March 11th, 2009
One of the potential holes in Ron Moore’s Cylon back-story is his explanation for Cylon resurrection technology, which, unless I’m mistaken, goes something like this:
For a very long time, Cylons could not achieve sexual reproduction, so they “reproduced” via download, or “resurrection.” Then something happened and Cylons could reproduce sexual reproduction, so they abandoned resurrection in favor of it. They turned their backs on resurrection technology for so long, in fact, that when they needed it again, nobody could quite figure out how to make it work any more. Or rather, it took a group of very smart Cylons working together for a very long time to reverse-engineer the tech.
The obvious problem being, how does an advanced civilization “lose” the ability to create an old technology. It sounds a little contrived; but maybe not.
Today’s Post carries an op-ed about credit default swaps by David Smick, which essentially makes the point that we have this giant financial system and nobody actually knows how it works:
I suspect Obama’s advisers would like nothing more than to dismantle an irresponsible firm such as Citigroup. They are afraid to do so, for one reason: All the big banks are connected to a potentially lethal web of paper insurance instruments called credit default swaps. These paper derivatives have become our financial system’s new master.
The theory holds that dismantling a big bank could unravel this paper market, with catastrophic global financial consequences. Or not. Nobody knows . . .
In addition, Geithner worries that because the troubled insurance giant American International Group (AIG) is a conduit for the banks’ use of credit default swaps, a collapse of AIG (as an unintended consequence of dismantling the big banks) could be catastrophic. AIG’s more than 300 million terrified holders of insurance-related investments and pension funds, who have investments totaling $20 trillion (U.S. GDP is $14 trillion), could suddenly rush for redemptions — the equivalent of a run on a bank. Geithner would face a worldwide insurance collapse to accompany his global banking collapse.
Or again, maybe not. Nobody knows.
Maybe resurrection technology looked just as opaque to the Cylons.
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