This Muggle still floats

Good afternoon, Don, from “still raining in Colorado”. For a dry state, I can truthfully say we are water-logged here on the east side of the mountains. We saw the sun yesterday (Saturday), but not enough to recharge the batteries in the solar lights we have in the garden. Even our little solar lighthouse is dim. According to my rain gauge, in our little neighborhood (threatened only by a couple of very small creeks) we have had 4.5 inches of rain in 5 days. That would be about 12 feet of snow if this were November. We know what to with snow! But Rain?

Now I know that for some of you readers, rain and flooding is a yearly thing. Not here in Colorado! We are a DRY state, just recovering from drought and forest fires. This rain and not seeing the sun in 3 days is beyond us! And one of the bigger problems is the humidity! We’re talking 100% humidity. For us, 20% is a really humid day. So will we mold? I remember living in the Ohio River Valley wondering if my hair would ever dry!

Okay, on to Harry Potter. I agree, Don. The first movie, and second one too for that matter, followed the book amazingly close! But the movies began to digress a bit after that. But I can fully understand why. As Harry Potter grew up, so did the plot and characterizations in the books. The language and sentence structure changed with each year – became more complex. The plots became more tangled and deceptive, more extensive. For a script writer, the later books definitely presented a challenge.

My biggest complaint was book 7. Rowling was granted full writing privileges which meant there was no “official” content editing and there should have been. Movies 7-8 did okay given the book, but the book should have been judiciously edited.

And the wand! What a gift! Invisibility is nice, but to flick your wrist and have your wish come true! WOW! That's my favorite contraption.

I enjoyed your thoughts on British Education as experienced through the arts and literature. As much as I envied British kids who got to go off to school each year, I’m pretty happy with what I got. And yet, I have to admit that the “happy, be true to your school” attitude hasn’t done us any favors. We’ve developed a culture of “everybody is a winner.” This has led to a lot of students who feel “entitled”.

I’m at the end of our 11 week quarter, finally. I’ve been grading papers for the last 2 weeks – have one more round of papers to go then I’m done for a couple of days. I bring this up because the research papers are finally coming in. One of those many papers I read was a paper on visual effects and its effect on movie goers. Interestingly enough, the research indicates that people have finally reached their tolerance for fast paced movies with lots of explosions, big races, no plot, and characters that are on an endless treadmill of calamity and desolation and can’t get anything right. As an audience, we don’t even know if they got their lines right because we can’t hear them. This was from a visual effects student – interesting. He’s toning down the number of explosions in his scripts and going more for the skyline effects, the small environmental effects that enhance a story instead of detract from it.  Smart kid.

Okay, riddle cave – my guess to your riddle is iphone or a calculator.

So here is my contribution for the week:

The little remains of once giants that get into everything

Porch for great adventures

Substance of carbon nano tubes

 

Before I forget!! I'm judging the sowrite.us.com writing contest and Wormhole is providing some of the prizes. And because of this, I've been given the privilege of giving to the first person who comments (and leaves a way of getting back to you) the passwords so you can enter the contest for free! It's a great little contest - write a complete story in 3 sentences! And earn the opportunity to win one of the books that are being offered! Wormhole is offering up the Fantasy Collection and

and the Sci-Fi Collection! Both great books chalked full of the best of our fantasy and science fiction from our most talented authors! These are a fast read collection of stories that will keep your finger on the screen - you won't be able to turn the pages fast enough!  
 
 
 
 
Contact me! Let's make this happen!

 

Have a great week everyone!

Carolyn  

Figures 1 – 4 downloaded from Google images:

Fig 1 – 30 beautiful rain wallpapers retrieved from wlneel.com

Fig 2 – downloaded from Google images

Fig 3 – Harry Potter: Visual Effects Wizard Tim Burke retrieved from herocomplexlatimes. com

Fig 4 – MarketSay- 3D movies, gaming and technology retrieved from marketsaw.blogspot.com

Fig 5 – 6 – downloaded from http:/www.wormholeelectric.com