September 24, 2005

Code red: Hollywood comes to Rosslyn - [Sunday Herald]: “As filming begins on the Da Vinci Code movie tomorrow, Rosslyn Chapel finds itself accused of selling out and promoting lies about the Bible. By Jenifer Johnston”

The Phoenix Lament
Only Ginny is able to pull Harry away from Dumbledore’s body.
The scene with the remnants of Dumbledore’s Army at the hospital is very touching. The elegiac mood reminded  me somehow of “Return of the King” after Frodo destroys the ring (except, yes, they won in ROTK).
The titled “Phoenix Lament” begins when Harry is narrating the story of Dd’s death and, we sense, giving way to his grief for the first time. In this and many other ways in the remaining two chapters it is signaled that Harry is somehow specially connected to the Phoenix now.
Again with the Big Death-eater.
Ginny’s narrowed eyes focused on Fleur. It becomes apparent later in the chapter that Ginny was not secretly pulling for Fleur, rather, that she was preparing to apply high standards to her.
The Fleur speech to Mrs. Weasley is wonderful.
Does Lupin love Tonks? Even with an engraved invitation and the endorsement of the local wisewoman (Mrs. W) he holds back.
Harry’s version of what Snape told Dd to get in good with him is not entirely accurate. Also, I was confused by Harry’s reference to Snape calling Lily a “Mudblood.” I missed that – where was it?
After the high praise for Fred & George from members of this group, I was very disappointed that their Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder was instrumental in the attack on Hogwarts.  Unfortunately, Ron’s pledge to “talk to them” lacked some, well, heft.  I would have been happier with a pledge that if they ever sell to the Dark again he will personally feed them their guts for garters.  
“Luckily, said Lupin hoarsely” his party ran into Felix-enhanced Ron & Ginny almost immediately.  Lupin obviously not clued in yet to Felix.
Yet another ambivalent scene where Snape stupefied Flitwick (and let Hermione and Luna live).  By far the most sensible thing to do, would not have been very smart to burn bridges at what very well might have been a false alarm.   It’s also hinted that Felix may have had something to do with this…
The scene in Dd’s office where he is sleeping in the portrait on the wall really got me.  
The conference among the teachers showed true colors. I was disappointed, but should not be surprised, that Slughorn wavered.
The Fat Lady’s wordless cry, very painful.
We’re told that the Phoenix had left Hogwarts forever … but we’re not told that the Phoenix has left Harry. I think it’ll be back!  

HBP Chapter 28 Re-read

“Flight of the Prince”

Flight of the Prince: JKR.  Flight of the Phoenix: Elleston Trevor, aka Adam Hall.  Advantage: Trevor.  Has it occurred to JKR that Princes do not, intrinsically, fly, whereas Phoenixes do?

Harry stumbles into the free for all and fights up a storm.  Ginny dodging hexes nimbly with the aid of Felix.

I felt a surge of love for Neville as Harry came across him clutching his stomach but saying “I’m all right.

Does JKR ever identify the “big blond” Death Eater?  She must have had a compelling reason for keeping his identity secret as it becomes quite tiresome to read “big blond DE” over and over again, let alone type it.  It would have been easy enough to have one of the side characters (McGonagall) recognize this person.

Harry uses Crucio on Snape twice.  Interesting that Snape tells him you haven’t got the nerve or the ability to use the Unforgivable spell.  Rowling doesn’t tell us or show us that Harry is in any way holding back, but  Snape seems to think so.

“Fight back! Fight back, you coward!”  One of many lines that is pretty suspicious if you fall in the “Snape-is-secretly-good” camp.

“Coward, did you call me, Potter?”  

“Blocked again and again until you learn to keep your mouth shut and your mind closed, Potter!”  Another line that sounds suspiciously like Snape is “coaching” Harry.

Snape intervenes to protect Harry – “he belongs to the Dark Lord!”  

A few moments later, Harry sees Snape’s face “full of rage.”  The reason for the rage is not specified.  It could be because of the threat to Harry.

Harry actually makes some progress and slows Snape down – he screams “No, Potter!” very much as if he is reprimanding someone who is actually on the same side as he is.

“DON’T CALL ME COWARD!”  Ok, I’ll bite.  Why does Snape have an issue about being called a coward?  We haven’t actually seen him do anything cowardly in any of the books, have we? I recall him being bullied a lot, casting nasty spells, casting nasty looks … but never running away from a confrontation.  In fact, many would argue that playing a cool double or triple game between Voldemort and Dumbledore calls for cold-blooded blavery in the most Slytherin sense.  And it’s not as if Slytherins particularly value bravery – that’s Gryffindors – Slytherins don’t put highest value on bravery.  So why does it cheese Snape so much to be accused of cowardice?  I know that’s a fairly typical “issue” for insecure men and for mustachio-twirling villains in drama, but something just doesn’t quite fit here.  There must be an actual episode of painful and humiliating cowardice that we haven’t seen yet.

Great scene where Buckbeak descends in front of Snape.  That’s got to be in the movie!

MISD: Statistics & Database Administration Section

For reasons best known to a big customer, I have been spending a lot of time looking at national censuses. This completely un-work-related factoid struck me as impossible to overlook:

the Seychelles has its own Census Theme Song, “Resansman,” composed by Bennet Accouche and sung by Raymond Clarisse. Click here to listen. Bouncy, upbeat, in French, mp3. Surprisingly enjoyable.

Interesting speculation from the Dinosaur@usc.edu mailing list.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200509/s1465753.htm

Dozens of dinosaur bones have been unearthed in western Queensland in
what is being described as one of the state’s most successful fossil
digs.

Scientists from the Queensland Museum and volunteers from the Australian
Age of Dinosaurs worked on the two-week dig near Winton.

One of the coordinators David Elliott says some very large bones were
discovered, well-preserved in solid rock....

“It’s a saurapod [sic], very large one, a lot of material. We know
there’d be a couple of dozen bones there at least.”

Dann Pigdon commented:

 It seems that sauropod material is coming thick and fast from the Black
Soils now… or at least, by Australian standards! It would be
interesting to see whether they are all from closely related fauna
(which might indicate that Oz had a low sauropod diversity for some
reason).

This isn’t a pod_publishing issue only, but i thought the font issues would resonate with many here.

I have recently made some changes in my workflow tools by migrating my website to use the Blogger service. This in turn has caused me to start using Blogger for Word, BlogThis, and an Outlook toolbar called Attensa that both reads and publishes. It’s all having the desired effect of vastly increasing the frequency of posts on my website and therefore traffic. But the fact that all these tools use WYSIWYG editing has caused me to realize that I need to rethink my personal font strategy across all media!

Until now, I have had “standard” fonts that I prefer in various media. For example, I do all my LSI books in Palatino (I like the look, and the thin letters don’t bother me). For Word I usually leave the default Normal style to “Times Roman” and create font-specific styles when I am engaged in serious doc creation. In Outlook e-mail I usually use a streamlined-looking sans serif like GIll or Century Gothic.

The result is that when I post to Blogger using these different tools, the fonts in the resulting posts are a mishmash! I can either a) spend a lot of time editing posts to fix font consistency (a task which, I know from experience, often gives web-based WYSIWYG editors a lot of trouble) or b) converge on a single standard font that I use as the default in Outlook, Word, and the Web. Ideally this should be an expression of a personal branding and usability strategy!

At the moment, I’m leaning towards Palatino…

PublishersMarketplace reports:

Peter Jennings’s Fans Remember an Anchor of Their Lives: “It is difficult to overstate how devastated most ABC journalists were by Jennings’s Aug. 7 death at age 67 from lung cancer, just five months after the diagnosis was announced.”

Cheryl and I miss Peter Jennings very much.