Which came first, muggles or magical beings, squibs or Muggle-borns. and why are there so few  magical beings? This is just a matter of curiosity.
What is a wizard that makes them non-Muggle? Or, more directly, what ancestry does the witch/wizard gene follow? Is there a patriarchal wizard (or matriarchal witch) that Muggles have no part in? Elves perhaps? Stop reading here.  Purpose of the Question/History/Don't Read There seem to be solid consequences associated with being Muggle, or Muggle-related. A dominant theme in the novels is discrimination against the non-gifted race, but, when read into, the wizard bloodline doesn't appear all that well defined. JKR indicates that wizard-ness is genetic, or inherited:  &quot;Muggle-borns will have a witch or wizard somewhere on their family tree, in some cases many, many generations back. The gene resurfaces in some unexpected places.&quot;  By the above, it stands that a family that produces a squib (non-magical born of magical parents) must be a half-blooded family in some way, since half-blooded only requires one non-magical ancestor. Of course, we are dealing in magic genetics. Any other form of genetics would make this inherited, seemingly recessive trait (or squibs couldn't exist), never appear at all. Unless they were XMen. If it is so important, what does the wizard-bloodline follow? Other Mythos In other literature a wizard can be nearly anything, but magical powers are typically inherited as well as learned. Merlin of the Arthurian Legend (also mentioned in HP) is Cambian, meaning he is born of demonic intervention; this explains his source of enchantment. Gandalf of Middle Earth is a Maiar, as are all Wizards of Middle Earth. Wizards in Harry Potter seem to follow a bloodline, and it has been mentioned (in the question Gabe linked) that genetics have a heavy play in it, meaning that squibs and parents of Muggle-born wizards should have identical genetics. This bloodline must come from somewhere. Magical Creatures In Harry Potter it is common for magical creatures to &quot;mingle&quot; with humans, these beings are typically somewhat magical. Elves have been described to have very strong magic, but are for some unreasonable reason subservient to humans. I may be mistaken, but believe it was hinted that elves and the wizarding lineage had intersected at one time. Maybe I'm imagining this. Genocidal Allusions Voldemort hates muggles, and half-bloods, and whatever else is non-wizard. The presence of this theme, suggests that this wizardly bloodline must be at least defined if the main antagonist is so obsessed with keeping that mysterious bloodline pure. Since Slytherin himself was said to be a supremacist (circa a really long time ago) it suggests that this bloodline should have existed long before he was around, especially if he founded a school with people he was not related to, but were also magical.
Change folder permissions and ownership I need Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) in order to work with some legacy software and I want to buy new Mac Mini computer.  Is it possible to install this OS on a new Mac Mini or it's not compatible with it?  If so, what is the latest model of Mac Mini that I can use in this scenario? Can I force an iPhone user to upgrade an application? I am using my school's computers and would like to use zsh instead of bash. I'd like to make it the default shell, but I cannot run a command such as $ chsh -s $(which zsh) because I don't have admin privileges.   Is there a way I can put something in my .bashrc or something that automatically calls zsh when it opens as a workaround?   To clarify, zsh is already installed. How to assign result of sed to variable Below is a complete copy of a demo I'm using to to figure out to get the sed command to get rid of the spaces in a persons name, and compress it down to not have spaces.  Once this is done, I want to assign it to the variable comp then I can re-use it later on in the script. Here I am just trying to echo it to the stdout so I can see it worked.  If I run the script and enter my name as Ronald McDonald the result I get returned is RonaldMcDonald} with that curly brace on the end of his name, or whatever I type in.  How do I get it to work, so that the result doesn't append the } to the back of the assigned text.  #!/bin/bash  function readName {     echo "Enter your full name:"     read fullName     clear }    # end readName  function cmprsName {     comp={ echo "$fullName" } | sed 's/ //g' }    # end cmprsName  function sayItNow {     echo $comp }    # end sayItNow  function allTogether {     readName     cmprsName     sayItNow }    #end allTogether  case $1 in         -h | --help )           allTogether                                 exit                                 ;;         * )                     echo "$0 -h"                                 exit 1 esac Government investigating home library of missing inventor This is a short story from the 50s or 60s.  A scientist or inventor has invented either teleportation or a space drive and has disappeared - leaving no documentation or clues except his extensive home library.  The government gathers all types of scientists to attempt to duplicate his research.  Several months later, as they are about to launch the first space drive space ship, the officer in charge reveals that there was no 'disappeared inventor'.  The greatest step toward a new impossible concept is knowing that it has already been done. How can I revert a config file back to the originally installed version after I have edited it? I want to revert a file in /etc/ back to its originally-installed form. I have edited the file since it was installed. How can I revert this config file? Apt is smart enough not to overwrite edited config files, so how do I tell it that I want it to do so?  For argument's sake, let's say that I want to revert the file /etc/foo.conf from the package foo. How to interpret regression coefficients in logistic regression? How would you evaluate $\liminf\limits_{n\to\infty} \ n \,|\mathopen{}\sin n|$ How would you evaluate the limit inferior of the sequence $n\,|\mathopen{}\sin n|$? That is, $$\liminf\limits_{n\to\infty} \ n \,|\mathopen{}\sin n|$$    Edit. Let $\mu$ be the irrationality measure of $\pi$. Since $\mu$ is not known, I will split the question:   Assuming $\mu &gt; 2$, what is $\liminf\limits_{n\to\infty} \ n\,|\mathopen{}\sin n|$? Assuming $\mu = 2$, what is $\liminf\limits_{n\to\infty} \ n\,|\mathopen{}\sin n|$?     I kind of like its graph... I am asking this question from an educational/hacking point of view, (I wouldn't really want to code like this).  Is it possible to implement a while loop only using C preprocessor directives. I understand that macros cannot be expanded recursively, so how would this be accomplished? List of functions not integrable in elementary terms When teaching integration to beginning calculus students I always tell them that some integrals are "impossible" (with a bit of expansion on what that actually means).  However I must admit that the examples I give mostly come from "folklore" or guesswork.  Can anyone point me to a list (not a complete list of course!) of fairly simple elementary functions whose antiderivatives are not elementary?  I'm thinking of things like $\exp(x^2)$ which is the standard example, $\sin(\exp(-x))$ perhaps, things like this, not hugely complicated formulae. threeparttablex table notes for tabu tabulars with less than \textwidth What are the criteria for posts to be included in "Top network posts" on new profile page? From the name of it, certainly it looks for posts with the highest scores. However, recently I found that some of the posts are not listed. Example: My  (not sure if it's that good, just because hot network question) was included in some point, but then it's not listed on . I guess it's because the question was closed, e.g as a dupe? (I don't have any hidden communities on the settings)    However, it's listed normally on .    Also, what other criteria that makes the posts to be included/excluded in &quot;Top network posts&quot;? How to evaluate $\int_0^{2\pi} \frac{d\theta}{A+B\cos\theta}$? I'm having a trouble with this integral expression:  $$\int_0^{2\pi} \frac{d\theta}{A+B \cos\theta}$$  I've done this substitution: $t= \tan(\theta/2)$  and get: $\displaystyle \cos\theta= \frac{1-t^2}{1+t^2}$ and $\displaystyle d\theta=\frac{2}{1+t^2}dt$ where $\displaystyle \cos^2\theta/2=\frac{1}{1+t^2}$  then the integral becomes:  $$\int\frac{2 \, dt}{(A-B)t^2+(A+B)}= \sqrt\frac{A+B}{A-B} \arctan \left(\left(\sqrt\frac{A+B}{A-B} \right) t\right)$$   However, I'm not sure about the new limits since $\tan$ has period $\pi$ so what I have to do at this point to decide the new limits? And of course if you find some mistake in what I've done before, please let me know! Unable to format internal drive as APFS on 2018 MacBook Pro Random spawn location despite sleeping in a bed I am trying to make Minecraft harder, and one of the ways I wish to do this is to have a "pseudo-hardcore" mode where dying spawns you in a random location rather than completely locking you out of the world.  I intend to do this by setting the spawn radius to be very high.  However, I also want to make this "bed-proof" - that is, if someone places a bed and sleeps in it, I want the player to still be spawned in a random location, regardless of their personal spawn point.  How do I do this? Command blocks are fine, but data packs are not preferred. Why does N[1.000 01, 10] return 1.00001, but N[1.000 001, 10] returns only 1.? Accepted answer appearing below top voted On , sorted by votes, the accepted answer is #3 in order of votes.  It appears as number 3 in the list as well. Is this new behavior intended? What's an idiom for doing something in an unnecessarily complicated way? For an example, I'll quote C.S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:     One day the cat got into the dairy and twenty of them were at work moving all the milk out; no one thought of moving the cat.   Is there an idiom for this type of situation? how to make a 360 video (turntable) of an Object using a python script