Sirius Black's “Death”

Perhaps there is a reason that Rowling left the question of Sirius' death so open-ended. This tricky genius could easily have developed a loophole in Sirius' “death” so that she could justify him “coming back to life.” But why would he “come back”? What good can Sirius be to the series at this point? Sirius has lived his purpose in Harry's life, and though his life was dear to Harry and his fans in the real world, the man is dead and will not return. Rowling simply has her way of broadening the imagination of her readers. True, we have no proof that he is dead, but we also have no proof that he is alive.

The question is not whether or not Sirius is dead. The question is: what is that arch and what does it mean?

The Seven Pieces of Voldemort's Soul

As you may remember, Dumbledore had six of the suspected seven Horcruxes that Voldemort created. This leaves us with the question: what is the seventh? Perhaps Voldemort created his last Horcrux without intending to. When Voldemort killed Harry's mother, he then turned to kill Harry but could not. Instead of killing him, it is quite possible that Voldemort inserted a seventh of his soul into his enemy. This means that in order to kill Voldemort, Harry must die. You may chuckle at this idea, but Rowling seems to have a very good reason to not continue after Harry's seventh year….

The idea that the Horcrux is Harry's scar, however, is not feasible. The moment Voldemort tried to kill Harry, Voldemort was almost killed. The scar did not appear on Harry until Voldemort was reduced to near-nothingness. Therefore, the Horcrux could not be the scar itself, but it could very well be Harry….

The locket

Rowling is a sneaky writer! Poor Dumbledore strives all year to find the Horcrux-locket, and finally succeeds. He sacrifices himself, more or less, to obtain it, and it is a fake! The real one, however, should not be too difficult to obtain, because it is in the Black home, listed among other items on page 116 of The Order of the Phoenix, a fact that Harry will hopefully realize soon. This must mean that Regulus Black, Sirius' brother, was the one who found it first (the unknown R.A.B.).

As Harry and Dumbledore went to retrieve the locket, there was a boat that led them to the center of the lake where the locket was. The boat began to move once a “man” sat in it, but did not notice Harry as he was still only 16. Dumbledore brought Harry with him because he needed Harry to force him to drink the potion in which the locket was hidden. All this to say, if Regulus beat Dumbledore and Harry to the locket, Regulus must have had an underaged companion. If Dumbledore could not have claimed the locket alone, who else possibly could have? This raises the question of who was with Regulus. This matters because Dumbledore thought that he and Harry were the only ones who knew about Voldemort's Horcruxes. Now we suspect that Regulus knew too, but as he is dead that hardly matters. But if someone else was with Regulus, someone underaged and now just a few years older than Harry, then that opens many doors and a few windows of possibilities.

Snape: Innocent or guilty?

At the end of book five, though we all hated him, the wiser of us trusted Snape to be on the side of Dumbledore. The end of the sixth book, however, is the final straw. On the tower, when Dumbledore heard Malfoy running up the stairs, he endangered himself to ensure Harry's safety. After a few moments of Malfoy struggling to do his duty (killing Dumbledore), Snape busts through the door. Snape, you remember, is bound by a vow he cannot break (unless he dies) to complete Malfoy's work should he fail. Snape killed Dumbledore, so he must be guilty, right? No! Dumbledore was already weak from the potion he drank to obtain the locket. If Snape had not killed Dumbledore, he would have died because of the Unbreakable Vow, and, consequently, one of the many Death Eaters present would have killed Dumbledore instead. Malfoy is another issue - if neither Snape nor Malfoy had killed Dumbledore that night, both would have been punished, and likely killed (of course, Snape would have died anyway). Dumbledore's death would have been Dumbledore's death alone; if Snape had not killed Dumbledore, then the death toll would have been much worse.

Also, before Snape killed Dumbledore, Dumbledore pleaded with him. And, as the narration said, Harry had never heard Dumbledore plead. The automatic thought is that Dumbledore is pleading with Snape for his own life. Oh, please! Dumbledore is no fool; he knew he was, at that moment, useless. Not even Dumbledore can defend himself against half a dozen Death Eaters with no wand. “There was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of [Snape's] face.” Snape did not kill Dumbledore because of the hate; he hated Dumbledore because he had to kill him. Dig deeper and everything points to Snape's innocence. Dumbledore knew Snape would rather die than kill Dumbledore, but Dumbledore had Malfoy in mind to protect, and Snape himself, and of course Harry. As was recently pointed out to me, perhaps Dumbledore pleaded with Snape to kill him. After all, Voldemort trusted Snape, so, naturally, Snape was more valuable.

Rowling's brilliance lies in the clues she leaves us about the future of Harry Potter, and how everything fits together in the end. These theories are well-thought out and fit the clues, but could easily be wrong. Or who knows? Maybe there are some things that Rowling will not tell us even in the seventh book, but will leave for us to decide for ourselves….

Dinosaur Heresies basically talks about the errors in scientific understanding of dinosaurs. His thesis in The Dinosaur Heresies is that the generally accepted view of dinosaurs is that they are cold blooded, reptilian dullards and an evolutionary dead end. Bakker pointed out that this concept is wrong. As a matter of fact, dinosaurs were one of the most successful groups of land animals in history. The same way that mammals are warmblooded and active today.

To many, this seemed a new, radical idea. But Bakker quickly states that this is not a new idea at all. As a matter of fact, it was the most accepted view from the time the dinosaurs were first discovered until the 1920's. This correct view however was replaced in the succeeding years particularly around 1920's to the 1960's by the foolish view that the dinosaurs were somewhat of a failure. Bakker did not try to explain how this erroneous idea evolved through the years. His focus on this book is primarily centered on the case for his theory of warmblooded dinosaurs rather than discuss the history of dinosaur paleontology.

In the book, Bakker presents his ideas in a clear, methodological method. He first examines the generally accepted theories and concepts to be able to show where its deficiencies are, and to show some evidence against the theory. Bakker does this by not just pointing out the characteristics in the dinosaurs themselves, but also looking at reptiles that are alive today. He compared the dinosaurs to the present-day reptiles and show us where they differe to each other.

After he showed us that the old theories about dinosaurs have serious flaws, he then proceed to show where dinosaurs lived in the past and what they lived on. This is again to show, in great details, the mistakes in the cold blooded theory and the idea that plant eaters like Brontosaurus ate mushy waterplants to be alive. The fact that dinosaurs ate in order to live that proves that if dinosaurs were coldblooded, they would not have needed food as much as warmblooded animals do; Bakker shows that dinosaurs could eat and probably did eat as much as mammals similar to their size do.

He then goes on to explain how the dinosaurs moved and lived. He also examined the relationship between plant eaters and predators. He also pointed out how an arms race erupted a number of times in dinosaur history between armored plant eaters and the very nasty predators. The plant eaters depended heavily on an active, warmblood style of defense instead of the coldblooded "wait it out" defense. In this part of the book Bakker made a controversial claim that there is a possibility that one kind of dinosaurs never died out.

Bakker also looks at the direct evidence for warmbloodedness in dinosaurs by looking at their sex lives, also by their fast rates of growth from hatchling or newborn dinobaby to adult size and the ratio of predators to prey, all of these shows that dinosaurs were indeed warmblooded.

Finally, Bakker puts dinosaurs into their new context, quickly sketching their rise and fall, with the interesting thing being that he does not believe in the idea that the dinosaurs died out due to a meteor impact, an idea that has been largely confirmed since then. He ends the book by argueing that dinosaurs deserve to be taken out of the class Reptilia and there should be a new class created just for them, Dinosauria, with birds as one branch of it, which are the sole surviving dinosaurs.

What The Dinosaur Heresies expounds in the book has now become the new orthodox view of dinosaurs and newer, more up to date books are pushing this view similar to Bakker's. This book laid the foundation for this revolution in concepts of dinosaur paleontology. Most of the views it holds is still largely correct and it is highly readable and clear. You feel smarter for having read it. And the illustrations, all done by Bakker himself, both proper drawings and sketches showed some incredibly cute looking dinosaurs are very appropriate for the book.

Some of the science in it is subject to debate; but the enthusiasm with which the book is written is infectious. Bakker clearly love discussing all things pertaining to dinosaurs. It jumps around cheerfully from subject to subject, talking about subjects pertaining to dinosaurs such as anatomy, physiology, extinction and much more. The prose is easy to read and very interesting, and Bakker's own beautiful black-and-white illustrations make it all the more understandable which capture his vision of fast, powerful, active dinosaurs.

Bakker knows that challenging generally accepted ideas requires innovative thinking backed by solid evidence. It's probably the same problem that Darwin faced when introducing evolution through natural selection. The evidence is there, it simply takes a perceptive eye and logical thinking to point it out clearly. Bakker is able to do just that in this book. He is also good in writing and presenting his ideas and conclusions. Much of the fossil data has an extensive history. He has a very good ability to make field research understood by a wide spectrum of readers. The evidence and conclusions he presented are clear and unambiguous.

The nice thing about The Dinosaur Heresies is that Bakker provides his reasoning for his thoughts on the dinosaurs in a clear, accessible manner especially for those who are not dinosaur buffs. He discusses lizards and their niches and how this might or might not apply to dinosaurs, moas and how their digestive systems may have mirrored that of Brontosaurus. It helps that Bakker is also a decent artist and can illustrate his ideas well. There is, for example, a clean and informative drawing of a crane, a stegosaur, and an African elephant, showing leverage points and bracing that lead him to the conclusion that if an elephant can stand on it's rear legs, then a stegosaur most certainly could; much better ligament bracing down it's spine, and twice the leverage between spine and hip.

Bakker is also smart enough to admit that his theories are not new. Throughout the book he gives credit to papers published in the last century way before his book came out. He is more concerned about getting the idea right rather than credit.

 

Children around the world have been waiting for the last installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It is the last book of the series, which is causing both excitement and sadness. Will Harry die in the final book? Will Lord Voldemort get what he has wanted for so many years?

Will Harry Die?

Some of the most popular theories are that Harry will kill the evil Lord Voldemort but will lose his own life in the process. But if Harry dies that will cause a great disappointment for some fans who want to see the hero defeat the villain in the last book. Another theory is that Harry will not kill Voldemort but merely send him to the wizards’ prison Azkaban or some other means of imprisonment.

Will any of the Other Characters Die?

The author J.K. Rowling has said that yes another character will die but we do not know which. It could be someone who is close to Harry himself for instance, Hagrid who has been a loyal friend ever since he rescued Harry from his horrible aunt and uncle. Another would be Ron and Hermione Harry’s two best friends. And of course there is Severus Snape the not-so-nice potion’s teacher/ former death eater, whom Harry despises, he is believed to be on the good side but many think he is still part of Voldemort’s death eaters.

Release Date?

We do not know the release date at this time but it is expected some time late this year, another theory being that it will be released on 7/7/07 because this is book 7 of the series, Voldemort had 7 horcruxs and with 7 being the most powerful number it would make since, but that is only a theory and we will continue the make theories until the book is released until then we can just enjoy the beginning of the end.