My cousin sent me this and I thought you all might enjoy it.
and here is the link: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.comicsalliance.com/media/2010/05/periodictable-2.jpg
Orphan. giggle
I’ve been on the record for quite some time as being on the Bashir bandwagon, as one might remember from this ancient thread. 
Your discussion of the relative difficulty levels of trivia questions reminded me of a Harry Potter trivia contest I won back in my first year of college… because I won by knowing answers to questions like, what are the four Houses; where did Harry get his wand, etc etc. I did enjoy winning a pair of HP glasses, though
I also concur with the posters who praise the general complexity of a number of DS9’s villains - Winn was just annoying at first, but she’s so seriously misguided she becomes evil (kind of like Dukat…). But I’ve got to disagree with the Keiko hate. Sure she’s not perfect, but I was never bothered by her, and always kind of understood her possessiveness and worry for the people she cared about. Sometimes that got out of hand, but in the end, she doesn’t fall into the d-bag category for me.
Great dialogue 
Keiko was such a weird character. I think the writers wanted to portray a “not perfect” marriage. That was the premise for most of Deep Space Nine, to depart from Roddenberry’s vision. In the end, Keiko became the nagging wife always interrupting Miles’ fun. She was never happy and in the end, just annoying. It’s sad because I really liked when she was involved with the school and I was hoping she would get more involved with the Bajoran culture and politics, a character to give the layman point of view.
That. I guess I was always bothered by that particular portrayal (she’s ruining Miles’s fun! oh no! the terrible, terrible annoying wife lady!), rather than her actions themselves. This feminist isn’t too happy about that - it’s like the show wants Miles to be able to be single/free/acting like a 5 year old, and it therefore demonizes at times Keiko’s pulling him back into his familial responsibilities. There is also the whole issue of her following Miles to DS9 and “giving up” her own work in order to advance his career, a move that often puts stress on relationships [though to be fair, later in the series she does get to do some stuff in her specialty]. A dual-career couple with a child, though, that’s a complicated situation in our society, and evidently, in Trek society, too.
and of course it’s the wife who gives up her career… (though I know there are other examples in Trek of women with careers being successful in them… how are their personal lives going?)
Hm. This is something that I feel like I need to rewatch a bunch of things to formulate something more systematic about family life, personal relationships, and gender.
Yeah. It was poorly done. Then again, perhaps that’s how they wanted it to go. They definitely wanted tension between them but I don’t know.
Anyway, I don’t leave Miles out of this either. He takes such a passive role whenever anything involves their relationship. Whenever they fight, he pouts like a child. He forces her to take a motherly role with him instead of living as partners. It’s frustrating to watch.
Of course, Keiko takes the brunt of it because we see it from Miles’ POV and we are more familiar with him. But listening to the way you describe it, “demonizes”. Yeah, that’s exac-T-ly it.
I think “hate” is a strong word for Keiko. For me, she just never seemed to fit in, and she had zero point zero chemistry with Miles. She just never worked on any level. I cheered when, in “The House of Quark”, she took Miles’ advice and decided to go to the planet for a six month expedition.
not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet…
the last airbender movie that was mentioned on the cast is actually based on the animated series “avatar: the last airbender”. this is one of my all time favourite tv shows (after BSG and firefly) and i recomend checking it out.
its light and fun, but its also kids doing serious things, with serious story lines…hope you like it
I just finished watching “Dorkness Rising”.
Awesome.
Sorry for the late posting on this. I really enjoyed this podcast and wanted to share. But over a month ago iTunes suddenly decided to require a new account for everyone, and in order to get that new account, you had to give them your address at the time of getting the account- which for me was 7 addresses ago! It took a very long time and many rounds of email with the iTunes guy before I could get the address, and start downloading podcasts again. (My computer is too old to make sense of podcasts directly off the internet.) So now I’m back, and pleased to say I’ve figured out MultiQuote!..
That was an awesome clip! Thank you!
This was a really great podcast for me. I teach biology, and I used to teach at another school in Casablanca. Of course, I taught the foundation of biology, evolution. But the director at the time was a huge believer in Intelligent Design, though in truth, a lot of his arguments were more Literal Creationists Old Earth beliefs. He was constantly at odds with me on this. I myself am “religious”, in that I am a Christian, and believe the tenants of that belief. I even spent a couple days in class letting students talk about their beliefs, before I taught the science.
When I refused to teach Intelligent Design or other Literal Creationism, he began mandatory classes in Intelligent Design for all high school students, even if they had never taken biology. These classes were designed to sway them towards Intelligent Design. Contrary to my suggestions to use a book like “Darwin’s Ghost: Origin of a Species Updated”, where the English is easier to understand, he insisted they read the first chapter of the original. So students for whom English was a fourth language were struggling through this 19th century English language with advanced scientific terms. Then he taught them “both sides”, with the majority of the time focused on the evidence for intelligent design. Then he turned to the other sciences, to deconstruct them as well, arguing that the sun was powered by gravitational collapse, and other strange ideas that were disproved a century ago.
So I had students coming in, in a highly authoritarian culture, not sure if they should believe me, the biology teacher, or the director. Everything I had taught in biology was now undercut- and everything I hadn’t taught yet was now suspect. It was simply “another theory”.
I finally realized what I needed to do when I learned that the director accepted my presence only because there were other science teachers there (who unfortunately are still there) who did not accept evolution. My presence therefore justified the existence of the other side, to him, so that there was “equal time”. And I realized as a matter of professional integrity, I could not remain. And I quit.
As they said in the podcast, Sisko’s take on this was excellent. A belief that the Wormhole Aliens are prophets in no way denies that they are also wormhole aliens. Yes, our science dictates that they are wormhole aliens, and there is no denying that. But in the same way, by Gould’s NOMA, Non-Overlapping Magisterium, science can’t really address if those aliens are also prophet/gods. (I do think though that NOMA also has it’s limitations if it’s strictly limited to the ethical realm, as Gould would have it.) Science gives us the what and how, not the why. But to then turn around and demand that science justifies my religious beliefs in some way not only diminishes science; it also diminishes my religion. It is bad science, and bad theology.
Have you read any of the late Stephen Jay Gould’s thoughts on this? He was a great biologist and evolutionists, founder of the Theory of Punctuated Equilibrium, along with Eldredge, and really good at explaining biology and science for the common man. He had this interesting essay on Galileo, where he argued that, as Pike said, this was a political argument, but more than that, a personal argument. As you pointed out, there were other guys at the time talking about a round Earth that wasn’t the center of things. But Galileo, in his zeal for true science, wrote a book in which the title character was Simplicio, and was clearly the Roman Pope. To make matters worse, he and the Pope were formerly friends. Now, you don’t go around calling the most powerful man in the known world a Douche, especially if you were formerly friends, and get away with it. The Pope had no choice but to imprison him.
Gould, no friend of religion himself, goes on to point out how both the religious folks and the scientific folks have since then made this huge story about the clash between religion and science, but the history just doesn’t bear that out. It was actually more of a class between two egos, says Gould.
I really enjoyed that series, especially the first ones. I think they kind of ran out of steam a bit though when Flint started farming out the books to other authors. It’s Flint’s voice I liked. Still some of the best of alternative history out there.
I think I always liked Keiko because 1) I saw the actress in Joy Luck Club and thought she was awesome, and 2) Keiko was hot.
I found out a week ago she was the Korean girl Klinger marries from MAS*H as well. And to hotness, well, now she’s not.
Really? Still looks so to me! 
I saw that as well, was watching it as well and thought I recognise her
I totally agree.
Have you listened to the director’s commentary for IM2? Favs comments about Black Widow’s fighting style… and his own boxing. LOL I think they did a fantastic job!
Favs talked about the Disney-Stark similarity in his commentary, too.