HP7.2

The other day I got the chance to see the last Harry Potter movie. I didn't see it at midnight, I saw it at about 9:00 PM, I think seeing midnight premiers is kind of overrated. I felt the movie was good but I feel other aspects of the movie would have been better had it followed the book. For one thing I thought the battle between Harry and Voldemort with them flying around, and combining heads, and Voldemort's coat wrapping around Harry was kind of bizarre. I feel that the way Neville killed Nagini was also better in the book and I think it would've been a better movie had they talked to Dumbledore's portrait like in the book. I've been a little annoyed with the directing style of the last four movies. They have all had the same director and for each of his movies I felt that he was trying to rush through and get it over with and I wish he would go at a slower pace so that the audience could better absorb what was going on. For example I felt that the scene with Snape memories was rushed and had it been slowed down it would've had a better emotional impact.

Why you want money more than love, or intelligence

This concept is inspired by would you rather questions. I once saw a statistic that said that some large number of kids would rather be rich than really smart. I don't think that's necessary a shallow answer. I'll explain why.

Let's say someone asked you if you would rather have love or money. You might feel that love is more important than money but what if this question came from a game with hundreds of would you rather questions, such as: Would you rather be able to fly or breath underwater, would you rather have, or would you rather travel through time or into outer space. Neither of these is possible so the nature of these questions suggests that the person granting these is some sort magical genie.

Imagine if a genie gave you the choice between having love or more money than you will ever know what to do with. Or between a lot of intelligence or more money than you will ever know what to do with. I would choose money in either of those situations. Because wealth can be thrust upon someone. Intelligence or can not so the idea is abstract and would make me uncomfortable.

I know you probably think I'm over thinking this but I think that's fun.

Best Picture

This morning at 5:38 AM PST the Oscar nominations were announced by the 83rd Oscar Ceremony. Four of nominees for Best picture are movies that I've never heard of until this morning when I went to Wikipedia and three of them are movies that I've barely heard of, mostly because of the Golden Globe ceremonies. It's fine that a lot of the movies are ones that I haven't heard but I think that the Academy made a mistake when expanding the number of best picture nominations from 5 to 10. Ten nominations for one of the most famous awards out there is too many in my opinion, because giving that many nominations makes the nomination not as big of a deal. If you ask me they should lower it back to 5 or maybe 7. They probably won't change it any time soon so I'll predict that most Pixar movies from here on out will receive a nomination for best picture and win the Best Animation Oscar.

Definition of "falling in love"

If you want my immature opinion I would say that to fall in love means to develop very strong feelings and care for someone. That might seem too simplistic but I think it's correct. I think you could maybe argue that a lot of people have fallen in love but some at very low magnitudes. So I think that whether or not people have fallen in love depends on where you draw the for what level of magnitude of feelings you must have to count as "love." One deep question people like to ask is "do you believe in love in first sight?" If you ask me I'd say that that theoretically might be possible but I think it's shallow. I've defined love as strong feelings as care for someone, I haven't ruled out that possibility of that happening just from viewing someone but I don't think that that's very admirable. I definitely wouldn't say that I have had strong feelings that I've described so I wouldn't say that I've fallen in love.

My problem with Harry Potter

In reality I might have a few problems with Harry Potter but only one of them is on my mind at the moment.

Can Harry Potter coexist with religion?

One thing that sets Harry Potter from other fantasy universes is that the Harry Potter Universe is trying to be our Universe. In The Chronicles of Narnia there is a parallel fantasy universe that is linked to our universe, In The Lord of the Rings there is a fantasy universe that as far as I know is completely parallel to universe.

In the Harry Potter Universe the students at Hogwarts go home twice a year for Christmas and Easter holidays. Going home for Christmas makes sense because Christmas is pretty big on a secular aspect, but wizards and witches going home for Easter just seems weird to me, for what purpose would the Malfoys or the Weesley's have for celebrating Easter. This seems weird to me because it's kind hard for me to imagine God and magic existing in the same realm. I don't have a problem with reading Harry Potter for this reason but it just makes me a little uncomfortable.

How much wood could a woodchuck cuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood

Let me start out by saying that I realize that by even trying to analyze this I am looking way to into this.

Nevertheless, let me say that this is a stupid question that does not deserve any pondering.

Woodchucks do not chuck wood, so there is no way to tell how much wood it could chuck if it could chuck wood. This is like saying, "How many papers could a lava lamp write if a lava lamp could write papers." How in the world are you supposed to figure that out. You can not give lava lamps paper writing abilities any more than you can give woodchucks wood chucking abilities.

But really, I realize that this is just a tongue twister and not a mystery of the universe, but I feel like it's been to long since I posted something here.

Ground Zero

From a legal standpoint I think that peaceful Muslims should be able to build their mosque or recreation center at a location that I believe is actually about two blocks away from ground zero. Any action taken by New York City or New York state to prevent the mosque from being built would probably be a pretty blatant violation of 1st amendment rights.

However whether or not they should be allowed to is a separate from whether or not they should. This is a more tricky question. If the site was on ground zero that would be one thing, but I saw a map in Newsweek Magazine that shows the proposed site about two blocks away from ground zero which as far as I know is as close to ground zero as it could possibly be. Whether or not they should is something I'm not as certain about.

What do I think will happen. From what I've seen the people who oppose the ground zero mosque seem mean, loud, and not too intelligent. I think the mosque will ultimately be built and history teachers will talk about it when teaching about first amendment rights.