From my family to yours, a joyous Thanksgiving!
Joe Posnanski, America’s Greatest Sportswriter, Reveals One Question Test Equivalent to Hogwarts Sorting Hat
November 27, 2024 by Leave a Comment
I’ve written about Joe Posnanski before. Not only is he America’s greatest sportswriter, he is also a real Harry Potter fan. In the most recent post I’ve written about him, I explained Posnanski’s success in losing weight on the Harry Potter Diet Plan and included links to the other HogwartsProfessor posts I’ve written about his love for Rowling’s first and her best selling novels (aside here: I’m a Serious Striker and I love Christmas Pig, but let’s be real; nothing Rowling has written has sold anything close to the number of published and sold copies of any of the Potter pieces).
If you only have time for one article, read either Posnanski’s Katie the Prefect or Katie the Prefect Revisited for perhaps the greatest stories ever written about a dad, a daughter, and their love of the Wizarding World.
Though I no longer follow professional sports teams or leagues, I have a paid subscription to Posnanski’s Substack Page, which is called ‘Joe Blogs,’ a sort of sideways tribute to Princeton Review because of their ‘typical tester’ and to the Joe Bloggs who is the ‘man in the street‘ of the UK. Today in a wonderfully rambling Thanksgiving post, he once again showed his love for the Potter series.
It starts with his new-found obsession with fountain pens. He lists the ‘Best of Price Point’ Categories for these pens with his nominations.
- Under $50: LAMY Safari. All the LAMYs are great—there are those who will tell you that the LAMY 2000 is the best fountain pen ever made—but I totally dig the Safari as just a fun pen. I just bought the Harry Potter collection of Safaris—one pen for each Hogwarts House.* They’re awesome.
*OK, so somebody taught me a trick for figuring out somebody’s Hogwarts House that has worked INCREDIBLY well. I mean, like, eerily well. I’ll give you the key down below, but now ask yourself or your friend this question: “You come upon a locked door. You want to get in. What do you do?”
Gauntlet tossed down… A little while later on, after discussing the arcana of that fountain pen choice, at a sideways prompting retreats into the Sorting Hat Question:
And that leads us to my gift to you. I have now tried this [trick] FOUR times, and it has worked every time. Above, I told you to answer the question: You come upon a door. It is locked. You want to get in. What do you do?
If you answered, “Knock on the door,” you’re a Hufflepuff. Katie answered that way. Katie has long known she’s a Hufflepuff.
If you answered, “Go look for a key,” you’re a Ravenclaw. Margo answered that way. Margo has long known she’s a Ravenclaw.
If you answered, “Pick the lock,” you’re a Slytherin. Elizabeth answered that way. Lis has long known she’s a Slytherin.
And if you answered, “Knock the door down,” you’re a Gryffindor. I answered that way. I have no idea why I answered that way—I couldn’t knock any door down, even on a gingerbread house—but it was the first answer that came into my head, and, yes, I have long known that I’m a Gryffindor. In fact, I once had an exchange with Lin Manuel Miranda about him being a Slytherin and me being a Gryffindor. I wonder how Lin would answer the question.
Anyway, it’s 100% foolproof and… you’re welcome.
It worked for me!
Rowling Rebukes Amnesty International, Highlights Important Court Case
November 26, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Three notes on this tweet yesterday from Rowling and the several she has made about the case before Scotland’s Supreme Court, For Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent):
(1) What the Case is About: Per the Supreme Court website page on the case:
Issues
Is a person with a full gender recognition certificate (“GRC”) which recognises that their gender is female, a “woman” for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 (“EA 2010”)?
Facts
In this appeal, the Appellant challenges the lawfulness of statutory guidance issued by the Respondent, which has the effect that a GRC recognising that a person’s gender is female brings them within the EA 2010 definition of a “woman”.
The Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 is an Act of the Scottish Parliament (“ASP 2018”). It sets targets for increasing the proportion of women on public boards. The original ASP 2018 definition of a “woman” included people: (i) with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment; (ii) living as a woman; and (iii) proposing to undergo / undergoing / who have undergone a gender reassignment process. In a 2022 legal challenge brought by the Appellant (“FWS1”), the Court of Session found that this statutory definition was unlawful, as it dealt with matters that fall outside the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament.
Following FWS1, the Respondent issued new statutory guidance. This is the guidance currently under challenge. It states that, under the ASP 2018, the definition of “woman” was the same as under the EA 2010. It also stated that a person with a GRC recognising that their gender is female has the sex of a woman.
The Appellant challenged the lawfulness of the Respondent’s statutory guidance in the Court of Session. The Appellant’s arguments included that the guidance failed to respect the decision in FWS1. On 13 December 2022, the Outer House dismissed the Appellant’s petition. The Appellant appealed. On 1 November 2023, the Inner House upheld the decision of the Outer House and dismissed the Appellant’s appeal.
The Appellant now appeals to the Supreme Court.
The case was heard today and will be decided tomorrow.
(2) Importance of Case: Rowling believes this case is, per a re-tweet, “one of THE most important legal cases in the UK/world right now. It will impact women’s & girls lives EVERYWHERE.”
What’s at stake that makes this important?
Scotland, incredibly, has legislated that having a ‘Gender Recognition Certificate’ stating that your gender is different than your biological sex means that you are effectively — and legally — a member of the opposite biological sex.
If the Court agrees with the Appellant, a women’s rights group protesting the government’s insistence that sex can be changed by the say-so of a bureaucratic agency, this nonsense will be reversed and all legislative bodies in the UK will have this decision as a blocking precedent to passing such laws and direction in the future.
If the Court agrees with the Respondent, the “transgender” over-reach into women’s safe spaces continues with the force of law as an enforcer to this delusion. Resistance to its contra-factual basis and provable harms to women will no doubt continue but victory will be delayed indefinitely.
(3) Another Break With Her Past: One of Rowling’s only jobs as a non-writer was as a translator for Amnesty International; “While she was working temporary jobs in London, Amnesty International hired her to document human rights issues in French-speaking Africa” (Wikipedia). It was a fit for her progressive views, especially those about resisting oppressive and autocratic political regimes, and her ideas of virtue, specifically sacrificial love, empathy, and courage. Rowling has now officially broken with ‘Manesty’ over their siding with the Gender Theory Extremists about women’s safe spaces and the core issue of whether biological men and women can ever change into their opposites. File this break along with her separation of self and identity with the Labour Party.
Rowling Tweets Strike Birthday Love — Hallmarked Man Nearly Complete
November 25, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Three quick thoughts about Rowling’s birthday message to Cormoran Strike, a character in books she is writing, i.e., a person not real in any of the conventional understanding of that word (though very much in keeping with Rowling’s discussion of “real” in Deathly Hallows, Troubled Blood, and Christmas Pig):
(1) Hallmarked Man is not yet finished. Which means it won’t be published until this time next year? Nick Jeffery said as much in a recent post, but it’s still dreadful to type out and see written on a page. I wrote a year ago that the structural evidence of the first seven books suggests strongly that it was originally conceived as a septology a la Potter. The longer it takes her to finish Hallmarked Man, longer than it did, say, for her to write and prepare for publication the epics of Troubled Blood and Ink Black Heart (?), the more than thesis takes on tangential credibility, I think.
(2) One Thing Revealed about the Series Ending: The joking conversation with one of her characters, “try not to be a grumpy sod about turning fifty,” means that Cormoran Strike survives the seven book series’ many dangers and his enemies, and, more surprisingly, perhaps he survives Covid and the shots. Rowling has said previously that the series will end before the lockdowns and masking mania of Covid appear and today, it seems, we have been told, he lives on to celebrate his fiftieth birthday I doubt this sort of jest is a binding commitment not to kill her champion, But I’m hopeful.
(3) Strike’s Birthday: For a longish discussion of what we know and can figure out about Strike’s actual birthday in 1974, see ‘Troubled Blood: Strike’s Natal Chart.’
Sunday Potter Quiz: A Peck of Owls
November 24, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Chapter Two: A Peck of Owls
1. Mrs. Figg could not have helped Harry against Dementors because she’s a what?
2. What was the name of the cat Mrs. Figg had set to watch as Harry’s erstwhile bodyguard?
3. Who is Mrs. Figg furious at for leaving Harry completely unguarded?
4. Mrs. Figg tries her best to kill the unrepentant guard with a string bag full of what?
5. True or False? While Harry was trying to explaining to the Dursleys about Dementors, Aunt Petunia supplied that they guard the wizard prison Azkaban.
6. The two letters Harry received from the Ministry of Magic were sent from which office?
7. What words did the Howler sent to Aunt Petunia scream?
8. True or False? After hearing Voldemort is after Harry, Uncle Vernon tries to force him out until Aunt Petunia stops him.
9. Uncle Vernon thought Dudley had fought off the dementors by doing what?
10. How many owls flew into the Dursley’s kitchen overall that night?
For Your Reflection: As Joyce Odell was the first to point out, Order of the Phoenix largely mirrors the action of Philosopher’s Stone, the first Harry Potter novel. Every Potter novel has its ‘Wizarding World makes Contact with Muggledom Moment at Privet Drive,’ though, when Harry leaves for school or comes into conflict with the Dursleys. Sometimes those world-meeting instances are comic — see Dobby and the pudding in Chamber and the ‘Blowing Up’ of Aunt Marge in Prisoner — and sometimes the Dursleys’ home is really invaded and turned upside-down — see the first, fourth, and seventh books, the ‘axis’ novels, for those. What makes the revelations of ‘A Peck of Owls’ (side question: isn’t the collective for these animals a parliament of owls? What is Rowling saying here by using the word ‘peck’?) significantly different than those Magic-Muggle meetings in Harry’s safe-house? What makes it resonant with the Hogwarts Letter invasion of Philosopher’s Stone?
Answers: 1. A Squib (20); 2. Mr. Tibbles (20); 3. Mundungus Fletcher (20); 4. Cat food cans (23); 5. True (31); 6. Improper Use of Magic Office (27-33); 7. ‘REMEMBER MY LAST, PETUNIA.’ (40); 8. True (38-41); 9. Giving them ‘the old one-two.’ (34); 10. Five (26-28-32-34-39)
Recent Conversation