"
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. -- Rainey Johnson, sporting a yellow shirt, yellow socks and yellow paint smeared on his face, darted across the freshman quad.
Other students, in capes, ran after him clutching brooms between their legs and grasping in vain for a tennis ball stuffed in a sock hanging out of his yellow shorts."
[more inside]
posted by rtha
on Sep 22, 2008 -
43 comments
Apparently, the new black is... really, really black. "Researchers in New York reported this month that they have created a paper-thin material that absorbs 99.955 percent of the light that hits it, making it by far the darkest substance ever made -- about 30 times as dark as the government's current standard for blackest black." But what possible benefit to society could come from this blacker than black substance? Why,
invisibility cloaks, of course!
[more inside]
posted by willie11
on Feb 20, 2008 -
53 comments
British actor
Jim Dale is
greeted as a "star" by children and adults when he appears in public and at readings. He has narrated the U.S. audiobooks for the "Harry Potter" series. For the series
he worked six-and-a-half-hour days, recording about 18 to 20 pages. Over eight years he has crafted over
200 distinctive voices for the books' characters. He takes into account the aging of the main characters, who started out as 10 and 11 in “Sorcerer’s Stone” and are now 17 and 18 in “Deathly Hallows.” Like the books, the tapes and CDs have been a publishing phenomenon selling more than 5.7 million copies. For his work on the “Harry Potter” series, Mr. Dale has won a Grammy Award, a record 9
Audie Awards (the Oscars for audiobooks) and holds the record for creating the most voices in an audiobook in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Audio clips and
video interview.
posted by ericb
on Jul 22, 2007 -
39 comments
Sally Wallace creates highly detailed miniature dollhouses, including several from the Harry Potter films (
Olivander's wand shop & Honeydukes,
Hogwarts,
The Stairs).
Via.
Warning, every single annoying web 0.9 trick in the book is employed somewhere on this site, including but not limited to: embedded midi files, that java fake reflecting water deal, virtual exploding fireworks, etc. ugh.
posted by jonson
on Feb 10, 2007 -
4 comments
Kill Bill + Harry Potter =
Kill Harry, featuring cameo appearances by Bender the robot, Bruce Campbell, and Zombie Rick James, bitch.
posted by Gator
on Feb 20, 2006 -
16 comments
Wizard People, Dear Reader is a bizarre re-reading (or, if you're Tim Burton, a re-imagining) of Harry Potter and the philosophers stone (or sorcerers stone for our friends across the pond). Basically you download it, burn it to CD and play it while watching the DVD. A new art form, a childish gimmick or somewhere inbetween?
Everybody will have a copy
soon, so get busy with the download (courtesy of the ever vigilant Talking Tina at Sissyfight.com).
posted by ciderwoman
on Jun 8, 2004 -
20 comments
Harry Potter: RIP Private Harry Potter from the Worcestershire Regiment was killed in action at Hebron on 22/7/1939 aged 19 years, 10 months old.
This is a genuine photo of the grave of a British soldier that died during the time of the “Arab Rebellion” and is buried in the British military cemetery in Ramla Israel.
posted by Postroad
on Mar 3, 2004 -
17 comments
Faery Lands Forlorn A.S. Byatt, author of
Possession and other novels, looks at the phenomenon of adults reading the Harry Potter children's books:
Ms. Rowling's magic world has no place for the numinous. It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip. Its values, and everything in it, are, as Gatsby said of his own world when the light had gone out of his dream, "only personal." Nobody is trying to save or destroy anything beyond Harry Potter and his friends and family.... Ms. Rowling, I think, speaks to an adult generation that hasn't known, and doesn't care about, mystery. They are inhabitants of urban jungles, not of the real wild. They don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had.
posted by Artifice_Eternity
on Jul 7, 2003 -
105 comments
This 'news'... it vibrates? Yes, more than six months after it appeared
here on MeFi, New Scientist has just found out about the vibrating broom. I can feel my confidence in them dripping away...
posted by twine42
on Apr 3, 2003 -
6 comments
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's MDMA Police uncover ecstasy ring in UK targeting children by stamping the image of Harry Potter on the pills. Wonder if Rowling will work X into the next story line? Don't know whether to laugh or cry.
posted by xmutex
on Jan 22, 2003 -
25 comments
Cervantes no not THAT Cervantes silly, THIS
Cervantes wrote the first half of
Don Quixote in 1605. The popularity of the world's first novel was so great that an impostor book was
published chronicling the continued misadventures of the Don Quixote and Sancho, so scandalously in fact that Cervantes himself had to write a
second half ten years later which ends (SPOILER) with the death of Alonso Quixano and the end of all further tales. Now it seems some 400 years later its happening to our
young Harry Potter!
posted by Pollomacho
on Nov 13, 2002 -
27 comments
JK Rowling's expecting -
twice over. A new baby's on the way and the new book's almost finished. Ain't life grand.
posted by zimbobzim
on Sep 20, 2002 -
10 comments
Barry Trotter Michael Gerber's parody of the Harry Potter series. The first chapter is available for download at the site. Well, I think it's funny...
posted by lilboo
on Jul 21, 2002 -
1 comment
Fake Harry Potter novel hits China. An anonymous Chinese author has decided JK Rowling is taking too long to write the fifth book - so has written a new adventure to satisfy the huge Potter market in the country, according to a report in The Times.
Harry Potter And Leopard Walk Up To Dragon, on sale in Beijing street markets for about £1, is selling fast to the dismay of the publisher of the genuine Potter books in China.
posted by ncurley
on Jul 6, 2002 -
14 comments
Harry Potter released unprotected. In a move that makes me say both "Wha?" and "Kickass!", Warner Bros chose to release the Harry Potter DVD and VHS home versions sans the Macrovision copy protection. It could stand to be quite an experiment, or quite a blunder on their part.
posted by mathowie
on Jun 15, 2002 -
14 comments
If you were expecting the Lord of the Rings movie to receive as much if not more scrutiny from Conservative Christians
as Harry Potter did you’re in for a surprise. Despite LOTR being filled with violence and intense fantasy imagery few churches or religious watch-god groups will be condemning the fantasy epic
like they did the occult heavy, yet kid-friendly Harry Potter flick.
The reason is simple:
Tolkien was a devout Christian.
In fact, Tolkien persuaded C.S. Lewis, who himself later wrote several Christian classics, to become a Christian. The two are credited with paving the way for a new genre of devotional literature, influencing authors like Charles Williams, T.S. Eliot, G.K. Chesteron and Dorothy Sayers.
Fortunately for most Tolkien doesn’t let Christian imagery dribble into his stories
the way C.S. Lewis did. So expect religous LOTR friendly reviews from all with the possible exception of the
ChildCare Action Project. One has to wonder though - if Harry Potter author, J. K. Rowling, was more publicly religious would her books be as controversial?
posted by wfrgms
on Dec 5, 2001 -
38 comments
AOL Time Warner's Marketing Wizardry : "With its Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., AOL leveraged its promotional and advertising might across its empire of Internet, cable TV, movie, music and magazine outlets to ensure that kids, parents, teens and everyone else knew that "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" was debuting in theaters Nov. 16. In the days leading up to the film's release, tracking studies showed an extraordinary 100% awareness among moviegoers that "Harry Potter" was coming."
posted by owillis
on Dec 2, 2001 -
18 comments
Hank Steuver from WaPo :
When did this happen? Where are the kids who are supposed to be beating up the kids who like Harry Potter? Where is the bully who is going to tell them what kinda dorkface fairies they're being? Where are the kids who don't like to read? So, come on, bullies! Get with the program!
posted by swell
on Nov 24, 2001 -
34 comments
OK, this whole Harry Potter thing - while completely out of proportion to any real value in the books - has up till now been pointless but essentially harmless. But
wasting a Hugo Award on this crap?! To quote (oh, I don't know, some Clinton-hating Republican):
"Where's the outrage?!"
posted by m.polo
on Sep 5, 2001 -
60 comments
