Category Archives: Reading

From digitalized ship records.. See here the advantage of the dutch, british and spanish ship administration.

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LOTR, now finally written from the other side.

“It’s been said that history is written by the winners but Laura Miller writes in Salon about a counterexample as she reviews a new version of Lord of the Rings. The Last Ring-bearer was published to acclaim in Russia by Kirill Yeskov, a paleontologist whose job is reconstructing long-extinct organisms and their way of life. Yeskov performs essentially the same feat in his book. The Last Ring-bearer is set during and after the end of the War of the Ring and told from the perspective of the losers. In Yeskov’s retelling, available in translation as a free download, the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor and its southern allies because science ‘destroys the harmony of the world and dries up the souls of men’ and Aragorn is depicted by Yeskov as a ruthless Machiavellian schemer who is ultimately the puppet of his wife, the elf Arwen. Sauron’s citadel Barad-dur is, by contrast, described as ‘that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic.’”

See also: The Children of Hurin [Tolkien last LOTR tale from 1918, finished]

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UK, England, Brittish Empire explained… still quite complicated.

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De Fransen kopieerden de manier waarop prins Kurakin Borisovich Alexander, de Russische ambassadeur in Frankrijk van 1808 tot 1812, zijn maaltijd liet serveren. Dat houdt in dat de gasten aan tafel zitten, dat er meerdere op elkaar afgestemde gangen zijn en dat iedereen gelijke porties krijgt geserveerd. Bestek, borden en glazen hebben een vaste plaats en er zijn welomschreven regels voor het bedienend personeel. [more]

Not verbazend is er wel discussie over. Franse tafelmanieren zijn 1 van de 13 cultuur dingetjes die we moeten beschermen.

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