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Showing posts with label Harry Potter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harry Potter. Show all posts
Friday, January 31, 2014
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Commencement Speech 2013
I’m afraid that once again, I’m unable to accept any invitations to speak at various graduation ceremonies, primarily due to not having received any. However, in the event of sudden, last minute desperation that might induce someone to call upon me, I’ve prepared a few remarks suitable to the occasion.
The main reason I’m addressing you today is that I’ve discovered within myself an unerring knack for writing things nobody wants to read. This is actually very liberating. After all, if nobody’s reading, I can experiment with half-formed ideas and ill-conceived … uh, concepts. I can give voice to all those idiotic thoughts that, under normal circumstances, should never see the light of day. I think all writers should do this as a way to improve my standing.
Seriously, most writers play it extremely safe. Look at J. K. Rowling and the Harry Potter books. Duh!! Of course people are going to buy books about kids discovering they’re really wizards with magical powers and a world of intense good and evil to master. And come on. After the first book, she was basically coasting.
Couldn’t she have explored some of the deeper questions? Harry was kind of railroaded into a wizarding career. What if he really wanted to study dentistry or chiropractic?
I mean, I could have written those books. What’s so hard? It’s not like a completely new idea. King Arthur - Kid discovers he’s the king. Superman - Kid discovers he’s a superhero. Harry Potter - Kid discovers he’s a wizard. It’s an easy formula. I’m working on one about a kid who discovers he’s incredibly gifted at … well, I don’t want to give too much away. Lets just say it’ll make those other stories seem like fantasies.
Oh, and that whole graduation thing? Good luck with that.
The main reason I’m addressing you today is that I’ve discovered within myself an unerring knack for writing things nobody wants to read. This is actually very liberating. After all, if nobody’s reading, I can experiment with half-formed ideas and ill-conceived … uh, concepts. I can give voice to all those idiotic thoughts that, under normal circumstances, should never see the light of day. I think all writers should do this as a way to improve my standing.
Seriously, most writers play it extremely safe. Look at J. K. Rowling and the Harry Potter books. Duh!! Of course people are going to buy books about kids discovering they’re really wizards with magical powers and a world of intense good and evil to master. And come on. After the first book, she was basically coasting.
Couldn’t she have explored some of the deeper questions? Harry was kind of railroaded into a wizarding career. What if he really wanted to study dentistry or chiropractic?
I mean, I could have written those books. What’s so hard? It’s not like a completely new idea. King Arthur - Kid discovers he’s the king. Superman - Kid discovers he’s a superhero. Harry Potter - Kid discovers he’s a wizard. It’s an easy formula. I’m working on one about a kid who discovers he’s incredibly gifted at … well, I don’t want to give too much away. Lets just say it’ll make those other stories seem like fantasies.
Oh, and that whole graduation thing? Good luck with that.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
HPL
In an earlier post, I compared some of the magic in the
Harry Potter stories with technology that's available today. It occurred
to me that the best use of this overlap would be to implement a computer
programming language whose built-in operators are spells from the Harry
Potter books. We will call this, naturally, HPL (Harry Potter Language).
As I first step, I'm proposing the following:
1Redundant on Windows systems.
| Command | Effect |
| Accio | Download file |
| Alohomora | Enable access |
| Avada Kadavra | Ctrl-Alt-Del |
| Confundus | Display engineer-written help message |
| Engorgio | Fill available memory. |
| Expecto Patronum | Launch a new process |
| Expelliarmus | Eject CD |
| Imperio | sudo |
| Legilimens | Show stack trace |
| Lumos | Brighten screen |
| Obliviate | Delete |
| Patrificus Totalis | Freeze computer1 |
| Prior Incantato | Undo |
| Riddikulus | Can be substituted for any program written in HPL |
| Wingardium Leviosa | Upload file |
1Redundant on Windows systems.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012
There Will Always Be an England
Anyone who's ever seen Oliver! or My Fair Lady or Mary Poppins already knows that London is full of colorful characters, ready to burst into song and lively dance at the drop of a hat. But even beyond the winsome orphans, the mystically wise chimney sweeps and the oh-so-proper upper crust at Ascot, we now know that delightful musical pageantry extends even to ruthless killer James Bond and and the effervescent Dark Lord, Voldemort himself!
Yes, it was a veritable Disney parade style roll call of British icons at the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. The headiness was almost enough to make you forget that the main characters, James Bond, the Beatles, Mary Poppins et al, were a half century old or more. And yet stage and film director Danny Boyle also managed to work in the history of Britain's contributions to industry and technology, from the railroads to the industrial revolution to the World Wide Web.
It really was an entire theme park packed into one stadium and 3 and a half hours.
Yes, it was a veritable Disney parade style roll call of British icons at the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. The headiness was almost enough to make you forget that the main characters, James Bond, the Beatles, Mary Poppins et al, were a half century old or more. And yet stage and film director Danny Boyle also managed to work in the history of Britain's contributions to industry and technology, from the railroads to the industrial revolution to the World Wide Web.
It really was an entire theme park packed into one stadium and 3 and a half hours.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Idealets
In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry and his friends visit the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic. Part of this office is taken up by a vast storeroom in which prophesies are kept in glass spheres, like the proverbial crystal ball. Like memories that get replayed in a Pensieve, the prophesies appear, in the movie at least, as wisps of smoke.
What would be immensely valuable to humankind would be the ability to keep ideas archived and available for immediate consumption. After all, in the long run, the only thing of value our species has produced is ideas, and perhaps the occasional realization of some of them. Some ideas are captured in objects that represent them ... buildings, machines, works of art. But many are stored only in the limited transcriptions into books, musical scores, recordings, etc. These require time and some amount of cognitive effort to transmit their contents. You have to read a book or watch a movie or listen to music. Who's got time for that?
Mort Gerberg defined a cartoon as "instant communication of a funny idea."1 Of course, technically it's not instantaneous if you have to read the dialog or the caption, but it's probably as close as we've been able to come. So I think we should place greater value on cartoons as the ideal medium for preserving our culture and intellectual heritage.
And, needless to say, we should honor cartoonists above all others.
1Gerberg, Mort, Cartooning: The Art and the Business.
What would be immensely valuable to humankind would be the ability to keep ideas archived and available for immediate consumption. After all, in the long run, the only thing of value our species has produced is ideas, and perhaps the occasional realization of some of them. Some ideas are captured in objects that represent them ... buildings, machines, works of art. But many are stored only in the limited transcriptions into books, musical scores, recordings, etc. These require time and some amount of cognitive effort to transmit their contents. You have to read a book or watch a movie or listen to music. Who's got time for that?
Mort Gerberg defined a cartoon as "instant communication of a funny idea."1 Of course, technically it's not instantaneous if you have to read the dialog or the caption, but it's probably as close as we've been able to come. So I think we should place greater value on cartoons as the ideal medium for preserving our culture and intellectual heritage.
And, needless to say, we should honor cartoonists above all others.
1Gerberg, Mort, Cartooning: The Art and the Business.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Harry Potter Magic vs. Technology, Part 1
Harry Potter Magic | Technology |
 Floo Network fireside chat |  Skype |
 Broomstick |  Zipcar |
 Priori Incantatem (Show previous spells) |  Undo |
 Portkey (Touch to travel instantly to a pre-assigned location) | <a href=""> ... </a> Web page link |
 Pensieve (Relive memories) |  |
Friday, July 15, 2011
Post Voldemortem
It's finally over. Osama bin Laden's been killed. "Whitey" Bulger's been captured. And now Voldemort's dead. Somehow the movie imparts a greater sense of finality than the book did. Maybe we actually needed to see Harry, Ron and Hermione as dowdy, paunchy middle-aged people ... as, ugh, parents!
Parents don't fare too well in Rowling's world. With the exception of the Weasleys they're mostly absent (Hermione's folks), abusive (the Dursleys), infectiously evil (the Malfoys), or just plain dead. Young readers can indulge the fantasy that their real parents are kind and just and good, unlike the morons they're forced to live with.
The HP stories are interesting both because they follow in a long-tradition of hero legends, and because they don't. The tales of the superhero predate even the King Arthur fable, going back at least to Achilles and Beowulf and Gilgamesh. People seem to love these stories of someone with extraordinary powers, generally foreordained by birth or magical circumstances, arising in order to set things right. In addition to those mentioned above, there are the Last Airbender, Frodo Baggins, Clark Kent, Luke Skywalker and many others.
And Harry Potter has all the traditional earmarks. He's chosen by prophesy. His noble lineage is hidden from him. He copes with both celebrity and scorn in his adventures.
But there's one major difference between Harry and most of the other legendary heroes ... He's actually a pretty mediocre wizard. He's not as bright as Hermione, and nowhere near as powerful as Dumbledore or any of the Deatheaters. He and his friends are completely outmatched in the battle at the Ministry (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), and Snape essentially toys with him in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Harry himself acknowledges that most of his successes were the result of pure luck, with no particular skill or knowledge.
In some sense, Rowling created the first politically correct legendary hero ... one whose strength is his ordinariness. He succeeds because he has friends. That's all. Like the politically correct view of history, that things happen because of tides and trends rather than individuals, Harry is caught up in the forces that surround him. Even his prophesied role comes to him because Voldemort believes the prophesy. It's self-fulfilling. The chosen one could just as easily been someone else (though Neville Longbottom and the Chamber of Secrets doesn't have quite the same ring.)
The question is: Does the politically correct hero story work? Does it satisfy the urge that has driven people to create and embrace these legends for thousands of years?
Judging from the crowds at the midnight release of the final book in 2007, or the final movie today, the answer appears to be: Duh!
Parents don't fare too well in Rowling's world. With the exception of the Weasleys they're mostly absent (Hermione's folks), abusive (the Dursleys), infectiously evil (the Malfoys), or just plain dead. Young readers can indulge the fantasy that their real parents are kind and just and good, unlike the morons they're forced to live with.
The HP stories are interesting both because they follow in a long-tradition of hero legends, and because they don't. The tales of the superhero predate even the King Arthur fable, going back at least to Achilles and Beowulf and Gilgamesh. People seem to love these stories of someone with extraordinary powers, generally foreordained by birth or magical circumstances, arising in order to set things right. In addition to those mentioned above, there are the Last Airbender, Frodo Baggins, Clark Kent, Luke Skywalker and many others.
And Harry Potter has all the traditional earmarks. He's chosen by prophesy. His noble lineage is hidden from him. He copes with both celebrity and scorn in his adventures.
But there's one major difference between Harry and most of the other legendary heroes ... He's actually a pretty mediocre wizard. He's not as bright as Hermione, and nowhere near as powerful as Dumbledore or any of the Deatheaters. He and his friends are completely outmatched in the battle at the Ministry (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), and Snape essentially toys with him in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Harry himself acknowledges that most of his successes were the result of pure luck, with no particular skill or knowledge.
In some sense, Rowling created the first politically correct legendary hero ... one whose strength is his ordinariness. He succeeds because he has friends. That's all. Like the politically correct view of history, that things happen because of tides and trends rather than individuals, Harry is caught up in the forces that surround him. Even his prophesied role comes to him because Voldemort believes the prophesy. It's self-fulfilling. The chosen one could just as easily been someone else (though Neville Longbottom and the Chamber of Secrets doesn't have quite the same ring.)
The question is: Does the politically correct hero story work? Does it satisfy the urge that has driven people to create and embrace these legends for thousands of years?
Judging from the crowds at the midnight release of the final book in 2007, or the final movie today, the answer appears to be: Duh!
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Predictions for 2010
It's now safe to make predictions for the year 2010. (Ok, so I'm not a big risk taker.) Here are my top ten:
- In a stunning reversal, Republicans decide the Obama health care reform bill is the best legislation ever. The controversial provision requiring Americans to buy health insurance is seen as precedent-setting. The GOP immediately goes to work drafting laws that require Americans to buy cars, high-definition TVs, and real estate in Florida.
- Apple rocks the world with the invention of a phone that not only doesn't fit in your pocket, but can't be used as a phone. They sell millions. In response, other phone makers develop Google Android devices that offer all of this plus a near complete lack of application software.
- A group of Chilean miners invents a way to avoid campaign advertising. Rights are acquired by Disney, the reality-avoidance company, in exchange for E tickets.
- BP invents a new way to harvest oil by drilling holes in the ocean floor and waiting for it to wash up on the beach, where it is collected by government workers and volunteers.
- Economic woes cause world-wide hardship as millions of homes and jobs are lost, school budgets are slashed, and Republicans are forced to cut back on Grey Poupon.
- To everyone's great surprise, Middle East peace talks break down as Palestinians continue their practice of sending rockets and bombs into Israel, and Israelis continue their practice of building housing.
- The long-awaited, next-to-last, no-we're-not-finished-milking-this-yet, and other-hyphenated-adjectives Harry Potter movie is released. We learn that Harry, the most famous and awesome wizard in the world, with the most evocative back story, still can't score with the witches. (Spoiler Alert: In the sequel, he will hook up with Christine O'Donnell.)
- American voters express their frustration with politicians who don't act on their ideas by electing politicians who have no ideas.
- A bunch of celebrities die.
- Blogging, especially the snarky, sarcastic kind, makes a huge comeback.
Happy New Year!
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