Just found again, by chance, something that crossed my mind the other day. The author of The Bible Code responded thus in 1997 to the obvious criticism that you can find anything if you massage random data enough: “When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I’ll believe them.” So, for those who haven’t seen it already, or misplaced the bookmark: Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick.

John J. Miller alerts us at The Corner that John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born eleventy-one years ago today.

Which reminds me of yet another of my oddball notions. I don’t like the word eleventy-first (or even twenty-first), because the root of first has nothing to do with ‘one’ let alone ‘one more’: it is related to foremost. Why don’t we say twenty-oneth or twenty-next?

Better late than never– Garrett Moritz responds (June 19) to Elvish propaganda:

Elves want to save the world because it is a world that benefits them, and they’ve constructed a useful typology of good and evil which serves their ends. Of course the elves don’t want change, safe in beautiful country-club-esque forest homes like Rivendell while everyone else scrapes by in the dirty, muck-a-day world of Middle Earth. When it comes down to it, the one thing the Elves really do seem to care about is keeping everyone else out of their beautiful forests.

“Jury Service” is an amusing transhuman story by Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow.

Anyway, I saw The Two Towers yesterday, and I must say some puzzling liberties were taken with the plot.

The transformation of thirty Rangers (and Arwen’s brothers) riding from Rivendell into hundreds of anonymous Elf archers walking out of nowhere-in-particular weakens the setup of Aragorn’s later activities, and conflicts with Elrond’s (inserted) words about departure. And would Elves move in unison, like human infantry on parade? I think not! – particularly when the film’s designers made a point of avoiding straight lines in Elvish artifacts.

Why does Faramir take Frodo to Osgiliath? To avoid a talking-heads scene?

Did Gríma really need to have black hair? He is of the Eotheod even though a traitor. Maybe he dyed it.

Straight Dope Message Board – If LotR Had Been Written By Someone Else!? (ten pages so far; I’ve only looked at the first and last, but those are quite good on the whole)

Update: The entries have been more neatly collected elsewhere.

Ever wonder about the economy of Middle-Earth? Like: What do Rangers eat, where do their children sleep, and how do they pay for their beer at the Prancing Pony? What do the goblins of the Misty Mountains eat between dwarves? Why has Eriador – which ought to be hospitable to nomadic shepherds if nothing else – been mostly empty for a thousand years despite being defended by the Rangers?