Beard Of Wisdom.com

Go read an alternate storyline — Harry Potter and the Showdown. Apparently people have been hard at work in China cranking out stories to meet the voracious demand from readers. Some even think that these stories could be better than the ones written by Rowling herself!

Some homegrown “Harry Potter” authors are also unabashed about their forays into publishing.

One such writer is a manager at a Shanghai textile factory named Li Jingsheng. “I bought Harry Potter 1 through 6 for my son a couple of years ago, and when he finished reading them, he kept asking me to tell him what happens next,” he explained. “We couldn’t wait, so I began making up my own story and in May last year, I typed it up on my computer. I had to get up early and go to bed late to write this novel, usually spending one hour, from 6 to 7 in the morning and 10 to 11 in the evening to write it.”

The result was “Harry Potter and the Showdown,” a 250,000-word novel, the final version of which he placed recently on Web sites, followed by a notice saying he was looking for publishers. The book quickly logged 150,000 readers on a popular Chinese site, Baidu.com’s Harry Potter fan Web page.

“This is fantastic,” Gu Guaiguai, an admiring reader, wrote online about “Showdown.” “I wonder if Rowling would bother to continue to write if she had read it.”

Another reader was even more breathless. “You are the pride of our Harry Potter fans,” he wrote, adding, “We expect you to go on and write Harry Potter number eight,” which Mr. Li has in fact already begun.

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From the Club for Growth:

In 1930, Congress passed and President Hoover signed into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. At the time, this protectionist measure was vigorously opposed by 1,028 of the nation’s top economists. They rightly predicted the tariffs would devastate the economy. And, in fact, the country subsequently plunged into the Great Depression.

Now some in Congress are considering ways to enact similar protectionist policies against China. Once again, 1,028 of America’s top economists, from all 50 states and top universities, have signed the following petition sponsored by the Club for Growth in opposition to protectionist policies against China. In addition to many other prominent and well-respected economists, signatories include Nobel Laureates Finn Kydland, Edward Prescott, Thomas Schelling, and Vernon Smith.

Club president Pat Toomey explains the petition in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal here.  Read the petition and see who signed it here.  The list of signatories includes Hillsdale’s Gary Wolfram and six professors from SJSU (Brendt, Hummel, Lopez, Means, Ortega, and Stringham).

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From CBS Sportsline:

China’s official sports association has issued an unprecedented public criticism of Yao Ming for reporting late to national team training.

The Houston Rockets star was faulted for taking too much time off to recover from the NBA season, as well spending too much time planning his wedding and making appearances for the Special Olympics and 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

“No matter how lofty public welfare activities are, they can’t be allowed to take first place in a player’s life,” the China Sports Daily, a newspaper owned by the government’s All-China Sports Federation, said in an article Tuesday.

“No matter how sweet personal life is, it can’t be compared to the exultation of capturing glory for one’s nation,” the article said.

Don’t you hate it when people put family and disadvantaged children before a meaningless international scrimmage?

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