UBN

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to visit a highly-specialized laboratory dedicated to developing advanced tools and devices to support intelligence collection activities*. In the course of the tour, one of the lab workers showed us a special collection of things they'd developed that didn't quite come out the way they'd hoped, but were still nifty enough to keep and admire. They had a designation for such things: "UBN" ... meaning, "useless, but neat."

Speaking of UBN**, someone with a great deal of time on his (or her) hands has created this marvelous spinoff of the periodic table of the elements which relates all the characters of The Lord of the Rings. Click it to enlarge, or go and see the original here. You can see a neat collection of other pop culture periodic tables in this article by Miss Cellania at Mental Floss.

The second part of the film version of The Hobbit is coming in December. I'll be there.

Have a good day. Watch out for Orcs, particularly in the vicinity of the House of Representatives. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* I'd tell you more about it, but I'd have to kill you.

** No, I'm not talking about Congress. That would just be "U."