House of the rising Moonglum

A goblet on fire!

OK, so I just finished the fourth Harry Potter book, or as I like to call them… Paper Crack. Better for you than the crack cocaine, but just as addictive. I don’t know what I am going to do once I finally catch up to where she is.

So over all this was a very interesting book. The last book introduced the major “prior story” characters that will interact in this story, while this book catapults us into the “main” plot line. Remember I have no problem giving spoilers away, so please stop reading if you don’t want it. And you know you do.

So, the beginning was really fun, with the world cup, and everyone getting to go see it, and the Death Eaters showing up. It really sets the stage for the rest of the book. (Though you do have to wonder why people are so reluctant to believe Dumbledore that Voldermort has returned, given that the Death Eaters had, and had also sent up his sign…) In any case, that was fun, and gave us lots of additional character development that wouldn’t be possible if we were stuck in Hogwarts. This book will be very hard to make into a movie, there are just too many things going on. At first I was scared that they weren’t going to be able to do any character development, and some of the “what it’s like to be a kid” moments that make me love these books so much, but with around 800 pages there is plenty of room for that and some heavy duty plot as well.

As for the competition, I was so excited that _finally_ something important was going to happen, and Harry wasn’t going to be the center of it. Since he couldn’t join in the competition since he was too young, I figured no problem. Of course, they have to pull an anakin and make him be the hero. Of course there was not much heroing to be had there. All in all, even when I was expecting to be disappointed, she pulled it out and made it be interesting. From “how did his name get in” to “how does he beat these people who are better than him”. Very cool in every respect. Although, I have to say I wonder if “mad-eye” didn’t do a little too good of a job teaching him defense against the dark arts.

Speaking of which, having read a bit of the next book now, I don’t actually like the “real” mad-eye nearly as much as the “want’s to be friends” fake mad-eye from this book. But oh well, c’est la vie.

OK, can’t be all positive, there was one thing that bugged me. I was kind of upset with Voldermort in his “Before I kill you Mr. Bond” moment where he revealed all of his evil plans. The first part of his plan is great, I mean trying to make yourself immortal is a great goal with a long history. My problem is that where does this muggle bashing come in then? I mean if essence of muggle is required to live forever, that is one thing, but just to go around mashing them all because you can isn’t really a good supervillian sort of thing. There is no gain from it. Hold them ransom for money then when you get it kill them. Use their souls to bring back the beast rune to get ultimate power. Something, but just floating them in the air so you can look at their panties….? Just seems petty for <big scary voice> “the great dark lord VOOOOOLDERMORT” </bsv> But that is just me.

The sad truth is that I just can’t take comedies any more where the main point of it is to watch someone who keeps messing things up, when the correct thing to do is just barely out of reach. I’ve never really been able to watch sitcoms, but these movies where they take reality and just run with it to the horrible horrible extreme are just too much for me. Even the known required happy ending can’t get me through the worst parts. Some movie I saw a while ago where the husband to be goes to meet the inlaws and the dad is some CIA agent was just too painful to sit through. And even school of rock, where there was tons of rocking 80s music was almost too much. Though I did see most of the movie, and only had to walk out of the room when the parents show up. Lots of rocking music, but tons of painful “humorous” situations.

I could be wrong but I believe that that is a missile launcher on top of that robot. Now that is a little scary!

W00t! Just got SCUBA certified today. It was totally awesome. Well aside from the ear infection part. But it was really cool. We didn’t start the classes until later in the week, so we really had to cram everything in. Two dives a day, plus doing all the classes. The physics behind it all are really cool. The regulator that you breathe through keeps the air in your lungs at the same pressure as the water outside your body. Remember every 33 feet under water is another atmosphere! Too cool. So if you swim down your lung gets less and less full. And when you swim up… well… don’t hold your breath.

Actually one of the coolest parts of the entire thing was the “emergency ascent.” Basically, you pretend that you run out of air at the bottom. When you take in your last breath, you need to go up, and fast, but you can’t keep breathing normally, so you just slowly let out your breath. But since the pressure gets less and less while you go up, your lungs never get empty. Simply too cool.

Hopefully I will have pictures in the future.

We are getting really close now! Cassini’s orbital insertion is only a couple days away. I think the thing that excites me the most about this mission is how much more info we are going to get on Titan.

And still a year until they drop Huygens into the atmosphere so we can get a really good picture of what is going on there. For those who don’t know, Titan is the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere.

Note on my book comments… it takes me so damn long to read a book, that I assume that people will have already read them, so I make no promises about not giving spoilers.

Well, I’m finally caught up to the movies now. Thank goodness for vacations and day long plane flights. The next one looks like a brick, but I still have a lot of vacation left, and a plane ride back home in which to finish it.

So this book seems to be everyone’s favorite. At least they finally have a good Professor for the defense against the dark arts in this book. Prof. Lupin really teaches them things that they can take with them into the future (which is especially important for Harry in the next book.) I think that the reason that it is everyone’s favorite is that it introduces the “major” characters. That is to say the characters who were the big players the last time around, the four friends. Snape’s connection to them is a little less clear, though I do wonder if Harry hadn’t blasted him, they would have gotten the real story out of them all, AND has wormtail captured in the end. Heh, I like that, because Snape just wanted to bring them in to arrest them, and the rat wasn’t getting away anyway. Then they could have had the rat turn back into wormtail, cleared Sirius, and stopped wormtail from completing his plan in the next book.

Another interesting thing is that this is the first book where the movie departs in a major way from the book. I think part of that is just that there is so much more back story, but they do some things in the movie that make Snape come across as a little less sympathetic, I mean he really was just doing his duty. Not only that, but he went running after the kids _and_ made excuses for their behavior. I suppose he could have been hoping that Sirius would have been killed by the dementors before they got back to the castle, but that seem doubtful, given that they almost made it back the way it was.

The other cool Snape thing in this book is that he is a better teacher of potions than we thought, he is the only one who can make the anti-werewolf potion. And is doing it, very cool.

All in all I like this book the most (of the first three) because it is the most believable. All of the “bad” things the kids do, seem more reasonable given the rest of the universe. Going by all the traps to get the sorcerer’s stone, eeh… not to mention fighting off Voldermort again… then taking on the basilisk worm thing at the end of the second book, while fighting deus ex machina, I mean Voldermort again. I just like the doing what you need to do, facing off politics and your own fears more than the strongest mage ever, and the one time that you really are doing something hard, it is something that you have been in training for the entire book for, and FAILED at on your first try. All in all, it made me really happy, and like all Rawling’s books was put together very well. I like hinting at the gun on the wall in the first chapter rather than putting it out there for real (Hermione’s hourglass).

And finally, harry is growing up. Playing with his wand under his sheets at night. Polishing his broomstick with the broom oil that Hermione gave him. Not to mention lusting after the older and unattainable Cho, when someone who really cares about him is right there under his nose the entire time, Hermione. Just perfect. This is real life. (And the ball in the Fourth book! But I’m not talking about that book yet.) All in all a great book. I hope he does get Cho in the end, though if it is realistic, he will finally date her, she’ll decide that he’s not enough of a man for her, and he’ll go back to Hermione, and she won’t be interested any more. Now THAT is teen angst worthy of some Pink Floyd. (or Cure.) And did I mention that I like that they haven’t won the Quidditch cup yet? (Though I think that Dumbledore is being a little obvious in the house cup thing.)

We rode horsies today! I love horsies! I haven’t ridden a horse in a really long time, but they are great. If the grand jihad ever occurs and all the oil is burned up, I won’t mind riding horses. They are so powerful and amazing. They know where they are going, they use an all natural power supply. Though they do pollute.

In any case, here are some pictures of our horse ride, we went up…

and down…

We went on a sail boat ride, or swimming lesson, yesterday. This was a racing boat, so it had a nice upwind angle of attack. It was a really fun ride, but since they didn’t want anyone falling off or anything, they had these seats installed which we had to sit in and not move around. Like to the high side. Unfortunately I was stuck in the front of the boat on the low side. The wind had picked up pretty well, so we were really moving, and as far as I could tell, my end of the boat was under the water. Every time a wave came by, I felt the ocean doing a body slam into me. Quite impressive. I just hope that everyone behind me on the bench appreciated it. Here is a pic of me before the wet (and in a different (better) seat).

I forgot my standard cowboy hat at home, which was probably a good thing, as the replacement I got has a string to hold it to my head.

I have been waiting for this to happen for quite some time now. This is the first privately funded space launch ever. Melville is now the first privately funded astronaut. The department of transportation awarded him his astronaut wings, which I find particularly cool. They had some problems with the launch, their primary trim control went out, forcing Melville to go to a secondary system, but as he put it, “That’s why we have secondary systems.” It does mean however that the next launch won’t be for a while, until they figure out what went wrong.

Since the XPrize dries up at the end of the year, they do need to hurry. They are the only serious contender at this point, anyone else who puts something up will be seriously risking the death of the pilot. Of course, the same could be said for the birth of the aviation industry so…

In any case, for the XPrize they need to put three people, or the weight of three people, into space twice in three weeks using the same ship with government funding. It is pretty clear that scaled is the only company that is currently even close. I can’t wait. The even more exciting thing though, is on sneaky line in the PR: “We do not plan to stay in low Earth orbit for decades,” said Mr Rutan. “Hold on, the next 25 years will be a wild ride.”

Woot! Finally got some pictures from the JMR band practice… er… reunion tour played at my house about three weeks ago. You can get the whole set of pictures which include a visit by a small friend requested by one band member. My favorites are here:

Back from NY, HUGE delay last night. Tons of work to do today. But no complaints, because it is OFF TO HAWAII tomorrow!!!

Phew, finished that one in record time. I’m afraid that these Harry Potter books are going to be totally addictive. Fortunately they seem to end well, so you aren’t left hanging, waiting for the next book. I have to say, I was completely impressed. The writing is good. It has been a long time since I have read a book where the writer really cared about the way they strung words together. I am not a good writer myself, but I can at least make sentences that make sense. So many writers today do just that. But Rowling is a pleasure to read, beyond just the plot. Her use of language is refreshing, and I don’t think that is just because I am reading the UK version of the books. An example: “Seamus Finnigan couldn’t control himself. He let out a snort of laughter that even Lockhart couldn’t mistake for a scream of terror.” So descriptive, and on so many levels. And since it is a children’s book, she does it without using obfuscating language.

Things I learned from this book: house elves are pricks, Hogwart’s students are much wussier than they used to be, if there is a sock that is on the wall in the first act, it will always always always be used in the final act, Harry is too willing to make powerful enemies, Snape is totally under-appreciated and would probably get along just fine with Harry if Harry weren’t such a wad to him and really he probably should have gotten the defense against the dark arts position because those kids just lost an entire year of it, and it is clear that they are really going to need it in the future and Snape would probably be a good teacher at it. OTOH, it is also clear that he is a really good potions teacher.

I had more thoughts about this book, but this is being written waaay after the fact, so this is all you get. Comment away, and maybe you will jog loose some other thought that I had. Oh yeah, it is amazing how well they translated this book into a movie. I will have to see how they did on the next one…

Mondays in NY are sleepy. I shouldn’t bring books to read that are too good. Got sucked into Harry Potter, but fortunately also had Kerry’s book along to put me to sleep. Not enough sleep. Why does this always happen when I am in NY.

Yay! Brown Elephant came and cleaned my apartment today. That is they took all the stuff that was filling the front room. That took a while. Of course I won’t see the results for another two weeks.

I’m going to be out of town for the next two weeks, and don’t think that I’ll have much if any time to blog, so I might not have posts here for about two weeks. Enjoy the silence.

So the Iraqi Police are now in charge in Najaf, after an agreement between the Medhi Army and the US Army where they would both pull out of the city. This agreement was odd. So far the Medhi army hasn’t done anything that said they were going to in terms of negotiations. And now they haven’t again, but the US troops aren’t in the city any more. In an article I don’t seem to be able to find again from yesterday the US army actually turned down a request for assistance by the Najafi police, saying basically “You need to learn how to deal with your own problems sooner or later.” That really upset me, but now I see that much of the fighting is going on at the Imam Ali mosque. Only the most holy site to the Shi’a. I begin to wonder if this didn’t have something to do with the US saying no to the police. That would put them in a much more favorable light, given how much trouble they got in for shooting back at mosques in Fallujah. (Or even for when something happens to a mosque that they are not near.)

After all my talk about how we are screwing the Kurds, I read from the most optimistic Iraqi ever that this is actually a great thing. I Iraq is to be a real democracy then these types of issues will come up and have to be dealt with. And the US can’t solve the problem for them. If the Kurds and Shia are going to be integrated in a “real iraq” they will need to go through a non violent process of hashing out their issues. It’s the first real test for Iraqis on wether they can form a government together.

Wow, that is outstandingly optimistic. But he does have a good point. Sistani will still be there long after we leave, and the Kurds will need to be able to defend their rights against him and his ilk for a long time to come, having someone else force the issue just puts that discussion off, if the issue would even hold.

Nope, not using someone’s death for political advantage. Wouldn’t be prudent. Go to George Bush’s web page. It needs to be seen to be believed. Who knew when you vote for Bush you are really voting for reagan. I have a screenshot for when it goes away.

Making a new government is a tricky process. I think that what is going on in Iraq right now must have been to one degree or another similar to what was going on in the US at the time of the revolutionary war. People unsure of what was going to happen, people not happy with the way the constitution was turning out. Everything one big confusing mess.

So while we were trying to get a unanimous vote on the UN resolution Sistani was pursuing an agenda of his own. He fired off that letter to the UN letting them know in no uncertain terms that there would be “dangerous consequences” if the TAL were mentioned in the resolution.

You see, it was made by an unelected government. But the problem is that it was also made in order to create an elected government that as many people in Iraq as possible would agree with. And now that we rolled over to Sistani to get a nice unanimous vote in the UN for this year’s election our one true ally in the region is pissed and sending a letter of his own.

Anyone who has been following me for a while knows that I have a great fondness for the Kurds. They are our best ally in the region. They have stuck with us through each of our backstabbings and sellouts. I hadn’t seen that last link from slate before. But that sellout watch doesn’t go back far enough. We have been selling them out for decades, and everyone else before that, and I mean everyone. From the end of WWI when they were promised a nation, through WWII when the region was divided up again and they were promised safety by Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syra through whose countries they stretch. Every one of them represses them as a minority.

So for the past ten years we have given them a shield in northern iraq (after turning a blind eye to Saddam using chemical weapons and more normal means to kill 200,000 of them) and they used it to their advantage. They have built their own little corner of democracy under the umbrella of US air power. Because of that they have been willing to forgive many of our failings, and help us out in our dealings with Iraq. In return we gave them assurances that they would not be wiped out by the tyranny of the majority, if they were willing to give up some of their autonomy for a greater Iraq. This meant them giving up on an old dream of a free state. But they did this for us.

We have never had truer friends in the region. Not Jordan, not Saudi Arabia, not Kuwait, not even Israel. And since we as the United States of America under George Bush seem to need to take our friends for granted, now we are about to crap on the Kurds. No mention of the TLA in the UN resolution, because some NONELECTED religious figure wants to take away some of the rights of the minority in his country because he leads the majority.

“Adil Abdul Mahdi, Iraq’s finance minister and a leader of one of the country’s largest Shiite parties, said Tuesday that the country’s Shiite leadership was determined to remove the provisions that could allow the Kurds to veto the permanent constitution, even at the risk of driving them away. “It’s not against the Kurds, it’s against the procedure,” Mr. Mahdi said.” NYT

Well guess what Mr. Mahdi, that procedure was put in place to keep the kurds as part of your country, because they gave just as much as you did under Saddam and also want to make sure that it never happens again. Only now you are in power and want to have that power.

Since the Kurds are our best friends in the region, I think that they will stick with it if we ask them to, but we really do need to remember that they are our friends, and we shouldn’t push them too far. They have suffered enough, and can really make a difference in the rest of Iraq.

And listening to the kurdish bloggers, I think that we will have to tread very carefully for a while. (That first one sometimes has sounds, sorry, and that second one is from Iranian Kurdistan.) Of course some kurds feel that it’s their own leaders not the US that betrayed them. Best of luck to them. I hope we don’t sell them up the river. I’ve already written my congress man on this issue last year. Looks like I might have to do it again, not that it will make a difference now…

“The mountains are our only friends”
— old and depressingly accurate Kurdish saying.

I just got the most annoying phone call ever. A recording said that they were doing a poll about abortion. If you do not want to participate hang up now…. OK, if you consider yourself Pro life press one, then they go through a whole bunch of terms ending with Pro choice as 9. So I hit 9, and it says, thank you for picking pro life, our organization has been fighting for, at which point I hung up and got the barest flicker of understanding of how the girls feel when they go to a fake family planning clinic.

Wow, a lot of things have been making me mad lately.