This is the deepest into space anyone has ever seen onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com This is the deepest into space anyone has ever seen

Using a naturally-existing zoom lens in space, the Hubble telescope has taken the deepest look into space ever to grab these pictures of galaxy cluster Abell 2744.

NASA used the power of the Hubble, a long exposure, and what they call a naturally-existing "gravitational lens" formed when the gravities of the individual galaxies clustered together combine to become so powerful that they actually warp the surrounding space. This bending of space and light creates a natural "zoom lens" that magnifies some of the way, way back galaxies that would otherwise be far beyond our sight, allowing astronomers to view almost 3,000 distinct galaxies, including some of the youngest galaxies that NASA has ever discovered. NASA plans to combine the footage with shots of Abell 2744 taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope to shed some light on both how galaxies evolve and just what role black holes play in the process.

These comparative shots of the regular view of Abel 2744 and the magnified views give a great sense of just how powerful the magnification of the natural lens combined with the Hubble offers:

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com This is the deepest into space anyone has ever seen

Matt Reeves hired to direct Planet of the Apes 3 onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Matt Reeves hired to direct Planet of the Apes 3

S

Fox must be happy with the Matt Reeves' take on the new Planet of the Apes franchise, because even before the second film has been finished filming, the Cloverfield director has been hired to film the third movie as well.

Deadline is reporting that 20th Century Fox has asked Reeves to come back (once he's completed his work on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) to film the third installment. Which could mean very good things about this sequel.

Set after the fall of man, Dawn stars Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, and Jason Clarke (the new John Connor), while Andy Serkis will return to play head ape Caesar. The sequel follows a group of human survivors who have to face Caesar's ever-growing Ape army. Also, cars no longer work for some reason and everyone rides horses.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes will hit theaters on July 11th.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Matt Reeves hired to direct Planet of the Apes 3

​What is the nerdiest fandom on the hierarchy of nerds? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com ​What is the nerdiest fandom on the hierarchy of nerds?

Greetings, post-apocalyptic postal service users! I heard you all are experiencing the "polar vortex," and there's some debate about whether it's a result of global warming, or proof that global warming is bunk, or whatever. As a person living in the future, I feel you all should know two things: 1) global warming is real, and 2) The vortex is being caused by space yetis. Use that information as you see fit.

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Nerd Is the Word

mlb:

Postman:

What is the nerdiest branch of all possible nerdlinesses? I could offer some possible examples but I think you know what I mean… wink wink nudge nudge say no more.

Some of you know I used to work at Wizard Entertainment, which put out a variety of nerd-based magazines — comics, toys, anime, and CCGs, to be specific. There was very much a hierarchy of nerdiness going on there that informs my thoughts on this, but you folks let me know if you disagree.

The comics guys were at the top of the chain, partially because Wizard was the flagship magazine of the company, but also because of all the comic book movies that were beginning to come out (I was hired in 2001) and because comics themselves were on quite a resurgence of quality from the dark days of the '90s. A close second to them were the toy guys of ToyFare, of which I was initially one; toys were a bit less cool than comics, in that most of the toys folks collected were still sold alongside Fisher-Price and Barbie and such. But the collector's market had begun in earnest, toys were being stocked in comics stores, and if you liked certain comics characters there was at least a 50% chance you'd want to own action figures of those characters.

Third in the social stratum were the Anime Insider guys, which I became. There were lots of reasons for this, but partially because anime was a pretty new fandom, partially because it was foreign, and partially because a lot of the comics guys had no desire to learn anything about those crazy comic books with the big eyes that people had to read backwards. It's silly to think that comics about super-powered people in tights were inherently better than the wide variety of manga available, even then, but more than a few people at Wizard felt that way, and I'm sure some still do. The fact that superhero movies are big business nowadays while major anime movies get the occasional small theatrical release before hitting DVD indicates to me that this can be extrapolated to all of nerd-dom, even now.

At the bottom of the hierarchy was the collectible card guys. They virtually never interacted with any of the rest of the groups; while all the other magazine editors would go eat lunch together, the CCG guys would sit off by themselves and play CCGs. Every. Day. I don't want to disparage them, they were perfectly nice — well, some of them were perfectly nice, and a few did indeed embody the socially awkward stereotype of nerds that many people have — but the fact of the matter is, generally any of the anime, comics or toy guys could pick up one of the other magazines and understand what was being written about and why the other group was so excited about it, but none of us could pick up Inquest, the CCG magazine, and understand a single fucking word in there. It was all crazy proper nouns and crazy terms and crazy rules, none of which made any sense to us whatsoever. It might have well been written in Wingdings.

Again, I don't want to knock these guys for their passions, but there's something about CCGs breeds kind of an insularity of nerdiness. Maybe because people can be somewhat into comics, buy the occasional collectible, or maybe check out a well-known anime series on Netflix, but with CCGs you're sort of required to be passionate. You have to learn the rules, if you want to have any chance of competing you have to have certain cards, and to get those you have to spend a certain amount of money. With CCGs you're either all in or you probably shouldn't bother, and the people who tend to go all in often seem to do so to the exclusion of most everything else. And those that play them do seem to be the most obsessed nerds, the ones that other nerds can least understand or relate to, and that's why they end up at the bottom.

At any rate, that's my answer. I'd genuinely love to hear everybody's thoughts below.

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S

Reboots Are Made for Walkin'

Charles C.:

Hey Mr. Postman, I'm a big fan of your column.

I finally watched Man of Steel the other day. I thought it was kind of good, but not great. It was... watchable. But it got me thinking, why did Superman have to kill and didn't that ruin the movie and the character? No, just kidding. It got me thinking, does every "reboot" have to start with an origin story?

I don't own any comic books, and have never read any. But I know the origins of all of the major comic book heroes thanks to cartoons, movies, TV, and the Internet. Part of the reason I only found Man of Steel okay, was that I KNOW the first half of the movie. Sure, it was slightly different I guess, but not enough to make it interesting for me. I have no interest in seeing the new new Spiderman 1, because I have seen the old new Spiderman (and various cartoons) and new new Spiderman 1 is just an origin story with a different first villian (than some, same as others).

So is it possible to have a reboot without an origin? Like the next Batman without a lengthy intro into how and why Bruce Wayne becomes Batman? Would any movie, cartoon, TV show ever even change the origin of popular superheroes anyway?

You see, Man of Steel was terrible because Superman does not kill—oh, wait. Sorry, I read "Man of Steel" and just went into my regular diatribe. Sorry!

Obviously, origin stories are useful if not necessary anytime a superhero first graces the screen, like Captain America, Thor or Green Lantern. That's obvious. But there are two reasons why Hollywood keeps retelling origin stories: 1) when making a reboot, it's super-fucking easy to start over from the beginning — seriously, letting Peter Parker get bit by a radioactive spider is an easy 40 minutes of screen time, right there; and 2) Hollywood thinks we're all idiots who can't possibly remember how Spider-Man became Spider-Man, even though his origin been recounted in countless mediums hundreds of times, including one of the most popular movies of 2002. People know it, or at least they know it enough that they could watch Spider-Man swing into a movie frame and not scream, "Wait a second! Who is this guy, and how has he received such amazing powers?!"

Here's my criterion for whether an origin story needs to be told: Does my completely non-nerdy mom know this superhero's origin through its prevalence in pop culture? If so, then Hollywood never needs to fucking tell it again. I'd say Spider-Man and Superman are definitely on this list. Maybe she couldn't remember that Batman watched his parents get gunned down by a mugger as a kid, but at the same time, he's the goddamned Batman. He hates crime. She knows that, and that's really all she needs to know.

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A League of Their Own

Dominik Z.:

Dear Postman,

I recently caught up with Arrow, having previously dismissed it after the third episode. To my surprise I genuinely enjoy this show - it's not perfect, and there's still plenty stupid, but there are more pros than cons. Also, the recent appearance of Grant Gustin as Barry Allen made me cautiously hopeful for an enjoyable Flash series.

Suddenly I had an idea - could CW be building up their own Justice League? We've already got Green Arrow, Black Canary and the Flash. Considering what happened in Central City we suddenly have several metahumans running around alongside the Flash, some of them heroes, some villains. Arrow is turning Roy Harper into Red Arrow or Arsenal. We already know that Nightwing is coming. And what better place to try reintroducing Green Lantern than the Flash show - which could in turn lead to a GL show. Even if the Hourman show, Brimstone pretending to be about Constantine and Young Gordon show end up being not connected to the Arrow-verse, we could still unite all those characters into a team similar to the Justice League and give them a miniseries or a TV movie.

So what do you think - plausible or just wishful thinking?

Totally wishful thinking. I mean, there technically is a CW DC TV-iverse now, but it's never going to include Batman or Superman, because DC/WB is going to keep them on the big screen, and the SFX needed to make a half-way decent Green Lantern TV series is cost prohibitive for the big networks, let alone The CW. (The reason The Flash is at all doable is that The Flash basically needs one special effect — to look like he's running really fast — which they can then repeat ad nauseum.)

Sure, I can easily see The CW managing to make a special event mini-series crossover between Arrow, The Flash, whatever other DC shows they manage to make, along with the rest of Arrow's expanding super-cast. And maybe they'll call it the Justice League, but if so it would be a Justice League consisting of Arrow, the Flash, Nightwing, Black Canary, and a few others. Does that really count as the Justice League for you?

---

S

Doctor Wha-?

Jaime M.:

Why not an American Doctor? If a woman could play the Doctor than surely an American actor could. I suppose you can argue that being British is integral to Doctor Who. But following that logic others can argue that being a white male is integral to the character of the Doctor. And it's canon! Eric Roberts portrayed the Master (admittedly poorly) in the Doctor Who TV movie. I can think of a number of American actors who would be great for the role: Michael Emerson, Zachary Levi, Kristen Schaal, Ron Glass, just off the top of my head. And with Doctor Who more popular than ever in the U.S. I think that it would be a great time to do it (after Capaldi of course).

Oh shit.

Okay. Huh.

Let me first say that as a guy who is clearly all for a female and/or non-Caucasian Doctor, the idea of a non-British Doctor appalls me. I understand the hypocrisy here, but it's not something I can just dismiss, so I'd like to think there has to be a reason behind it. Let's see.

I feel the Doctor isn't intrinsically male or white, but I do feel he's intrinsically British. I don't think swapping the Doctor's gender or race would fundamentally change the character at all, but changing his nationality would somehow be a betrayal. I'm not saying the Doctor can't be American — the story-telling mechanism of regeneration that would allow the character to become a black woman certainly allows for a nationality change — but nationality is almost a matter of personality, and while the Doctor can switch personalities, there's a broader aspect to it that becoming an American would just seem untrue to the character to me, in a way that race or gender does not.

Some things can be adapted to any culture; there are plenty of foreign shows that are remade in America and are excellent, and there are some American shows that get adapted for foreign countries that take on new life. But some things can't be transposed without losing something in the process, and I think Doctor Who might be one of those things. That's to say, sure, the Doctor can be an America, but I really don't want him to be.

Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe it's pure hypocrisy on my part. Or maybe since white male Americans pretty much dominate the world's pop culture landscape, that I would hate for something as unique and individual as Doctor Who to get amalgamated by the machine.

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Do you have questions about anything scifi, fantasy, superhero, or nerd-related? Email the postman@io9.com! No question too difficult, no question too dumb! Obviously!

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com ​What is the nerdiest fandom on the hierarchy of nerds?

Dad Metal onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Dad Metal

Dad Metal!

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Dad Metal

Dennis Rodman sings Happy Birthday to Kim Jong-Un onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Dennis Rodman sings Happy Birthday to Kim Jong-Un

State of the World, 2014: Dennis Rodman sings happy birthday to Kim Jong-un.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Dennis Rodman sings Happy Birthday to Kim Jong-Un

Sterling and Lebkowsky on why the world is in a state of WTF onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Sterling and Lebkowsky on why the world is in a state of WTF

As is tradition, Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky have kickstarted the new year by discussing the current state of the world. This year's edition is as insightful and acerbic as ever, touching upon such topics as the NSA, the emergence of "android demigod" Google, and why it's so hard to write scifi these days.

Scifi author Bruce Sterling and social commentator Jon Lebkowsky's State of the World 2014 appears at The Well, and it's the 15th time they've done this. The email-threaded conversation is currently underway and should last a few weeks. I strongly suggest that you read the whole thing, but I've clipped a few highlights:

Lebkowsky on the changing marketplace:

Bruce made a related point last year, as he came up with the concept of "stacks":

"In 2012 it made less and less sense to talk about 'the Internet,' 'the PC business,' 'telephones,' 'Silicon Valley,' or 'the media,' and much more sense to just study Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. These big five American vertically organized silos are re-making the world in their image. "

This is pretty well-established theology at this point, but I think we're still in a transition with attendant confusion. These stacks and related businesses are all about media and marketing, and they require massive cycles of content, not so much as product but as fuel for the engines of commerce. So the pipes are full of information, but it's less reliable than ever - we're missing the intermediary vetting within the cycle, everybody's running just to stay in the race. And where media is amplified by a proliferation of content - channels and sources - there's more room for media manipulation, political propaganda and commercial marketing messages are embedded, often indistinguishably, in the signal and the noise.

Given all this, and implications that will emerge as we talk over the next couple of weeks, I'd say the current state of the world is *W*T*F*.

Sterling on the year that was:

It'll be hard, this year, not to dwell obsessively on the capering specters of the NSA, Snowden, Wikileaks, Bitcoin… 2013 turned out to be the year when the Digital Revolution trended Stalinist. Old-school Digital Bolsheviks scattered hapless in every direction, as Big Data Killer Bot Commissars scoured the darkening landscape, and Trotsky went to ground in Ecuador.

An extraordinary atmosphere of sullen, baffled evil, as the year opens. I don't know what to compare 2014 to — except for many other glum post-revolutionary situations, when the zealots succeeded in toppling the status quo, then failed to install a just and decent form of civil order. The world in 2014 is like a globalized Twitter Egypt.

What's become of yesterday's august, sturdy, pre-digital institutions? For instance: why does the United States even have a Congress, in 2014? Is it habit? The Congress doesn't do anything now. Everybody despises them. They despise themselves even more than the public does.

Sterling on Google:

Google was going wild in early 2013, they were like android demigods. Now Google is, all of a sudden, presto, Russia. Google is a surveillance secret-police empire with spy binoculars on their faces. Sergey Brin's pet Moonshots are just a lame prestige show.

It's sad, really. Larry and Sergei used to be the Not-Evil Guys, they empowered the users and won their instinctive trust. Now, if Snowden entered the boardroom of Google, Larry and Sergei would shriek in falsetto like the Wicked Witches of the West and melt into two puddles of black wax.

That doesn't make Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Amazon any better than Google — Facebook in particular, oh my God — but it's the first time that these new titans of American industry have really looked genuinely ugly. Just, nasty. Because they're rich and powerful, but they're also narcs. They're creeps and snoops. They're police informants.

Sterling on writing scifi:

This year, I happen to be the fiction editor for the 2014 all-science-fiction issue of MIT's "Technology Review."

I've already lined up a cluster of my favorite fellow-travellers for the effort, and I'm trying to encourage them to write some science fiction stories that actually *review technology.*

Just, like, a literary confrontation with the emergent techno facts-on-the-ground — and that's getting harder to do, I think. It's not because technology is moving faster, or that we're approaching a Singularity or anything. Mind you, that's an excellent sci-fi idea, "Singularity," it was great of Vernor Vinge to come up with that concept, everybody knows what it is now, the Singularity, even long-haired duck hunters in backwoods Louisiana know what a Singularity is. It's cool and rare when science-fictional thinking becomes genuinely popular.

But that's not why it's harder to write science fiction about technology. Technology's not moving all that fast in 2014; tech is simply drifting toward the money, really. It's hard to write fiction about technology because the structure of language is mutating. Also, the demographics for printed fiction have collapsed. So, who is science fiction talking to? Why aren't those readers doing something besides reading science fiction?

Much more here.

Image: Akira.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Sterling and Lebkowsky on why the world is in a state of WTF

Intelligence's pilot used skywriting where it needed subtlety onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Intelligence's pilot used skywriting where it needed subtlety

Intelligence's first episode really wanted you to understand its premise, so it talked it to death. Which was an odd choice, since it's a) not that complicated (Chuck crossed with Covert Affairs, but grittier) and b) it comes on before Person of Interest, which manages to dispatch its more involved concept in just a few sentences.

To be fair to this pilot, it did do some things that were genuinely unexpected. First, I honestly didn't guess the identity of the traitor. Second, it didn't begin with Josh Holloway's Gabriel Vaughn just getting his computer-chipped brain. That would be the obvious route to go, to have Gabriel and audience get used to the device at the same time. Instead, the audience proxy is Meghan Ory's Riley Neal, a Secret Service agent pulled from protecting the president and newly reassigned to protect/reign in Gabriel. This means she spends most of the episode catching everyone's explanation of the premise.

The episode begins with Gabriel and his sweater wandering the "Himalayas." As he does so, his brain's projecting a freeze-framed event and helpfully showing floating headlines and files on the people in it. There's Amelia, Gabriel's wife, with a gun and apparently working with a terrorist. A floating headline helpfully informs us that she was a CIA agent-turned-traitor. She gets mentioned a lot in this episode. Gabriel's apparently been searching for her for five years, so that's apparently his entire motivation.

He gets caught, tells the man who's holding him that the woman he works with hates that he hits on her, opens a door with his mind, hits some dudes in the face, and escapes. Meanwhile, Dr. Phlox is getting abducted by the Chinese. I'll admit that the cheap sympathy ploy of showing Dr. Phlox feeding and talking to his cat right before that happened totally worked on me. Poor dude, he just wanted to discuss computing power with a kitty. (Sidenote: It looks like John Billingsley's going to be a regular on this show, so at some point I'll have to learn his character's name. But he'll always be Phlox to me.)

Then we get introduced Riley, and Marg Helgenberger plays exposition fairy for her and us. She works for U.S. Cyber Command and works on a project called Clockwork. What's Clockwork? Well, it's the Manhattan Project. No, seriously. She takes some time to explain the Manhattan Project to the audience and then says that Clockwork is the 21st century equivalent, has a 100% success rate, and created a chip that lets amputees control artificial limbs with their brains. That... doesn't actually help, but okay.

Riley meets Gabriel and his technician, Amos, who's running Norton Antivirus on Gabriel's brain. Gabriel then uses his super-powered, wi-fi enabled, hackin' brain to bombard Riley with information about herself, including the fact that he can look at a photo she sent a boyfriend a while back. Ick. He sees a sealed juvenile record and wants to open it, but is foiled. How? Some sort of encryption? Basic human decency? No! Marg Helgenberger just tells him not to!

Anyway, the rest of the plot, such as it is, revolves around getting Dr. Phlox back. He created the chip that was installed in Gabriel's brain and, as it turns out, made a new and improved version at home, pretty much because he was bored. He made Gabriel's, put it in his brain, and the Clockwork just sent him home to write his memoirs. That's stupid. He's stupid for thinking he should make one of those in his unsecured house, and Clockwork's stupid for not giving him another project. Of course the Chinese kidnapped him to put the new chip in one of their operatives.

Riley and Gabriel get kidnapped by the Chinese, because they would like Phlox to remove the chip from Gabriel's brain so that they have the only Internet-capable human. Then it turns out that Amos is the traitor. This was honestly surprising, since Amos had all the markers of "geeky comic relief sidekick" and not "greedy spy for hire." Phlox and Gabriel actually manage to improvise a pretty good plan to get out, and then they save Riley. Finally, Marg Helgenberger trades a Chinese operative for information on Amelia, who is apparently alive.

Other things we learned that are likely to be important later:

• Riley's sealed juvenile file is from when she killed her abusive stepfather. She wasn't convicted or anything, but it was sealed all the same.


• Phlox has a son who works with him, and is also jealous of Phlox and Gabriel's relationship.


• The frozen event thing Gabriel does is essentially his using facts and extrapolations to reconstruct how something happened. It looks like a mental holodeck.


• The reason there's not a ton of chipped people running around is that the chip needs its user to have a rare mutation.


• And, if the ending is any indication, it looks like Phlox managed to implant the Chinese operative with a chip before he got away.

There was a scene near the middle of this episode that essentially jumped up and down and screamed "THIS IS OUR THESIS. GET IT? GET IT?" It has Marg Helgenberger telling Gabriel that he's too reckless and emotionally invested in things. He wants Phlox back because he's essentially his father-figure. And he keeps trying to find Amelia. Helgenberger just wants him to do as he's told, dispassionately. Like a machine. Because he's got this chip, so he's essentially a machine, not a person anymore. GET IT?

And in case you didn't, Gabriel leaves and Riley enters in order to write this thesis on an anvil and drop it on our heads. They argue about Marg Helgenberger's treatment of Gabriel, and she says that Riley's job is to "keep it safe." Riley then responds, "Him, not it." OF COURSE SHE DOES. Because just because he's part machine, he isn't one. GET IT YET?

The show has potential, it really does. We all know Josh Holloway can be very charming. Marg Helgenberger plays her character with a great "been there, seen that, just do what I tell you" attitude. She and John Billingsley were the only two who seemed in total control of their characters. In particular, the Phlox/Gabriel breakout scene was really good. We'd heard that they had this close relationship, and Billingsley actually showed it in their scenes together. Honestly, they had better chemistry than Holloway and Ory. Dear show, do more of this instead of endlessly telling us everything. It would have been nice to simply see how Amelia's "betrayal" affected the characters, rather than everyone bringing it up all the time.

If this show can fall a little out of love with its premise, and instead focus on its characters and their dialogue, it could be a fun ride.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Intelligence's pilot used skywriting where it needed subtlety

​Is our love of character reboots killing our creativity? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com ​Is our love of character reboots killing our creativity?

Is our love of character reboots a source of creative inspiration, that lets us re-imagine and reinvigorate our favorite stories? Or is it a symptom of a progressively timid nostalgia that comforts us with the familiar (but this time, with more lens flare)?

In a post for The New York Times, James Parker asks if our love of reviving old characters in new situations — the neo-Sherlocks, The Doctor(s), the crew of the Enterprise, the many, many Batmen—- is evidence that we are locked into "a diminishing loop of derivative creativity, some kind of stranglehold of the secondhand":

"The originators, the exuberant men, are extinct," Evelyn Waugh wrote in 1957, "and in their place subsists and modestly flourishes a generation notable for elegance and variety of contrivance." We do not have Tolkien, in other words: We have J. J. Abrams. Or Steven Moffat, lead writer of "Doctor Who" since 2009 and co-creator (if that's the right word) of the new BBC/Benedict Cumberbatch version of Sherlock Holmes. Nothing against Abrams and Moffat; they're both clearly brilliant — zanily gifted reorganizers and rewirers of material. "Elegance and variety of contrivance," yes indeed, by the bucketload. My point is that the material, for the most part, is not theirs. They work in tropes, memes, brands, jingles, known quantities, canned reactions, market-tested flavors, whatever you want to call them. The cultural critic Simon Reynolds has named this phenomenon "retromania": He published a fascinating book about it in 2011. Tolkien, too, was of course drawing on his sources, his own scholarly vaults of inspiration, his Kalevalas and Nibelungenlieds and all that. But he was closer to the root, to the first fictive impulse. Which makes "The Lord of the Rings" a rather juicier and more self-sustaining "subcreation" — to use Tolkien's terminology — than, say, "Star Trek Into Darkness."

Of course, another way to look at it is that character reboots are a source, not a snare, for creativity — a way to give a character a deeper history, throw a twist into their circumstances, or even to shift the spotlight and answer the question of just what all those other characters were up to while our heroes had their adventures. And incidentally, it's also worth pointing out that when Evelyn Waugh was sounding originality's death-knoll, Tolkien had just published the final book of his Lord of the Rings trilogy two years prior.

So, what do you think? Are the literary-characters that we love to see again and again increasing the creativity of our stories, or curtailing it? And what it is about some characters that makes them just so hard to let go?

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com ​Is our love of character reboots killing our creativity?

Watch every day of the Second World War in this amazing timelapse onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Watch every day of the Second World War in this amazing timelapse

Recently, YouTube user EmperorTigerstar mapped the changing front lines of WWII as it unfolded across Europe. Now, he's finished the job, compiling a timelapse perspective of the entire war that includes the African, Asian, and Pacific theatres.

Personally, I would have started the clock on July 7th, 1937 — the day the Second Sino-Japanese War began, and a date that some historians consider the true start of World War II. At any rate, things get going in September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland and end with the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945.

Watching the timelapse, I find the war in the Pacific particularly fascinating — starting with the massive offensive by the Japanese in 1941, followed by the patient but unrelenting island leap-frogging by U.S. forces. Front lines on the water aren't quite like the ones on land.

For a list of key dates in Europe, check out this previous post. Here are the dates to watch for in the Pacific and in Central and East Asia.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Watch every day of the Second World War in this amazing timelapse

We Understand Our Taste System A Lot Less Than We Thought onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com We Understand Our Taste System A Lot Less Than We Thought

S

How people develop long-lasting taste aversions has intrigued scientists for decades. Surprisingly, research now shows this phenomenon doesn't occur in the brain area involved in taste perception, as previously believed — this discovery could not only help us better understand our taste system, but also why people eat the foods they do.

In recent years, scientists have used a variety of techniques to reveal the roles that different brain regions play in managing our senses. But the taste cortex, or gustatory cortex, of the brain has remained a bit of a mystery, said Alan Spector, a neuroscientist who studies the gustatory system at Florida State University. "Though, there have been some theories about what it's involved in," he told io9. In particular, research has suggested the gustatory cortex, which is known to mediate our taste perception, also plays a strong role in conditioned taste aversion.

This ubiquitous phenomenon occurs when people (or animals) eat or drink something new, and get sick shortly after (within 12 hours). From then on, they will have a powerful, long-lasting aversion to the food item, a reaction that is a kind of natural survival mechanism. And unlike other forms of conditioning, taste aversion doesn't require repeated trials — you only need to get sick from something just once in order to become averse to it. This can also happen with food you're familiar with, but the aversion won't last as long, Spector said.

A number of studies in the past have shown that damaging an animal's gustatory cortex causes it to lose its learned taste aversion. This suggests that the taste cortex encodes conditioned taste aversion. Recently, Spector and his colleague Koji Hashimoto decided to use this "lesion approach" to see if the gustatory cortex also encodes other functions of taste, such as taste sensitivity and taste discrimination. They began by trying to reproduce those past studies on taste aversion — they couldn't. In their experiments, they found that even extensive damage to rats' taste cortexes didn't mess with their conditioned taste aversion.

The researchers thought that maybe they did something differently. "We thought that maybe our lesions were in a slightly different place or not as big," Spector said. So Spector and his colleagues — Lindsey Schiera and Koji Hashimoto, especially — redid the experiments with a more comprehensive approach.

Taste Aversions and Brain Lesions

The researchers began by inducing a conditioned taste aversion in rats. They first placed the rodents on a "restricted water access schedule," where they only gave the rats water at certain times of the day. The rodents functioned just fine on the schedule, but they were thirsty when drinking-time came around.

Next, the team replaced the water with a sodium chloride (salt) solution. After the rats drank the solution, the team injected them with a bit of lithium chloride, which causes nausea for an hour or so. They pulled this trick again a few days later — and force fed the rats that already developed an aversion to the solution after getting sick the first time — to solidify the conditioning. They then left out two bottles of liquid — one contained normal water and the other contained the salt solution — for over a month, and found that the rats only drank the pure water, showing that the conditioning lasts for a long time.

The researchers made all kinds of different surgical lesions across the rats' gustatory cortexes and adjacent areas, and then tested their taste aversion. When they looked at the group of rats with the most extensive gustatory cortex damage, they found that these rats were still averse to the salt solution.

They then conducted another set of experiments where they tested if the rats could form a conditioned taste aversion to delicious sucrose after they developed lesions. Again, as a group, the rats with the most extensive damage showed no taste aversion impairments — that is, the rats were still able to develop a taste aversion to sucrose despite having damaged gustatory cortexes.

"Basically, we weren't finding many effects," Spector said. "We were perplexed."

A Symphony of Signals

When the team took a closer look at individual rats, however, they saw that some of them did indeed show a disruption in their conditioned taste aversion. Using a high-resolution lesion mapping program they developed, they were able to overlay the lesions of the unimpaired rats with the impaired rats, which allowed them to find lesion "hot spots" associated with taste aversion disruption.

To their surprise, the lesions of the impaired rats were outside of the gustatory cortex, as it's conventionally defined by electrophysiological recordings (a technique in which scientists measure the activity of neurons), Spector said.

Deficits in taste aversion were instead associated with the most posterior end of the gustatory complex, as well as an adjacent brain area called the visceral cortex, which processes information from the organ systems, including the gut. The researchers took a look at some of those previous studies on taste aversion impairments, and found that while those studies showed lesions in the main gustatory cortex, they also showed lesions in the visceral cortex. "Most people very naturally contributed [the effect] to the gustatory cortex," Spector said.

The results suggest that the gustatory system works with the visceral sensory system when it comes to learned taste aversion, as well as eating, drinking and satiation, Spector said. "All of these things involve a symphony between the signals coming from the mouth and the signals coming from the gut and other organ systems that help guide ingestive behavior," he explained, adding that further work on the interplay between these systems could elucidate why people eat what they do, and even why some people overeat.

The research also has clinical applications. For example, cancer patients receiving chemotherapy sometimes develop eating disorders, which may in part be due to the therapy inducing taste aversions. "Learning more about this would help guide the type of therapeutic regimes that physicians suggest," Spector said.

For now, Spector is planning on returning to his original research goal: Using the lesion approach to understand the role the taste cortex plays in taste sensitivity and taste discrimination. "We really don't know a lot about what the gustatory complex does," he said. "What has initially been attributed to gustatory complex probably involves other areas of the brain."

Check out the full study over in the journal PNAS.

Top image via Levranii/Shutterstock.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com We Understand Our Taste System A Lot Less Than We Thought

The X-Men Character You Didn't Think You'd Ever See Again onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The X-Men Character You Didn't Think You'd Ever See Again

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Seriously, this is the last mutant you thought they'd ever bring back. Meanwhile, Chris Evans explains what he's learned about Captain America. Check out a new piece of Star Wars: Rebels concept art. Plus, check out Hugh Jackman sporting a mullet in Neill Blompkamp's Chappie. Spoilers now!

Top image: X-Men: Days of Future Past

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

We've been hearing forever that this film in the the "70s thriller" mold, and now Chris Evans offers up his theory as to why this genre works for Captain America:

The brothers said right from the start that we were really doing a '70s thriller. And I think just Cap's abilities mesh well with that kind of genre. I mean, his powers are very meat and potatoes. Faster. Stronger. Punch. Kick. That works with those types of movies. It would be more difficult to put, say, Hulk in that kind of context.

In the same Empire interview, Evans says that the film shows Steve trying to find his place in the modern world. He also described what he thinks sets Steve apart:

To be a good man is difficult. To be the best man you can be is even harder. Even though he doesn't choose to wear his baggage on his sleeve, I think that's his skill set. He doesn't moan. There is a depth to him. There are always new things to find.

[Comic Book Resources]

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X-Men: Days of Future Past

We haven't seen Toad since the first X-Men movie, when Halle Berry showed him what happens to toads struck by lightning. Now it turns out Evan Joingkeit will play a younger version of Toad in this prequel/sequel. He did say that his Toad will look very different to the one played by Ray Park in the first film:

The aesthetics of the character are much different, and I'm not really allowed to say a whole lot more than that. . . . It's darker. I would say it's a darker tone.

[Coming Soon]

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Chappie

Hugh Jackman posted a photo of himself on Instagram, with this caption:

Day 1 on Chappie! Vincent is born, rocking the mullet. Working with Neill Blomkamp in SA. This film is rad.

Little is known about Neill Blomkamp's upcoming comedy, other than that it centers on the eponymous robot, who gets kidnapped by two criminals during birth and becomes the adopted son of a strange family. We also know that Sharlto Copley will voice Chappie. But of the rest of the cast – Jackman, Sigourney Weaver, Dev Patel, Yo-Landi Vi$$er and Ninja of the South African rap rave "zef" crew Die Antwoord – have not had their characters revealed. Perhaps Weaver and Jackman play the adopted parents? [Moviefone]

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The Amazing Spider-Man 2

The latest Daily Bugle tumblr post both wraps up what happened to Dr, Curt Connors after the first movie and may set up his alter ego for either the Sinister Six movie or maybe, given that we know Ravenscroft is in the sequel, a cameo there. Here's the text:

By Joy Mercado

The trial of Dr. Curt Connors came to an end as the former geneticist for Oscorp Industries was found guilty on all twenty counts for which he was indicted, including the murder of NYPD Captain George Stacy.

Connors and his attorney, Anne Weying, were unable to convince the jury that he was not responsible for his deadly actions while transformed. His defense that he only injected himself with the serum that changed him into the Lizard to prevent Oscorp Industries from experimenting on innocent civilians did not sway the jury.

Next stop: Rikers. But even that is controversial. Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane has said their facility is better served for housing and studying a prisoner such as Connors, but the judge has yet to rule on where Curt Connors will spend what is likely to be the rest of his life.

[Coming Soon]

And here are three international posters. [Coming Soon]

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The Cobbler

Here's a photo of Adam Sandler in The Cobbler, in which he plays a shoe-repair guy who develops the ability to walk in other people's shoes (i.e., live their experiences) for a period of time. [EW via First Showing]

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The LEGO Movie

Here's the first TV spot. [Coming Soon]

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RoboCop

Here are two international trailers. [Coming Soon]

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Doctor Who

The BBC released the first set photo of Peter Capaldi, which has him still in 11's clothes. (We featured it in yesterday's 2014 TV preview, but it's below in case you missed it.) There were also some new interviews. Here's what Capaldi said when got to his first filming:

New job, first day, slightly nervous. Just like the Doctor, I'm emerging from the TARDIS into a whole other world.

And a quick tease from Steven Moffat:

First the eyebrows! Then, at Christmas, the face! Coming soon, the whole Doctor. In the Cardiff studios, the Capaldi era begins.

The photo's below.

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Agents of SHIELD

If you're worried about the reveal of what's happened to Coulson, Clark Gregg seems to be pleased with the result, saying:

As a fanboy, I thought, "How are they going to do this? They've been keeping this for 10 episodes." We know that there's something bogus about the magical place concept. He can't even say Tahiti without turning into a robot. Is he a robot? How did they bring him back? Is he some kind of Life Model Decoy, as all the Marvel fans think? Is he the Vision? There's all these theories. How do you do this for real and really pay it off? At the same time, you don't want them to go, "Well, I guess that's the finale of the show. There's really no need to continue after this. The bullet was in the chamber, now it's completely blown." When I read the script, I was blown away because it's completely satisfying to me as a fanboy, and, as probably the biggest fanboy in Phil Coulson in the Marvel Universe, because it's not a tease, it's: here's what happened! At the same time, what they've crafted not only opens up enough questions that are at the existential core of Phil Coulson and his relationship with S.H.I.E.L.D., but really set the direction for the back end of the season and the future of the series. I was very, very impressed with what they delivered here.

[TV Guide via Coming Soon]

Showrunner Maurissa Tancharoen talked about how much of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s past we'll be seeing and the problems the show faces in doing that:

We will dive into the vast history of S.H.I.E.L.D. at some point, but as with all things, we exist in the MCU and must tread lightly when it comes to reveals and storylines they plan to delve into within the films. Coulson has a deep fascination and respect for that history, so it's only natural that we will explore it in detail in time.

Tancharoen also answered a question about whether there'd be more people with powers "like Scorch," as opposed to the sort of scientifically endowed powers of many of the other characters already seen:

Yes. Tech served as a great entry into this world for us. Keep in mind, when our show debuted, there were only two humans alive with superpowers in the entire history of the MCU (Cap and Hulk), so we had to be very responsible with how many and how rapidly we began to introduce them.

[Comic Book Resources]

We mentioned Stan Lee will appear in the series in a "big role" — but here's a set photo. [Coming Soon]

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Sleepy Hollow

Star Nicole Beharie says that the season finale's going to be a shocker:

I don't think anyone sees what's coming. I was completely thrown. There are so many twists, turns and ways that all of the different storylines start to make sense. It's definitely up there with the big stuff you get in a series finale.

[TV Guide]

Speaking of the finale, here's the synopsis for the two hour episode:

A LIFE-CHANGING, DEMONIC TRUTH IS REVEALED ON THE TWO-HOUR SEASON FINALE OF "SLEEPY HOLLOW" MONDAY, JANUARY 20, ON FOX

Ichabod and Abbie discover a dark secret buried within the pages of George Washington's Bible and unearth the shocking true nature of the founding father's death. Meanwhile, Capt. Irving makes a near-impossible decision for the sake of his beloved family that drastically changes his future. Then, the battle between good and evil comes to an explosive head. Sacrifices must be made, worlds collide, loyalties are tested and the town of SLEEPY HOLLOW will never be the same in the all-new special two-hour "The Indispensable Man/Bad Blood" Season Finale episode of SLEEPY HOLLOW airing Monday, Jan. 20 (8:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. (SLH-112/13) (TV-14 L, V)

[SpoilerTV]

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Star Wars: Rebels

Looking at upcoming LEGO sets for the series have revealed two called "The Phantom" and "The Ghost." Both sets are for ships, but the details also seem to name two characters: a "young Rebel hero" called Ezra Bridger and someone called Zeb. What are the chances these will be the main characters? [Slashfilm]

And here's a piece of concept art for the Ghost, by Kilian Plunkett. [Star Wars Tumblr via Mania]

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Intelligence

Here's how Josh Holloway describes his character, Gabriel Vaughn:

Would you describe Gabriel as The Six Billion Dollar Man?

The difference, though, is he hasn't been enhanced in any way physically. Which is very interesting. He can get shot, he can get killed just as easily as you and me. That was appealing to me too — I didn't want him to be this super human that you can't hurt or Robocop, who is more machine than human. This is simply a computer chip in his head, so yeah, you have information but that's it. He's not physically enhanced and he's having problems with this chip — he's going to get hacked, he has viruses, the downside of computers is that we want to Frisbee them against the wall sometimes because they don't work [laughs], so there's that element and I was very adamant about that when I took the job. All my questions were around that: What if he's addicted to, like, polka dancing, and that's all he streams all the time? What if he can't control the data flow? What if his dreams go wild? He's not this super agent that can do everything — no, he's having problems with this f—er — so it's good. It makes it real to me and a more interesting dynamic to play.

Gabriel is one of America's most powerful weapons. But he's also a loose weapon. Who's a bigger threat to him: The terrorists or himself?

Well, ultimately the terrorists but he doesn't make it easy! He doesn't play by the rules exactly — he's an instinctual soldier and that's also what I liked about this character. He's a soldier more than a computer guy, right? He was taught through Delta, he's been through all these combat tours pre enhancement so he's used to making decisions from instinct, making decisions in deep, hardcore operations, he's used to operating in that way and surviving. So that had to change. He makes field calls on the day that don't exactly compute with the information that he's getting per se — it reminds me of that line in Star Wars: "Never tell me the odds." His brain already tells him the odds. So he just doesn't listen to it. (laughs) But he definitely uses it to help — he wants to survive but he's more human than computer.

[Entertainment Weekly]

And here's the synopsis for episode 2, "Red X":

WHEN CYBERCOM INVESTIGATES A TERRORIST SUICIDE BOMBING, GABRIEL IS SHOCKED WHEN HE COMES FACE-TO-FACE WITH HIS WIFE, WHEN "INTELLIGENCE" MOVES TO ITS REGULAR MONDAY TIME SLOT, ON MONDAY, JAN. 13

"Red X" - CyberCom investigates a terrorist suicide bombing at a U.S. Marine base and learns a new, chemically undetectable bomb material is being consumed. Meanwhile, Riley is forced to make a drastic decision when she finds Gabriel unable to complete a task, on INTELLIGENCE, Monday, Jan. 13 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Go here for photos from that episode. [K Site TV]

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Ravenswood

According to Nicole Gale Anderson, there's something big in store for Miranda:

[There's a] huge choice for Miranda's storyline at the very end of the first episode. And it really molds her character and her character's storyline. So it changes a lot for her. It's a huge game changer at the end of the first episode.

More at the link. [TV Equals]

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Revolution

Here's a short description of episode 2.13, "Happy Endings":

Monroe leads a risky mission while Rachel and Miles watch over Willoughby; Aaron is reunited with an old friend.

[SpoilerTV]

And here's the synopsis for tonight's episode, "Three Amigos":

MILES LEADS AN UNLIKELY TRIO IN HIS ONGOING QUEST TO MAKE AMENDS- KIM RAVER GUEST STARS - When Miles leads Monroe (David Lyons) and Rachel (Elizabeth Mitchell) south of the border; they're met with much more than they bargained for as Neville (Giancarlo Esposito) and Julia (Kim Raver) dance a delicate dance. Meanwhile, Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos) and Gene (Stephen Collins) continue their search for Aaron (Zak Orth).Also starring JD Pardo, Christopher Cousins, David Aaron Baker, Mat Vairo, Jorge Jimenez and Jack Scalia.

Go here for more photos from the episode. [K Site TV]

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Additional reporting by Charlie Jane Anders and Emily Stamm

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onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The X-Men Character You Didn't Think You'd Ever See Again

Giant Dashi Float from Japan, 1871 onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Giant Dashi Float from Japan, 1871

Ein 1871er Dashi-Floß aus Japan, das während eines Festivals durch die Straßen gezogen wird und einen Berg symbolisiert. Howl’s Moving Castle much, eh?

The photo above was taken by an unknown photographer in 1871, a mere 30 years after the world’s first photographs began emerging. The artist captured a massive, precarious float (known as dashi) parading through the streets of Hakata, in Southern Japan. Much of the specifics remain unknown, but my best guess would be that it was part of the Hakata Gion Yamakasa, a 700-year old festival that takes place in early July. […]

Dashi (written 山車, the characters for mountain and car) have been around for hundreds of years and play a central role in Shinto festivals that celebrate the gods. It was thought that Shinto gods originally descended onto mountainous peaks, hence height and overall resemblance to mountains. It was also customary for the floats to be heavily decorated with mountain imagery.

Japanese Parade Floats from the 1800s

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Giant Dashi Float from Japan, 1871

The Internet K Hole onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Internet K Hole

80s. Punks. Bikes. Tits. NSFW. Cats. Skating. Drums. Sex. Cakes. Cars. Mustaches. Summer. Goth. Giant Hats. The Internet K Hole. It’s weird. (via Dangerous Minds)

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Internet K Hole

Eileen Gunn's strange thought experiments will unravel your mind onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Eileen Gunn's strange thought experiments will unravel your mind

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Plenty of science fiction and fantasy authors do "thought experiments" — but few of them disregard experimental safety protocols with quite as much gleeful abandon as Eileen Gunn. And now, at long last, Gunn is publishing a second book of demented tales.

Gunn's new book Questionable Practices comes out in March from Small Beer Press, but we got hold of an early copy and were excited to delve into the strange imagination of Gunn. For those who've missed out on her writing, this former Microsoft exec published a book of jarring stories, Stable Strategies and Others, ten years ago, and also published the webzine Infinite Matrix.

True to form, Gunn's new book, Questionable Practices, contains a number of sardonically weird looks at the future and the strangeness of corporate culture. But her insatiable eye for weirdness branches out this time around, featuring a number of different takes on the fantastical.

There is also a good deal of silliness in Questionable Practices, which should be welcomed by anyone who's gotten tired of the pervasive stiff upper lip in SF and fantasy of late. From outright spoofs to metafictional pranks to sarcastic mischief, Gunn is constantly winking at the reader, while also packing tons of clever ideas. And just when you least expect it, she drops a serious truth bomb.

In terms of theme and subject matter, the stories in this book are all over the map. You can read her four-part steampunk pastiche online,and her bizarre metafictional piece of Kirk/Spock slash fiction is also online. But you can also read her strange Christmas fairytale, a collaboration with Michael Swanwick, which starts out goofy and slowly becomes sadder and sadder. Also online: "Zeppelin City," another collaboration with Swanwick that includes both derring-do and abundant strangeness.

My favorite pieces in this book, in fact, are generally the ones in which there's a surprising weight behind Gunn's flights of fancy. Including the Christmas story, "The Trains That Climb the Winter Tree," which turns into a coming-of-age tale with kind of a heavy message. Similarly, another collaboration with Swanwick, "The Armies of Elfland," involves a young girl learning some harsh lessons and facing some serious heartbreak in the midst of all the weirdness. Both of these stories feel like the kind of dark fables that a lot of young-adult book authors have aimed for of late, but Gunn (and Swanwick) take themto darker places and bring an amazing inventiveness to them that add to the feeling of going on a real journey.

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And on the "dark fabulist" tip, probably my favorite story in the book is the previously unpublished "Chop Wood, Carry Water," which is told from the point of view of a Golem who is mystified by his own soulless existence and just wants to return to being inanimate clay. The Golem tries to understand what it is to be alive, and the meaning of Jewishness, even as terrible things are threatened for the small Jewish settlement he lives in.

But Gunn also turns her satirical eye on several characters whose self-delusions get them into trouble. In "Up the Fire Road," she tells the story from both the contradictory POVs of a man and a woman, who are both kind of awful people, and both of whom end up having a romantic/sexual relationship with a sasquatch that winds up turning them into television stars. In "Hive Mind Man," a collaboration with Rudy Rucker, she follows another dreadful romance, involving a man who takes our obsession with smart gadgets and social media to a horrendous extreme.

In between these strange satires and the bizarre fairy tales, there are also straight-up spoofs, such as the Star Trek and steampunk things linked above, plus a metafictional tale about Michael Swanwick and Samuel R. Delany eating hamburgers.

The overwhelming feeling you get after you finish reading Questionable Practices is one of oppression — Gunn is not using fanciful writing and silly spoofs to liberate you, as a lot of other writers would, but to show how you're being crushed by systems that make no sense. There are a lot of stories about enslavement and imprisonment here, and in none of them does liberation turn out to be as simple as people imagine.

Her first book was described as "Kafkaesque," but here she's moved beyond the Kafka riff into something harder to pin down — there are plenty of surreal touches, but also a lot of hints that our own subjectivity, our ways of constructing ourselves, are at the root of how we become enslaved.

If you've been wishing your science fiction and fantasy short stories had a bit more mischief lately, then Eileen Gunn's Questionable Practices is guaranteed to shake things up.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Eileen Gunn's strange thought experiments will unravel your mind

The city at level 10 was nothing like level 2 onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The city at level 10 was nothing like level 2

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Rising up through the glowing levels of the city, you could see the grime slowly peeling away. As the windows became cleaner, it was easier to see how much more expensive the furniture and machines were in the upper level apartments too.

Cat-meff is an artist in Germany. You can see more of her amazing work on her Deviant Art page.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The city at level 10 was nothing like level 2

Will Sansa Stark end up a villain or a victim? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Will Sansa Stark end up a villain or a victim?

Today, we were promised that one of Sansa Stark's chapters in The Winds of Winter is sure to spark controversy, setting off a flurry of speculation about Sansa's ultimate fate. Here are a few theories as to Sansa's future position in the Game of Thrones.

A Song of Ice and Fire spoilers below.

GoLikeHellMachine wonders if Martin is setting Sansa up to become just like the woman who tormented her:

I've been thinking they're setting up Sansa to become just like Cersei; cruel, calculating, hard. That leads me to believe I think she's going to kill Robin and marry Littlefinger instead.

Naturally, the idea of Sansa wedding Littlefinger caused some controversy, with some commenters liking the idea of Sansa and Littlefinger living nefariously ever after and others hoping that Sansa would eventually kill Littlefinger. But UnitedShoes wondered if killing the heir to the Vale would be a wise move:

I feel like killing the heir and marrying the regent wouldn't indicate much in the way of having learned to play the game, at least from the bits that have been revealed about Vale politics. It sounded like the key lords in the Vale of Arryn were loyal to Jon, tolerated Lysa because Jon liked her and she was mother to Robert, and are on the verge of revolt should anything happen to Robert, in spite of pretty openly feeling like he's not cut out to rule the Vale and being ready to stand behind Harold the Heir.

I could be wrong (it's been a while since I finished ADWD), but her and Littlerfinger's position in the Vale will have to change pretty significantly before I could expect a plan like that to not just wind up getting them both killed.

Although GoLikeHellMachine also adds that killing Sweetrobin is a move that makes sense to someone who learned the game the way Sansa did, and wonders if Joffrey's death and Cersei's current status might prompt her to reveal her true identity and try to rule the Vale.

In light of the notion that Sansa could turn out just like Cersei, LadyJillybean's speculation about Sansa is particularly interesting:

I keep thinking she's going to get pregnant at some point. Motherhood is quite an important theme and it would be interesting to see Sansa with her view on life going through that trial.

Where do you see Sansa heading in the next book? Will she keep playing the Game of Thrones, or will she fall to it?

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Will Sansa Stark end up a villain or a victim?