Category: Stuff

The Last Ringbearer

I was reminded over the weekend about The Last Ringbearer while talking with my buddy Sam, who likes The Lord Of the Rings but had never heard of TLR.

The tl;dr version is it’s LOTR as told by the losing side.  I enjoyed LTR more than LOTR because it provides more context to the events – the political manoeuvring and intrigue, about-faces, and a far more rational  explanation for why the battles portrayed in LOTR are so important.

The original is in Russian, but the English translation is “non-commerical” (the translator’s words) and is free.  It can be found at http://ymarkov.livejournal.com/270570.html where the translator provides backstory for why TLR exists and why the translation is free.

Fortune

“The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent.”

— quotation from a 1972 Supreme Court ruling, and redacted from a US Supreme Court document by the Ashcroft Justice Department in the name of national security.

Fortune

I take it you already know of tough and bough and cough and dough? Others may stumble, but not you, on hiccough, thorough, laugh and through. Well done! And now you wish, perhaps, to learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word, that looks like beard and sounds like bird. And dead — it’s said like bed not bead — and for goodness’ sake don’t call it deed! Watch out for meat and great and threat (They rhyme with suite and straight and debt)

A moth is not the moth in mother, nor both in bother, broth in brother. And here is not a match for there, nor dear and fear for bear and pear. And then there’s dose and rose and lose — just look them up — and goose and choose, and cork and work and card and ward, and font and front and word and sword, and do and go and thwart and cart — come, come I’ve hardly made a start. A dreadful language? Man alive. I’d mastered it when I was five.