shortest feature ever

Yeah. Potter is perfect for ID... nothing really there.

Potter perfect for ID? On the contrary:

"There was a lot more to magic, as Harry quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words."
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Chapter VIII, page 133

I've actually read the book -- it's been out for several years -- and it's extremely well written, and quite interesting in some of the parallels it draws with science and technology in the real world, and the "magical" occurrences in Harry Potter's world, eg things like the Marauder's Map aren't all that far removed from new technologies like electronic paper.

I realize it's tempting to indulge in snarky putdowns of books we haven't read, on subjects it's all too easy to dismiss as irrational and (the horror!) "unscientific." But I think in this instance, I'd conjure the spirit of Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." :)

But then, that's just the sort of viewpoint you'd expect from somone who wrote about the physics of the Buffyverse. :)

I've seen the most recent movie three times, and I read the first half of the second book when I saw it lying about at a friend's home. I would start with the first book, but I need to brush up on my Latin so I can tackle it in translation — Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis. (Anything to be "that guy who did X," you know?) Based on my limited exposure to the series, it appears that magic is a discipline to be mastered, with its own "natural laws" — which may be enough to kick-start a book using the story's world as a springboard for teaching science.

it appears that magic is a discipline to be mastered, with its own "natural laws" which may be enough to kick-start a book using the story's world as a springboard for teaching science.

And very realistic it is too. The woman, of course, is about ten times smarter, works harder and gets little of the credit. And, typically, she nurtures/codepends her slacker male friends who can't be bothered to study by letting them plagiarize and fixing their work. When a little pat-on-the-head comes her way, finally... "oh, harry, did you REALLY say I was best in our year?". of course, harry only said so when trying to score points off someone he found annoying.

Gak.

I have not read the book, which is why I can do the snark - if I read it I might like it...
Have to confess I haven't read "Physics of Buffy" either, but that's mainly because I don't think I've ever seen an entire Buffy episode and would have no idea what was what.

I like Harry Potter, it is well written, good character development and quite well plotted - and I hope book 7 pulls a lot of the loose ends togethere. It is a brilliant riff on "Tom Brown's Schooldays" with a nice touch of wish fulfillment and magical realism.

BUT, while the magic in Harry Potter is "rational" - it is reasonably consistent in its application and evidently subject to experimentation, so as an internal system it could be tackled with scientific methodology, it is not magic-as-science - it is pure magic, and levitation in the Potterverse is not explained by strong gradient magnetic fields acting on paramagnetic objects, etc and so forth.

It is cute and possibly efficient to draw people into science by explaining how magical stuff can be done for real with science, sort of, but that doesn't mean there is a Science of Harry Potter.

Anyway, it was hot, I have too much paperwork to do, and I can snark if I want to...

J. R. R. Tolkien was a great writer. His oevre constitutes the greatest Fantasy ever written. I grew up on it, with my mother reading to me from the newly minted hardcover Bristish first edition. The Peter Jackson trilogy is the greatst Fantasy film ever shot. BUT...

J. K. Rowling, however derivative, however sometimes tone-deaf and in need of a good editor, has a better sense of humor than Tolkien.

J. K. Rowling is better at setting up and solving mysteries.

J. K. Rowling has more plausible female characters.

J. K. Rowling shows us more about education.

Question about the Harry Potter world: is the Muggle reality actually OUR reality? With no USSR? No King/Queen of England? Was there a Newton -- Alchemist? A Kepler -- Astrologer? An Einstein?

Final questions: is there any religion as such in LOTR (not, of course, in the deeply theological "The Silmarillion")?

What Magic is there in LOTR, which is not some Sufficiently Advanced Technology (the Palantir-web 2.0, the Ring-net, Mithril metal, etcetera).

Rowling is a good, entertaining writer - her prose flows well, the characters are engaging and plausible.
She suffers a little bit from "Star Trek gadget syndrome" - she comes up with all sort of fun spells, gadgets and dei ex machina, which are then forgotten about next time they'd be incredibly useful for a plot point, in reality, as opposed to in fiction.
I am hoping some of those dangly bits will be collected up in book seven and made sense of, book six made some start on this.

Tolkien is in a different league, his prose is more florid overall and not as catchy, but equally engaging on a different level. His "world" is much more thouroughly thought out and consistent, even though it is inconsistent in very many ways.
I've always suspected that Tolkien ran into a variation of Godelian incompleteness, there's just no way to make a fictional world that complex consistent without adding additional assumptions...

"Star Trek gadget syndrome" was frequent in the Oz books. That matters, as The Wizard of Oz was arguably the greatest Fantasy film BEFORE the Peter Jackson LOTR trilogy.

Tolkien's theory of Subcreation spawned, at least indirectly, the vast Gaming industry, which has for some years been bigger than Hollywood.

I'm serious about those open questions in LOTR, which emerged from discussions with Dr. George Hockney at JPL.

We'll know in a very few days, via Book 7 of Potter:

(1) Which world IS that, in the multiverse?

(2) Whose side is Snape really on -- is he a triple agent or a quadruple agent?

(3) Dumbledore -- a Schrodinger cat?

(4) Historically, how did the House Elves get enslaved, and what role do they play in Book 7? The little silly Hobbits saved Middle Earth, after all...

My high school students (I've just finished teaching my 2nd full week there) were puzzled by my love for Haryy Potter books and films. They were awed that J. K. Rowling's literary agent has become one of the 20 richest people in Great Britain. "Writers have agents?"

They were equally dubious that I'd spoken for an hour with Johnny Depp, think him a great actor, and dig the Pirates films. "Is he hot?" the girls asked. When I agreed, they suddenly questioned my gender-preferences. "And how do you feel about Orlando Bloom?" they asked.

I said that I liked him better in LOTR than Pirates, and reminded them that I was a happily married man, and not gay. "Not that there's anything wrong with that," as they say on Seinfeld.

I had always understood that the Muggle reality is indeed our reality.

In what way might Dumbledore be a Schrodinger cat?

(I've always thought Schrodinger's cat was a bad example, actually, because there is an observer of the experiment in the box - the cat itself, which is aware of its own existence (and briefly of whether the vial of cyanide is smashed). A better thought experiment would be to leave the cat out of it (and avoid prosecution by the RSPCA/ASPCA!) and simply state the vial of cyanide as broken/not broken, rather than the cat as dead or alive.)

I want Snape to be evil, because it would vindicate Harry's entire line of thought throughout the sixth book.

A house elf (we do not know whether it is Dobby or Kreacher) is seen on the British children's cover of HBP, brandishing a sword that is identified by some as Godric Gryffindor's. So they must have some role to play...

Yeah, I think it is pretty clear from hints in the books that Harry Potter is supposed to be set in our reality, or as close a parallel as is plausible.
I think the Dumbledore allusion is to the question of whether he really is dead or not...
consider for example how Sirius was saved by Hermione and Harry in book four - that is one poweful spell Hermione had, be useful on some occasions. I don't think Rowling will take that out though, which is a flaw in the books - too many gadgets are introduced and then not got out later when they would be rather useful.

My officemate piped up with
"Harry Potter and the Order of Magnitude"
today. That is almost science....