Currently, I’m rereading The Lord of the Rings , which I hadn’t read since I was a kid. (I’m currently wondering whether I really finished it back then, because I don’t remember anything from the second half of The Two Towers on very well at all.) Anyway, what surprised me is that these are really great books. I think my opinion of them had been diminished by all the other fantasy dreck I’ve read since then. Anyway, as I’ve read the books, I’ve of course become obsessed with all things Tolkein … I even bought an atlas of Middle Earth. I’ve also been wondering how Tolkein’s world view shaped the overall mood of the novels. Andrew O’Hehir’s essay briefly discusses Tolkein’s upbringing and life, and reading it, my suspicions are confirmed.
I love it when things happen to Steve Gibson, because he always documents them copiously, and then generally writes some software that addresses the problem. Because he’s an old school hacker, he writes the software in assembly language. Anyway, he was recently the victim of a distributed denial of service attack, and has written up the incident in detail.
Enjoy it while it lasts: Tomalak’s Realm is going to cease publication after this week. I just wanted to post a little note saying that I really appreciate the hard work that Lawrence Lee has done in culling all the stories that he does from the Web. If you don’t think it’s a lot of work, take a look at the cross referencing he does. I’ve always wondered whether he has an amazing memory or he is just extremely meticulous.
A reader sent me more information on the $43 million we gave to Afghanistan. According to this ABC News article, the $43 million was separate from some unmentioned amount of drug money we’ve provided to Afghanistan, and was earmarked for drought relief. There’s also a press release from the Feminist Majority Foundation praising the government for the aid dollars provided to Afghanistan. This leaves unanswered the question of how much money we’re giving Afghanistan to fight their version of the drug war.
Coming soon to a cybercafe near you: offline PKing.