Personally, I kind of get kicks out of reading the negative comments, if only because I remember people saying that it was the fans of the film who always kept on bringing the movie back up.

Don't we pretty much know for sure at this point that Cobb wasn't dreaming?

I think the story can work with Deckard as a replicant... but I think it works better if he's human. Like you said, the love story's more interesting if they aren't both humans/replicants. Additionally, you don't really have a sympathetic human viewpoint if Deckard is a replicant.

Just a thought: Wouldn't it be relatively easy to figure out if it was a vertebrate eye or a cephalopod eye? My understanding is that their structure is pretty different.

The golden standard of science is falsification. Always has been, always will be. That's why stuff like intelligent design isn't scientific - it isn't falsifiable.

I'm skeptical of that option because, if nothing else, school teaches you how to deal with authority figures and bureaucracies. While I think it is perfectly reasonable to say it isn't the end-all of success or that you need to be a good student to be successful, I'd say that in most cases it's more helpful than not.

"If it's longer than a tweet, a character should probably not be saying it in the play of a game."

Ah, you're right. I could have sworn the publication date said the late 1970s. But nope, it's from 1984.

What's the Hemingway test?

I will say this: I read Neuromancer for the first time about a year ago and was exceptionally impressed with how good the book was, how little it had aged in close to forty years, and how much of cyberpunk Gibson had clearly invented single-handedly. So, yeah, he'd definitely be up there IMO.

Unfortunately, it's a sample size of one, so while it's amusing, it doesn't establish that notes like this are pointless. For one thing, Gurdon's teacher could have just been a poor one. Alternatively, Gurdon really was a poor student in high school, but later focused himself and became an exceptional scientist.

Yeah, I'd have to agree with you there. Performance definitely doesn't correlate 100% to ability, but it's not as though there's no relation. Some people are poor students but are really bright. More people are poor students and aren't exceptionally bright either (though I wouldn't necessarily say they're unintelligent…

So, what, Joffrey?

What? Ned was a douchebag? I'm going to have to vehemently disagree there. Perhaps unwise, perhaps too honorable for his or anyone else's own good, but a douchebag? No.

That's my impression as well, though I've only read up to ASoS.

That doesn't come up until Season 4 anyway.

I think it mostly just establishes the start of Tyrion's decay from someone earnestly trying to do the best that he can given the circumstances to someone who's just trying to survive. By the end of Book 3 he's significantly less heroic than he was at the end of Book 2 and he's basically given up in both himself and…

Does anybody actually know how much time passes between Books 1 and 3? I'm curious, because it's not clearly established as far as I know. Sure, they're in autumn heading for winter but since seasons last for years or even decades in Westeros that doesn't really tell us anything.

That's what I was thinking: Bolton is more cautious than that. The whole reason it's Vargo Hoat who cuts off Jaime's hand is because he's already in an extremely tricky predicament for having gone over to the Starks.