That reminds me.
When Roslin said she wasn’t going to let Zarek win, I half suspected she was going to cheat. Rig the ballot box or something.
Ah! So you got your MBA from Loompanics University? 
But why not? One thing they need at this point is communications. Remember what happened to the internet on 9/11, everyone went nuts trying to find information, speculation was rampant? Hell, I had a co-worker run home to crawl in his shelter with his guns and prepare for the apocolypse. I think this is also why you see all the press people in BSG. Everyone is clamoring for news, because the fleet is still in the process of re-forming itself, and there are a lot of people with time to kill who are confused and want to know what is happening. There is an obvious need for marketing and PR here, just to keep the natives from rioting, and motivated to pitch in.
And a good marketing manager might be just what it takes to convince the other marketing managers to become damage control officers.
Maybe this is why I had to take a foreign languages and economics and whatnot as a CS major.
I know you are kidding but maybe this is, like I say, why I had to take economics in college(can you tell I wasn’t fond of it?) I think you would see three groups of people in this situation(other than government/military which wouldn’t change). Those who are waste control, will always be such, and you will always need them. Those in skilled trades who will be in demand for production (machinists, viper mechanics, those folk on the refinery ship), who will probably change what they are making, but do the same type of work. And those who have a higher education that bitch about having to take economics as a CS major, but then can fall back on those other bits of knowledge to make themselves useful and figure out what needs to be done.
BTW, given the events in BSG, I think I have the most useless job by far in that scenerio.
Network Administrator.
Might I suggest this would be a good time for the Etherkiller?
When Zarek was talking about all the things people are clinging to out of habit even though they’re irrelevant to the present situation, one thing he curiously didn’t touch on: Why is civil government still organized along the lines of the twelve colony worlds, which are now in the hands of the Cylons? Why not decree a general merger of citizenship for all surviving humans? The answer, of course, is that the original series was produced by a Mormon and the Twelve Colonies are the Twelve Tribes of Israel, who kept their separate identities while following Moses through the desert. But characters on the show can’t say that, so it would be interesting to see what arguments a traditionalist would come up with in favor of maintaining the old system. (On the original show, the Twelve Colonies had slightly different cultures, customs and religious beliefs, but that doesn’t appear to be the case with the new series.)
Here’s a thought about the Cylon detector.
It may have taken Balthar a fair amount of genius and/or help from 6 to come up with it. As it stands now, it looks like it’s tedious, and not very complicated to run.
Balthar himself is: a) obviously bored with running it, and horrified by the thought of running it for the next several hundred years; and b) now has the new Veep position, which should have some demands on his time.
Shouldn’t some BG tech be available to run the Cylon tests now, freeing up Balthar for bigger and badder things? If so, is the detector always going to show up green, or will it show red that the new person can catch and bring to someone’s attention?
I’d also like to see them address whether additional detection stations can be made – does the one nuke he used for the materials mean only one station, or does he have enough material to make multiple stations, so that more people can be cleared?
And Zarek – is he above working with Cylons to get power in the government?
Well…
The colonial divisions would probably translate into fleet divisions as well.
If you think about it, ships that escaped from Caprica probably have a vastly Caprican (is that a word?) makeup.
So, almost all of the people packed on the Caprica BootScootBoogey would be Caprican and would identify as such.
I wouldn’t be surprised if people didn’t rearrange themselves so that they can share ships with people who come from the same colony. After all, strangers are strangers, but someone from the same colony would at least be able to have discussions about their local lives.
Odds are, only the Galactica has a serious mix of colonies, and we really don’t know that, do we? Is it a mix, or is it a fairly homogeneous population?
-Joe
[QUOTE=NE Texan]
Here’s a thought about the Cylon detector.
It may have taken Balthar a fair amount of genius and/or help from 6 to come up with it. As it stands now, it looks like it’s tedious, and not very complicated to run.
Balthar himself is: a) obviously bored with running it, and horrified by the thought of running it for the next several hundred years; and b) now has the new Veep position, which should have some demands on his time.
Shouldn’t some BG tech be available to run the Cylon tests now, freeing up Balthar for bigger and badder things? If so, is the detector always going to show up green, or will it show red that the new person can catch and bring to someone’s attention?
QUOTE]
As I see it,
Baltar’s vylon detector (v1.0b) is quick, painless, accurate, and could be run by a (non-colorblind) chimp. It also has the potential for causing all sorts of problems and inconveniences based on the reaction of a detected cylon, as six noted.
The “Cylon detector” (V2.0), on the other hand, is slow, cumbersome, and requires a genius of Baltar’s level to run. He couldn’t even explain it to anyone else it’s so darn complicated. However, it has no particular ability to actually detect cylons. Every one comes out human. That’s not a big problem though, given that it keeps people off Baltar’s back and avoids all manner of unpleasantness.
Until inevitably someone Baltar has cleared turns out to be a Cylon. I fear Moore will gloss over it though, just like he did when Baltar’s first Cylon detector turned out bogus.
And we don’t know, but no doubt the colonies have political and historical differences. Saggitarion(Zarek’s colony) apparently was “exploited” by the other colonies. That could cause some interesting issues about government policy, much like the hundred or so nations on earth trying to make decisions via the UN.