Isegoria

A map of Middle Earth, annotated by JRR Tolkien himself, has been acquired by the Bodleian library in Oxford. It was found in illustrator Pauline Baynes’ copy of The Lord of the Rings:

The annotations, in green ink and pencil, demonstrate how real his creation was in Tolkien’s mind: “Hobbiton is assumed to be approx at latitude of Oxford,” he wrote.

The geographical pointers were intended to give Pauline Baynes, the artist who was creating an illustrated map of his world, guidelines about the climate of key sites in the story. “Minas Tirith is about latitude of Ravenna (but is 900 miles east of Hobbiton more near Belgrade). Bottom of the map (1,400 miles) is about latitude of Jerusalem,” he advised.

“‘Elephants appear in the great battle outside Minas Tirith (as they did in Italy under Pyrrhus) but they would be in place in the blank squares of Harad – also camels.”

Baynes was the only illustrator Tolkien approved, and he also introduced her to his Oxford friend CS Lewis, which led to her illustrating all of his Narnia books.

Her poster map, published in 1970, was bordered with the first illustrations of Tolkien’s characters, but was based on the fold-out map in the first volumes of the 1954 Ring trilogy, which had been drawn by Tolkien’s son, Christopher, to his father’s meticulous instructions.

Baynes tore the map out of her own copy and took it to Tolkien, who covered it with notes, including many extra place names that do not appear in the book. Since most were in his own invented Elvish language – spoken fluently by the many devoted fans – he helpfully translated some: “Eryn Vorn [= Black Forest] a forest region of dark [pine?] trees.”

He dictated the colours of the ships and the emblems on their sails: “Elven-ships small, white or grey … Numenorean (Gondor) Ships Black and Silver … Corsairs had red sails with black star or eye.”

Seb Lester is an artist and designer who has fallen in love with calligraphy and now makes videos of his handiwork:

Kermit and Cookie Monster and the Mystery Box goes back to Sesame Street episode 3546, from the 20th season (1988–1989):

The 21st was Henson’s last.

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur had the body of a man but the head of a bull. The name Minotaur simply means Minos’s Bull, because the beast lived in the labyrinth of King Minos of Crete — but the beast had a proper name:

In Crete, the Minotaur was known by its proper name, Asterion, a name shared with Minos’ foster-father.

I don’t remember this part of the story from any of the mythology books I got out of the school library:

After he ascended the throne of the island of Crete, Minos competed with his brothers to rule. Minos prayed to Poseidon, the sea god, to send him a snow-white bull, as a sign of support (the Cretan Bull). He was to kill the bull to show honor to the deity, but decided to keep it instead because of its beauty. He thought Poseidon would not care if he kept the white bull and sacrificed one of his own. To punish Minos, Poseidon made Pasiphaë, Minos’s wife, fall deeply in love with the bull. Pasiphaë had craftsman Daedalus make a hollow wooden cow, and climbed inside it in order to mate with the white bull. The offspring was the monstrous Minotaur. Pasiphaë nursed him, but he grew and became ferocious, being the unnatural offspring of a woman and a beast; he had no natural source of nourishment and thus devoured humans for sustenance. Minos, after getting advice from the oracle at Delphi, had Daedalus construct a gigantic labyrinth to hold the Minotaur. Its location was near Minos’s palace in Knossos.

“I deserve this today.” The LEGO Batman trailer:

“You like axe-wielding heroes?” our Slovenian guest asked. Clearly a rhetorical question. From his neck of the woods comes Martin Krpan the Strong of the Peak:

A Slovenian subject of the Habsburg Empire and one of the strongest men in it, Martin Krpan hails from a fictional village in Inner Carniola. A smuggler by profession, he makes a living by illegally transporting English salt. With the help of his loyal, diminutive mare (a female horse), he carries the salt from the Adriatic Sea coast to the Slovenian Lands and elsewhere in Inner Austria. On one of his travels, Krpan meets the imperial carriage on a snowbound road, and makes way for it by picking up his laden horse and moving it aside. His extraordinary strength is noted by Emperor John. Several years later, the Emperor summons Krpan to Vienna in order to fight as the Empire’s last hope against Brdaus, a brutal warrior who has set up camp outside the imperial capital and challenged all comers, and has already slain most of the city’s knights, including the Crown Prince. Reluctantly, Krpan accepts the challenge, scandalizing the court with his uncouthness, honesty and homespun manner, before defeating the brute in a duel by using both his strength and his ingenuity. In gratitude, the Emperor gives him a special permit to legally traffic in English salt, as well as a pouch of gold pieces.

I had no idea that the Internet Archive included a Pulp Magazine Archive, until Boing Boing noted that the full run of If Magazine had been uploaded:

Included in the collection are all of the issues edited by Frederik Pohl from 1966-68, three years that netted him three consecutive Best Editor Hugo awards. If‘s Pohl run included significant stories by Larry Niven, Harlan Ellison, Samuel Delany, Alexei Panshin and Gene Wolfe; it was the serialized home of such Heinlein novels as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, as well as Laumer’s Retief stories and Saberhagen’s Berserker stories.

I find it hard to believe that Cookie Monster appeared on The Colbert Report almost eight years ago:

Stephen Colbert opened a recent episode of The Late Show with A Short Film By Spike Jonze: