Thursday 8 February 2024

Henry Porter and the Wizard's Rock

 I don't know very much about the Harry Potter cannon (I'll be Link if you are Gannon) but there are a couple of things I'd like to share with you.

Firstly: In the same way that adding "in bed" to the end of a fortune cookie message often makes it funnier, the title of pretty much every scientific paper is improved by adding "Harry Potter and the".
Harry Potter and the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid
Harry Potter and the Computability of Numbers
Harry Potter and the Unskilled and Unaware of it: How Difficulties in Recognizing one's own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-assessments

Secondly: The sorting hat.

If I remember correctly each of the children are sorted in to one of a few houses when they start their magical studies. To start with this seems like a wonderful and fantastical invention by the author, but it happens in real life too. It doesn't happen to absolutely everybody, it's more men than women, and it happens at a later age, but it's the same. Something intrinsic about your character identifies you with your house. There's some degree of family lineage which might affect which house you're in. Each house has its own culture and heritage. Once you're part of a house, you can never possibly change.

I know you're sceptical, and you can't remember being sorted, but you will when you see the names of the houses:

De Walt. Makita. Ryobi. Bosch. Milwaukee.

Richard "De Walt" B


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