In case you were wondering, that poster on the wall in the background at the end of this season's premier when Levitt was talking to Houston was an 1899 production by Strobridge Lithographic featuring the minor magician Zan Zig:

Zan Zig, courtesy of trialsanderrors

They may bury him in the earth,
And be hopey that his Backer,
Keeping reaping Grim at lock and key,
Will inspect the barn he built and see
His worth, that he was one good cracker.

Via Bruce Schneier, a refreshing exploitation of the (modified) Prisoner's Dilemma round on the split-or-steal game show Golden Balls.

1) I have read and enjoyed George R. R. Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire.

2) I hate and despise my fellow man.

3) It logically follows that this made me smile.

I have resisted what amounts to a dare by Patrick to geek out in front you all over the progress of the HBO series Game of Thrones, which has had two episodes now. Suffice it to say: I am rereading the series (in my iPad this time) in preparation for the 5th book in July, I am faithfully watching and enjoying the series, I am attempting to keep my dear wife (Happy Anniversary, dear) interested in it, and I am using it to think about the necessary differences between art forms. But I am reserving the more effusive geekery to other locales, so as not to embarrass Patrick. It's really the least I can do.

That said: one of the great things about this series of tubes is its ability to deliver to us not only pure geekery in its unrefined form, but geek fusion, in which different types of geekery are combined in new and exciting ways. In that spirit, via the man himself, I give you The Inn at the Crossroads, a blog that documents attempts to re-create both medieval and modern versions of the foods described in GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire series.

I am so making the hot spiced wine this weekend.

There were many ways this old man could have handled his grandson's query about prejudice, a word his grandson was too young to understand. Or even to pronounce.

He could have explained, without being judgmental, why it's best to think of our friends as individuals rather than classifying them as part of an arbitrary group.

He could have given his grandson a short, sanitized history of anti-semitism, explaining why Jimmy legitimately felt ostracized by being classed as "The Other," while, in his grandfatherly fashion, getting his grandson to agree that, as good people, the grandfather and the grandson are above this sort of name-calling and labeling. He could have started his grandson down the right path, to a future in which the boy judged individuals on their merits, rather than by race, religion, or class. He could have made the boy part of the team.

But did the grandfather do that?  No.

Grandpa lowered the boom. He told his four year old grandson, so young that he still lisped, that the boy was an incurable bigot. Beyond redemption. A thought criminal with no hope of reform.

There is a reason the camera fades away in the last seconds of this public service commercial: so as to avoid showing this boy's face as his own grandfather deals a traumatic blow, an emotional punch in the stomach, that will follow the boy to his shame for the rest of his days. There is no way the child will ever think of himself as a decent person after this. Every time this child looks in the mirror, he will hate the face that looks back at him. Whenever he sees his friend Jimmy, he'll be filled with self-loathing.

Kinder that the grandfather had removed one of those hooks from his hat and gouged out the boy's eye.

Today that kid is probably a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, bouncing between parole and prison in a meth-fueled haze, praying to Wotan, in his lucid moments, that the government never connects him to the Oklahoma City bombing.

Thanks a lot, grandpa. And thanks a lot, Jimmy Carter, for traumatizing kids with this sort of shit during their After School Specials.

Until then, I'll miss Elisabeth Sladen, who passed away after a long fight with cancer this morning.

Fans of Doctor Who know Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, who accompanied the Doctor in the series' first golden age, while Tom Baker was playing the character in the early and mid-1970s.  The character, and the actress who played her, was so appealing that alone among the cast in the series' "first" 25 year run, Sladen was brought back in the series' modern, second run.  Where she was just as enjoyable, so beloved that she was brought back for her own, children's oriented series, in which she still starred.

Au revoir Ms. Sladen.

HBO's adaptation of George R. R. Martin's Game Of Thrones premiers Sunday.  Set your clocks, and your hearts, for this once in a lifetime event Popehat readers.

Unlike Ken (who I know is counting the seconds until Sunday night), I enjoy Atlas Shrugged as much as I enjoy A Game Of Thrones, which is to say, I enjoy it mildly. Rand's followers compare her work favorably to that of Plato and Dostoevsky. Martin's followers call his work C. S. Lewis for adults, or Tolkien meets the Wars of the Roses (and therefore, implicitly, Shakespeare). To call any of these comparisons a stretch is to be kind.  At least Rand knew how her book would end (with a 78 page speech) before she wrote it.

Martin is just stringing his audience along.  When he dies, his fans will compare A Game of Thrones to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.

But as long as we understand that going in (we surely do four books in), that's entertainment!

Now where is my twelve hour adaptation of Cryptonomicon?  That would be art.

You unlock this door with the key of imagination: A graphic history of fantasy and science fiction, from the unknown poet behind Beowulf to Vernor Vinge and beyond.

I can't do this justice by describing it, and I won't steal it for reproduction here. Just click the link.

Like I keep saying, the writers over at cracked continue to offer insightful political and social satire and commentary disguised by numbered fart-and-boob jokes.

But some things are so freakishly wrong in the first place that they can't really be satirized; even the best writers are left sitting back and gaping in horror, making a few half-hearted jabs.

Take, for instance, Cracked's take on the E! Channel reality show Bridalplasty, in which brides-to-be compete for free plastic surgery.

I thought, at first, that Cracked was having us on — that it was describing a fictional, over-the-top show in order to satirize reality TV.

Oh Lord, how I wish that were true. Because the show is real — and, if anything, worse than Cracked's heroic but futile attempts to ridicule it would suggest. E! thinks people want to watch this sort of shit. And they're right.

What the hell is wrong with us?

Craig Ferguson explains Dr. Who to Unitedstatesian viewers:

Friends on the west coast who haven't had a chance to see the premiere of AMC's The Walking Dead tonight, should.

I didn't expect to like it.  I expected to see the first episode, satisfy myself that it wasn't worth watching, and move on.  Though I'm a fan of George Romero, I don't like most zombie movies, because most zombie movies are, to put it plainly, awful.

But here we have a true contender.  I highly recommend The Walking Dead to fans of George Romero or Max Brooks, but also to anyone (with a strong stomach) who enjoys a good suspense or horror yarn of any sort.   On the evidence of one show, this will be a top notch television program.

It's a safe bet that no one else was watching C-SPAN 2's "Book TV" panel the other day, so consider this a public service announcement to the woman of the world.

Don't date Todd Seavey.  Ever.

If you must date Todd Seavey, don't break up with him.

Because he'll talk all about you, in great detail, on C-SPAN 2's "Book TV".

The head of the University of California at San Diego's robotics laboratory, tasked with creating a lifelike, human seeming robot, is named Javier Movellan.

The British science fiction television show Doctor Who, in the 1970s, featured a race of aliens named Movellans.   The Movellans were engaged in a galaxy-spanning war against the better known Daleks.

Daleks

Here's where it gets weird.  The Daleks were a race of living creatures, cyborgs, who required robotic shells to stay alive.  Opponents of the Daleks often mistook them for robots.  Horrific, genocidal robots, but robots nonetheless.

Movellans

The Movellans, on the other hand, looked and behaved like humans, so much so that they were mistaken for living creatures. But in fact they were robots, less like humans than the Daleks they fought.

Just like the machines that Dr. Javier Movellan is trying to create.

Look guys, I voted for Bob Barr because I think John McCain's a RINO, but when you attack Andy Fucking Griffith, you've gone too damned far.

"Andy Griffith Throws Away Fifty Years Of Good Faith In Thirty Seconds."

Sheriff Taylor's approval ratings are, supposedly, down in North Carolina because he participated in a commercial supporting Obamacare.  I have my doubts.  I've lived my entire life in the state, and would guess that Andy's ratings are down because the state's younger generation are a bunch of videogame addicted illiterates who think Larry the Cable Guy is classic comedy.  But that's just me.

The older generation knows.  And the kids will come around.  Eventually they'll rediscover "What It Was Was Football," "No Time For Sergeants," and hardcore oldschool Andy Griffith Show reruns, in black and white, not that miserable Mayberry RFD pap.

But don't take my word for it.  The surest sign that Andy is still relevant, still funny, and STILL A TITAN WORTHY TO SIT AMONG NORTH CAROLINA'S GREATEST SONS (roughly speaking, Thelonious Monk, George Clinton, Thomas Wolfe, John Coltrane, Andrew Jackson, and Andy Griffith) is that Bill O'Reilly has jumped on the bandwagon. If Bill O'Reilly is against Andy Griffith, he must be doing something right.

As Jon Stewart asked, "How do you turn against Opie's pa? Matlock! He's a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner. What happened, North Carolina, did Griffith wipe his ass on one of Dean Smith's old jackets?"

Look, Andy Griffith could endorse Satan-worship from a toilet stall in an elementary school girls' restroom, and I'd still be a fan. Long after Bill O'Reilly's show is cancelled following the host's horrific death from having his head sucked into the vacuum of his ass, the Andy Griffith Show will remain a classic.