I’m speaking as a fan of the books, but I have to say Game of Thrones, Season One, is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Take the acting from Battlestar Galactica, give it the narrative direction you can only get from an established story, and you get ten episodes of compelling television. (DVD and Blu-ray sets out today.) My impressions: You don’t need to have read the books to enjoy the show. They do a fair amount of exposition during the storyline. “They got their True Blood in my Game of Thrones!” Not sure why HBO figured we wouldn’t pay attention to the exposition scenes without a naked woman wandering around, but the nudity wasn’t as exaggerated as I thought from earlier reviews. And, yes, for those who’ve read the books, they show Hodor’s hodor. That being said, is it kid-appropriate? Nope. Too many throats getting sliced. The producers took the opportunity to add in a few non-expository scenes that I don’t think were in the books. They should have been. Having living actors added a new dimension to some of the books’ more one-dimensional characters. Heck, the Lannister kids are even better, and they were good in the books. Cersei is a lot better when being played by Lena Headey. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime is excellent, and Peter Dinklage would have been the perfect choice to play Tyrion even if he’d been 6'4". As in the books, a friendly warning: Don’t get too attached to any characters. GoT has the approximate mortality rate of the actual Middle Ages. Update: Almost forgot: It does continue the GoT tradition of moms are crazy. And, for anyone who has already seen Season One, here’s the Season Two trailer (starts April 1): ...

Sometimes days are just special: October 20 Happy 41st birthday, Chavo Guerrero, Jr., Michelle Malkin, Aaron Garcia, Taj McWilliams-Franklin, Sander Boschker, and Tiger Mask IV!

[vimeo 25023898 w=601 h=338] Night Motion Timelapse: Outer Banks from Daniel Dragon Films on Vimeo.

Full remarks here. This is an important quote: As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity. ...

GOP holds up NJ governor’s record as a model With bipartisan backing, Christie plugged the budget hole largely by cutting aid to schools, suspending property tax rebates and skipping a $3 billion payment to the state’s pension system. He imposed a 2 percent cap on increases to local property taxes and fought frequently with the state’s teachers and other public employee unions. Wow, so plugging the budget hole is defined as moving all of your expenses to next year? It’d be interesting to see the credit ratings for Coulter, Barbour, and AEI, if they think the Christie model is any better than what states have been doing for decades. I’m surprised he’s not talking more about running in 2012, given he’ll need to flee the state soon after. ...

In a speech on the House floor, Republican Representative Ron Paul of Texas asked nine questions in regards to the ongoing kerfuffle about Wikileaks: Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen? Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information? Number 3: Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information? ...

Not the liver, obviously…I know, the brain…or whatever Tony Stark uses for thinking. The Word - Nothingness The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cwww.colbertnation.comhttp://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:364881Colbert Report Full Episodes2010 ElectionMarch to Keep Fear Alive

NPR: Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law It’s a membership organization of state legislators and powerful corporations and associations, such as the tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., ExxonMobil and the National Rifle Association. Another member is the billion-dollar Corrections Corporation of America — the largest private prison company in the country. It was there that Pearce’s idea took shape. “I did a presentation,” Pearce said. “I went through the facts. I went through the impacts and they said, ‘Yeah.’” ...

I was thinking about updating my Macbook Pro in a few months. Now I have to wait to see if Oracle is going to take up the slack on maintaining a JVM for Mac OS X, and whether Apple will let them. Add that to the announcement of a Mac App Store, and I get to wait till post-Lion in 2011 to see if Apple is thinking about turning their laptops into iPads with keyboards. ...

Statement from Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, on December 23, 2009: “June 1989 was the major turning point in my 50 years on life’s road. Before that, I was a member of the first group of students after restoration of the college entrance examination after the Cultural Revolution (1977); my career was a smooth ride, from undergraduate to grad student and through to PhD. After graduation I stayed on as a lecturer at Beijing Normal University. On the podium, I was a popular teacher, well received by students. I was also a public intellectual: in the 1980s I published articles and books that created an impact. I was frequently invited to speak in different places, and invited to go abroad to Europe and the US as a visiting scholar. What I required of myself was: to live with honesty, responsibility and dignity both as a person and in my writing.. Subsequently, because I had returned from the US to take part in the 1989 movement, I was imprisoned for “counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement to crime”, losing the platform I loved; I was never again allowed publish or speak in public in China. Simply for expressing divergent political views and taking part in a peaceful and democratic movement, a teacher lost his podium, a writer lost the right to publish, and a public intellectual lost the chance to speak publicly. This was a sad thing, both for myself as an individual, and, after three decades of reform and opening, for China. ...