Harry Potter hanky-panky. Close readers of the fourth novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, noticed a plot discrepancy…or was it a deliberate twist? Speculation abounded, until the mistake (as it turned out to be) was corrected, clumsily and with no public announcement, in subsequent printings. Fans criticize inordinate deadline pressures and inadequate prepublication editing, and wonder whether J.K. Rowling was involved in the inept correction at all. [My son and I had gotten a first printing of Goblet on the day of its release too, but we never noticed the error.]

My Untold Story. Ralph Nader explains how he tried to engage the media during his Green Party run for the Presidency, and how it didn’t work. Brill’s Content

Roundup: Dubya’s Press Posse. When the Administration changes, so does the White House press corps. Brill’s Content

New police powers unveiled, further erosion of civil liberties in the UK: ‘Jack Straw today unveiled new measures to crack down on
antisocial behaviour, including a version of Tony Blair’s
controversial “instant fines for louts” proposal. The criminal justice
and police bill introduces fixed fines for being drunk and abusive
and grants powers to extend curfews. Civil liberties groups
condemned the bill for expanding the national DNA database by
allowing police to retain samples indefinitely.’ BBC

Party animals gather for Bush’s ball: “They
were looking for the biggest and brightest in Texas to come
to Washington for this event…” Ananova

The disease of bipartisanship: Will it infect the
environment?

Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr., says George W. Bush
plans his bipartisanship around compromise-prone
conservative Democrats. “It is this conservative bipartisan
coalition that allows Ralph Nader to say we have one
corporate party with two different names,” says Jackson.
He adds, “If Democrats go down this bipartisan path it
will only strengthen Nader and the Greens for 2002 and
2004.”

With Bush appointees such as Gale Norton, and a Bush
agenda so unfriendly to the environment and civil
liberties, we need an opposition party to the Republicans.
I would like to see the Democrats rise to the occasion.
Jackson and certain Progressive Caucus members have
their fingers on the electorate’s pulse. Conservative,
compromise-prone Democrats would be wise to remove
their fingers from their ears and feel that pulse, too.

Online Journal

Say It Ain’t So, Van: a distraught counter-culturalist’s open letter to Van Morrison responding to reports that he had accepted an invitation to play at Dubya’s inauguration festivities. ‘I can understand why groups like ZZ Top or The Kentucky
Headhunters would be invited to appear at this so-called gala;
on the face of it, they fit right in with a crowd that I’m told likes
to munch on a delicacy called “Bull Balls” (I’ll spare you the
gory details).’ Back in March, the Guardian did report that Van the Man is among Dubya’s favorite musicians and Moondance among his favorite discs. (But Travis Tritt did Moondance too…)

Outsider Art Fair: Art So Out It’s Almost In. For fifteen years, ever since I spent a day at Dubuffet’s Muse´e de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, I’ve been getting mailings announcing their new shows and wishing I had the chance to go back. Now it’s in New York in a major way (and apparently has been on an annual basis, at the Outsider Art Fair in Soho each January). Although as a psychiatrist I have been particularly interested in the works of art brut produced by those suffering mental illnesses, it is less a matter of who produced it than its spontaneity, drivenness and untutored nonconformity to any artistic formalities or conventions that defines the genre. New York Times And a self-proclaimed outsider artist (which, before the term was “in”, would have been a contradiction in terms) Max Podstolski contributes some <a href=”http://www.spark-online.com/january01/miscing/podstolski.html
“>”insights: to Spark which show how far the term has degraded.

United Bush Front Running Into Early Challenge; it’s especially convoluted on abortion policy: “Mr. Bush’s choice for attorney general, John Ashcroft, also
seems to have staked out a slightly different position from
the president-elect on an element of the highly charged
debate over abortion.

On Thursday, a day after Mr. Ashcroft told the Senate
Judiciary Committee that he would not seek opportunities to
challenge Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling
on abortion rights, Mr. Bush said in an interview with Fox
News that he would not rule out having his Justice
Department argue for a change in the law.

Further muddling the incoming administration’s position,
Laura Bush, the president-elect’s wife, told NBC News in an
interview broadcast today that she did not think the
Supreme Court decision should be overturned.” New York Times