The world may be complex, but that has nothing to do with the plot. Harry Potter plots are all exasperatingly shallow.
I'm speaking of the plot, as well as the world. Harry is at the center of the plot, but his actions are only a small part of the whole thing. This series is not seven individual stories, it's one story split across seven books. There are dozens and dozens of subplots, all contributing to a huge master plot arc spanning probably 4,000 pages once it's done.
Harry is a bloody dunce who wanders around through a fantastic world in a complete muddle, ignoring or missing clues all around him until he is trapped in a corner and saved by whatever deus ex machina plot device JKR had handy.
First, one of the appeals of the series is its realistic, fallible characters. Harry, while powerful, is NOT a genius. He is a very flawed, damaged individual. He doesn't see things he should.
Second, contrary to popular belief, these are not mysteries where can you "solve the mystery". They are about the hero's journey, doing the best he can with whatever resources he has. That's not to say there aren't hints along the way -- there are a lot of hints, some planted in the first book that didn't come to fruition until the fifth and sixth books.
Well crafted plots? Not at all.
The genius of JKR -- and why both seven and 70 year olds can enjoy these books -- is that they can be read two ways. Either as a superficial, simple plot, or as an amazingly deep plot, depending on how much you dig into them. A seven year old sees the evil Voldemort. An older reader sees the two-class system of "pure" wizards and muggleborns, and all the allegorical ramifications. A seven year old sees scary Dementors running the prison. An older reader can wonder and debate about the morality of using such creatures to guard prisoners. We could get into politics of the wizarding world... on and on, all contributing to the enormous plot arc.
Just find some essays on all the unanswered plot questions -- some very subtle -- and you'll see just how deep the plot really is. There's a reason people get obsessed about these books (not me, of course *cough*:)).
It's actually: "Harry Potter: the plot is shallow".
I know you're just being funny, but the LAST thing you can accuse the HP plot of is being shallow. That world is HUGE and very complex. I think that's one of the reasons that adult readers can get dragged into it as much as the kids. Supposedly JKR has boxes and boxes full of notes about how various things work. She's said she might publish an encyclopdia of the world based on her notes (for charity, like the other two charity books).
The collaboration between two of the most powerful brands in technology is seen as a potential catalyst...
Who the hell is Orange? OK, I looked them up -- they're a big company, and maybe they're known more outside the US, but that brand is hardly on the same level as Google when it comes to world-wide recognition.
Sony BMG Music Entertainment will pay $1.5 million and kick in thousands more in customer refunds to settle lawsuits brought by California and Texas over music CDs that installed a hidden anti-piracy program on consumers' computers.
I'm sure the ashtray of the Sony CFO's Mercedes 600SEL will miss that pocket change.
Name me one person in the real world who is completely evil, other than Hitler.
I don't know about "good", but this guy is arguably WORSE than Hitler. Hitler just killed people on a large, but impersonal scale. Mengele personally did horrendous, torturous experiments on children. Sheesh, he experimented with sewing together twin children to try and create artificial conjoined twins. He tried to change their eye color by injecting chemicals into their eyes. This guy has his own special wing in Hell.
you could have used your eyes to look for the burning plastic.
I could have, but didn't. And that's a bit impractical looking at every square inch of the room to identify something small and burning (if you can even see what's burning).
And since you knew that the light bulbs were on (and hot), you could have used your powers of deduction to guess that the chandelier was a likely place to look.
Actually, I was predisposed to look for electrical shorts to find the burning source. It was only by following my nose that I figured out that wasn't it.
that demonstrated that humans can follow a scent trail -- an ability that most had assumed only animals possessed.
Err, I recently smelled something burning. I walked through my house using my nose to follow the scent trail, and locate the single light bulb in the chandelier that had a tiny piece of plastic stuck to it that was burning (from a Christmas decoration).
How do these researchers think I performed this amazing feat? Got out my hound dog and had him sniff around?
Person of the Year is irrelevent ever since... They passed on naming Osama bin Laden in 2001.
Time Magazine died even earlier than that. I still remember the moment I concluded Time was no longer worth my time. It was the mid-to-late eighties, and Time magazine had an editorial where they announced (paraphrase) "Environmentalism is too important to remain neutral, and from now on we are taking an advocacy stand."
What kind of news magazine announces that they're not going to strive for a balanced view any longer? Granted, most news magazines are very biased anyway, but I think they at least strive for that ideal. At that point, I realized that Time had lost their way and didn't realize that the more important the issue, the more important a balanced, neutral view becomes. People want to be informed, not to be preached to.
It's why legitimate environmentalists have trouble making progress. The bad ones give the good ones a bad name by assuming that an issue is "so important" that exaggerations (if not outright lies) are justified.
you're right. he's an ESTABLISHED nerdcore rapper. and if you don't think that "white and nerdy" or "all about the pentiums" do not qualify as nerdcore, then wtf does?
A "nerdcore" rapper does music (to use the term loosely) in the style of rap -- that's their particular style. Weird Al does parody of music using the style of the original music. That he happens to do parodies of some rap songs does not making him an "aspiring" nerdcore rapper.
...and features MC Hawking, mc chris, Weird Al Yankovic, Brian Posehn, Daily Show personnel, and dozens of aspiring nerdcore rappers from around the country.
Weird Al is NOT an aspiring "nerdcode" rapper, and PLEASE for the love of God don't lump the proven genius that is Weird Al with these other obscure whatever-the-hell-they-ares.
Wait. I pay for these networkes, Is ME who decide anithing. And I decide with my money to have P2P in full use, and not as 2th or 3th level.
No, you aren't paying for "these networkes", you are paying for exactly what the service agreement tells you, which is probably not unlimited usage. If you want to make the decisions, then pay the big $$$ for commercial, unrestricted internet access.
Well, if that's the completely unwarranted conclusion you wish to jump to, you're more than welcome to it.
Considering that: 1) the whole idea of currency revaluation was completely unknown to you, 2) yet, you felt compelled to apparently conclude it was impossible, and 3) then you apparently assume that doing it would turn the US economy into Mexico's economy...
That conclusion may or may not be unwarranted, but I think we can safely conclude that you could use a few more economics classes.
Gosh, I wonder if there might be some unintended (and disastrous) consequences?
Sheesh, you do realize that monetary revaluation has been done before in other countries, right? Mexico, as one example, revalued their currency in 1993 so that 1 "Nuevo" Peso was worth 1,000 old Pesos.
The problem is that our lowest currencies are so valueless that 1) they're worth less than the metal they're made out of, and 2) they're not all that useful as currency. Revaluing the currency is just another way of dropping pennies and nickels and whatever, except that we keep the same useful monetary scale of dollars and cents.
I know it would be incredibly difficult to do in these modern days, but I'd love to see dollars revalued as 10 "new dollars" (or even more... 50/1, 100/1?). Inflation has devalued money so that anything under a dollar has so little value. The original dollar back in 1790 was a pretty good chunk of change. Even back in the early 20th century, a dollar was worth 10 or 20 dollars today. What's it even mean to be a millionaire these days? It's not a trivial amount of money, but you could barely live off it.
Yeah, because you know those right-wingers... they won't be happy until every animal species is extinct.::rolls eyes::
Nice bigotry and prejudice. You've put in exactly as much thought into your beliefs as a Klansman who complains about those "rabid n***ers who can't do anything except cause crime."
This newly-created account is Dean Hunt!! Read his posts. They're subtle attempts to get people to link to the story, as well as convince them it's not a hoax. Another Slashdotter figured this out, and I completely agree.
Pre civilization / not pre human evolution. I figure you do know that line can be hard to draw? Not even paleoanthropologists are very sure when homo sapiens was a complete species. How many homos back would you call "human"?
Well, I guess you are going to be deliberately obtuse. All right, what the heck, I'll play along. Homo Sapiens, by definition, was a complete species when all members are able to interbreed. Now, can we stop trying to back the debate into evermore ridiculous levels so that you can find some needlepoint to pounce upon and declare unlitateral victory?
The problem with everyone using that period for justifying hunting is that they tend to leave out the fact that "gathering" counted for the overwhelming majority of food consumed.
The utter ridiculousness of this statement is breathtaking to behold. No one claims that "gathering" or farming, for that matter, didn't count. But to make such a broad statement that gathering was the "overwhelming majority" of our food is just silly. First, you (and no one else) have statistics to back that up. Second, our bodies are designed for hunting (note our forward-facing eyes of the predator, versus other animals with wider eyes to give a wider field of view in order to flee FROM predators).
Almost every society has used a combination of hunting and gathering for food. Duh! Of course a society is going to take advantage of whatever the natural resources are around them. Do you think some primitive culture is not going to hunt out of some modern notion of nobility when there are plentiful sources of meat around?
I'm not even sure what your point is. Are you trying to argue that humans are NOT designed to hunt, and that it's only in modern times that we've suddenly decided we like meat, and that we like hunting? The absurdity of your argument is self-evident.
Sneaking after a grizzly through the bushes with a bowie in your hands must surely give much more of nature communication and heritage experiencing.
It's certainly more challenging, but the point of the experience is not get as near as possible to death, it's to hunt for food. Just because I use a tractor to till some land doesn't mean I'm less of a farmer.
Ah, but you were talking about heritage and what we were made for. Then please specify what step of the human evolution we should look at for finding out what "nature intended".
Stop being deliberately obtuse. Of course, we're speaking of pre-civilization, not pre-human evolution. We don't exactly have to go back many years to find when hunting was a normal part of life in most cultures.
Why all the guns, then? If it all about experiencing a timy part of our heritage, why not attacking deer with a knife, or a home made bow and arrows?
All three are hunting tools, just different kinds. We're humans -- we design and use tools. The exact tool doesn't matter.
And no, we are not designed at the most basic level to kill large mammals. For the most basic level, go and read a book about apes feeding habits.
We're not apes. We're not even chimpanzees. We are humans, who happen to share a common ancestor a long, long time ago with the latter animals.
Wonder why we don't see many hunters out in the woods, eating worms, ants or beetles and such? That is after all what they are designed to do at the most basic level.
If we were designed to do that, we'd still be doing it. But you'll note that worms, ants and beetles aren't very appetizing. Yet delicious meat is EXTREMELY appetizing to the vast majority of people. Of course, certain people have been culturually conditioned to not like it. But hey, when you combine animal instincts with an intelligent brain, you're going to get some variance. Just because certain people don't like sex doesn't mean that sex isn't natural.
And the misfortune of the wild animal, slaughtered for fun? Is that humorous to you instead?
The point of hunting is not "slaughtering for fun", it's "slaughtering for food", as nature intended and as we're designed. Not that it isn't also fun, but the point of hunting is to commune with nature and experience a tiny part of our heritage when surviving meant catching our food. That's why hunting is the most noble sport -- it's what we're designed to do at the most basic level.
fears that UWB might interfere with other technologies has kept it out of the market
I've been hearing about these fears for like five years now. Why the hell doesn't anyone just test the damn thing? Is this question really that hard to settle? Am I missing something here?
No, by the threat of killing them. Why do you think countries having standing armies, even if there's no war going on? By your logic, the only reason to keep an army is to go out and kill people for absolutely no reason.
But the gun doesn't do anything to protect you and I can't decide if the fact that you think it does do makes you foolish or dangerous.
That's just silly. Here's an experiment for you: walk down a dark street in a dangerous part of time after dark, totally unarmed. Now walk down that same street, waving a gun in your hand.
I think there's a wee bit of difference in the danger level between those two scenerios. And bizarrely -- the gun protected you without it even having to be fired!
Slashdot Mirror
The world may be complex, but that has nothing to do with the plot. Harry Potter plots are all exasperatingly shallow.
I'm speaking of the plot, as well as the world. Harry is at the center of the plot, but his actions are only a small part of the whole thing. This series is not seven individual stories, it's one story split across seven books. There are dozens and dozens of subplots, all contributing to a huge master plot arc spanning probably 4,000 pages once it's done.
Harry is a bloody dunce who wanders around through a fantastic world in a complete muddle, ignoring or missing clues all around him until he is trapped in a corner and saved by whatever deus ex machina plot device JKR had handy.
First, one of the appeals of the series is its realistic, fallible characters. Harry, while powerful, is NOT a genius. He is a very flawed, damaged individual. He doesn't see things he should.
Second, contrary to popular belief, these are not mysteries where can you "solve the mystery". They are about the hero's journey, doing the best he can with whatever resources he has. That's not to say there aren't hints along the way -- there are a lot of hints, some planted in the first book that didn't come to fruition until the fifth and sixth books.
Well crafted plots? Not at all.
The genius of JKR -- and why both seven and 70 year olds can enjoy these books -- is that they can be read two ways. Either as a superficial, simple plot, or as an amazingly deep plot, depending on how much you dig into them. A seven year old sees the evil Voldemort. An older reader sees the two-class system of "pure" wizards and muggleborns, and all the allegorical ramifications. A seven year old sees scary Dementors running the prison. An older reader can wonder and debate about the morality of using such creatures to guard prisoners. We could get into politics of the wizarding world... on and on, all contributing to the enormous plot arc.
Just find some essays on all the unanswered plot questions -- some very subtle -- and you'll see just how deep the plot really is. There's a reason people get obsessed about these books (not me, of course *cough* :)).
It's actually: "Harry Potter: the plot is shallow".
I know you're just being funny, but the LAST thing you can accuse the HP plot of is being shallow. That world is HUGE and very complex. I think that's one of the reasons that adult readers can get dragged into it as much as the kids. Supposedly JKR has boxes and boxes full of notes about how various things work. She's said she might publish an encyclopdia of the world based on her notes (for charity, like the other two charity books).
The collaboration between two of the most powerful brands in technology is seen as a potential catalyst...
Who the hell is Orange? OK, I looked them up -- they're a big company, and maybe they're known more outside the US, but that brand is hardly on the same level as Google when it comes to world-wide recognition.
Sony BMG Music Entertainment will pay $1.5 million and kick in thousands more in customer refunds to settle lawsuits brought by California and Texas over music CDs that installed a hidden anti-piracy program on consumers' computers.
I'm sure the ashtray of the Sony CFO's Mercedes 600SEL will miss that pocket change.
Name me one person in the real world who is completely evil, other than Hitler.
I don't know about "good", but this guy is arguably WORSE than Hitler. Hitler just killed people on a large, but impersonal scale. Mengele personally did horrendous, torturous experiments on children. Sheesh, he experimented with sewing together twin children to try and create artificial conjoined twins. He tried to change their eye color by injecting chemicals into their eyes. This guy has his own special wing in Hell.
you could have used your eyes to look for the burning plastic.
I could have, but didn't. And that's a bit impractical looking at every square inch of the room to identify something small and burning (if you can even see what's burning).
And since you knew that the light bulbs were on (and hot), you could have used your powers of deduction to guess that the chandelier was a likely place to look.
Actually, I was predisposed to look for electrical shorts to find the burning source. It was only by following my nose that I figured out that wasn't it.
that demonstrated that humans can follow a scent trail -- an ability that most had assumed only animals possessed.
Err, I recently smelled something burning. I walked through my house using my nose to follow the scent trail, and locate the single light bulb in the chandelier that had a tiny piece of plastic stuck to it that was burning (from a Christmas decoration).
How do these researchers think I performed this amazing feat? Got out my hound dog and had him sniff around?
Person of the Year is irrelevent ever since... They passed on naming Osama bin Laden in 2001.
Time Magazine died even earlier than that. I still remember the moment I concluded Time was no longer worth my time. It was the mid-to-late eighties, and Time magazine had an editorial where they announced (paraphrase) "Environmentalism is too important to remain neutral, and from now on we are taking an advocacy stand."
What kind of news magazine announces that they're not going to strive for a balanced view any longer? Granted, most news magazines are very biased anyway, but I think they at least strive for that ideal. At that point, I realized that Time had lost their way and didn't realize that the more important the issue, the more important a balanced, neutral view becomes. People want to be informed, not to be preached to.
It's why legitimate environmentalists have trouble making progress. The bad ones give the good ones a bad name by assuming that an issue is "so important" that exaggerations (if not outright lies) are justified.
you're right. he's an ESTABLISHED nerdcore rapper. and if you don't think that "white and nerdy" or "all about the pentiums" do not qualify as nerdcore, then wtf does?
A "nerdcore" rapper does music (to use the term loosely) in the style of rap -- that's their particular style. Weird Al does parody of music using the style of the original music. That he happens to do parodies of some rap songs does not making him an "aspiring" nerdcore rapper.
Weird Al is NOT an aspiring "nerdcode" rapper, and PLEASE for the love of God don't lump the proven genius that is Weird Al with these other obscure whatever-the-hell-they-ares.
Wait. I pay for these networkes, Is ME who decide anithing. And I decide with my money to have P2P in full use, and not as 2th or 3th level.
No, you aren't paying for "these networkes", you are paying for exactly what the service agreement tells you, which is probably not unlimited usage. If you want to make the decisions, then pay the big $$$ for commercial, unrestricted internet access.
Well, if that's the completely unwarranted conclusion you wish to jump to, you're more than welcome to it.
Considering that: 1) the whole idea of currency revaluation was completely unknown to you, 2) yet, you felt compelled to apparently conclude it was impossible, and 3) then you apparently assume that doing it would turn the US economy into Mexico's economy...
That conclusion may or may not be unwarranted, but I think we can safely conclude that you could use a few more economics classes.
Oh, wow, that's genius. Let's make our economy more like Mexico's.
Yeah, because anything those "fereners" do has to automatically lead to ruin! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Gosh, I wonder if there might be some unintended (and disastrous) consequences?
Sheesh, you do realize that monetary revaluation has been done before in other countries, right? Mexico, as one example, revalued their currency in 1993 so that 1 "Nuevo" Peso was worth 1,000 old Pesos.
Wait, what was the problem again?
The problem is that our lowest currencies are so valueless that 1) they're worth less than the metal they're made out of, and 2) they're not all that useful as currency. Revaluing the currency is just another way of dropping pennies and nickels and whatever, except that we keep the same useful monetary scale of dollars and cents.
I know it would be incredibly difficult to do in these modern days, but I'd love to see dollars revalued as 10 "new dollars" (or even more... 50/1, 100/1?). Inflation has devalued money so that anything under a dollar has so little value. The original dollar back in 1790 was a pretty good chunk of change. Even back in the early 20th century, a dollar was worth 10 or 20 dollars today. What's it even mean to be a millionaire these days? It's not a trivial amount of money, but you could barely live off it.
rabid anti-environmental right
Yeah, because you know those right-wingers... they won't be happy until every animal species is extinct. ::rolls eyes::
Nice bigotry and prejudice. You've put in exactly as much thought into your beliefs as a Klansman who complains about those "rabid n***ers who can't do anything except cause crime."
This newly-created account is Dean Hunt!! Read his posts. They're subtle attempts to get people to link to the story, as well as convince them it's not a hoax. Another Slashdotter figured this out, and I completely agree.
You, sir, are a scum-bag loser.
Pre civilization / not pre human evolution. I figure you do know that line can be hard to draw? Not even paleoanthropologists are very sure when homo sapiens was a complete species. How many homos back would you call "human"?
Well, I guess you are going to be deliberately obtuse. All right, what the heck, I'll play along. Homo Sapiens, by definition, was a complete species when all members are able to interbreed. Now, can we stop trying to back the debate into evermore ridiculous levels so that you can find some needlepoint to pounce upon and declare unlitateral victory?
The problem with everyone using that period for justifying hunting is that they tend to leave out the fact that "gathering" counted for the overwhelming majority of food consumed.
The utter ridiculousness of this statement is breathtaking to behold. No one claims that "gathering" or farming, for that matter, didn't count. But to make such a broad statement that gathering was the "overwhelming majority" of our food is just silly. First, you (and no one else) have statistics to back that up. Second, our bodies are designed for hunting (note our forward-facing eyes of the predator, versus other animals with wider eyes to give a wider field of view in order to flee FROM predators).
Almost every society has used a combination of hunting and gathering for food. Duh! Of course a society is going to take advantage of whatever the natural resources are around them. Do you think some primitive culture is not going to hunt out of some modern notion of nobility when there are plentiful sources of meat around?
I'm not even sure what your point is. Are you trying to argue that humans are NOT designed to hunt, and that it's only in modern times that we've suddenly decided we like meat, and that we like hunting? The absurdity of your argument is self-evident.
Sneaking after a grizzly through the bushes with a bowie in your hands must surely give much more of nature communication and heritage experiencing.
It's certainly more challenging, but the point of the experience is not get as near as possible to death, it's to hunt for food. Just because I use a tractor to till some land doesn't mean I'm less of a farmer.
Ah, but you were talking about heritage and what we were made for. Then please specify what step of the human evolution we should look at for finding out what "nature intended".
Stop being deliberately obtuse. Of course, we're speaking of pre-civilization, not pre-human evolution. We don't exactly have to go back many years to find when hunting was a normal part of life in most cultures.
Why all the guns, then? If it all about experiencing a timy part of our heritage, why not attacking deer with a knife, or a home made bow and arrows?
All three are hunting tools, just different kinds. We're humans -- we design and use tools. The exact tool doesn't matter.
And no, we are not designed at the most basic level to kill large mammals. For the most basic level, go and read a book about apes feeding habits.
We're not apes. We're not even chimpanzees. We are humans, who happen to share a common ancestor a long, long time ago with the latter animals.
Wonder why we don't see many hunters out in the woods, eating worms, ants or beetles and such? That is after all what they are designed to do at the most basic level.
If we were designed to do that, we'd still be doing it. But you'll note that worms, ants and beetles aren't very appetizing. Yet delicious meat is EXTREMELY appetizing to the vast majority of people. Of course, certain people have been culturually conditioned to not like it. But hey, when you combine animal instincts with an intelligent brain, you're going to get some variance. Just because certain people don't like sex doesn't mean that sex isn't natural.
And the misfortune of the wild animal, slaughtered for fun? Is that humorous to you instead?
The point of hunting is not "slaughtering for fun", it's "slaughtering for food", as nature intended and as we're designed. Not that it isn't also fun, but the point of hunting is to commune with nature and experience a tiny part of our heritage when surviving meant catching our food. That's why hunting is the most noble sport -- it's what we're designed to do at the most basic level.
fears that UWB might interfere with other technologies has kept it out of the market
I've been hearing about these fears for like five years now. Why the hell doesn't anyone just test the damn thing? Is this question really that hard to settle? Am I missing something here?
Yes, by killing them.
No, by the threat of killing them. Why do you think countries having standing armies, even if there's no war going on? By your logic, the only reason to keep an army is to go out and kill people for absolutely no reason.
But the gun doesn't do anything to protect you and I can't decide if the fact that you think it does do makes you foolish or dangerous.
That's just silly. Here's an experiment for you: walk down a dark street in a dangerous part of time after dark, totally unarmed. Now walk down that same street, waving a gun in your hand.
I think there's a wee bit of difference in the danger level between those two scenerios. And bizarrely -- the gun protected you without it even having to be fired!
See also: Nuclear Weapon Strategy.