are busy helping to advertise the University of Saint Andrews' amateur performance of Jerry Springer The Opera for them. Isn't that the very spirit of Christian charity?

(no subject)

Happy birthday sfeley!

Battlestar Galactica - [SPOILERS for all season four]

My general opinion of the first half of season four of BSG was unfavourable. With a few minor exceptions it seemed that a position had been reached and the writers didn't really know where to go beyond there. With the Final Four, beyond the episode with Cally, nothing was found to do with that, Starbuck's merry chase around the cosmos was a blatant excuse to waste time and the Cylon civil war might have been interesting if we'd got to see it and if what we did see didn't show that the writers have lost all track of the Cylon society (though to be fair they lost a grip on what Cylons are and aren't called when they occupied New Caprica). And don't even get me started on Lee going from CAG to minor inexperienced politician to being 'the obvious choise to stand in for Roslin'. Although the first episode of the second half was filmed back then, which means the whole thing about the dead Earth, Starbuck's body and the Final Cylon were decided back then, it does seem as though the strike may have been useful to give the writers time to find some shovels to start digging themselves out of the holes they've got themselves in. We're seeing that some people actually are concerned about Starbuck's mysterious return (something which, for dramatic purposes and so Starbuck doesn't spend the rest of the season in the brig, like Athena did), we're seeing the fleet fall apart in a variety of interesting ways and we're standing alongside Gaeta as he discovers those things he's been carrying around in his pants for the last five years are actually a pair of testicles. It does seem as though Baltar is being quietly slipped back to the coward of the start of the show which would be unfortunate if it does happen, I was preferring the more nuanced character with some moral fibre that he seemed to be turning into.

The first half of season four was the worst of season one. The second half of season four looks like it might be the best parts of season two.