Uncategorized on Rachel Joi

Rational Rebellion: Morality and the Rule of Law in Harry Potter

Sat, 22 Oct 2016 12:43:00 +0000

I’m at LeakyCon in Burbank, CA right now, and yesterday I presented a talk about law, morality, and rebellion in Harry Potter. It went better than I expected, and though I wish I had been better prepared (and had practiced it enough to not have to read it), it was fine, and I received positive feedback. Since most of you weren’t able to be there, I thought I’d post my talk and slides (with “(slide)” written into the script if you want to follow along). The slides are mostly pictures and quotes to complement the talk, but I did work on them, so I wanted to put that out there. Without further ado:

Harry Potter cosplay

Thu, 19 May 2016 08:00:00 +0000

Thrilling Thursdays are where I will share things that get me excited. This could be music, knitting, or, as it is here, Harry Potter! I’m going to Leaky Con in October with a friend, and I’ve decided to cosplay for all five days we’re there. I’ve started work on my costumes, ordering the bits I’m not going to make and getting ready to sew the stuff I will make. So here’s my plan:

weekly roundup - January 8th

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 16:32:00 +0000

I started my week by reading an article in Bloomberg about Disney’s princess business switching from Mattel to Hasbro. Mattel had a series of missteps with its treatment of Disney princess products, and Disney finally took its business elsewhere. Last year, two-thirds of the Mattel senior staff resigned or was fired (Mattel lost the Disney princesses in late 2014). Hasbro has reworked the princesses to be more true to their animated characters, including painting on faces, making the waistlines (very slightly) different, and taking the dresses back to what they were meant to be. A couple things stood out to me in this article. First, it’s very important to know your market. Disney didn’t understand that kids (and their parents) wanted princess stuff until an executive went to a Disney on Ice show and saw little girls in handmade princess dresses. Second, it’s important to pay attention to your client and make them feel heard and valued. The article is full of cringing moments where I found myself wishing that Mattel had done anything else. Excellent read. Speaking of Disney and Hasbro, the #WheresRey debacle has been fascinating. Hasbro may be doing right by princesses, but their treatment of the female protagonist in Star Wars is just terrible, and their excuses feeble and hollow. This post discusses how Rey is a role model as much for boys as she is for girls. Something else Disney is doing is building a Star Wars franchise to last the ages. Wired wrote about how the last Star Wars movie won’t come in our lifetime. Star Wars is following the comic book style of universe-building, with lots of options for side stories and having characters develop independently and together. (Also, I learned a new word - paracosm - so that’s exciting.) It’s the same thing that the big studios are doing with Marvel and DC, intertwining stories and building franchises to explore characters and ages and lands. It’s an exciting thing, but at the same time, I like being able to just ingest single stories or movies without needing to know a lot of external information. On a side note, I may get more into Star Wars. Carl certainly wants me to, and he has a list of books for me to read if I’m interested. So there’s that. Getting away from Disney entirely, I also read about environmental activists that went after a ship that was egregiously and illegally fishing. The article was a fascinating look into a world of very determined people (on both sides). The environmentalists pursued the fishing boat for over 100 days and 10,000 nautical miles. I care about the environment, but their level of caring is so beyond what I can comprehend. Games! This week, I played Bang the dice game, Aton, Roll for the Galaxy, and Five Tribes solo:

Bulb planting time

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 14:59:00 +0000

Last weekend, we planted a lot of bulbs on the side of our house. We are hoping to have bearded irises bloom in the spring and saffron in the fall. We are going to harvest our own saffron threads once they are ready. So excited. Daffodils also bloom over in that bed, and we will plant some allium bulbs and some other summer-blooming flowers so that we have blooms basically from March through October or November. Awesome, right? Once we get everything in the ground, I will post what exactly is in there and when it should (hopefully) bloom. We may need to supplement the late summer time period. I don’t think we have any bulbs coming for then. Any suggestions?

studying for the Bar Exam

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:00:00 +0000

I like organization. I like having plans. I have created a plan that is supposed to motivate me to study for the Missouri Bar Exam, which I will take July 28th and 29th. I’ve devised a point system. Three colors of points, though they are all worth the same amount. I get a blue point for every set (17 problems) of multiple choice questions I do. I’ve thought about having a quality threshold, but that (and I) would be pointless. Then, I get a green point for every essay I write. Finally, I get a purple point for 1) every 20 pages I read in the large outlines, 2) every 20 notecards I create for studying, and 3) every half hour I spend (productively) studying otherwise, though if I study for 50 minutes all in one go, I get two points. Basically, every point is roughly 30 minutes of work. So that’s my system. Sounds great, right? I have decided that I need to amass 30 points before I can watch any Harry Potter movie, and if I want to watch all five before July 15th, I need to get some serious points going. I have not earned many points so far. I’m working on it. Also, I moved into Carl’s house a week and a half ago. Stuff is EVERYWHERE. I feel torn between studying and cleaning, and so I end up reading a magazine instead, naturally. It’s probably a good thing Carl won’t move back to the States until December. It gives me plenty of time to reorganize. I told him how I’ve been organizing our books and DVDs and things. He has a strange aversion to organization, and he has repeatedly cautioned me that his books will not stay the way I’ve put them. It will be a fun marriage, I think. Speaking of which, we’re doing things backwards, and we’re going to basically take our honeymoon this August while I’m over there. We’ll spend a 7-10 days in Great Britain at the beginning, a week in Italy at the end, and we’re hoping to spend a weekend in Switzerland (Zurich maybe?) and a weekend in Vienna. I’m really looking forward to it. I love hanging out with Carl, and we have such a great time together. We have not done much traveling together, and I think it will be a lot of fun. We have similar ideas of what constitutes “fun,” which will be a great thing. I can’t wait to be there. Then, after we’re married, we’ll take a weekend or something and go somewhere close. It may sound corny, but the thing I’m looking forward to most is just getting to be with my best friend. I should study.

cert

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:21:00 +0000

SCOTUS granted cert on my issue. No word on when arguments will be. Darn. I knew the risk, but I wanted to be cool and have something published before they looked at the issue, because then I would have been the only article out there on it. Yeah.

trains

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:06:19 +0000

the candidates as trains

spread it like herpes, only for positive

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:56:42 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhDRVKDcXQo

Carl in DC

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:08:46 +0000

Carl came to DC last weekend. He arrived here on Wednesday from Munich and left for KC on Sunday. It was a whirlwind weekend, but it was so good just to see him again. Here’s a rundown of what we did: Wednesday: I met him at my house after work. We went out for dinner and walked around Arlington. It wasn’t very exciting, but it was very nice. Thursday:

definitely

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 03:01:12 +0000

I am so in love.