Are you smarter than the characters in "Stargate Universe"?

Take this quiz to see how you stack up against the characters of SyFy [sic] Network's (slogan: "Imagine Murdering the English Language", or "Now, with more gays!") new show.

Question 1

You have been transported to an Ancient ship that is several billion light years from earth. Its life support system is damaged and it is leaking air. While investigating the ship, you discover the source of the air leak: a shuttle that is docked with your ship has a smashed window, and the energy shield that is supposed to contain the atmosphere in the event of a breach is not holding up, and gradually air is leaking through. You will be out of air within two hours if you don't fix it.

The door on the ship's side of the airlock to the shuttle is damaged and cannot close, but the door inside the shuttle can be closed: from within the shuttle, by pushing a button on a console. Whoever closes the door will be trapped on the shuttle and quickly asphyxiate.

In your inventory you have some remote-controlled flying spheres with cameras, some guns, some food and other supplies, but no towel (they didn't bring their HHGGs). What do you do?

a) Use the remote-controlled flying sphere to push the button on the console.

b) Make a ten-foot pole from material found aboard the ship, or from what you brought with you.

c) Jam the door with a crate or something, push button, exit shuttle, unjam door.

d) Make a list of who is expendable, argue over it, argue with the commanding officer that he shouldn't be the one to close it, then finally allow a dying senator who is threatening you with a gun to nobly and heroically sacrifice himself for all, even though he was something of a jerk before, while his daughter screams and cries from the other side of the door.

If you answered anything other than (d), then you are smarter than every single character on Stargate Universe! Congratulations. Use your newfound knowledge to, I don't know, figure out if rocks are edible. Or discover the secrets of fire.

I'd like to share this picture of the Great Pyramid that my co-worker, Devin, took on her honeymoon to Italiagreekturkegypt.

Look familiar?

She denies any involvement with a secret government organization that explores other worlds by using a device called a "stargate" that creates a stable wormhole suitable for interstellar travel. But I know better. The honeymoon was just a ruse. She spent the three weeks on P3X-495.

Anyone remember this statshot? I think I need to make an addition at the bottom: "Any character from Stargate SG-1 who is remotely religious."

Because, as we all know, all religious people are superstitiously one-dimensional.

Take the episode we most recently watched, "New Ground", in which a scientist, searching to find evidence of his people's religious claim that their god, Nefertum, created life on their planet, unearths the Stargate, thus proving their enemies' position that Nefertum brought humans to that planet as slaves through a magic gateway.

Of course, the episode has the contractually-obligated (it must be somewhere in the SG-1 contract) one-dimensional religious zealot, who when confronted with the evidence, proclaims that it's a trick of their enemies, because he can't be wrong: he's studied The Book and devoted his life to it! The only way this character could be improved would be if he had a Snidely Whiplash-esque mustache to twirl while torturing the members of SG-1. The actor who played him also bears a striking resemblance to Bruce Campbell, which does not help the Campiness Factor.

The scientist who discovers the Stargate is also equally one-dimensional, and he, in fact, delivers the best line of the entire episode.

Scientist: "I must show my colleagues at the research academy."
Teal'c: "Can you be certain they will believe you?"
Scientist: "They are scientists as I am. They will realize they are wrong when presented with the evidence."
Me: "BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA–eh"

"But Joe," you explain, "that's a fair depiction. After all, The Church has a terrible track record of persecuting scientists for undermining the obviously false, silly, and superstitious beliefs of Christians. Scientists, however, are noble and pure-hearted, only seeking out The Truth to better enlighten person-kind."

"Oh, really," I respond. "Care to provide an example?"

"Of course. Galileo was imprisoned (tortured, put to death, depending on how ignorant you are) for stating the simple fact that the Earth revolved around the Sun. The Evil Church, in its attempts to brainwash the masses and keep them ignorant and under her control, despised any sort of learning and oppressed those who favored The Truth."

"Oh, really," I respond. "Wanna bet?"

It's interesting to read a real account of Galileo's tribulations. It is nowhere as interesting as the conspiracy theory proposed by most Good Scientists (which, by the way, is an absolutely terrific conspiracy theory, as they go; conspiracy theories involving massive church cover-ups are always so amusing, the most important quality of any good conspiracy theory). It is in fact rather dull. Instead of the fascinating tale of a brave man heroically standing defiant against the oppressive Church, we get a rather dull tale of a man who flip-flopped about what he had agreed to talk about, and, through his arrogance and discourtesy towards his opponents, found himself at the wrong end of an Inquisition. And, unfortunately, even that wasn't one of those good clap-him-in-irons, string-him-up-by-his-thumbs inquisitions. No, instead it was more like a tribunal to determine if he had kept his word.

The claim that the Church was trying to suppress the Copernican system because it represented Scientific Progress and a challenge to its teachings is just so wrong on so many levels. Firstly, the theory of heliocentrism was first posited by, and named after, a churchman, Nicholas Copernicus. He published his ideas at the urgings of two churchman, Cardinal Schömberg and Tiedemann Giese, Bishop of Culm. That work was dedicated by permission of Pope Paul III, in hopes that it would be protected from the attacks of mathematicians (scientists!).

Copernicus himself was not persecuted in any way by the church (but did receive strong condemnations by Luther) and for 75 years after, the Catholic Church offered no opposition to Copernicanism. Galileo, during his early years, was also in good standing with the church and on occasion of his trip to Rome in 1611, he set up his telescope in a garden belonging to Cardinal Bandim, to show sunspots to the admiring crowd.

It wasn't until later that he began to get into trouble. Perhaps, it could be said that Galileo had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Had he lived 100 years earlier or 100 years later, perhaps he would not have received any persecution. But he happened to live just at the height of the Protestant Revolution, where any novel interpretations of Scripture were looked at suspiciously. Anyways, in 1615 he presented himself in Rome, where he was graciously received, to explain himself before the inquisition which was (are you ready for this?) concerned that he was being un-scientific! At the time, the known evidence was in favor of a geocentric system, and Galileo himself was not able to prove that false with the evidence he had. As such, the Inquisition declared his teachings to be scientifically false and heretical. Galileo agreed not to teach Copernicanism as fact and that was that.

There are two interesting things that should be noted about that inquisition of 1616. Firstly, they did not forbid Galileo to discuss heliocentrism. They only said it should be discussed as hypothesis, not fact. Secondly is that the members of the Inquisition themselves did not seem to find their ruling final and absolute. Cardinal Bellarmine, the most influential member of the Inquisition, himself wrote:

"I say that if a real proof be found that the sun is fixed and does not revolve round the earth, but the earth round the sun, then it will be necessary, very carefully, to proceed to the explanation of the passages of Scripture which appear to be contrary, and we should rather say that we have misunderstood these than pronounce that to be false which is demonstrated."

Of course this decision was wrong. We can very easily say that now, since we have empirically observed, by means of advanced telescopes, measuring equipment, and various probes the motion of the bodies within the solar system. But that does not mean it was as obvious at the time. Also, we now have a better understanding of the scriptures and recognize, as Galileo put it, that "the Bible teaches men how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." This was not necessarily obvious at that time (from what example should people have known it?)

Anyways, Galileo lived on peaceably, even visiting Rome in 1624, to a positive reception, until 1632, when he published a dialogue that mocked the geocentrist viewpoint. This being in disagreement with his former promise, brought him again before the Inquisition, which was not a debate about Ptolemaic vs. Copernican systems, but merely an investigation if he had kept his word. Galileo proclaimed that he had not taught Copernicanism since his trial of 1616. The Inquisition didn't believe him and convicted him of heresy, sentencing him to imprisonment. He spent a grand total of 22 days in imprisonment at the buildings of the Inquisition, not in a cell, but in an apartment of an official of the inquisition. After that, he lived out the rest of his life, still technically under "imprisonment", at the houses of friends, until his death in 1642.

So the claim that the Church was trying to prevent the spread of scientific truth is wholly false, otherwise other great proponents of heliocentrism, such as Copernicus and (perhaps the greatest astronomer of the age) Kepler would have come under fire for it, but no such thing happened to either. Also, the idea that the scientists would run to embrace the truth, once they had seen the facts was also false, as Galileo was unable to convince Bacon, Milton, and even the great Tycho Brahé (no, not that Tycho) of his ideas.

And this is the case all through-out history. Louis Pasteur received the most scorn and condemnation from other scientists, who insisted that maggots grew spontaneously from rotten meat, or that a dew drop would create aphids. The fundamental truth that the writers of Stargate are forgetting is that all men have faith, even scientists. After all, have you ever tried to prove, empirically, the principle of non-contradiction?

(this article plagiarized from the Catholic Encyclopedia)

Muenster or Pepper jack?

Apparently, I have an observational deficiency. This only just now occurs to me, which is, perhaps, further proof of its existence. Normally, I pride myself on my abilities of observation and situational awareness. I am often aware of the placement of people, cars, objects around me, when others seem oblivious. At first, I assumed this was only because positive confirmation was the only type of confirmation one is likely to notice is positive confirmation (i.e., you don't notice when you don't notice something). But eventually, I came to believe that perhaps I was more extraordinarily gifted in this regard, as evidenced by (verbing weirds) the surprised reactions of others around me to things I noticed a while ago, and the fact that the opposite rarely occurred, for instance, me being surprised by something which the person standing next to me confirms he noticed a while previously.

Anywho, more on my deficiency. Apparently, despite how bleeding obvious it might be, I have a very hard time telling if a TV show is cheesy. The first sign of this deficiency was that I did not notice that the 60's Batman TV show with Adam West was written tongue-in-cheek, until after I had watched at least a full season's worth. It was not until they brought in the "Bat-Three-Dimension-Restorer", which Batman had apparently built, you know, just in case a villain happened to turn him into a two-dimensional cardboard cut out, that I finally said "Oh, come on!"

Anyways, I just realized the most recent occurrence of this "Cheese Blindness" a couple days ago while watching an episode from the third season of Stargate SG-1. That's right, it took me three seasons of SG-1 to figure out that it was, in fact, cheesy. (NB: This is not to say it's bad or unenjoyable.) But now that the veil has been lifted, it suddenly occurs to me that the website TV Tropes was probably started about SG-1. (There are actually two tropes named after characters from SG-1, the Colonel Makepeace and the Jonas Quinn).

The exact moment when I began to realize the show's cheesiness was when I, without thinking, finished one of Major Carter's lines for her. She was puzzling over the problem of trying to create a Naquadah reactor. She had built it but it did not work. While looking over the problem, she began to theorize that, just maybe, if she reversed the—
Me: "Polarity"
Sam Carter: "—polarity, it just might work!"
Of course it does.

My suspicions of cheesiness only grew when I realized that as soon as a character in that particular episode appeared on screen, I had immediately labeled him as the antagonist with a Dark Secret. As it turns out, he was harvesting children's brains (well, not really, but in effect). Then in the episode immediately following, SG-1 travels to a parallel universe, where Teal'c meets his Evil Twin, who, of course, has a goatee, as do all evil twins. (Which makes me think; If ever I was transported to a parallel universe and met a clean-shaven version of myself, does that mean I would be the evil one?)

It should also be pointed out that the show's writers themselves also seem to be painfully aware of the show's cheesiness, as they, quite humorously, parodied themselves in both their 100th and 200th episodes.
Wormhole X-Treme writer: "Ok, we've established that one shot stuns the target, and two shots kills. What does three shots do?"
Colonel O'Neill: "Vaporizes it?"
TV Producer: "That is the dumbest idea I've ever heard of."
(For those of you not In The Know, Wormhole X-Treme was a TV show within a TV show, where a character who had knowledge of the Stargate program, but has forgotten it, begins to remember, but thinks he's just coming up with original ideas, which he puts together into a TV show. In the above quote, the writers of Wormhole X-Treme, based on Stargate SG-1, are debating what the Zat guns do. Jack suggests what they actually do in the Stargate Universe, and the idea is tossed out as rubbish.)

But anyways, on with my point. Reversing the Polarity. That is my new fix-all suggestion. Whenever someone asks me how to fix something, I'm just going to say, "have you tried reversing the polarity?"
Ex.
"When I start your software, I receive the error message 'Vendor Daemon Down'."
"Please reverse the Vendor Daemon's polarity at the command prompt. You can open the command prompt by selecting Start -> Run, and typing in 'cmd' and pressing enter. At the prompt, navigate to the License directory by typing 'cd \<installation directory>\RAMS\License', except replace <installation directory> with the directory you chose when you installed the software (default is C:\Program Files). Next, run the vendor daemon, using the -rp switch to reverse its polarity, e.g., type in 'lmgrd -rp'. Please let me know if you have any questions on these instructions."

"I'm have computer trouble. When I turn it on, it POSTs, but won't boot into the OS."
"Have you tried reversing the polarity?"

"My car won't start."
"Have you tried reversing the polarity?"

"I think my boyfriend is cheating on me. Also, he stays out late, comes home drunk, then beats me."
"Have you tried reversing his polarity?"

Of course it will work. It always does on TV.