Saturday, July 09, 2005

On rereading Goblet of Fire

My first few times through, I thought the plot of Goblet of Fire was a bit silly. Why not just solve every task with Accio? Why didn't Crouch!Moody just make something into a portkey and hand it to Harry? But upon a close rereading I find I'm really enjoying it. The first hundred or so pages have nothing to do with the rest of the plot (just chez Weasley and Quidditch Cup) but I'm immensely enjoying reading through them because I get to see joyous daily life in the wizarding world, which is really one of my favourite things about the books. Plus there's all these tiny little clues that you can see when you know how it's going to turn out. Perhaps clues isn't the correct word because the reader (or Harry) could never have put them together to figure out the entire nefarious plot (that's why the last few chapters are always essentially a debriefing). But as I reread, I see that Winky the House Elf is struggling as though an invisible person is holding onto her, which he is, but we don't know this yet! And I see how Crouch Sr. is reacting, and it all makes sense given what we know at the end! It really makes me appreciate the craft, and perhaps it will give me a better idea of how to derive clues from HBP.

Friday, July 08, 2005

Doggies in elevators

Sometimes people in my apartment building are taking a doggie in or out of the building, and sometimes the doggie gets to ride in the elevator.

One thing I've noticed with all the doggies I've ever seen is the moment the elevator doors start to open, the doggie enthusiastically charges through, ending up on the other side before the doors have even finished opening. They're all waggy and SO EXCITED that they get to get on or off the elevator!

I love doggies.

Sheep!

If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Thoughts from the first chapter of GOF

1. Who's the rich absentee owner of the Riddle House? Might it be Malfoy or his ilk?
2. What's up with Nagini? Where did she come from, and why is she with Voldemort? Did he just ask her to come along, or is there something in it for her? Is the a Fantastic Beast? Did Voldie name her or is that her own name?
3. Voldemort says that Wormtail can do him a favour that most of his followers would give their right hands for. Nice! I never noticed this line before!
4. How did Wormtail know where to look for Voldemort?
5. A skilled wizard can undo a memory charm. I expect this to turn up again later.
6. What on earth does a "high, cold voice" sound like?

Things that will not happen in HBP (but tend to happen in fanfiction)

1. Harry will not find religion of any sort
2. Harry will not become a superhero over the summer (although I can't rule out the idea that he might become a superhero by the end of book 7).
3. Harry will not decide "I need a girlfriend" and then proceed methodically to acquire a girlfriend.
4. None of the grownups will find romance.
5. None of the students we know will be in a steady longterm relationship by September.
6. Harry will not get over the death of Sirius and become bright and cheerful and optimistic over the summer.
7. Harry will not be treated excessively differently from other students. He may have one or two extra lessons in the evenings, but he won't be a TA or a specially-appointed prefect or DADA instructor.
8. Harry will not see eye-to-eye with Snape or Malfoy or anyone else who might have previously been interpreted as an enemy before June.

Tai Chi

The exercise ladies on TV had me doing Tai Chi this morning. Apparently along with all the movements, you are also manipulating energy. As with most spiritual things, I can go through the motions, but I can't actually feel the energy. This makes me wonder if you can manipulate energy inadvertently by moving your body certain ways. Like if I flail my arms to avoid slipping and falling or to shoo away a fly, might I accidentally disturb my Chi or throw a load of negative energy at some innocent passer-by?

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Prisoner of Azkaban thoughts

This is without a doubt my favourite Harry Potter book! It has the best Quidditch, and the last hundred pages or so are so action-packed that I was on the edge of my seat, reading them all in one go the first time I read it. Even upon numerous re-readings, knowing full well what happens, I still don't want to put the book down. (I just noticed, it's the best book, and it's also the only one with no Voldemort. Coincidence?)

Thoughts:

- Penelope Clearwater is mentioned quite frequently, and always described as "Percy's girlfriend". That's probably because that's how Harry perceives her, but still she's mentioned a lot. Penelope Clearwater for Half-Blood Prince!

- I wonder if it's important that Pigwidgeon is a ridiculously tiny owl?

- I wonder why J.K. Rowling chose to tell us Sirius's vault number?

- I predict another prophesy from Trelawney by the end of the series.

OMG! Canadians can't remember politics from their early childhood or before they were born! Whatever shall we do?

Since last weekend was Canada Day, it was time for the annual "OMG! Canadains don't know ANYTHING about Canadian history! Whatever shall we do?" quiz. (The quiz itself starts on page 10.)

The problem with some of these questions is that they cover events that they expect the quiz-taker to have memory of. The questions are about things that people would remember but might not make it into history class (or might only be mentioned in passing). The problem is that while the quiz is for people age 18 and up, questions requiring memory focus more on the boomer era. The average 18-year-old was born in 1987, so they wouldn't really remember political or historical events from before the mid-90s. (Aside: have you ever noticed that some grownups seem to have the implicit attitude that "Young people are stupid because they don't remember stuff we remember!")

So, for general amusement, here are the questions I could and could not answer:

1. I would have said "Gold Rush" because it wouldn't have occurred to me to specify which gold rush in a Canadian quiz. So if the word Klondike was necessary I would have gotten it wrong.

2. AGEIST: Requires memory of the 1970s.

3. **cough cough** product placement.

4. I knew this one.

5. I didn't know this one.

6. I knew this one.

7. I knew this one.

8. I knew this one.

9. I knew this one.

10. I could not have given the correct answer, but if they had asked me "What was the Pacific Scandal," I could have described it reasonably well.

11. AGEIST: Requires memory of the 1970s.

12. I would have guess this one correctly.

13. AGEIST: I knew this one, but it requires memory of 1987.

14. AGEIST: Requires memory of the Trudeau era.

15. I know I was taught this in grade 10 history, but I don't know whether I would have answered correctly or not. I do have the word "reciprocity" mentally linked to "Laurier", but I don't know whether I would have remembered what it is.

16. I knew this one.

17. I knew this one.

18. I knew this one.

19. I knew this one.

20. I would have guessed this one correctly.

Total for all questions: 13/20 = 65%
Number where I knew the fact in question but could not have answered the question as posed: 15/20=75%
Total for all non-ageist questions: 12/16 = 75%
Total for all non-ageist questions where I knew the fact in question but could not have answered the question as posed: 14/16 = 87.5%

So we're left with the following facts:

- I don't know details of politics that occurred shortly before I was born and hadn't made it to the history books by the time I was in school.

- I don't know what percentage of Canadian goods were exported to the US in 1900, which is normal for me because I suck at remember percentages in general.

- Sometimes I can't recall every detail of what I was taught in history class ten years ago, but if presented with the full facts can remember being taught it.

- I can sometimes make good guesses using logic and conventional wisdom.

- I suck at recognizing product placement opportunities.

Karla Homolka roundup

1. Lorna Dueck asks "Can we forgive Karla?" I propose that we cannot because we are not qualified to do so. The only people who are qualified to forgive her are three dead girls and one Jane Doe. The families of the victims have a secondary claim to forgiving her, and perhaps, by some standards, the many potential victims living in terror in the golden horseshoe area have a distant tertiary claim. (I count myself among these potential victims, but I don't claim any right to forgive her). It would be terribly presumptuous for anyone else to go around forgiving her. If I were one of the victims, I would begrudge it greatly indeed if random people started forgiving her when I was not prepared to do so.

2. Karla Homolka still looks like Belinda Stronach.

3. She also looks like someone who has been to prison.

4. My professional assessment of her French, based solely on transcripts (because I don't care to hear her voice). It is certainly sufficient. She has a broad enough vocabulary (although she forgot the word for the trunk of a car (c'est generalement "coffre", mais ca peut varier)), but her structure is still blatently English. It isn't wrong, per se, but it is quite obvious that she thinks in English, and it would be obvious to any Quebecois that any text she might write was written by an anglophone. Ordinarily, this would be a hinderance in Quebec to any job that might involve writing, or that might involve diplomacy in the broadest sense of the term (customer complaints department, sales at higher-end stores, psychotherapist, hostage negotiation, etc.) However, I don't know if any language issues could me much more of a hinderance than "rapist and murderer".

Bad science of the day

I'm surprised the Toronto Star printed such a flawed study:
Some people are attracted to women; some are attracted to men. And some, if Sigmund Freud, Dr. Alfred Kinsey and millions of self-described bisexuals are to be believed, are drawn to both sexes.

But a new study casts doubt on whether true bisexuality exists, at least in men.

The study, by a team of psychologists in Chicago and Toronto, lends support to those who have long been skeptical that bisexuality is a distinct and stable sexual orientation.

[...]

In the new study, a team of psychologists directly measured genital arousal patterns in response to images of men and women.

The psychologists found that men who identified themselves as bisexual were in fact exclusively aroused by either one sex or the other, usually by other men


The main problem is that they're doing a study based on physical arousal from photos. As we all know, physical arousal or lack thereof is not a 100% reliable indicator of physical attraction or lack thereof, and physical attraction (which I assume they're going for since they're using photos) does not always equal sexual attraction And even if physical attraction were an accurate measure, different people are attracted to different kinds of people. Did the study take into account that some people like hairless muscley blond men and other people like big fat hairy men?

This also makes me seriously wonder what they hoped to achieve from this study. Why would you question a people's self-identification anyway instead of granting them the basic human respect of taking them at their word for who they say they are? That would be like doing a study to prove or disprove the existence of a particular phobia or food preference - especially doing a study of a small sample group and then extrapolating to the general population. Imagine:

"I like peaches."
"No you don't."
"Yes I do!"
"Studies show that people who say they like peaches really don't salivate sufficiently when they see peaches. Therefore you don't really like peaches. I think you should stop deluding yourself and get some psychiatric help."

Sunday, July 03, 2005

Metamorphmagus question

Suppose a child Metamorphmagus decides to turn into a member of the opposite sex. However, being a sheltered child, our Metamorphmagus has an incorrect idea of what the genitals of the opposite sex look like. Would they end up having genitals that do not resemble anything that exists in humanity? If so, would they still be able to urinate and defecate? If so, does that mean that they can simply change how their internal organs work? If so, does that mean they can heal their own injuries? The possibilities are endless!

The real reason why we should be worried about a future oil shortage

We know that the world's supply of oil is finite.

We know that plastics are made from oil.

We know that parts of computers are made of plastic - not just cases, but insulation for cables and probably some other components whose composition I don't know anything about.

So the big, important question, the issue on which scientists should be focusing: can modern, mass-produceable computers be made without using any oil by-products whatsoever?

If not, someone should come up with a solution!

Aunt Marge for Half-Blood Prince!

I'm rereading the chapters about Aunt Marge in POA. She seems excessively disapproving of Harry for someone who's not in on the fact that he's special in any way. This makes me think that there might be more to her than meets the eye. On the other hand, she does fulfill her role as a plot device in POA by getting blown up, thus causing Harry to flee the Dursleys' and go to Diagon Alley. And she does need to be worse than the Dursleys to get Harry that angry, since he's used to the Dursleys.

But why do we need Harry to flee the Dursleys and go to Diagon Alley? Hmmm...brainstorming:

1. To introduce the Knight Bus. We've seen the Knight Bus several times, but why do we need it?
2. Because it's on the Knight Bus that Harry learns Sirius Black is a wizard. But he would have learned that soon enough in Diagon Alley.
3. So he can see, and be frightened by, Sirius' Animagus form. This is necessary, it shows that Sirius is checking up on Harry and presents the idea of the Grim. But he gets frightened by the Grim in other places. Is this one truly necessary?
4. To show that the Ministry is being more lenient with Harry this year. So how does this contribute to the overall plot?
5. To introduce various denizens of Diagon Alley. The people at the Leaky Cauldron. Florean Fortescu. To introduce the idea that the entire magical world is looking out for Harry (perhaps to contrast with OOTP?)

Is this all leading to something, or is it just an incidental subplot whose only purpose is to be interesting and make this book different from the others? Who knows? We must read on...

Saturday, July 02, 2005

The problem with blogging Harry Potter

When I started my pre-HBP read-through, my intention was to blog everything that I thought was interesting or noteworthy or might come up later. Little details, like how on the train home at the end of COS, they're practicing disarming each other, and it's casually mentioned that Harry is quite good at it (foreshadowing his Defence expertise), or all the places where 20/20 hindsight shows us Snape's and Dumbledore's Legilimency skills.

The problem is that the books are so engrossing that I don't want to put them down to blog. And this is the one's I've already read! So then I forget what exactly I was going to say by the time I next find myself blogging.

I had planned to do a chapter-by-chapter blog of HBP as I read it, but I'm not sure whether I will do this now. In my reread I've noticed that chapters tend to end in cliffhangers, and I don't know if I can manage to put down the book at a cliffhanger and blog what I've just read.

On the other hand, doing so might cause me to slow down and savour the story rather than rushing ahead.

Oh, another thing I intended to blog: when Dumbledore intercepts Harry by the Mirror of Erised, he mentions that he has ways to make himself invisible.

The need to fact-check reader mail

I've been meaning to blog for a while about one of my latest pet peeves: media (especially print media) who don't fact-check letters to the editor and other reader mail. Sometimes I see letters on the letters to the editor page where the reader has a nice bundle of outrage based on something that is just plain wrong. I don't mean the reader's opinion is wrong, I mean the facts on which the outrage is based are incorrect. For example, the reader might take their total tax burden (which includes income tax, sales tax, capital gains tax, and some other taxes I don't know about) but call it their income tax burden. Or they might be outraged about something based on a misconception of, say, how the senate works, when the thing that they're outraged about doesn't actually exist because the senate doesn't work that way. Or they might be complaining about a law that is no longer in effect.

This is problematic, because people are inclined to take what they read in the newspaper as fact. Even when the piece of writing in question is an opinion, readers are likely to accept the facts on which it is based, even if they are incorrect. It's also a disservice to the reader who sent in the letter with the incorrect facts, because it makes them look stupid in public.

Here is a minor example, not as serious as some of the other misinformed reader letters I've seen, but demonstrates the point. A couple of weeks ago, Globe and Mail columnist Karen von Hahn wrote a column about customer service, and readers replied with emails bitching about or defending customer service representatives.
Virginia, who thanked me for my "affirming" column about the "daily charade of service," wrote of her recent encounter at a Loblaws checkout counter. The young cashier held up an item of produce and asked, "What's this?" "Now I admit that there are numerous fruits and vegetables in today's supermarkets that I cannot name," she wrote, "but imagine my surprise that I have to answer 'lettuce.'"
The problem here, of course, is that there are several kinds of lettuce available, and the cashier needed to know which kind it was so that she could type in the correct code. Perhaps Virginia didn't know this, but by printing her comments without mentioning anywhere that there are different kinds of lettuce, the newspaper is validating what she's saying and implying that there's nothing wrong with it. So now people are going to be running around thinking Loblaws cashiers can't even recognize lettuce, when in actual fact they couldn't identify a specific variety of lettuce when they didn't have the other kinds of lettuce to compare it to.

I'm not saying newspapers should make their readers look stupid by printing letters and then refuting them, but perhaps they should make an effort to print only those letters that are factually correct, or arrange it so that misconceptions in reader letters are refuted by other reader letters in the same column. The only possible good that can come of printing a factually-incorrect reader letter is that it will fill up column space, but there's no point in filling up column space if it is only going to spread misconceptions.

Graduations

In Thursday's For Better or For Worse, John makes a comment rather denigrating the validity of an eighth-grade graduation. Reminds me of something my father would say, although I'm a bit surprised to hear it from John. Some of the posters in rec.arts.comics.strips also seemed a bit derogratory towards the idea of an 8th grade graduation, kind of sneeringly implying that the kids haven't really accomplished anything yet, so they don't deserve a graduation.

Yes, grade eight is not a big deal in the adult scheme of things. A grown adult would not be at all feted for having an eighth-grade education. However, these are not grown adults, they are 13-year-olds, and graduating from grade eight is a perfectly valid accomplishment for a 13-year-old.

One of the things I've learned in my professional life is that the most important ingredient for being able to achieve great things is having experience, and experience is the one thing I cannot expedite. I just have to sit there, do your work, learn as you go, apply what you learn, and accept the fact that I'm not going to be nearly as good as my co-worker with 30 years' experience any time soon. But that doesn't matter, no one expects me to. I just have to be good for an employee with two years' experience, and when I get stuck draw on the vast experience of the senior memebers of my team.

Similarly, you can't hold a 13-year-old to accomplishments by adult standarda, and sneering at them for celebrating age-appropriate accomplishments would be like a senior co-worker sneering at me because I feel proud of having successfully translated a new genre of text that the senior co-worker has translated in hundreds of times. Now that I think about it, the adults who disapprove of graduations for "minor" milestones sound almost insecure in their adulthood, like they feel sub-consciously driven to be competitive with and show that they're better than mere adolescents.

Friday, July 01, 2005

The amazing disappearing cotton ball

A while ago, I opened a new bottle of Advil, and noticed that there was no giant wad of cotton at the top. I commented that this was strange, took my Advil, and forgot about it.

Today I discovered that the cotton had sunk down about halfway into the bottle of pills. I had to dump about half the pills out to get to it. It's a great big wad, the size of one of the larger cotton balls used for makeup (or like two of the smaller, store-brand ones). It is significantly fatter than the neck of the bottle. I'd assume they usually put the cotton in after they fill the bottle with pills, so I wonder how this one managed to sink halfway down?

Sins of the father

Tom Tomorrow comments on the tendancy from certain corners to say "He says he supports the war, but I don't see him or his children in combat".

However, neither Tom Tomorrow or the people he linked to mentioned what I find to be the most wrong-headed and illogical aspect of this sort of reasoning. Saying "I don't see him" in combat is one thing, saying "I don't see his children in combat" is quite another.

Whether or not you believe it that a person who supports a war should be involved in military activities themselves, it is completely inappropriate to say that if a person supports a war, they should send their (young adult) children into the military. This is because the children are their own people! They are human beings, with thoughts and feelings and their own political opinions and the basic human right to self-determination. They might not even support a war that their parents support! They are not chattels, they are not vassals, they are not Borg, they are not corporate representatives. Their actions and life choices should not be interpreted as having to reflect their parents' politics because that denies the children's very humanity - their right to self-determination!

I'm sure it's difficult to have your child be in a war and devastating to have your child killed in a war, but it is always more difficult for the child, who is actually in the war! It is simply incorrect to say that war-mongerers should "make the sacrifice" of having their own children be in the military, simply because it's not the parents' sacrifice to make! Ultimately it is the soldiers themselves who are making the sacrifice, and to imply that it is the parents' sacrifice completely trivializes what the soldiers are going through.

It is especially strange that this is happening in the US, which traditionally sets great store by self-determination. You'd think the American public would be the first to acknowledge that even if the parent is a hawk, the child still has every right to be a dove, or a chicken, or any other bird metaphor you can come up with, and should not be forced into a particular life course because of who their parents are.

If this isn't convincing, try wrapping your brain around it another way: think about your parents. Think about your parents' opinions about things. Think about your parents' opinions on political policy, on how a person should live their life, on what makes an appropriate romantic partner, on what music a person should listen to, on what job a person should have, where a person should live, how a person should dress, what a person's family situation should be, what a person should do in their spare time. Think of everything your parents have ever expressed an opinion on. Now imagine that you were required to live your life in precise accordance with your parents' opinions about everything. How would that make you feel?

Now I can't even figure out character motivation in the COMICS

So...9 Chickweed Lane.

Just last Saturday, Edda tells Amos, "I know I'll always want you, I'm just not ready to have you yet." This says to me that she intends to have a romantic relationship with him in the future, and that she loves him romantically, just doesn't feel grown-up enough to deal with that yet.

Today, she seems to be on a date with some anonymous guy. (Yes, she fell asleep in the middle of it, but she's still on a date, and went through all the trouble of making/accepting a date and putting on a dress and wearing her hair differently, all while she was really tired from dancing and working out all day.) And this is the second or third time she's been on a date with an anonymous guy since moving to New York (although the first one before she told us that she is definitely going to want to be with Amos in the indefinite future.

So why is she going on dates with people who aren't Amos? She knows she's going to want to be with Amos eventually. So if this date does work out and lead to a relationship, she's going to have to end the relationship when the time comes for her to be with Amos. Why would she go through all the trouble of attempting to build a relationship when she knows she's going to have to end it eventually? Why would she do something so cruel as to date someone when she's can say to herself with certainty, "I am going to have to leave him when..."

We know Edda isn't stupid. We know she's a bit clueless, but she certainly isn't cruel, she has a definite sense of the long-term consequences of hurting someone in a relationship as a result of her father leaving her mother, and she has the good sense to reject the biggest cads outright.

So what's she doing dating when she already knows who she is in love with for the long-term? If she needs an escort to an event or for appearances or to avoid being hit on, either Amos or Seth or, I'm sure, one of her other male co-workers who is as harmless as Seth would be willing to help her out. If she needs a good snog, I'm sure Amos would be more than willing to help her out there. If she's just socializing, surely she can do that without the expectations of eventual romance. So does she not love Amos as much as she says/thinks she does? But why would she do that to her best friend? Does she have this random idea that "People date. That's what we do. Therefore I have to go on dates with people."? If so, why not go on dates with Amos? Is she going to run around repeatedly breaking Amos' heart until she's ready for a nice safe husband? But why would she emulate her father like that? Or has she just been reading Dear Ellie?