Trivia Thread!

[Ent]

@Olorgando -
Would reading The Hobbit in German be a good exposure to (fairly) current German do we think?
I can certainly grab one of those easily enough. And 'familiarity' may be a help along the way as well.

Maybe I should just get some German language training books/programs.

 

[Olorgando]

@Olorgando -
Would reading The Hobbit in German be a good exposure to (fairly) current German do we think?
I can certainly grab one of those easily enough. And 'familiarity' may be a help along the way as well.

Maybe I should just get some German language training books/programs.

Reading TH would give you a reasonable idea of current German - well, 20th-century German. What damage has been done to the language since then ...

I realized that I'd never read TH in the German translation, which I'm doing now (they're just about to meet the three trolls). This being the 1997 translation by Wolfgang Krege, embedded in the 2012 translation of Douglas A. Anderson's 2002 second edition of "The Annotated Hobbit".
The edition read by the then 15-year-old in the newspaper article I mentioned above would be the 1957 edition by Walter Scherf, based either on the 1937 first edition or the 1951 second. As Scherf revised his writings in 1971, this was probably due to the 1966 English third edition. Krege's 1997 edition adjusts the story to fit better with the 1969/1970 first German edition of LotR, translated by Margaret Carroux.

 

[Ent]

Goodness @Olorgando. What a mouthful..! 😃

I was looking at the Kindle Krege edition available... says '1st Edition 2010."

Part of it says "This new translation by Tolkien expert Wolfgang Krege is based - in contrast to the translation published in 1957 - on the last authored version. A German version is now available, as Tolkien himself would approve of."

There are a couple other translations available there as well.

 

[Olorgando]

I was looking at the Kindle Krege edition available... says '1st Edition 2010."
Part of it says "This new translation by Tolkien expert Wolfgang Krege is based - in contrast to the translation published in 1957 - on the last authored version. A German version is now available, as Tolkien himself would approve of."
There are a couple other translations available there as well.

'1st Edition 2010' can only mean 1st Kindle edition.
Krege clearly used the 1966 third edition for his 1997 translation. And his adjusting nomenclature to the 1969/1970 first German edition of LotR translated by Margaret Carroux is significant, as Carroux had direct input from JRRT in her translation. JRRT had been disgusted in various degrees with the first two translation into Dutch (1956/57) and Swedish (1959/60) and had written his "Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings" in 1967. So I would suppose that the 1957 TH translation by Walter Scherf diverged more from (what was to become) canon nomenclature.

All German translations of JRRT's works are published by "Hobbit Presse", an imprint of publisher Klett-Cotta. I know that they continue to print both the Carroux as well as the (revised posthumously) 2000 Krege translations of LotR, so probably both Krege's and Scherf's version (in the 1971 revision) continue to be available.

 

[Ent]

For the sake of my sanity, I'll just assume the Krege Der Hobbit: Oder Hin und zurück will be adequate to the task for now. Hopefully it will be both instructive, and pleasant.

It already reminds me of what I remember about my German class...

Der Hobbit: Oder Hin und zurück
Literal translation: The Hobbit: Or Round Trip
Or we have: The Hobbit: Or Back and Forth
Just doesn't have the same ring as "there and back again.'

I've got a LONG ways to go..! I'm so tempted to add nochmal (again) i.e. Oder Hin und zurück nochmal.

But that just isn't German.

 

[Tyelkormo the Fair]

Don't know how true this is but I just found out that Fisaghores law wasn't actually his and someone from Babylon had came up with it before he had.

 

[Ent]

Fisaghores law

Hmmm. Thanks. Another research project..! 😃

Playing off yours, this IS true... some trivia about another who had 'borrowed stuff' from others. Though where your example may have been unintentional and coincidental, this one isn't.

Charles Darwin's theories weren't his originally either. They were his grandfathers...with whom he spent some time. He just took them, expanded them, and attempted to imperically test them (though ultimately at his death, he was saud to be unhappy, as he'd not verified it, and it remained theory.)

Poor fellow. At one point he even declared the female of the human species was clearly at a lower stage of evolutionary development than the male of the species.
Somehow though, he lived after that statement. Perhaps the most stunning achievement of his career. 🤣

 

[Olorgando]

Charles Darwin's theories weren't his originally either. They were his grandfathers...with whom he spent some time.

Erasmus Darwin had written about Evolution in general terms, as had others. Natural (and later sexual) selection was Charles's stroke of genius that Erasmus had nothing to do with. Yes, Charles saw unanswered questions to his theories. Gregor Mendel had provided some answers during Darwin's lifetime, unknown to Darwin. Ronald Fisher and others incorporated Mendelian genetics into the modern evolutionary synthesis as of the early 1930's, and the field has never looked back.

 

[Ent]

and the field has never looked back.

True.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

True.

The same thing happened with the discovery of a spherical earth.

Except for the Flat Earth Society, of course.

 

[Ent]

Except for the Flat Earth Society, of course.

True.

 

[Berzelmayr]

Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers were inspired to write the Boomtown Rats song "I Don't Like Mondays" after a school shooting happened in January 1979:

Cleveland Elementary School shooting (San Diego) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Ent]

The Monarch Butterfly is listed as endangered as of July, 2022, its population being reduced by some 90%.

The typical Monarch Butterfly lives 2-6 weeks... (avg 5 it seems) EXCEPT for the very last generation born at the end of the summer season.

This last generation lives 8-9 months, and actually migrates south to their breeding grounds.
Yes, on the East Coast those migrating from Canada into Mexico travel some 3,000 miles in their journey. The rest of them on the East Coast travel a shorter distance, obviously.

On the West Coast, the Monarchs migrate to spots on the coast of California, a shorter migration distance.

There appears to be some 'interchange' between the East Coast and West Coast Monarchs...due to being moved about by weather patterns, etc. Yet it appears they automatically adopt and follow the migratory pattern of the Monarchs in the area in which they find themselves without a problem.

There is much more to the Monarch Butterfly. A most interesting creature.

 

[Eljorahir]

Here's a bit of trivia left out of the history books.

Future TTF member, young Eljorahir, had brushes with two U.S. presidents.

He and his fellow marching band members were called upon to play 'Hail to the Chief' for President Carter on October 30, 1980 at a shopping mall. It was a spur-of-the-moment campaign stop for President Carter shortly before election day. Our musical vibes, however, must not have worked; a few days later President Carter would lose the election in a landslide to Ronald Reagan.

During his political campaign (1988 I think) not-yet-president George H.W. Bush gave a speech at the manufacturing plant where Eljorahir worked. He and the future commander-in-chief even had a weighty political discussion while shaking hands that went something like this:

Me: How's it going?
Candidate Bush: Not too bad.

 

[Tyelkormo the Fair]

The Monarch Butterfly is listed as endangered as of July, 2022, its population being reduced by some 90%.

The typical Monarch Butterfly lives 2-6 weeks... (avg 5 it seems) EXCEPT for the very last generation born at the end of the summer season.

This last generation lives 8-9 months, and actually migrates south to their breeding grounds.
Yes, on the East Coast those migrating from Canada into Mexico travel some 3,000 miles in their journey. The rest of them on the East Coast travel a shorter distance, obviously.

On the West Coast, the Monarchs migrate to spots on the coast of California, a shorter migration distance.

There appears to be some 'interchange' between the East Coast and West Coast Monarchs...due to being moved about by weather patterns, etc. Yet it appears they automatically adopt and follow the migratory pattern of the Monarchs in the area in which they find themselves without a problem.

There is much more to the Monarch Butterfly. A most interesting creature.

I remember a few years ago,there were millions of them in our town. Didn't found out why there were so many of them all of a sudden because I have never seen any of them before...

 

[Ent]

millions of them in our town.

Yes, a little while ago this was very possible. Millions migrated on the West Coast to California alone.... no telling how many millions migrated on the East Coast, but from the maps., likely a much larger number.

Yet their total population in July 2022 was estimated at just 250,000, and though that number was actually just a little higher than the 2021 estimate, it was a small enough increase, and represented elimination of a potential 'anomaly' of the counts from 2021, to incite action to be taken in 2022 moving them from 'dwindling' to 'endangered'.

Now... if we ever want to see a situation where there may be a real reason to complain, we can always consider the Monarch Butterfly.
All those generations lasting only an average of 5 weeks would seem to have some reason to complain about only that last generation getting to live so much longer.

(Of course, the real question for Ent is, how in the world does "Nature, biology and genetics" KNOW 'this is the last generation this year, so make 'em different.' Plus, how much is 'climate change' a factor in their decline.)

Anyway, this fascinates the Ent a bitsy.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

I don't have a picture but when I was young and in grade school, Kurt Angle had just won his gold medal (with a broken freakin neck!). He was from the Pittsburgh area and came to my school (still with hair) to give a talk about working hard or something, I don't remember. I got a signed picture of him though, it's at my mom's somewhere.

 

[LaurelinBearsFruit]

As someone who works in the environmental field, especially in native habitat restoration, climate change may be a factor, but the biggest two-fold factor is the destruction of native habitats along their migration routes, coupled with the use of selective herbicides in agricultural areas that have all but eliminated wild milkweed plants from sprouting up throughout and on the margins of fields.

Monarch butterflies actually require plants in the milkweed genus to provide sustenance to monarch caterpillars. It is the only plant family that they will lay their eggs on and they often require multiple species present in a single area to be attracted to the site. There is a really big push in the last few years to take matters into our own hands so to speak and so many municipalities and private citizens are plant pollinator habitats on their properties.

At my workplace alone (I am the environmental analyst at a wastewater treatment plant) we have converted over 10 acres of our facility to native habitat and I have seen the affects firsthand. One year I did a monthlong study and found over 200 individual monarch eggs across our sites (there were probably a lot more than that even). So the answer is... plant pollinator habitats yall!

 

[Ent]

Monarch butterflies actually require plants in the milkweed genus to provide sustenance to monarch caterpillars. It is the only plant family that they will lay their eggs on and they often require multiple species present in a single area to be attracted to the site.

Thanks for the addition. I'd read of their dependence on the Milkweeds.... but was unaware of the extent of destruction of their essential habitat.
Just goes to show again the biggest threat to our planet and its life is man himself...in virtually every way.
And still we wonder why, every time we destroy things mindlessly in our arrogant selfishness and gluttony, problems result.
How about... 'absolutely no brains and less ability to think."

The good news.. soon we will have destroyed things beyond their ability to recover as long as we remain. Then we'll get our just reward, and things can improve again.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

The closest living relatives of rhinos are tapirs, horses, and zebras. These animals are known as perissodactyls or odd-toed ungulates. Even toed-ungulates are called artiodactyls and include cattle, deer, antelopes, goats, sheep, pigs, camels and llamas. Rhinos have three toes on each foot so, in a way, their tracks resemble the Ace of Clubs.