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It’s been more than a fracking year, but this Friday the wait will pay off. I’ll be parked in front of a TV set watching the opening of Season Four of Battlestar Galactica. I’ve not written about it here before, but it is in my estimation, the best thing ever put in television, easily outdoing everything that has come before it in the science fiction genre, and a substantial portion of everything else. For once a show that happens to have to be set in space has been created under the assumption that it can and will be enjoyed by adults of higher than average intelligence.

There are no silly pseudo-scientific solutions to the problems faced by the characters, no last-minute inventions based on theoretical particle or temporal physics. It is instead a basic human drama set in a time of catastrophic events, not so unlike what we’ve come to experience and imagine to be plausible in our own reality, or perhaps in the reality that has been visited upon others. In one sequence of episodes, a planet settled by the human protagonists is occupied by the antagonistic, genocidal Cylons, leading the humans to struggle with the idea of, and to ultimately carry out suicide bombings as a means of resistance.

The plot arc of the first three of four planned seasons have covered topics ripped from the streams of cultural and political consciousness: Stolen elections, war crimes, trust, marriage, family, and a peculiarly thoughtful twist on the old boilerplate of science fiction television, what constitutes being human.

Season three climaxes as four core characters discover suddenly that they are actually not humans as they’ve long assumed but Cylon sleeper agents of unknown purpose, it made my very skin crawl. After hating Cylons all their lives, they suddenly are Cylon robots made to appear and act human. The philosophical implications for the current political culture are staggering. When terrorists are the ultimate villains, what happens when those who fight terrorism are viewed through other eyes as terrorists themselves? Down becomes up; heroes, villains, and so on. The moral clarity through which one might wish to see the vital polemic struggles of the day are oddly clarified because there are no right answers. Show runner Ron Moore constantly asks the simple question What would real people do in the given situation? Answer: The best they can, which often isn’t enough.

It has been criticized as being a liberal-motivated allegory about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, yet reaches no firm conclusions, leaving the messy moral ambiguity of it all unresolved. Eventually humanity escapes its occupiers in an impressive and complex military operation so richly imagined by the show’s writers and so masterfully filmed in a combination of live-action and CGI special effects that it looks as though it could have been taken from combat footage on CNN.

Battlestar thankfully lacks the stupidity that so often infects nearly all television drama, but is instead played straight by a powerful ensemble led by Mary McDonnell who will for the remainder of her career be best remembered by the honorific “Madame President.” Her ruthless portrayal of the cancer-stricken President Roslin, head of the 50,000-odd survivors of a human population that once numbered in the tens of billions has been daring. It is jarring, when a female head of state, who can’t help but be compared to the real-world counterpart who would be president of our own republic, it is jarring when she orders the summary execution of an enemy agent. Edward James Olmos as the worn-out warrior Admiral William Adama is the opposite of the moralistic philosopher of Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard. He’s instead a soft-spoken leader who not only doesn’t have all the answers, but when pressed isn’t above blatantly lying to motivate the people he leads.

The show is a remake of a forgettable 1970s TV travesty, and the title still tends to trigger memories of Lorne Greene as Bonanza’s Ben Cartwright transplanted to spaceship. The unfortunate circumstance of its title tends to color people’s reaction when I tell them the title of my favorite show. There must always be an explanation. This show is nothing like the original, except in the most basic of plot premise elements: The remainder of humanity stuck on spaceships looking for a planet called Earth they know of only through myths and legends. Eventually they’ll get here. What they’ll find when they do – they may arrive on Earth during the time of the dinosaurs, or in the wake of a latent environmental collapse – is the question that Battlestar Galactica fans like myself will be pondering now through over the course of the next fracking year.

Note: The video below is no longer embeddable. You can see it here.

A great start.

The car just had a flat. Luckily we’re on the Triboro Bridge at the toll booth. The people are helping.

This is what the satellite pictures show of the Northeast tonight. In a few hours I’m expected to board a JetBlue flight to San Francisco for MacWorld. Given the image at right, what are the chances that I make it? Pretty poor. I spent the better part of the evening calling all over the city for a car service that wasn’t booked solid. (Who knew lousy weather prompts people who would otherwise take the subway to work suddenly think it makes sense to spring for a car service? I certainly didn’t.) In any event, I’m expecting Monday is going to be a one-of-a-kind travel adventure, fraught with long lines, impatient waits on the runway, and the kind of fun and games that only JFK International can deliver when the weather goes to Hell. To keep it fun and interesting (for myself at least) I’ll be blogging via Blackberry along the way. Stay tuned. My car arrives in only a few hours!

I don’t do much on Facebook, but I’ve become addicted to playing Scrabulous, an online version of Scrabble. I have been over the last few months, battling through a best-of-seven series against Shel Israel, co-author with Robert Scoble, of Naked Conversations, who I’ve known since I wrote the series of stories on Jambo for Forbes. We’re now into our sixth game: I’m leading three games to two, and as of this writing am ahead by 31 points. Here’s a link to the game. Shel blogged about our match when it was only two or three games old here.

Yes, I know I practically never write anything here these days, but it’s not as I haven’t been busy. I’ve been, among other things, rebuilding my Web clips file, and so far I’ve got three quarters of 2007 done, after which I’ll go back and do similar pages for 2006, 2005, and then the FDC years (2000 to mid-2005) all following the same format. After that I’ll go through the years at EN, IW, NCN, and if time and resources allow, digitize the stuff from before that. (No small feat, that.)

But so far this year, and not counting anything from the first quarter, I’ve written 63 stories, 14 Byte columns, five magazine stories and recorded 40 videos (not counting the one I shot today). Look for yourself:

Second Quarter

Third Quarter

Fourth Quarter to date

Of course none of this reflects what I really spend most of my day doing: Deflecting PR pitches from industry neophytes who haven’t done their research into what I cover, but figure since I cover “technology” that I’ll naturally be interested in their client. They’re the ones who clearly haven’t read any of my recent stories because for some reason they don’t think its necessary because my name is on some list their boss has given them and as such they’re expected to call me, but not smart enough to speak up and say “Hey boss, I don’t think this is Arik’s cup of tea.” Yes, they’re the same ones who are audibly irritated when I tell them I’ve never 1) heard of their client, and 2) have no use a meeting as there’s zero chance I’ll ever write about them and 3) try to find some “angle” that they think will keep me interested, all the while running up the bill they’ll submit to their clients. And yes, I’ll admit: I can sometimes be quite harsh in my rejections, and think nothing of hanging up on an unprepared PR flunkie mid-pitch. It isn’t pleasant, but I have a lot to do, and limited time.

In any event, the above scenario should be less frequent as I finish the build-out of the archives. Even the laziest of PR professionals can Google my name, click on the first link (or third; it varies) and navigate to the “clips” section, and find an itemized list showing what I’ve written recently, and for that matter, in the distant past. Or at least that’s the idea. So ever so slowly, I’ll get these pages built, if only to give the flacks a crutch, and maybe spare myself some unnecessary phone calls.

Over the weekend, I tried to put up a live stream of some John Lee Hooker tunes I have stashed in my iTunes playlist (8 hours worth!) using a program called Nicecast. It didn’t work, despite my best efforts to figure it out. So here’s the next best thing, a couple of live tunes from my bootleg holdings. So here at least is a sample of what I had in mind. The first track, Serves Me Right To Suffer is taken from a 1976 session in Chicago. The other is a 13-minute rendition of Boogie Chillin’ from a performance in Montigny Les Metz, France in either 1981 or 1983. So, at least now you have an idea of what I had in mind. And yes, it still seems like a good day to play the blues.