links for 2009-06-12

"Like sex tourism itself, Bernstein’s research and perspective are not new. This book was written long ago by postcolonial feminists like Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Feminism without Borders), Reina Lewis (Rethinking Orientalism and Gendering Orientalism), and Meyda Yegenoglu (Colonial Fantasies). If imperialist, white, male privilege makes you cringe, you might want to pass over The East, the West, and Sex in favor of a critique a little more comprehensive and a little less sensational."

"Galactica is sci-fi without that BS. Sci-fi with all the anger and stupidity and sadness that real people experience. Sci-fi without the conviction that we will conquer our own ugliness. Sci-fi for the age of peak oil and 9/11 and natural disasters compounded by climate change to the point where they can completely destroy major cities. Galactica’s message is that unless we come to terms with our own history, we are doomed. Mankind created the Cylons to fight our wars and to do our grunt work for us. Eventually they rose up and wiped out 99.999% of us. This basic lesson is one we still haven’t learned: that exploitation leads to exploitation, that if you oppress someone you sow the seeds of your own oppression. “You can’t play God and then wash your hands of the things you’ve created,” says the Galactica’s commander, William Adama. “Sooner or later, the day comes when you can’t hide from the things that you’ve done anymore.”

"Babylon 5 – Similar to some other shows, B5 showed a lot of racial animosity going on between different species, although the series also deconstructed this whole notion in "The Geometry of Shadows", where the ethnic battle lines are totally arbitrary and change every five years."