I previously mentioned that D'Anna is my favorite of Battlestar's recurring characters. Hers is to me one of the most simultaneously beautiful, tragic, and inspiring stories I have ever watched on television. D'Anna's story is one we all know -- it is the story of Eve, and all the others who have reached for the forbidden fruit --yet it deviates from the archetype in important ways that make D'Anna's story not one of a fall, but an apotheosis, an elevation to divinity.

For most of the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica, the show's supposed "bad guys", the Cylons, remained a mysterious, malevolent force, striking out from the shadows like the bogey man of children's nightmares. The few glimpses we had into their society -- notably "The Farm" -- suggested a foreign culture that enhanced rather than diminished the alienation Battlestar's characters, and its audiences, felt towards the Cylons. Then season two's "Downloaded" offered an open view into life of three Cylons, showing them to be not as different as we had thought, and humanizing them. Season three spent an entire story arc on a Cylon ship, a decision that generated much controversy. Many, including the show's own Jamie Bamber (Lee "Apollo" Adama), thought that the unknown, mechanical nature of the Cylons had been their greatest asset, and that by stripping the mystery away, they had been weakened as enemies. While I understand this point of view, I personally disagree it with it.

Some time ago I revisited a video game entitled Rome: Total War. Rome is, like its predecessors, a hybrid strategy game that combines high-level turn-based strategic planning with low-level real-time tactical battles. In terms of its gameplay, it's one of the most complicated and enjoyable video games ever made; one of the best the strategy genre as ever produced, at least. (In terms of everything else -- well, it really has nothing else. No plot, no interesting artistic direction, etc.)

The tragedy at Virginia Tech has generated a spectrum of responses from a multitude of people; some offering sympathy for those connected to the dead, some using the tragedy to bring gun control issues back to debate (whether in an honest attempt to prevent future tragedies or simply to further their own political agendas), and some expressing understandable outrage at the murderer, and, more disturbingly but still understandably, at the fact that, by killing himself, he prevented people from administering "justice" to him -- their idea of "justice" being something similar to the suggestion in the title, which is an almost direct quote from a fellow student.