Since half the ASOIAF-internet is convinced they know where the story is going just extrapolating on what's happened already, either we're all way off base or Martin needs to look at reddit for a few minutes.

I think you missed a line from the second dream about his father's cloak being pulled tight around him, but otherwise, sounds about right to me.

I did not read No Country, but I felt like Blood Meridian helped me interpret that aspect of the Coen film … the most detailed violence is at the beginning, to shock and disturb you. Repetition will not continue to shock and disturb, it will only desensitize. You already know, from the earlier depictions of violence,…

The film that convinced me that no matter what anybody says, January Jones is a real actress!

I have an easier time connecting emotionally to abstract art, about which I'm not terribly informed, just responding to the color/texture on an intuitive level. Traditional/representational art I typically look at more analytically, without inducing much of an emotional response. Two exceptions come to mind:

I haven't seen it, as I stopped watching after season 5; I'm not commenting on it as film-making, just noting that SOME of what people picking at the logic of it found weird about it is down to them needing to rework it on the fly.

Dear Dany: I received your reply with the box unchecked. I don't know if this means you don't like me or if you didn't see the box or if you forgot to check it or what.

Book!Jorah is a pretty persistent creep, who's not particularly embarrassed about violating a massive cultural taboo.

The production elements of the first few seasons were incredible, including casting - I would have gone in a radically different direction with the cast, but I can't deny that they came up with incredible actors for almost every significant role. Apparently from poking at behind the scenes scuttlebutt, one of the…

I don't think Glory is bad, by any means - hell, I don't even think The Last Samurai is bad, if I'm honest - but literally Washington won the best supporting actor, and Broderick has top billing (which Ebert complained about in his review).

This is also, bizarrely, about half of Edward Zwick's career. (OK, it's not, but it's about half of his most notable movies.) Glory, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, all with white main characters in the middle of a story that's mostly not about white people.

I certainly think that if Nixon had been prosecuted, it's more likely that Bush and Cheney would have been as well.

No, we're not supposed to be impressed by it. But given how many of his colleagues didn't care, I'll acknowledge it as a good thing. It's also super-par-for-the-course for a Republican politician to deviate from the party line on one specific issue that happens to intersect with their own biography. Which suggests…

Actually, I've come to think that Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon, while understandable at the time, was in retrospect one of the worst things an American president ever did for the health of our political culture.

Always remember McCain's public image is a fabrication.

I thought you were better than this one. The bill had been read. The bill had been discussed, in public, and across the political aisle in Congress, for a year. Obama traveled around the country holding town halls where he answered questions about the bill. The entire Republican narrative of secrecy around the…

I have to think that the psychology of modern battle (WWI - present) was very different than most of what came before, and that this must have had an effect on behavior. Whether Marshall's stats were accurate or not. As you say, though, we know the percentages are much higher now, and we know the training methods…

If it weren't for these lists, how would I ever know that the greatest drummers in history were all rock musicians except Buddy Rich?

He's not smart.

Interestingly, there was some pretty strong backlash in "official" military culture around that book/show, from what I've read. I think the real guy portrayed by the actor who then played a detective on Castle said some other Marines basically cornered him once to call him a coward for some of the things he said.…