Infomaniac: WeBlog

Around the blogs

Links to a report in Forbes on Where Billionaires live; there are tours of the homes of 15 of the world's richest people, from Warren Buffet's modest Omaha home to the palace of a Saudi prince.

Time Goes By is the blog of Ronni Bennett, a former radio and TV producer who writes about the aging process and sometimes muses as 'Crabby Old Lady'; recently 'Crabby' wrote about blogging and its ramifications: women bloggers, friendships made through blogging, and how it reveals our natures. A lovely posting, and it speaks truth:

"A good blog is work and the whiners would do well to tend to their own blog knitting....
More often, however, it is an agreeable process to gradually come to know bloggers through their interests, attitudes, likes and dislikes, senses of humor, photos selected, general outlook, how they carry themselves in this public venue and their styles in expressing it all. And some become friends."

So here's one of my current obsessions these days: Battlestar Galactica, the incredible ongoing space series on the SciFi channel. Praises everywhere for the series, which emphasizes human dilemmas rather than sci-fi glitz; but to me one of the most fascinating thing about it is the Battlestar Blog by creator Ron Moore. Not just a gossipy, newsy blog, Moore discusses the deep questions brought up on the show. The latest posting discusses the bad things the characters do in the series, like torture and killing: is it making a statement on the current world situation or American politics?

I firmly believe that what Kara Thrace did to Leoben in "Flesh and Bone" was wrong. I believe that a society which employs torture on the defenseless captives in its custody has crossed a bright shining line that civilized people should not cross. Likewise, I think that Laura Roslin promising a man freedom only to kill him in the end is abhorrent to the ways in which I want my president to behave. However, I also understand why each of them did what they did...
...These are the debates that I hope you have among yourselves, your families, your friends. I want the show to provoke you into thinking about the times you live in and the choices that are being made all around you every day. In a time when the President of the United States actually asserts that he has the power to arrest without warrant and detain indefinitely without charge or appeal, any citizen (indeed any person on the face of the Earth) simply by designating them as an "illegal combatant," we should all be engaged in a vigorous and energetic debate about who we are as a people and as human beings and exactly how we do intend to respond to the very real threat posed to this nation and to the foundations of liberal democracy posed by people capable of, and willing to, fly airplanes into buildings.

There's an online bulletin board, too, where these questions are being discussed.

posted by liz at 6:17 PM

Comments:

Thanks so much for the mention, Liz. That's very nice of you.

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:16 AM