[The 14th Colony]

1) Who do you see as the person or group who has made the greatest contributions to mankind in the 20th century?

Man, why do I ask difficult questions like this? I have to dwell on this awhile and edit and add my answer later.

2) What do you think is the ultimate collective goal of mankind? Is it domination and control, discovery and understanding, knowledge and betterment, or something other? What is our society striving towards?

Control. Not just in the dominating sense of ruling over kingdoms and masses of civilizations but in the vaster, all encompassing scope of human emotions, wants, needs, and expectations. We need control in many if not all ways. Whether it be finances, educational gains, health, career pursuits and aspirations, choosing what foods to eat and what to avoid, which restaurant to dine at or people to do business with, ect. ect., it is all about having control over one’s life, actions, and activities. Control is freedom…freedom is control, the right to have control over your own life so far as legal actions, and pursuing your own choices in life. That’s what makes this country great, and many others with democratic governments, that rather than being controlled by government, you have control over your own life and choices. Tyranny is about being controlled by government; democracy and freedom is about allowing people to control their own lives. But everything we choose big or small, vague or extreme, is a sense of our control. We want to choose where we will live, that is control; we want to be treated fairly, that is controlling your surroundings; we skip over some reading material and choose others to read instead, and that is control. Our minds enable us to have control over our bodies for the most part, and when injury or disease occurs we want to be able to stop the pain, heal the wound, cure the disease. Control. It is a nightmare to contemplate dying, losing one’s mind, not having proper sensory and motor functions, or being paralyzed, because without the control over those elements of our bodies and existence, our lives are drastically affected. Look, I even controlled you by making you read this long ramble!

3) What invention of the 20th century do you feel affected and moved society forward the most for better or worse?
A- The automobile
B- The airplane
C- The computer
D- Television and/or movies
E- The harnessing of nuclear energy

The automobile is my opinion. It led to speedy and far reaching growth of our civilizations and life in such a day and age would be impossible to navigate without cars, trucks, and other motorized vehicles to get us around in our busy lives and often distant destinations. The automobile engine was also used by Wilber and Orville Wright in the successful testing of the first airplane, so I dare say that without the fuel burning design of the auto engine, airplanes would never have gotten off the ground and been developed to the point that they are now. Without the car engine we’d still be sitting on horses, or worse, walking everywhere, and what kind of a life is that? Sheesh, I shudder at the thought.

4) This is a two-parter, but do not read the second question until you've answered the first.
#1: Say that a brand new form of transportation was invented that would bring our world closer together by cutting traveling time by two thirds. However, this new transportation, this new invention, comes at a steep price, which is that it will cost thousands upon thousands of lives each year. Would you support this invention and agree with its use by those who could be killed by its misuse?
#2: Say that you can travel back in time to right a dreadful invention of the past. With the first part of this question in mind, would you stop the automobile from being invented?

See, this was a trick question, because the automobile mentioned in the second part was the subject matter of the first part. The car can be and often is misused and its benefits abused, in ways that lead to people being badly hurt and killed. But I would not go back in time to stop its invention, for the good far outweighs the bad and simply put, we need this invention.

5) In the Battlestar Galactica inhabited galaxy, or in any sci-fi saga on TV or in films, what do you feel is the most beneficial technology used by the societies we've seen?

Anti-gravity. Air cars, land speeders, ships launching into space with ease and no pull from gravity, floating landing platforms and floating structures of all kind, none of it would be possible without anti-gravity field processors. I have no idea how anti-gravity works, but without it all the floating vehicles, platforms, and almost all means of transportation see in the SW films and many other forms of sci-fi media would not be possible. Artificial gravity as well. Can you imagine a ship like Galactica having no artifical gravity well? Everybody would be floating around and bumping into each other, and when the ship went into lightspeed everybody would fly right through the back window.

6) A- The evolutionists claim that the universe was created by an immense cloud of compressed gas that reacted and exploded to form galaxies. If that were true, where did the cloud of gas come from?
B- The creationists believe that God created the universe from nothing. So where did God come from? (Short answer only please. Go to the thread "In The Light" to express more.)

I’ll answer A and B together. I believe that God created the universe. God exists outside the range of time as we know it and does not have a past, present and future, but exists in all time frames simultaneously. So he always has been and always will, and that is something hard to fathom by time oriented mortals such as we. If it was a “big bang” that started the universe, it was something caused and carried out by God. Or else, where did that cloud of gas that started it all come from? Did it exist outside the range of time as I think God does, and always has been and always will be? I can't accept that so it had to be God.

7) With as serious an answer as possible, if you could be any person in the world for one week to experience an aspect of their life, at any given time in history or the present, who would it be and why (not friends or loved ones)?

The person who won the 300 million Power Ball Lottery, and live the life of material dreams for one week, and then write a check for 100,000,000 to some shmuck in Florida who loves BSG and spends a lot of time on a BSG board. That's right, me! :p

8) If you could alter your memory so as to mail yourself a gift and receive it as a complete surprise, what would it be?

The entire BSG DVD set with my memory of the film and TV series wiped so I can watch them all at once for "the first time".

Now the disturbing ones:
9) An evil, sadistic villain is going to kill you. There is no way to escape. You are being pushed forward by an unstoppable wall toward three holes in the floor that you cannot get past or jump over. One hole leads to a blazing furnace. The second hole leads to a pool of boiling water. The third hole leads to a pit of hydrochloric acid. You will, without a doubt, be pushed into one of the holes, and there are only thirty seconds before the edge. Which hole will you let yourself fall into?

Oh man, who is the sick bastard who came up with these questions? Oops, it was I.
I think the boiling water would take the longest to kill a person. Maybe the furnace because the intense heat would kill a person by inhalation before they reached the fire, or so I’ve read.

But what I would really do is snap open the secret compartment in my fake leg and take out the iron wedge I keep handy for just such a situation, and slide it under the moving wall to stop it dead in it’s path.

To be continued...