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Today? That one's been around forever.

Indeed, I am sure that many, many posts of many self-admittedly brilliant minds with exactly the same observation are sitting in thirty-year-old alt.sex.binaries.lotr.eagles.plothole usenet archives, each one basking brightly in the author's originality, wit, and critical thinking skills.

Was sorry to see point hat go.

http://www.ealasaid.com/misc/v...

Are you one of those gamers who wanted Fallout 3 to be turn based, isometric and 2D....in 2008?

No, I wanted it turn based, isometric, 2D and released in 1999. Why would I insist on a nine year delay?

it may not have been developed by Black Isle, but it's still a Fallout game and claiming otherwise is just being curmudgeonly.

Uh huh. And is it also just being curmudgeonly to make a distinction between the original Star Trek series and randomly chosen results from a Google search for Star Trek Slash? Or to carry on stubbornly believing that the Very Secret Diaries are not actually part of the Lord of the Rings? Or that the random scribblings that I did in crayon last weekend are not really Sherlock Holmes stories which can stand up with the best of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work?

Fallout 3 may have been inspired by Fallout and Fallout 2, but with none of the original writers or developers involved its branding with the 'Fallout' name is nothing more than a marketing gimmick.

Same for me. Citing encyclopedias is for high school freshmen who don't know any better. Adults should be learning to do research from primary sources and in-depth secondary sources.

There are a variety of reasons for this, but the most important (in my mind) is that the encyclopedia is meant to be a shallow repository of general knowledge. That's not to say it's bad or potentially inaccurate, it's just a crappy support for a scholarly argument. If I have to write a 2000-word paper on an historical figure, wouldn't I be better informed by reading a 300-page book instead of a 500-word encyclopedia entry?

Furthermore, they potentially have political omissions which, if you knew about them, could sway your argument one way or the other. This is especially true of history. After all, how many editors would quietly strike out things like homosexual relationships in historical figures? How many would print this poem from the 1600s, which wouldn't be read on television without bleeps, to give you an idea of just how vulgar the Earl of Rochester was? I bet most people don't even know those words were in use 400 years ago.

Just because Wikipedia is often more in-depth or more neutral than other encyclopedias does not elevate it to the status of a good primary or secondary source. And like it or not, Wikipedia's greatness will always be balanced against the fact that the person editing it could be a lunatic fringe scholar, a historical revisionist, someone will a reality-distorting mental illness, or just a well-meaning person who's misinformed. Call it an ad hominem attack if you will, but there's so much information out there - and so much of it which you cannot possibly verify in the time you have - sometimes looking at someone's sources and making sure there are no intellectual troublemakers/quacks on there and a few people you like are is the most efficacious way to see if something is worth reading and citing.

Well, OK, so the LOTR characters predate blogs per se, but this is still pretty funny.

Too bad they didn't leave behind any sort of record

As reasoned by the Patrician of Ankh Morpork, "if you were going to have crime, it at least should be organized crime." ;)

Truly. Just read his diary.

They really tended to detract from those "tender" hobbit scenes! ;-D

R

has to be the Very Secret Diaries of the Fellowship of the Ring. I haven't laughed so hard in ages, definatly worth a read.