"But what I don't understand, Inspector..." was: Re: DD's Unspeakable Word.

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> wrote:

> But you could ask the same of love. Is it predictable? Is it the
> result of as yet unelucidated universal imperatives or something 
> of an entirely different order?
> 

Kneasy:
You could also ask "does it really exist?" An imbalance of a hormone
or two, a slight disturbance of the glands and - oh dear, he's writing
poetry again.

As I've said before 'love' is an omnibus term, a linguistic convenience
to cover a whole slew of different feelings. Are you talking about the 
protective love of a parent for a child, sibling affection, the regard of 
a grown child for an aged parent, romantic love, the love one has for
oneself that is supposed to be directed at a neighbour, which?  Which
one is Harry replete with?

> Pippin:
> And don't underestimate gravity. We don't have that unified theory
> yet, for one thing. Also, its operations in the real world are not  
> predictable once you get beyond two bodies. For example, it would 
> be nice if we could tell whether the solar system is stable, but
> AFAIK, we can't.
> 
>

Kneasy:
SFAIK gravity is a propery of matter, proportionate to its mass and 
would be represented by the giant orrery. Somehow I don't see Jo
wrestling with Unified Theory, weak attractions and magnetism. 
Even Hermione would have problems there. 

Of course we making the assumption that this force is something in
our world, that it ain't magical. Can we be confident in that assumption?
Is there any evidence to substantiate that belief?
 
> Pippin:
> The hanging  threads will be caught up and tied with a bow. However,
> as this is fantasy, I hope there will also be some "unexplored
> vistas" , as Tolkien called them.
> 
> Let Florence remain a nobody and may we never find out what was so
> odd about those ferrets! Of course, important clues may masquerade as
> unimportant ones. Mark Evans is a nobody, but, IMO, duplicate names 
> are an important clue. (Let us remember that JKR told us we would not
> be getting full and frank answers until book 7 is released. Until
> then, I take it, any answer which sounds as if it is incomplete or
> misleading probably is, whether the author labels it as such or not.)
> 

Kneasy:
Oi! Hang on! I need Florence for a sub-set of the Black Widower construct.
Who else could be Mrs Sevvy? I don't know what the world is coming to,
folk playing fast and loose, cavalierly junking ones theories left, right
and centre. T'ain't right.

Ferrets I'm not really bothered about, though there have been some who
worry about the physical similarities between ferrets and weasels and
how that links to a Weasley offspring or three. Which leads me to a
bloody horrible pun - how do you tell the difference between a weasel
and a stoat? (See below for answer.)

No, we  probably won't get many answers in the new book. Though
it's not unreasonable for it to narrow the available options even further.

> Pippin:
> I think what confuses people like Byatt is that in Rowling's world
> there are characters  so intensely pragmatic that they see even
> ghosts and unicorns as mundane (Binns, Grubbly-Plank) and others 
> who are spiritual and see wonder everywhere  (Firenze,  Luna) and 
> still others, like Trelawney, who pretend to have a spiritual outlook 
> but are underneath it all  as mundane as Binns. 


Byatt? Confused? I don't think so.
I got the impression that she was more than a little peeved that Jo
showed no interest, nor any particular regard, for the so-called
literary establishment. Being out-sold is one thing, the self appointed
arbiters of literary taste being ignored by the publishing hot property 
of the decade something else again.
The "numious" comment was a patronising dig heavily flavoured by
sour grapes.

Kneasy

A weasel is weasily identified, but a stoat is stotally different.