Harry Potter! The end of an epic...

So last night we went to the Harry Potter book seven launch! Woohoo!!

I've just finished the book - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - and witnessed memorable characters and worlds find their fate written, their destiny sealed. I'm going to discuss it in full, spoiler-y detail right now - but I'll mask the text. Highlight it with your cursor if you're sure you want to read it:

Loved it! The resolution of many of the plotlines happened along the lines I expected, but wasn't sure. Some key points:


1. That Snape betrayed Voldemort out of love for Lily. Plausible. Awesome. As we saw in Book Five, his worst memory may not have been the day he was humiliated by James and the boys, but rather the time he called Lily a mudblood. And this explains why Dumbledore trusted him so deeply. And his death was pretty much a given. Poor, poor Snape. In many ways, I'd consider him the real hero. And the epilogue? When Harry admonishes his son (Albus Severus Potter!) for speaking against Slytherin? So good.


2. That Harry was a horcrux. How you like that? This one was ultra-controversial. The pottercasters were sharply divided over this question, although the scarcrux theory, as it had been called, explained so many things it seemed like the right fit. To whit:

• Harry's psychic connection to Voldy


• Harry being able to open the Chamber of Secrets, when it was restricted only to the Heir of Slytherin; Harry being, of course, the "Gryffindoriest Gryffindor who ever Gryffindored"


• Harry getting some of V's powers - parseltongue for example


• The sorting hat's ambivalence about putting Harry in Gryffindor versus Slytherin

3. Harry Lives! Of course he does. Puffaw. Seriously.


Good book, poor Snape, yay Harry. I also liked it when Neville kicked ass at the end. Woot! I did think it would be cool to know more about their lives at the end - like what jobs they had - but it was pretty awesome overall, most definitely.

The launch party, at Vandusen Gardens, was pretty fun to. A long lineup, but well-organized event with great energy.


The crowd. Evidently something like 4,000 people were expected to show. That's over $125, 000 in book sales from attendees alone.


Here I am! Rock you like a Pottercane!


LJ believes that the movies are as good as the books. I say books win no question.


Marina, almost as excited as I was.


Clau, another old school Potter fan.


LJ examines our key to Grimmauld Place.


When the book tents open, the crowd is suddenly dense, swaying, reeking of teenager.


Eventually we approach book flaps number nine and ten.


Victory! We have the tome!


Victory yes! Sweet victory!

A Confused Vegetation*

So today, the Beckstar turned a Wednesday into Wednfunsday!!!! Let's pretend that wordplay worked nicely and move on.

While in Portland over the weekend, I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Powell's Books, which was just as comprehensive, enormous and treasure-filled as its reputation suggested.

If you get a chance to go, be sure to visit the Technical Books Store around the corner. It's full of scientific/applied/instructional/awesome things of all sorts. Like this Magic Garden I bought. I enjoyed its growth all through my workday!


9:15am - Where it all goes down.


9:25am - Secret solution added. Muah ha ha!


9:55am - Baby crystals are the cutest. Look at their miniature little geometries! Awwwwwwww!


11:40am - If I'm ever fired, I think I will meditate on this photo for a little while.


3:20pm - Or maybe this one.


5:00pm - The view from day's end. Sweet!

If I've learned anything in the years I've walked this Earth - it's that this was totally awesome.

*

I will never forget the sight. The crystallisation vessel in which it (the chemical garden) exhibited itself, was three quarters filled with slightly slimey water, namely dilute water glass, and out of the sandy bottom sprung a grotesque small landscape of differently coloured growths, a confused vegetation composed of blue, green and brown spikes, reminiscent of algae, fungi, sessile polyps, but also mosses, then shells, fruit, treelets or branches of trees, here and there even limbs – the strangest thing I had ever seen: strange, not so much because of the, albeit wonderful and confusing sight, but because of its deeply melancholy nature.

So goes the description of a chemical crystal garden from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, in a scene which I want to read. According to my coworker, it is a horrifying scene in which the father torments his children by demanding they define the difference between the crystals and a living thing.

Philip K. Droid

Now this project is dead and gone, but I keep meaning to blog about it anyways.

Philip K. Dick (1928 -1982), as many of you know, wrote dark, paranoid science fiction that's been the source for many of your favourite sci-fi movies [Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly], and possibly some of your favourite sci-fi literature as well [The Three Stigmata of Palmer Elddrich, Ubik, The Man in the High Castle, Flow my Tears the Policeman Said, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?].

One thing I love about his work is its handling of robots and computers. Deeply concerned with the nature of consciousness, PKD's world is one where manipulation of memories, moods and personalities, and androids exhibiting emotion, inspiration and free will, blur the lines between man and machine.

So what better tribute to Philip K. than an android in his likeness?


Aw, don't you just want to go cuddle up and discuss the nature of reality?


Android head with stoned-looking kid.

From the FedEx Institute of Technology, Hanson Robotics, and the Automation and Robotics Research Institute, the project seems to have been pretty active back in 2005, but now has died out. No news as to why.

Here is the PKD android interacting with someone at 2005 NextFest in Chicago:



And here are some more links if you want to learn more about Philip K. Dick. Hey! Check out my major blogger journalistic diligence!

The Relationship Between Humans and Machines: Through the Eyes of Philip K. Dick - An analysis by Eli Eisenberger.

Official Site - if for no other reason alone, visit to see the cover art gallery, including the Japanese 'Do Androids Dream...' cover on the right.

The Most Brilliant Sci-Fi Mind on Any Planet - a Rolling Stone article from 1975, this was the first major article about the author.

Whenever you're in Cody, Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob

RIP Kurt Vonnegut. A great writer; a great thinker; a great humanist; a great man.

Ancient Computers are Awesome!

In what seems like the ultimate in fantastic invention is the true story of the Antikythera mechanism, a 2,000 year old Greek astronomical computer capable of computing the position of the sun and moon, and possibly planets, and predicting eclipses.

No earlier geared mechanism of any sort has ever been found. Nothing close to its technological sophistication appears again for well over a millennium, when astronomical clocks appear in medieval Europe. It stands as a strange exception, stripped of context, of ancestry, of descendants. [2]


Clockwise from top left - one part of the ruin as discovered; rendering of assembled mechanism; x-ray of one piece - hot gears!; 3D rendering of gear system.

Discovered in 1902, in the remains of a Roman shipwreck, the mechanism is potentially one of several, as mentioned by Cicero:

"And when Gallus moved the globe, it was actually true that the moon was always as many turns behind the sun on the bronze contrivance as would agree with the number of days it was behind in the sky. Thus the same eclipse of the sun happened on the globe as would actually happen"

Archeoastronomy is so, so, so very cool. Read more in the Nature magazine feature.

In a similar theme, check out The Book of Ingenious Devices: Kitáb al-Hiyal. By The Banú (sons of) Músà bin ShákirKitáb al-Hiyal: The Book of Ingenious Devices, an illustrated book of mechanical devices and automata, published in 850 by three Persian brothers. It contains the first mention of a robot.

Stupidly, I mixed up the book above - published in 850 and selling for around $300, with a similarly titled book published in the 1200's and retailing for around $60. So... if anyone wants to borrow this second book, let me know in 10 - 14 business days.

Vik Muniz. Of medium and message...

While we were in Seattle, KT and I were able to catch a fantastic retrospective of an artist I've been meaning to blog about for a while - Vik Muniz - at the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Vik Muniz was born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1961. Muniz started out as a sculptor, but successively became more interested in photographs of his sculptures than in the sculptures themselves.

So he basically creates images using highly perishable or unstable media, and photographs them. A direct descendant from Warhol, his interests in mass production and popular culture drive the subjects of his work - largely reproductions of famous images or artworks. His technical execution is amazing, and the relationship between medium and subject are insightful and clever.

Enough gush - just check some of it out:


Some guy checking out Portrait of Alice Liddell, after Lewis Carroll [Alice in Wonderland], which is made completely from toys and candy.


Saturn, after Goya, contrasted with Goya's original work.


A shot from one of my favourite series - Pictures of Clouds


Double Mona Lisa, after Warhol, done in peanut butter and jelly.


Part of the Sugar Children series, reproductions in sugar of photographs taken of the children of sugar plantation workers in St. Kitts.

This whole 'Look at me! I'm drawing with peanut butter!' thing could come off as contrived, but Muniz is really insightful and painstaking in his execution, which keeps the dialogue at a higher level.

His work reminds me of a passage in a book I am reading (and looooving) right now - Ghostwritten by David Mitchell:

The last of the cherry blossom. On the tree, it turns ever more perfect. And when it's perfect, it falls. And then of course once it hits the ground it gets all mushed up. So it's only absolutely perfect when it's falling through the air, this way and that, for the briefest time...'

I guess what I'm suggesting is that Muniz would agree, and that he works to create and then capture these brief moments of constructed perfection. The show's on until January 14th. If you're in Seattle over the next month or so, try to check it out.

Sellevision by Augusten Burroughs

Maybe it's because it was so rainy. Maybe it's because I was mildly hungover and in the mood for laying about. In any case, I guzzled this book down in a voracious fit this weekend.

Sellevision is Augusten Burrough's first book, supposedly written mainly over a single week. It's not perfect writing, but it's dark, fast and funny.

The story revolves around the team of hosts at Sellevision, America's premier shopping network, as the much-loved and handsome host of Slumber Party Sundown, accidentally exposes himself in front of 60 million kids and their parents during a "Toys for Tots" segment. The characters quickly lose control as each hurls towards his own twisted and subversive climax - finding redemption in porno, valium and other public humiliations. Quick, mean-spirited good fun.

Augusten Burroughs is pretty big right now, due to his bizarre and disturbing memoir Running with Scissors being made into an indy 'it' movie with a-list first namers like Gwenyth and Alec.


Joseph Cross and Evan Rachel Wood in the 'we made a skylight' scene.

Sellevision is supposedly going to be made into a film with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Kristin Davis and Carrie Fischer, but it seems pretty sketchy right now. In any case, a rather good excerpt from Sellevision if you're interested in reading more.