Last week, JK Rowling announced that, midway through writing the Harry Potter series, she nearly killed off Ron Weasley "out of spite." Ron isn't the first supporting character to narrowly avoid death in an author's rough draft. Here we look at some other close calls—and how those deaths would have affected the culture at large. READ MORE

"Two policemen are recovering after they were shot by fellow officers as they tried to arrest a man on child pornography charges outside a crowded move theatre. READ MORE

The last Harry Potter movie is a pretty beautiful thing, just in terms of flickering pictures on the cave wall and tableaux. It's very good! As a non-Harry Potter book-reader, it wasn't even that confusing, despite its having to wrap up 10,000 plots, though I did realize halfway through that I literally had no idea why the guy with the scary face was trying to kill our hero, and vice versa. Why were they so mad at each other again? No clue! Also I was slightly frustrated that the minor characters weren't allowed to speak very much, if it all. You put Helena Bonham Carter in all that hair and corset and then she gets to grunt two words? That's like letting the snake out of the cage and not tossing it a rat. (Although perhaps that's just what she looks like now? Like maybe she wasn't supposed to be in the movie at all, and Mrs. Tim Burton just rolled up and kept wandering into the shots.) But even Hermione, at last, doesn't have that much to say, for once. This is quibbling! Things blow up, a Lord of the Rings siege is made, the Big Reveal occurs, people die, and the flummoxing inability of a wizard to use magic to dry out wet clothes is presented to us once again. (Sure, you can stop time and go invisible, but you can't remove water from fabric with a simple spell? Magicians, stick to thy casts.) So yes, A+++! And then there's the epilogue. Which: OH NO. We will now drop down some white space so that those who have somehow not yet seen the movie may run away. READ MORE

Four years after the publication of the final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and on the day of that film's debut, Harry and all his friends—not to mention his enemies, minor acquaintances and a few of his forebears—are still leading extremely active lives online in the form of fan-made fiction and inspired media. The series has long enjoyed one of the biggest, most productive and considerably vocal fandoms on the Internet, not surprising as its publication coincided with the wider blossoming of the web. READ MORE

Emma Watson looked out of the window of Pembroke Hall onto the intersection of Angell and Prospect and watched the line of vintage jean-jacketed 20-year-olds blowing on their Americanos and clutching copies of To the Lighthouse and Of Grammatology. READ MORE

Should you want to get on a giant sea vehicle named Freedom of the Seas, with a bunch of shut-ins who've come outside for the first time, awesome news! It's a Harry Potter cruise! From the press release: "Passengers will be immersed in this wizarding world at sea, which will include a Sorting Ceremony, Classes in Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts, Wizards Chess, Horcrux Hunt, Yule Ball, Quidditch Lessons on board taught by Harry, Cedric and the International Quidditch Association, Quidditch Match on land, Team Trivia Contest, Wizards Wheel of Fortune, Charity Auction, Vendors Room and Photo Shoot. Events will only take place while the ship is at sea never during port times." The Facebook page is not to be missed. And ports of call include Labadee, Haiti. The spellbinding horror sets sail in August!

The richly imaginative details of J.K. Rowling’s fictive world, it must be admitted, are pleasurable. The hot-rod brooms, the flowing robes and flying cars, the goth Heaven of the sullen Slytherins, the snake language and the magic wands enclosing phoenix feathers or unicorn hairs, the metamorphic potions, the leaping or fizzing sweets! All these have been fully and lovingly realized in the Warner Brothers movie adaptations of the Harry Potter books, including the most recent, which is a fine-looking but completely incoherent mess with a morally bankrupt and politically repugnant story at its core. READ MORE

Also: "'It actually made me more uncomfortable,' Chris McMahon said."

I love this chart of the Harry Potter films U.S. box office. Oh and? The new one? That came out three weeks ago? It already has a worldwide gross of $755 million.

"This is the same week where the American people have been treated to the unseemly spectacle of conservative politicians using 'racism' as a club to beat up Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic American woman nominated to the United States Supreme Court. These attacks on her, as illustrated but not limited to Senator Sessions' remarks, illustrate that her questioners have no insight into their own racial formation, and deformation, in a white-dominant American society. READ MORE