The Ark and The Dove

WTH--What the Halloween?!?

It's 6:18 PM, and there's not a single trick-or-treater in sight.

Isabel just looked online and discovered that our township apparently scheduled trick-or-treating for LAST NIGHT!?!?!?! Where in the world does the local government reschedule Halloween to occur the night before!?!?!

Well...looks like I'll be getting Nerds for dessert in my lunch bag for the next ten weeks or so...

Is Harry Potter Racist?

The accusation has often been leveled at Star Wars, and, since Harry Potter has so much obviously in common with Star Wars, it seems like a question worth asking.

Granted, I'm only about 80 pages into the series, so these are honest questions.

What gives characters in the HP-universe their magic sensitivity?

Can anyone become a wizard with enough hard work, or only people with some kind of inherent proclivity?

Is that proclivity therefore a genetic proclivity, as critics have suggested with Star Wars thanks to the midichlorians?

Does Potter's universe suggest that certain people are genetically predisposed towards magic? Can that trait be genetically transferred?

If so, is there a possibility of Hogwarts essentially engaging in some kind of magic-user breeding experiment? Is Hogwarts isolating off these magic-sensitive youths throughout their pubescent years in hopes that they will eventually marry and generate a new generation of wizards? How long would such a project be sustainable before inbreeding occurred?

Is there eventually a risk of some kind of magic-sensitive super-race emerging that will eventually enslave the Muggles, as they diminutively name those people lacking the genetic traits that enable them to perform magic?

Why isn't the Muggle government exploiting wizards or at least trying to?

Are there any Muggle teachers at Hogwarts? When do these kids learn about non-occult fields of study, or things that would actually prove useful?

Is the fact that Hogwarts is a school for magic-users a beneficial product of free-market enterprise where students are earning their spots in the school based on a bona fide proficiency (even if that proficiency is drawn largely from genetic traits)? Or is Hogwarts' identity as a school for magic users essentially a form of isolationist tribalism? Should Hogwarts be forced to incorporate some kind of Muggle affirmative action quota? How does Hogwarts justify its lack of non-magic diversity?

Am I a Muggle?

I had to stop reading HP3 after only 30 pages (and they might have been the fastest 30 pages I have ever read).

My main question so far is whether or not there is anything resembling protective child services in England. Harry Potter's uncle threatens him with physical violence if he doesn't lie to a family friend. Physical violence. Towards a minor. In his custody.

Hasn't Harry mentioned any of this to his school councilors at Hogwarts? Don't they have a legal or at least moral responsibility to take him out of this abuse-ridden domicile?

And what's the deal with Harry's uncle anyway? He's an overweight, industrial capitalist suffering from homophobia...er...magi-phobia. I assume he is opposed to environmentalism because he runs a drill company (would I be wrong to assume these are mining drills rather than Black&Deckers?). He advocates the death penalty and harsh corporal punishments to criminals.

He reads like a bad, left-wing caricature of conservatives...or the typical villain in an episode of Captain Planet. He's an implausible, hyper-inflated cartoon character--and his implausibility dismantles my suspension of disbelief along with any sympathy for Harry.

I think I'd have found this conflict more compelling if Harry's uncle was less concerned about British manners alone and instead hypocritically tried to exploit Harry's powers while at the same time crying out against magic. Maybe it's just a British cultural thing that I'm not quite getting.

The Problem with Queer Theory...

...is turning it off.

I'm reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the first time. It will be the first HP book that I've actually read--but I was recommended by some reliable sources that it was actually a better place  than the first book to jump into the series.

But I'm facing a problem. Reading the series after Rowling has outed the fictional Headmaster of Hogwarts as homosexual means that I'm preconditioned to read the text in a rainbow colored light.

Imagine my scandal when I came across the following passage:

"Harry had crept downstairs, picked the lock on the cupboard under the stairs, grabbed some of his books, and hidden them in his bedroom. As long as he didn't leave spots of ink on the sheets, the Dursleys need never know that he was studying magic by night."

Let's paraphrase this idea, shall we? Harry has to make sure not to stain the sheets when secretly perusing illicit literature that his parental guardians have stashed away because they find it offensive.

On the very next page...Harry's uncle scolds him because one of his Hogwart's school friends has just called: "HOW DARE YOU GIVE THIS NUMBER TO PEOPLE LIKE--PEOPLE LIKE YOU?"

Don't forget that the book begins with Harry doing a homework assignment on medieval witch trials with the opening statement:

Non-magic people (more commonly known as Muggles) were particularly afraid of magic in medieval times, but not very good at recognizing it.

Now, I'm not saying that Rowling has written her entire book to be a grand Queer allegory...a modern day LGBTA Faerie Queen if you will. However, once you juxtapose any of those passages with the self-expressed authorial intent to make one of the main characters a closet homosexual, it's easy to turn the story into just such an allegory.

Oh, wait a second...Harry Potter goes to an English boarding school. How could I possibly think there's anything sexually deviant going on here?

Bad News

Normally, I would not be sympathetic to the idea of teenagers running away from home. I'm willing, however, to consider an exception in the case of Rifqa Bary, the Ohio girl who fled her Muslim family out of fear that she would become the next American to face an honor-killing. Rifqa converted to Christianity, and her parents threatened her. A Florida judge has ruled that she must return to her parents.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

With the rise of H1N1, my archdiocese just announced the temporary end of physical contact during the sign of peace! Yay!

They also temporarily suspended the awkwardness that has become the Precious Blood...no more droves of people blitzing passed a bored-looking Extraordinary Minister with nary an acknowledgment of What she is holding!

Now, if only someone could convince the bishops that choirs are a source of contagion, we'd be golden...

Ode to the Naughty in the News

It seems to me that there have been a lot of sleazeballs in the news of late who have been getting a moral carte blanche on the basis that they have huge fan bases. I think that's why the following passage struck me today:

How dangerous it is that this man goes loose!
Yet must not we put the strong law on him;
He's loved of the distracted multitude,
Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes,
And where 'tis so, th' offender's scourge is weighed,
But never the offense. (Hamlet IV.3 3-7)

Shredding the Shroud

FoxNews links to an article in which an Italian scientist claims to have reproduced the visual effects of the Shroud of Turin using nothing but materials available to a medieval artist.

The article notes that the Church does not demand faith in the Shroud, nor does it claim it's authenticity. This boils down to atheists wanting to dismantle unofficial folk belief in an allegedly miraculous relic and reduce it to medieval quackery. As you probably already know, carbon dating does not support the Shroud as having ancient origins--although there are people who claim that fire damage and restorations to the Shroud may have contaminated the carbon dating evidence.

I certainly don't think I'm capable of solving this one way or the other, but I do have some doubts about the methodology of the debunkers. While the results they produced are impressively like photographic effects the "original" Shroud, and while they do manage to use medieval materials, I'm not sure this adequately accounts for motivation. One of the most interesting effects of the Shroud (and the one which the debunkers most sought to replicate) is how the Shroud appears in photographic negative. This obviously could not have been the intention of the medieval forger, since I don't see how a medieval or Renaissance viewer would be able to see the effect.