Harry Potter book leaks before release

At a point when Harry Potter is the topic of the conversation virtually everywhere, a bothering news surfaces about an illicit release of the book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, on the internet. The author of this blog says he found the book on the pirate bay. The photos of the book are all fingers and thumbs, literally. If I were the an Onion editor, this would be my story:

The underworld mafia release an illicit version of the book on the internet. The photos were taken by a camera screwed to a chewing gum that was chewed for the whole time the book was photographed.

The author J. K. Rowling and the publisher are claiming a loss of $90 trillions. They said this number was calculated based on the losses purportedly incurred earlier by software companies such as Microsoft, Oracle etc and music companies such as Sony, BMG etc due to the piracy of their proprietary material. The far-reaching effects of this economic calamity will be felt all over the world. Countries will be without electricity, heat, water, spicy food and even underwears for more than a decade. The destruction caused will likely bring the US back under the British rule, make superbowl a game of cricket, disturb the peace in the middle east and unite India and Pakistan.

Such are the effects of piracy. Such.

What to believe?

Lately, many economists who write books, have a penchant for writing books that arrive at and/or justify unintuitive outcomes. The first of such books I read was Freakonomics, which was indeed a very different and engrossing book that dared to take a fresh look at why certain things happened the way they did.

An unexpected twist in a story makes the story very interesting and hard-to-forget. This is the reason we tend to like movies with an unexpected ending or a thriller-book with an unexpected culprit etc. This fundamental nature of human psychology is the selling point for books like Freakonomics. More often than not, these books are indeed very interesting, but beyond a point, once you start expecting every section of the book to have an unexpected outcome, the degree of unexpected-ness and the freshness of the idea wear out.

I gather, from an introduction to one such book, that it should not be surprising that Doctors are involved in suicide bombing missions. The problem with such a high-impact statement is that, it can easily be misinterpreted to mean that Doctors are likely to be involved in suicide missions. That is, in fact, not what it means. It simply means that given an act of terrorism has been committed, it is highly likely that an educated individual is the perpetrator of the heinous act. The difference is subtle and is difficult to grasp and perceive when you're reading such books' excerpts perfunctorily. And the beauty of human psychology is, it is such perfunctory reading that piques your interest in such books. But still, the fact that acts of terror are often committed by highly educated individuals is by itself interesting, and I'm sure I'll read What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism at the first chance I get. So, you can rest assured that your Doctor is (most likely) not conspiring with the terrorist-warlords of the world.

UPDATE (July 13, 2007): An Indian Doctor is charged in UK terror attack.