Have you been following the Harry Potter stories? Want to know the end now? There are five possibilities, as detailed here. But you being you-and-all could guess where this is going. The characters will all go out in a “blaze of glory.” (wink, wink)

In other news, note this from Ursula K. LeGuin on a serious writers. She writes:

Could he not see that Cormac McCarthy — although everything in his book (except the wonderfully blatant use of an egregiously obscure vocabulary) was remarkably similar to a great many earlier works of science fiction about men crossing the country after a holocaust — could never under any circumstances be said to be a sci fi writer, because Cormac McCarthy was a serious writer and so by definition incapable of lowering himself to commit genre?

Today, 07-07-07, is the day of the Live Earth concerts, an effort by world scientists to instruct us in the coming doom and how, if possible, to prevent it. These scientists knew a Ross Perot-style chart lecture wouldn’t communicate bo diddley, so they are masquerading as rock stars. Their message, as you know, is the sky is falling.

The latest news to this effect is the refusal to resign by the director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Some feel he has undermined confidence in the center’s forecasters. Also, a lake in Chile has run off into the sea due to global warming. The horror!

The Live Earth scientists want you to know that you are to blame, especially if you are an American. China can’t help it if they pollute the earth while trying to compete in your corrupted economy. Your keep-up-the-Jones greed forces them to produce cheap goods and ignore common sense environmental guidelines. You should be ashamed of yourself and thankful that righteous men and women will take time out of their busy schedules to educate your butt about your need to stop driving all over the planet and shopping at all hours of the day and night. The sky is falling, for pete’s sake.

Okay, let’s sing about it.

Apparently, if you want to argue that your country needs a radical makeover, a complete rebuild from the source code, then you will want to write intellectual books describing the horrid genocide by the country’s founders even if it didn’t actually happen. That’s what Theodore Dalrymple suggests in article on a skirmish in Australia over that nation’s history.

“There is nothing much more attention-grabbing than the claim that your current happiness and good fortunes is founded on a pile of bones,” he writes. “With a bit of luck, this claim will even turn people neurotic and increase the need for therapists.” And praise you for shining the light on the historic darkness and need for change. Let us be one nation, victimized, divisible, with liberty and justice for those who deserve it. (via Books, Inq.)

O beautiful for pilgrim feet

Whose stern impassion’d stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat

Across the wilderness.

America! America!

God mend thine ev’ry flaw,

Confirm thy soul in self-control,

Thy liberty in law.

That’s the verse we should be singing today, though the first verse is good too.

Here’s Red Skelton’s tribute to our country and the Pledge of Allegiance.