Monthly Archives: July 2005

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I finished reading the new Harry Potter book last night. Throughout the book I had a notion in my head of the answers to two of the mysteries; who the half-blood prince is, and who dies in the book (don’t yell at me about spoilers; the death is commonly known!). I was wrong on both counts, and regarding the half-blood prince, I shouldn’t have been at all. I should have guessed that one right away (and so should Harry and Hermione, frankly.)

I was so certain about both answers, though, that it colored my impression of the book, and I kept telling Stephanie all the way through that “this is my favorite of all of them!” Well when I found out the answers I was surprised, and it did change the way I feel. I was expecting a quite different ending.

I also thought there was way too much unresolved at the end of it; more so than in any of the others, and I hate that; it’s one of my pet peeves of sci-fi fantasy series novels, that they don’t wrap everything up from one book to the next so you’re left hanging for the release of the next book. If you’re going to do that, just write one big book, instead of chunking it up into pieces. My mind is littered with the half-way points of fantasy series that I gave up on in disgust because they insisted on dragging everything out for the cash from one more mass-market paperback. (Robert Jordan, I’m talking to you!)

In the case of Harry Potter, I’ve never felt like that with any of the rest of the books, and this series doesn’t follow any other sci-fi fantasy genre clichés, either, which makes them enjoyable to read. I know that the next book is the final one, and there’s no way I would miss it.

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London bombing the result of Bush Admin info leak

Two years ago, a man named Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan was captured by Pakistani authorities. He was an Al Qaeda operative responsible for planning an attack on the London Underground and other attacks. On his laptop, which was recovered by intelligence officials, he had information about the plans, and about Al Qaeda operatives in London. The intelligence officials got him to agree to send info to his fellow terrorists so they could be captured, but before he could do so, Tom Ridge leaked his name to the media to justify their raising the terror alert level. Kahn’s fellow operatives were able to evade capture due to the leak. They are now suspected of being some of the same men who planned or carried out last week’s bombing in London.

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Father kills 3-year old son because he thinks child is gay

In Tampa, Florida, the 21-year old father of a small boy went on trial this week for killing his son, whom he was boxing with because he thought the boy was gay.

Even though the boy would shake and wet himself, his father, Ronnie Paris Jr., would box with the 3-year-old, slapping him in the head until he cried because he didn’t want his son to grow up to be “a sissy,” the boy’s mother testified Monday.
“He was trying to teach him how to fight,” said Shanita Powell, Nysheerah Paris’ sister. “He was concerned that the child might be gay.”
Even Sheldon Bostic, who was Ronnie Paris Jr.’s Bible-study friend, said he warned the father several times not to play so rough with his son.
“He really did what other fathers do – slap box,” Bostic said. “He always said he didn’t want his son growing up to be pushed around.”
“Did Ronnie use a term for that?” asked Jalal Harb, an assistant state attorney.
“He didn’t want him to be a sissy,” Bostic said.

Gene Stone at the Huffington Post has some very eloquent thoughts on the subject:

The right wing’s relentless propaganda machine has a pernicious effect throughout society. Not only does it remind gays how much they’re hated by a segment of the population, it helps convince parents who don’t know much about homosexuality that it’s evil, a perversion, something that no family could possible want in its midst. When people are exposed only to the hateful bigotry of the right, what’s the result? When taken to the extreme, infanticide — as the Tampa case reveals.
Is this really what the right wing wants? A war against homosexuality in which innocent children are slaughtered in the name of righteousness?
Sometimes, it seems that, yes indeed, this is exactly what the right wing hopes for. Because where else can such anger, hatred, and intolerance lead?

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Over 100 Quick and Easy Healthy Foods

I’ll have to take a look at this site later. Stephanie and I have been trying to build our regular cooking menu with things that are easy to prepare and healthy. Because we don’t live together yet, we have an extra time-crunch due to traveling back and forth from one house to another, so we have to find and whip up things that are quick and easy.

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blog for city-wide games

I’m going to have to look at this site in more detail later — it’s a site based in New York City that holds city-wide games, such as capture the flag, and man hunt. Sounds like fun. I know there’s a site like it in San Francisco, because Ernie from Little Yellow Different particpated at one time, I think. I’d have to comb through my archives to find the link.

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Stuff on My Cat

None of my cats would sit still long enough to put stuff on them. And I’m sure some of these pictures are photoshopped.
Just make sure you don’t put too much stuff on your cat, or your cat could become one of these.
Ya know, people pick tan carpet all the time because they think it’s a nice neutral color and everything, but it looks like crap when you’re taking pictures of your pets.

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‘Human-brained’ monkeys

SCIENTISTS have been warned that their latest experiments may accidently produce monkeys with brains more human than animal.
In cutting-edge experiments, scientists have injected human brain cells into monkey fetuses to study the effects. Critics argue that if these fetuses are allowed to develop into self-aware subjects, science will be thrown into an ethical nightmare.
An eminent committee of American scientists will call for restrictions into the research, saying the outcome of such studies cannot be predicted and may in fact produce subjects with a ‘super-animal’ intelligence.
The high-powered committee of animal behaviourists, lawyers, philosophers, bio-ethicists and neuro-scientists was established four years ago to examine the growing numbers of human/monkey experiments.

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Age Maps

Bobby Neel Adams has an interesting photography project: “Two photographs of the same person, from different periods of time (child and adult) are spliced together.”

bobby neel adams agemap

I can’t truly recreate the effect of their project for myself without a lot more work, but the idea of two different pictures from completely different ages is interesting.

2019 update: Can’t find the image I created for this. I’m curious now what I was doing. There’s a guy named Ard Gelinck doing some ‘family picture’ type portraits of celebrities with their younger selves here on Instagram.

Ard Gelinck celebrity portraits

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