LOVELAND PARK, Ohio (AP) — A 13-year-old girl found shot to death in her bedroom died because she told authorities her best friend was being molested, family members say.

Katelind Caudill, a seventh-grader in this Cincinnati suburb, was killed early Monday, and authorities were searching for the friend’s stepfather, Melvin Keeling, 43. He also is a suspect in the fatal shooting of two convenience store clerks in Indiana about four hours

Warren County sheriff’s officials said that Katelind became ‘involved’ in a sex abuse investigation of Keeling less than two days before she was killed. They declined to give details except to say she was not the victim in the case and was a friend of Keeling’s oldest stepdaughter.

‘She was just trying to protect her friend,’ said Debbie LeBlanc, a cousin of Katelind. ‘You’re told to tell. She did the thing she was supposed to do by telling.’”

HBP Chapter 24 re-read

Sectumspectra

Lavender glares at Hermione … Ron looks “immensely guilty” … this is about as good as it gets for Lavender from here on out.

JKR does some back-pedaling to dial back the usefulness of Felix Felicis by having Harry realize that the stuff is fiendishly complex and takes six months to brew. Hermione also points out that you can’t rely on luck to defeat an experienced wizard.

H still tempted to take a slug of Felix to “tweak the circumstances” re Ginny.  

JKR sounds pretty bored with quidditch:  “The run-up to this crucial match had all the usual features …”  one can almost finish the sentence “blah, blah, blah.”

Tremendous scene with Malfoy in the bathroom.  

I was horrified and shamed at the effect of Harry’s Sectumspectra spell on Malfoy. Considering this it is rather amazing that Harry still has the nerve? Moxie? Presence of mind? To hide his copy of his potions book from Snape.


I liked the moment when Harry thinks about the book “as though a beloved pet had turned suddenly savage” because it is a plausible example of Harry thinking like a 16 year old.

“the book had become a kind of guide and friend” … indeed, creates a sort of shadow friendship between Snape and Harry, very interesting psychologically.

Loved the room of Requirement & its cathedral size … wonder if any of the objects mentioned were Horcruxes in disguise?

Great when Ginny jumps in on Harry’s behalf and points out that Malfoy was about to do an Unforgivable curse – “you should be glad that Harry had something up his sleeve.” The moment when the two girls, normally so friendly, are upset with each other is priceless.

“Oh, don’t start acting as though you understand Quidditch, you’ll only embarrass yourself.”

Absolutely loved the moment when Ginny ran towards Harry with “a hard, blazing” look on her face. I love intense women!  Reader, I married one.  

HBP Chapter 23 re-read

I read chapters 23 through 26 over the weekend.  Wow!  This is where HBP really gets good!

When returns to Hogwarts, the Felix Felicis is wearing off … so does he immediately revert to his normal “luck quotient”? Harry seems to be something of a special case with very high “standard deviations” away from normal luck – for good and bad(Lily, Ron, surviving encounters with Voldemort; being selected by Voldemort in the first place, drawing the Dursleys as a host family, etc.).  Indeed in Harry’s case one might almost wonder if Felix simply “smooths out” Harry’s normally wild luck swings.

Dd looks “stunned” when Harry reports success on the Slughorn front.  Then says “I knew you could do it.”  Ok, did you know Harry could do it, or not?  What was your “plan B” if Slughorn wouldn’t dish to Harry?

Riddle tells Slughorn he didn’t think politics would “suit him”.  Why is it always the megalomaniacs who think they aren’t politicians?  And at the same time the politicians are always megalomaniacs.  Go figure.

One wonders if Riddle came across the term “Horcrux” in the same book that Hermione did, or whether he had already discovered non-Hogwarts sources of Dark Magic lore by that time?  Where would a Hogwarts student go to find Dark lore?  Off-campus during break, one supposes.

Loved it when Harry recognized another master wheedler at work, watching Riddle wheedle info out of Slughorn.

I liked it when Slughorn looked at Riddle “as though he had never seen him plainly before.” Nice to give Slughorn the insight to realize that Riddle is deeply disturbed and deeply dangerous. Perhaps it’s his failure to act on this insight – which as far as he knew, he alone had experienced – that causes him the greatest shame in later years. In a way, all the subsequent deaths at Voldemort’s hands can be laid at Slughorn’s doorstep.  I hadn’t realized that before.

Great moment when all the old headmasters are awake and listening on Harry’s conversation with Dd.

Ok, the diary was a Horcrux, but what was scariest was that it was a spare Horcrux, intended for use as a weapon.

He made seven Horcruxes? Not seven, six, b/c Riddle still has a fragment of soul.

Just for the record: JKR is  encouraging Harry, Dd, and everyone else make  a big-ass ol’ assumption here that there are seven Horcruxes.  We don’t have any actual proof that it’s seven.  Riddle might have wanted to be the only wizard ever with eight Horcruxes.  That would certainly throw a spanner in Harry’s plans for book seven!

Dd destroyed Marvolo’s ring … “and a terrible curse there was on it too…” Dd only saved by Snape’s timely action when he returned to Hogwarts.  Here’s yet another action very tough to explain in terms of Snape as 100% bad guy… if you’re a secret DeathEater, why not let Dd die?

Great and very helpful scene where Dd confirms that H3 is slytherin’s locket, H4 is Hufflepuff’s cup, H5 is Nagini, and H6 is  either something from Ravenclaw or a Gryffindor object not the sword (which seems confirmed by its role in CoS – surely the sword would have helped out its fellow Horcrux somehow),

Am I the only one who has trouble accepting that Nagini is a Horcrux?  Something about that just seems wrong to me. I can’t fathom why Riddle would put a part of his soul in something mortal.  All the other objects are immortal treasures, a snake, however cool for a Parseltongue speaker, just isn’t up to the same standard.

We haven’t really seen the inner workings of either Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff in the first six books … they pretty much remain stock characters –  I hope JKR goes into the inner workings of both houses at some length in book seven.

Dd: I am sure V was intending to make his final Horcux with your death, Harry.  

We don’t know exactly how the spell works, but it seems likely it’s carried out simultaneous with and contingent on the completion of the Avada Kevadra spell… so when Lily’s motherly love spell blocked the AK, where did the Horcrux creation spell go?  Can we say “Harry the Horcrux”?

Lucius Malfoy secretly glad to be in Azkaban: indeed!  I almost want to join him there, I’m so scared of book seven.

Loved it when Harry could scarcely restrain himself from saying “Big deal” about his power to love.  

Great point about what harry saw in the Mirror of Erised and how few wizards could have seen the same thing.

The point about being dragged into the arena v. walking in with your head held high fell a bit flat for me, as the first thing that comes to my mind is the Roman Coliseum, and there I’m really not quite sure it does make much difference whether you walked in head high.  Hope Harry’s not heading for one of those Lions 1, Christians 0 moments.

Independent Online Edition > Middle East : app2: “srael is seeking to rally international support for a tough United Nations stand against Iran’s nuclear ambitions with a warning that it could have the knowledge to produce a nuclear bomb ‘within six months’.”

“Six months” to “ten years,” (recent think tank guess) that’s quite a range of estimates …

Independent Online Edition > Middle East : app2: “srael is seeking to rally international support for a tough United Nations stand against Iran’s nuclear ambitions with a warning that it could have the knowledge to produce a nuclear bomb ‘within six months’.”

“Six months” to “ten years,” (recent think tank guess) that’s quite a range of estimates …

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Posted by wfzimmerman to Proliferated at 9/21/2005 06:33:00 AM

Slate: No Nukes Is Good Nukes - Today’s North Korea breakthrough is great. Now comes the real work. By Fred Kaplan: “It’s a significant breakthrough. But it could easily have been accomplished two and a half years ago, had President George W. Bush been willing. It is also nothing like an actual agreement, just a preliminary step before the real negotiations—where, if history holds, North Korea will frustrate us with tricks and backtracking, and we just have to hang on tight.”

Hang on tight until what? Until the wishful thinking ends.

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Posted by wfzimmerman to Proliferated at 9/20/2005 01:25:52 PM

ABC news online

In an unusual publishing move, Tom Wolfe’s most-recent novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, will be printed without the title on the cover of its paperback edition - just its author’s name in giant letters.

The paperback cover of the sexually charged tale of contemporary US college life contains only Wolfe’s name and a picture of a young woman in a green dress, presumably to symbolise Charlotte Simmons.

“We are using Tom Wolfe’s name as a brand, rather than the title of the book. He is an icon himself,” said Tanya Farrell, publicity director for Picador USA which is printing more than 2 million copies of the 738-page novel in which the 74-year-old writer tries to infiltrate the minds of American college students.

The back cover has reviews of the book but does not name the novel, although the name is printed on the inside cover.”

The end of the book title may not be such a bad thing. As a general rule, book titles remind me of the marketing paraphernalia that big companies churn out in endless quantities for their sales force: much effort, time, and $ are lavished on something that, in the end, is rather peripheral to the primary value of the service provided.