Cutthroat Diversity

Game of Thrones

Thrones is back and thank the gods.  Ok.  That was a bluff.  I went all-in, and I folded.  Wasn’t my best poker play.  Throne’s presence at San Diego Comic-Con kicked off with a tribute to the many casualties of the beloved series:

Author George R.R. Martin is still writing The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring, the 6th and 7th installments of A Song of Ice and Fire, respectively.  The Winds of Winter is set for release December of this year, while Thrones Season 4 started location shooting last week in Nesjavellir, Iceland.  Several thespians have been cast for the season already including Pedro Pascal as Oberyn MartellIndira Varma as Ellaria Sand, and Mark Gatiss in an unspecified role.

Major potential  Season 4 characters that have NOT been cast yet include: Mace Tyrell; Lord of Highgarden, Styr; the Magnar of Thenn, Aeron “Damphair” Greyjoy; The Iron Captain, Victarion Greyjoy; Captain of the Iron fleet, Ser Arys OakheartThe Soiled Knight, Areo Hotah; The Captain of Guards, and finally Arianne Martell; daughter of Prince Doran.  Stay tuned for casting/shooting updates as they arrive.

UPDATE:

HBO parent company Time Warner has released their latest quarterly earnings report and within it are the latest viewer numbers for Game of Thrones. HBO is now reporting that Game of Thrones averaged 14.2 million viewers per episode last season. This is a 20% increase over season 2′s viewership number and is a significant jump from the last reported number of 13.6 million. (You can download the full report here.)

What does this mean? It means that even well into season 3 Thrones‘ viewership is still climbing. Which is pretty unprecedented for a drama like this. I suspect the Red Wedding may have had something to do with the late season jump as people got caught up on the show to see what all the fuss is about.

This also means that Game of Thrones is very, very close to becoming HBO’s most-watched show of all-time. The Sopranos is currently tops with an average of 14.4 million viewers per episode.Game of Thrones may very well break that next season.

ALSO:

British thespian Roger Ashton-Griffiths has been cast as Mace Tyrell; Lord of Highgarden.

Dutch actor Yorick Van Wageningen is rumored to have auditioned for Styr; the Magnar of Thenn.

Dean-Charles Chapman has reportedly been cast as King Tommen.

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Unbelievable, In Memoriam

They did’t believe her.

And you wonder why?

Don’t ask.

Homo anthropologicus?

Scientists are supposed to be objective, open minded, fair minded, and logical. Paleoanthropology is supposed to be a science. Think again.

Unbelievable.

Most of science is good, and mostly right, if not trivial and mundane. It’s the best we can do at the moment. But, there is this particular case — the question of origin of mankind — it’s unbelievable — these so-called “scientists” are acting like priests. Not objective, not open minded, not fair minded, not logical, and not scientific. What’s up?

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A Thorn In The Side..

The enmity was mutual.

In a typical parliamentary exchange in which Botha warned her against breaking the law, she said:

“I am not frightened of you. I never have been and I never will be. I think nothing of you.”

A principled, singular individual for 13 years, alone in the group in her contention.

Diminutive, elegant and indefatigable, she confronted the forbidding Afrikaner prime ministers — Hendrik F. Verwoerd, John Vorster and P. W. Botha — who became synonymous with apartheid’s repression of the black and mixed-race populations. She was dismissive of the death threats she received by telephone and in the mail, and undaunted in her showdowns with the men she described as apartheid’s leading “bullies,” who in turn dismissed her as a “dangerous subversive” and a “sickly humanist.”

Subversive Humanist indeed.

For decades, she was among the most venerated of white campaigners urging an end to racial rule, becoming known as a “cricket in the thorn tree” for her outspoken views.

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Resolved Effervescence

Rational Effervesence 5

 

Tyrion Lannister a.k.a. Peter Dinklage is Bolivar Trask, founder and CEO of Trask-Industries: the company that would go on to enslave mutant-kind with massive robotic Sentinel’s. As seen by some at San Diego Comic-Con this past week. Bryan Singer’s upcoming X-men: Days of Future Past will not only feature Trask’s Sentinel’s, but time-travel and a dystopian alternative future in which mutants are being sent to internment camps.

http://www.trask-industries.com/

The coveted franchise will be trying to shake off X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and X-Men 3: The Last Stand: both films having been absolute garbage, garnering an average 47.5% rottentomatoes score. While X-men: First Class did some damage-control, Singer will probably be looking to make some headway on the many fans of the franchise. As a matter of fact, with Sentinel’s running around, Singer could totally swing some Magneto/JFK”magic-bullet” action into the mix. Let’s just hope, assume and pray that the guy isn’t going to pull some sort of Zack Snyder. Because that would be bad. Like really bad. Speaking of the man-himself, Snyder will direct a Man of Steel sequel, featuring none other than a rebooted Caped Crusader. Does lowly gruntish simpleton Zack Snyder have sufficient enough intellectual-capacity and talent to do justice to the Justice League? NO. No he absolutely does not. Any other questions?

Rational Effervesence 6

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We Proceed..

lessons_of_history“Since man is a moment in astronomic time, a transient guest of the earth, a spore of his species, a scion of his race, a composite of body, character, and mind, a member of a family and a community, a believer or doubter of a faith, a unit in an economy, perhaps a citizen in a state or a soldier in an army, we may ask under the corresponding heads–astronomy, geology, geography, biology, ethnology, psychology, morality, religion, economics, politics, and war – what history has to say about the nature, conduct, and prospects of man. It is a precarious enterprise, and only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.” – Will and Ariel Durant

Those who fail to learn from history will repeat it.

History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
Mark Twain

“As his studies come to a close the historian faces the challenge: Of what use have your studies been? Have you found in your work only the amusement of recounting the rise and fall of nations and ideas, and retelling “sad stories of the death of kings”? Have you learned more about human nature than the man in the street can learn without so much as opening a book? Have you derived from history any illumination of our present condition, any guidance for our judgments and policies, any guard against the rebuffs of surprise or the vicissitudes of change? Have you found such regularities in the sequence of past events that you can predict the future actions of mankind or the fate of states? Is it possible that, after all, “history has no sense,” that it teaches us nothing, and that the immense past was only the weary rehearsal of the mistakes that the future is destined to make on a larger stage and scale?” – Will and Ariel Durant

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Tales of the Lone Arranger

Dr. Randy Cima is ready to tell some tales. He had experience with trying to prevent the “mental health” system from fouling up and making things worse for kids. Dr. David Keirsey had been instrumental in Dr. Cima’s way of reframing the problem and coming up with helpful ways for his kids that he was responsible for.