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  • Harry Potter, part 1

    Just last night I completed a re-read of the first five Harry Potter books, in preparation for The Half-Blood Prince. As a fan of both fantasy in general and the series in particular, I think they hold up rather well to re-reading. There were several bits in each volume that I hadn’t remembered, and the clever and funny bits were still clever and funny.

    The versions I was reading are the UK editions, and there are a few differences in vocabulary. Points to those who can identify these terms:

    • bogies
    • trainers
    • jumper
    • skiving

  • A liberal Israeli take on disengagement

    This from Ha’aretz:

    In a step seen as a watershed moment in his disengagement plan, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Wednesday morning ordered the Gaza Strip closed to Israeli visitors, declaring it a closed military area in order to blunt plans by anti-pullout activists to flood the Strip with protesters.

    The article also samples the expected quotes accusing Sharon of destroying Israel.

  • A mother’s lament

    More bombing coverage in the Guardian: Marie Fatayi-Williams’s plea to know what has happened to her son Anthony. Her speech is the second half of the article. Here are a couple of pieces:

    Which cause has been served? Certainly not the cause of God, not the cause of Allah because God Almighty only gives life and is full of mercy. Anyone who has been misled, or is being misled to believe that by killing innocent people he or she is serving God should think again because it’s not true.Terrorism is not the way, terrorism is not the way. It doesn’t beget peace. We can’t deliver peace by terrorism, never can we deliver peace by killing people. Throughout history, those people who have changed the world have done so without violence, they have [won] people to their cause through peaceful protest. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, their discipline, their self-sacrifice, their conviction made people turn towards them, to follow them. What inspiration can senseless slaughter provide? Death and destruction of young people in their prime as well as old and helpless can never be the foundations for building society.

    My son Anthony is my first son, my only son, the head of my family. In African society, we hold on to sons. He has dreams and hopes and I, his mother, must fight to protect them. This is now the fifth day, five days on, and we are waiting to know what happened to him and I, his mother, I need to know what happened to Anthony. His young sisters need to know what happened, his uncles and aunties need to know what happened to Anthony, his father needs to know what happened to Anthony. Millions of my friends back home in Nigeria need to know what happened to Anthony. His friends surrounding me here, who have put this together, need to know what has happened to Anthony. I need to know, I want to protect him. I’m his mother, I will fight till I die to protect him. To protect his values and to protect his memory.

    Innocent blood will always cry to God Almighty for reparation. How much blood must be spilled? How many tears shall we cry? How many mothers’ hearts must be maimed? My heart is maimed. I pray I will see my son, Anthony. Why? I need to know, Anthony needs to know, Anthony needs to know, so do many others unaccounted for innocent victims, they need to know.

    Amen.

  • Karen Armstrong on religious labels

    Great commentary in the Guardian Unlimited by Karen Armstrong. She argues that we must find a better label than “Islamic terrorists.” Here’s a quote that puts the matter into high perspective.

    We rarely, if ever, called the IRA bombings “Catholic” terrorism because we knew enough to realise that this was not essentially a religious campaign. Indeed, like the Irish republican movement, many fundamentalist movements worldwide are simply new forms of nationalism in a highly unorthodox religious guise.

  • How others see us

    How’s this for a lead headline from England: Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bush says: I put US interests first.

    George Bush sounds a warning today to those hoping for a significant deal on Africa and climate change at Wednesday’s G8 summit, making clear that when he arrives at Gleneagles he will dedicate his efforts to putting America’s interests first. . . .

    “I go to the G8 not really trying to make [Tony Blair] look bad or good; but I go to the G8 with an agenda that I think is best for our country.”

    While Bush is, after all, the president of the United States and should be expected to promote the interests of the US, this makes it sound like the G8 meeting (and the concerns raised at Live8) boil down to his relationship to Blair.

    What should happen when US self-interest is in conflict with our responsibility as humans? What about when US self-interest is in conflict with the demands of justice?

    And how is it that Bush can suggest that ending global poverty and fighting AIDS isn’t in the best interests of the United States? (And as a notoriously “Christian” man, how can he put a nation’s self-interest above the admonition of Jesus to care for “the least of these”?)

  • Elton John on worldwide homophobia

    Fresh on the heels of Live8: Make prejudice history by Sir Elton John in The Observer (on the Guardian website).

    I strongly believe that when thousands of us refuse to look away and stay silent, we make a difference to what politicians do and say. The sheer force of our numbers will ultimately help those who are suffering from extreme poverty and extreme prejudice all over the world.

  • If you’re in London in late July

  • MIT study

    Beppe did it, so of course I had to as well. If you have a weblog, you can click below and do it, too.

    Take the MIT Weblog Survey

  • Boston’s lack of commitment to public transit

    Boston’s transit authority, the MBTA, shuts down the subway system around midnight. Businesses (including restaurants, bars, and dance clubs) don’t close in Boston until 2 am. There used to be a “night owl” bus service that (barely) supplemented the T on Friday and Saturday nights from midnight until 2. Now you should just drive drunk, I guess. And of course people with service-sector jobs had just better be able to afford to own a car or take taxis.

  • Dragon’s Treasure by Elizabeth A. Lynn

    Dragon’s Treasure is the sequel to Elizabeth A. Lynn’s Dragon’s Winter, but it’s readable on its own. I read Dragon’s Winter when it came out several years ago, and so I was a little hazy on the backstory in Dragon’s Treasure, but it went fine. I was happy to revisit the characters, and Lynn has left the door open for an additional volume, which I hope appears in due course.

    Although the gay love angle is downplayed in Dragon’s Treasure, I’m amazed as always at the women authors who do gay relationships so well: Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mary Renault, Patricia Nell Warren. Lynn adds a bit of sado-masochism in some of her books (notably Sardonyx Net, one of her science fiction novels).