The Deathly Hallows

The seventh Harry Potter book.

I just finished reading Rowlings final installment in the series. I was
fearing that things would get too dark and end badly. I am elated to report
that this was not the case! The final book is perhaps not her best work.
The story line drags a bit through the middle. In the first several
chapters, Harry looses a lot of things that were comforting to him. As
He-who-must-not-be named, AKA Tom Riddle, AKA Lord Voldermort, is on the
rise, Harry finds himself going into hiding, along with everyone else who
has been resisting.

My prediction that Dumbledour would have at least one Horcrux, and would be
able to return proved false, however, the shadow that he cast still has
great impact upon this book. In other words, he may not be coming back to
life, but then again he isn't exactly gone.

If you're worried about who lives and who dies, then let me tell you this:
none of the major characters die. You can be at ease on that count,
however, the list of "former friends of Harry" grows quite long by the final
pages.

Rowlings style continues to impress me. The story is imaginative, detailed,
and intriguing. There are the bits of human interaction that always make me
laugh, there is plenty of action and some mystery. She has drawn from the
vast well of details written into the previous six books, and made sense out
of them. A lot of otherwise pointless details come floating back and impact
us in this book.

And should you be wondering about moral issues, this volume is better on
that count than all the previous ones. I have often critiqued the first
book because Harry is rewarded lavishly three times for breaking the rules,
and on the one occasion that he attempts to right a wrong, he is caught and
punished. It is not a tale for young children who have no solid sense of
right-and-wrong. This book however, makes it clear that the way you do
things (meaning that your motivation) is important. At times it is even
more important than what was done. Your motives impact your method and the
final results of your actions. That moral is perhaps a bit complex, but it
comes through rather clearly.

In all, I have to say, "Thank you J.K. Rowling for so many laughs and so
many pleasurable hours of reading. Your work has been delightful,
imaginative and so true-to-life."

I'd rate the entire series PG-13 and give'm a confident thumbs up!

Harry Potter and the Oder of the Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, a movie review.

My daughters and I went to the midnight movie premiere of the Harry Potter
movie. I have been a fan of the books, and have read them all to date,
(more than once). However my review of this movie is less than
enthusiastic. In one word, the movie is 'incomplete.'

Yes it was a very long book, and there are a lot of details that the movie
script writers would have to gloss over, but the film version of this book
simply cuts out way too much!

To start with are the characters which should be on screen and are not; such
as Mundungus Fletcher, Rita Skeeter, Dobby the house elf, Freinze the
Centaur, and a very noisy portrait.

Then there are the scenes that have been left out: far too numerous to
mention; but for example…

*Harry receiving a series of letters in short succession… only gets one
letter instead.

* House cleaning in the house of Black, and how the twins pocket some of the
stuff.

* Mrs. Weasley with the bogart.

* The sorting hats new song of warning.

* The visit to Mungo's Hospital, the spectar of Neviels parents and the man
who would be killed by Devils Snare.

* Harmiony's clever use of coins.

* The romantic date with Choe

* Quiddich. All of it! Nothing about Weasley twins and Potter getting
kicked off the team, Or Ron making the team. No "Weasley is our king" being
sung.. nothing!

In fact if the book had been written in the manner in which the movie
portrays it, I'd have lost interest in it altogether. These movie makers
are working at boiling down the story to it's essential plot elements, but
they miss out on the two things the J.K. Rowling has going for her in her
writing style. They miss the humor. These bits where circumstance and
personality play out in unexpected ways… are humorous! And they miss out on
the mystery. There is an element of mystery in every book, and all the
clues are in place in the details of the events. By cutting out so much
detail you loose the clues and foil the mystery element.

All that was retained was action and drama. As if, with films like Bourne
and Die Hard, the audience is staving for some action and drama.

Over all the film isn't bad, but in comparison… considering what they had to
work with… it is very very disappointing. See it if you must, but forget
what you think it should look like vis-à-vis the book version. It did not
happen.

I'm not sure what to make of this

It comes as no surprise to me. When I check my mail, I get everything sent
to me personally and my alter-ego 'Pastor Torch'. In my personal mail I
generally get various bits of spam and the assorted "you have to forward
this to every one you know.." type messages. Once in a blue moon I'll get
an actual bit of mail (that is what makes it all worth it.) But my
alter-ego is commonly sent virused messages. I know this because my web
service affords me a layer of protection against them, thus I receive a
notice in my e-mail about a potential threat that was sent.

It comes as no shock to me that some individuals out there can't see past
the word "pastor" in the name and would go to great lengths to cause such a
one harm. But I do not know what to think of this latest attack. You see
they came in the form of greeting cards... you may know the kind. There are
many web sites you can use to create and send a friend a special greeting.
The e-mail they receive provides them with a link to view the card you
created for them.. a very nice and thoughtful service, to be sure. So what
does it mean when the 'greeting cards' are blocked because they have a
virus? Did the sender infect it, or is that the web site admin's doing?
Who can you trust any more?

So if the thoughtful greeting card you sent was not responded too.. uh,
perhaps you could try using a different web-site?!

Once again I find myself wishing I had money. Several years ago I dreamed
about building an intra-net. Only back then I don't think the term had even
been coined. The idea was simplistic enough. Put a bunch of servers online
in such a way that you had to get in thru a gate way of some sort.
Everything behind the gate would be controlled. All content would be
filtered to meet three objectives. 1) Nothing would be pornographic,
fallacious or delinquent, in other words, it must be family friendly. 2)
All commercial content would be local. Chat, e-mail, the people you meet
online, if at all possible, would be local too. 3) Finally, the most
difficult part, organization. Content would be organized as in a phone
directory. Making research a lot more profitable. The key to maintaining
these characteristics is in the organization of it. Once it caught on,
other people would be allowed to connect and include their servers, and
their servers content would be added tot he service. If however any content
on that server was non-compliant, they would be given a short window of
opportunity to fix it or be literally un-plugged until it is fixed. Then if
they connect other servers to theirs...the same rules would apply. Any
non-compliant content found via their link would put them in jeopardy of
being cut off, thus they must exercise the same level of control over their
connections as the originating service does.

Alas, I never had the money to even build a server, let alone figure out how
to create a gateway.

In the mean time, I hope at least there is some truth to story that all porn
might be forced to use the extension .prn

That makes so much sense... on so many levels... for government to place
this regulatory stipulation on the internet and all of it's content. Think
of all the school's and libraries and businesses who would then only need to
block *.prn in-order to prevent porn from being accessed by their systems!
It would end the madness and errors they struggle with now days to filter
out the porn and maintain the educational web sites.

I could further dream that malicious virus ridden sights could be regulated
to *.vrs or some such, but then no one would be foolish enough to blunder
into their trap. Even when it comes in the form of a cute greeting card.