Walnuts, Brains, Battlestar Galactica and Being Alive

I am going to write about Battlestar Galactica again, because it really is the best thing I watched on TV. The last episode was simply great, and for those who watched it, I think it was the best episode finale of all. There is civil war, there is democracy, there is a benevolent tyrant, there is intermarriage tensions, there is alienation that makes a mother try to kill her own child, there are humans trusting humans, and Cylons distrusting Cylons. There are compromises in politics, there is a hidden agenda. All in one episode, but that’s not what I’m gonna write about. I simply want more people watching this great show if they are interested.

I am going to write about walnuts, brain, evolution, and meaning of being alive. I was eating walnuts -with Grana Padano cheese, delicious combination- when watching the last episode, and noticed -again- how our brains, almost all brains for that sake, are like walnuts. Then it occurred to me what a great thinker was Darwin again. Similar evolutionary pressures, to fit vulnerable soft tissue inside a hard round cover while supplying it from a single point, lead to similar “designs” or outcomes. Then I asked myself the question, if you were able to build humans from scratch -be it God or Cylons- what pieces would you keeps?

I am sure I would keep the women’s neck and their back, but my first obvious answer was the ability to evolve. So why don’t the Cylons evolve? As a matter of fact, the most decent answer to the controversial definition of a living organism was “a closed system that is able undergo Darwinian evolution.” I am sure to ask this in the viewers forums.