It's fairly well known that Tolkien studied Norse peoples and based some his languages (Dwarvish in particular) on them. Here is a neat example of a runestone found when a church in Sweden was torn down. The inscription reads:

Torgärd erected this stone after Assur, her mother's brother. He met his end in the East in Greece.
The good farmer ( Read more... )

Okay, so I got a phone. I got this phone, to be precise (except in red)

( Click to see my snazzy phone )

http://media-convert.com/

I woke up this morning with an odd sensation in an odd part of my head, so I did some research and I think I'm experiencing an idiopathic stabbing headache. It's not severe; more like an annoying distraction as I'm trying to write my class blog post for the day. I took some ibuprofen; hopefully it'll be gone soon. I had to look up the parts of ( Read more... )

Check this out--a valley that was flooded to make a reservoir contained an old town. Only one building was left standing, and this tech diver who explores man-made lakes wanted to find it. Turns out a lady who grew up in the house wanted to find it too. A nice story with some cool underwater shots. 300 feet is some serious tech diving, too ( Read more... )

omg omg omg activate cloaking shields

( Surprise! )

Well, I've been thinking on and off about what to write in this little post, and what I keep coming back to is religion. Religion and dirt. Dirt, Dee says, is what makes the show enjoyable for her. The fact that people are grimy and filthy and soaking wet for whole episodes at a time, and that you can see the dirt accumulate, adds more realism ( Read more... )

WE HAVE A HUMMINGBIRD!

I think that it was a female ruby-throated hummingbird, but I'm not 100% sure b/c the sunlight was not on the feeder and I couldn't tell the coloring for sure. The other kind in Iowa is the rufous hummingbird, and it could have been the female from that species, but again, I can't be sure.


( Read more... )

Brilliance.