Spoilers spoilers oh my god spoilers

If you have not yet read the final Harry Potter book and plan to, you should probably stop reading right now. Although why you weren't up until five in the morning finishing it like Alma and I were is a mystery.

Just to be safe, the following will appear in dark blue text to match the blog background. Highlight it if you actually want to read. Non-fans are hereby given a reprieve.



I didn't believe for a minute that Rowling was going to kill Harry, despite (and indeed because of) all her coy little "What makes you so sure he's going to live to adulthood?" answers to fans asking if there couldn't be more books telling Harry's story as an adult. The better answer for why there don't need to be any more books is answered by the final words of Deathly Hallows, which turned out not to end with "scar" as Rowling had said: "All was well." The "Nineteen Years Later" epilogue seems more like something to placate the people who wanted to know - yes, Harry and Ginny end up together, and yes, so do Ron and Hermione - and frankly I think she could have worked a bit more into it. For example, the only person whose profession we learn is Neville, who (unsurprisingly) is now Herbology teacher at Hogwarts. None of the "Big Five" characters we see on 9 3/4, however - the above four, plus Malfoy - appear to be at Hogwarts in any capacity. So what are they all doing? A rather unimportant question in the grand scheme of the books, I suppose, but one that she probably could have answered without much significant effort. That said, I believe her when she says she has no plans to revisit the series. Again, with no conflict of the sort that enveloped books 1-7 - and how could you top the struggle against Voldemort for high stakes? - it's hard to see where it would go. Sure, fans would eat up a tamer series with smaller conflicts, but why would she want to write it? She's already got more money than God, so that rules out one key motivation.

I was glad to see that most of what I wanted to happen did, and that a lot of what I predicted would happen did - Neville ended up playing a key role in Voldemort's downfall, as I thought had been strongly hinted by the fact that the prophecy could have referred to him before Voldemort attacked Harry instead, and Snape did end up being a good guy, although it took until the last possible second to reveal this. After Snape's major role in the last two books, he seemed woefully underused in the final chapter, but given how little of it takes place at Hogwarts, and the fact that Snape was not really a bad guy, that's probably understandable. Naturally I was happy with Harry surviving - Rowling's prediction that some fans would not like the book presumably referred to the fatalists who thought it made sense that Harry should die. I'm not saying there was no way that could have happened that would have worked, but I was glad it didn't. I was also glad to be wrong about my prediction that either Ron or Hermione seemed likely to die given the way the death ante had been upped in each of the previous books; evidently the sheer volume of casualties in this one made up for that. (It almost seemed perfunctory by the end. The deaths of Tonks and Lupin, for example, were referred to so briskly that Alma actually missed the initial reference and then, upon seeing a reference to it a few pages later, asked me in confusion when they had died. Frankly I think that those two characters deserved a little better than "And then Harry saw Tonks and Lupin and they were dead!", which is basically all they got, but that's one of my few serious complaints.)

Overall I enjoyed the last trip around the world of Harry Potter. It wasn't perfect - the middle is oddly slow and many parts are awkwardly expository, but in a lot of cases it's hard to see how else she could have gotten the information out, and anyway it's not like exposition-heavy dialogue hasn't pretty much been a hallmark of this series up to now. I got the happy ending I wanted, leaving me feeling good about the whole thing. (I had been worried that I might end up feeling like I did once I had finished the last Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book, Mostly Harmless, which ends, if cleverly, in ultimate depression. Instead I feel how I did when I finished the fourth book, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, which remains the way I like to imagine the books ended.) I guess it's a little sad that there aren't going to be any more, but the rich detail in Rowling's world should provide ample opportunities for re-reading over the years, which is all you can ask for. So long, Harry, and thanks for all the magic.

The district soaks its feet tonight

For those who don't know, Alma and I drove out to Washington on Saturday to spend a couple of days in DC, seeing my family and doing touristy stuff. Today we walked around DC checking out the major monuments, including the Jefferson, to which I had never been. Our route is mapped out here. It was a pretty good chunk of distance - 3.39 miles, which doesn't even include the walking around the various monuments, so we certainly did at least 3.5 and probably closer to four, all told. Throw in the mile walk to the Bethesda Metro and we almost certainly did at least five miles of walking today, and the temperature was in the high 80s the whole time. More of my exercise recently has come in the form of these long walks, and while they're not as efficient as runs, they're certainly lower stress. That said, my feet are pretty tired right now.

Tomorrow: no rest for the weary, as a trip to the Smithsonian is planned.

Shut up, Scott Boras

Scott Boras may be a good agent for the players he represents, even though a lot of GMs don't like him - and rightly so, I think. But when did he get it into his head that anyone cares about his opinions on the game itself? First there was the whole nine-game World Series with two games in warm weather, "neutral" sites, presumably so that Boras' clients could have more games to showcase themselves (and the warm weather so they could hit better in the playoffs). All told, it was clearly self-interested, and possibly the worst idea associated with baseball since the White Sox threw the 1919 World Series.

Boras' latest "brainstorm" is less offensive, but about as stupid.

"We need to give the fans something to identify brilliance defensively," Scott Boras said.

Boras proposes the "EP," for exceptional play. The official scorer would be asked to distinguish between an exceptional play and a routine one in the same way he is asked to distinguish between a hit and error.

Seriously? Seriously. This is retarded. First of all, how many more things do we need to farm out to the official scorer to make a judgment call on? He already has to do it on hits and errors, now he'll have to do it on every play? And this is going to be way, way more controversial, since it seems to me that the definition of an "exceptional play" is going to vary widely.

Also, as anyone who knows anything about baseball should be aware, plays that look the most exceptional can often be the result of a fielder with less range. For example, if you're not good at moving to your right, and a ball is hit to your right and you have to dive for it, and then you get up and make the play, that might look exceptional. But you are not a better fielder than someone who makes the play easily because they can get to their right quicker. In fact, you are a worse fielder. Over the long run, this statistic will probably just overinflate the perception of someone like Derek Jeter - by virtually all accounts a mediocre fielder whose awesome-looking plays are sometimes attributable to his lack of range - while further devaluing fielders who aren't flashy because they don't need to be.

Of course, then you have someone like Andruw Jones, who does make legitimately great plays on a fairly routine basis. The interesting thing about Jones is that offensively, he's having a terrible year - .211, with an OPS of just .720. He'll have about 30 home runs and 105 RBI, but for a guy who went 51/128 in 2005, that's not that impressive. But then, Andruw Jones' biggest selling point is that he's a defensive stalwart in center field. Hell, check out some of the plays that guy makes! If only we had some sort of, I don't know, made-up statistic that counted up the exact number of awesome - no, exceptional - plays that he makes in a year. Why, a quantifiable stat like that would really drive up his market value despite a down offensive year, wouldn't it? And hey, it just so happens he's a free agent after this season! And it really just so happens that his agent is - wait for it! - Scott Boras.

Guess what? I've just made up a stat. It's ShaF, which is short for "Shamelessness Factor." Right now Scott Boras is working on a ShaF of about 68.2.*

*For reference, the highest lifetime ShaF belongs to Pete Rose, who recorded a 97.4, mostly between the years of 1992 and 2007.

Internet, eh?

Originally there was a summary of my Kwik-E-Mart trip with Alma and Drew in this space, but the Blogger restrictions were not kind to the photos I had. So while I'd love to have you all as a captive audience, I'm afraid you'll actually get to choose (more so than usual) whether or not you want to read my boring stuff. The post is here.

Damn, Keith

Edward R. Murrow, eat your heart out.

Root, root, root for the beer team

It's sort of ridiculous that it took me five months to get around to posting this, but for anyone who was excited by the prospect of reading about another root beer taste test, the results for the second root beer taste test - held on February 3, for crying out loud - are finally online. As I'm sure you could guess, Drew and I performed the test with Alma administering.

In other news that relates vaguely to the stupid title I came up with for this post, I've been making a lot more posts to the Cubs blog lately. So if you're a Cubs fan, that may hold interest for you. Or not.