I’m in Jerusalem with my family right now, and we’ve just returned from the annual extended-family vacation. I used the past days on the seaside to catch up on my feed reader, and I have a bunch of goodness to share which might help tide an eager reader over until I actually write something again.<\/p>\n

PEACE: Harry Potter and the Politics and Terror<\/h3>\n

Dan Nexon over at The Duck of Minerva took two stabs at analyzing the last installments of the Harry Potter series. Both are an amusing and interesting read:<\/p>\n

\n
• “Harry Potter and Foreign Policy, or Voldemort is not Osama Bin Laden<\/a><\/strong>\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/li>\n
• “Terror, Counter-Terror, and Insurgency in Harry Potter, or Why Harry Won<\/a><\/strong>\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  The Duck also points<\/a> to a piece on Foreign Policy about the post-conflict reconstruction that must be done after the fall of Voldemort.<\/p>\n

  On the lighter side<\/strong>, there’s a trailer for Harry Potter as a teen comedy<\/a>\u00a0and the plot of the series in a 99 second song<\/a>\u00a0(both on TastefullyOffensive, both via Dubi Kanengisser<\/a>).<\/em><\/div>\n

  LANGUAGE: Pullum on apes and (possible) racists<\/h3>\n

  Over at Language Log, Geoffrey K. Pullum has two excellent and characteristically sharp posts:<\/p>\n

  \n
  • “Caesar and the power of No<\/a>” <\/strong>(on\u00a0the peculiar theory of language evolution in that new Planet of the Apes movie)<\/li>\n
  • “David Starkey on rioting and Jamaican language<\/a>” <\/strong>(attacking some racism and misconceptions around non-standard Englishes)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Other fine links<\/h3>\n

    \n

    \n
    • Charlie Brooker makes some necessary comments<\/a> regarding the commenting on the Norway right-wing terrorist attacks<\/strong>\u00a0(Comment is Free, via Dubi)<\/em><\/li>\n
    • John Oliver spreads the word<\/a> about the Florida couple that foreclosed on Bank of America<\/strong> (Daily Show, via Yuval Pinter)<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
      <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      I’m in Jerusalem with my family right now, and we’ve just returned from the annual extended-family vacation. I used the past days on the seaside to catch up on my feed reader, and I have a bunch of goodness to share which might help tide an eager reader over until I actually write something again. … Continue reading Links: Harry Potter and Terrorism, Apes and Englishes, and more<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":[],"categories":[5,7,8],"tags":[314,310,309,316,56,312,207,307,583,104,311,313,308,120,127,142,315,160],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1710"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2643,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions\/2643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}