steorra

Why is the Pacific Ocean fuller of islands than the Atlantic and Indian Oceans?

(Or am I wrong that it is? It sure seems to be, though, and I don't think it's just an illusion created by the Pacific being larger and therefore having more total islands.)

I have long been under the impression that Ents didn't eat, they just drank ent-draughts.

But when Treebeard tells of the separation between the Ents and the Entwives, he mentions Ents eating fallen fruit:

the Ents loved the great trees, and the wild woods, and the slopes of the high hills; and they drank of the mountain-streams, and ate only such fruit as the trees let fall in their path; and they learned of the Elves and spoke with the Trees. (The Two Towers, Book III, chapter 4: "Treebeard")

Clearly Ents' main source of nutrition was ent-draughts, not fruit. But they did eat fruit sometimes!

Side note, some people online seem to think that photosynthesis was a major source of nutrition for Ents. I don't see any textual justification for this. It's conceivable that Ents with green leaflike hair (like Leaflock ("Covered with leafy hair he is") and maybe Quickbeam ("his hair was grey-green") could do some photosynthesis, but there's no actual mention of them getting sustenance from sunlight. Also it doesn't seem like all Ents had such hair, and even for those that did, it doesn't seem like enough that it could be a major source of nutrition.

"flood waters from rapid snowmelt reached a level of 7.85 meters on the Mission gauge – a foot higher that the 1948 flood."

Classic Canadian unit-mixing.

I'm trying to list all the characters in The Lord of the Rings who lived during the First Age, as far as we know or have reason to believe.

Maiar

• Gandalf
• Saruman
• Radagast
• Sauron
• The Balrog of Moria / Durin's Bane

Elves

• Galadriel
• Celeborn
• Glorfindel
• Círdan

(Probably some of the other Elves too, but I haven't found any others for whom it's unambiguous. Likely but not definitely Thranduil.)

Half-elves

• Elrond

Ents and trees

• Fangorn/Treebeard
• Old Man Willow (probably)

(Presumably some of the Ents at Entmoot, but not Quickbeam/Bregalad - the Entwives disappeared around the end of the Second Age, and Quickbeam is one of the younger Ents, so he was probably born (are Ents born?) during the Second Age. Fladrif/Skinbark and Finglas/Leaflock are definitely that old but they don't actually appear in the story.)

Unclassified

• Tom Bombadil
• Shelob

I'm probably missing some. Any suggestions?

I have been working my way towards making stovetop pizza, and I just made my first thing that I think could be reasonably so described.

My first experiments were with storebought frozen pizza dough, just trying to cook the dough in a frying pan, not trying to actually make pizza. After thawing it, I separated off a reasonable-sized portion and made it flat(ish). I put olive oil in a frying pan, put my circle of dough on that, and drizzled olive oil on top too, put a lid on to keep the heat in so the top would cook better, and cooked it somewhere between low and medium, and turned it over when the top started to look cooked-ish. I did this with various thicknesses of dough and various temperatures and it took varying lengths of time but lots of options worked. I mostly ended up settling on a temperature just below my stove's medium, for about 10 minutes on one side and about 4-5 on the other. A few times I actually rolled the dough out on a floured surface, but more often I just pulled it roughly into a lumpy circle with my hands because that was easier for me.

Part of the motivation for this was in the summer, wanting to make fresh yeast bread without having to run the oven.

At some point I started making my own no-knead pizza dough, a half-recipe of this (using about a third of it per occasion, and saving the rest to cook later).

Earlier this week I tried rolling the dough out, putting cheese on one side, and folding the other half over and sealing up the edges. It almost worked but I put too much cheese in and the seal leaked and it seemed a bit greasy with the combination of all the cheese and the amount of oil I cooked it in. I think the concept is fine and could work (with other fillings than just cheese as well) but the implementation would need some tweaking.

Today I went back to just dough stretched out in my hands, cooked it on one side like normal, flipped it over like normal, and then spread some storebought pizza sauce on it and laid out some cheddar cheese on top, put the lid back on, and cooked until the bottom was done and the cheese was melted. It would probably be better with a more pizza-y cheese, and there's certainly room for more toppings, but the concept worked!

'Here,' said Elrond, turning to Gandalf, 'is Boromir, a man from the South. He arrived in the grey morning, and seeks for counsel. I have bidden him to be present, for here his questions will be answered.'

(The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter 2: "The Council of Elrond")

It's curious to me that Elrond introduces Boromir to the one person present that Boromir surely already knows. Gandalf has visited Gondor multiple times during Boromir's life, and has interacted with his father Denethor and his brother Faramir. Denethor implies that Boromir was less eager to learn from Gandalf than Faramir was:

'Do you wish then,' said Faramir, 'that our places had been exchanged?'

'Yes, I wish that indeed,' said Denethor. 'For Boromir was loyal to me and no wizard's pupil'

The face of Denethor set hard and cold. 'You found Boromir less apt to your hand, did you not?' he said softly.

(Both quotes from The Return of the King, Book V, Chapter 4: "The Siege of Gondor")

It's also notable that Elrond only identifies Boromir as 'a man from the South', not as the son of Lord Denethor. Does Elrond not know yet who Boromir is, and therefore not know that Gandalf would know him? Or does Elrond know perfectly well who Boromir is, and know that Gandalf would know him, but choose to let Boromir reveal that himself to the company at large, as someone online suggested? Boromir must at least have repeated the dream-poem to Elrond, for Elrond to be able to tell Gandalf that 'here his questions will be answered'. But I suppose it's possible that he repeated the dream-poem without telling the whole story of how the dream came to his brother as well as to him and how they consulted their father Denethor.

Side note, Aragorn may have seen Boromir before when Boromir was just a baby - in his guise as Thorongil, Aragorn was in Gondor serving Denethor's father Ecthelion until the year Boromir turned 2. But I wouldn't count that as either of them knowing each other.

I'm reading Endless Forms, by Seirian Sumner. It's about wasps. I'm mostly enjoying it and finding it interesting but have spotted a couple glaring errors that make me worry about errors that I'm not able to spot.

Insect brains are much simpler (a mere 1 million neurones compared to about 86 billion in a human brain) and smaller (around 1 cubic millimetre compared to 1.1-1.2 cubic metres in humans)

Um, no? 1.1-1.2 cubic metres? How big do you think human heads are? I don't even need to look up what the actual volume of a human brain is to know that that is wildly off. How did that make it through the editing process? How did anyone with any sense of size not catch that?

Evolving the societies of genomes, cells and multicellular organisms were some of nature's biggest achievements, and are collectively known as major evolutionary transitions: genes transitioned to become genomes, prokaryotes (single-celled organisms) evolved into eukaryotes (multi-celled organisms), and solitary wasps transitioned to wasp societies.

Come on, surely you're enough of a biologist to know that there are single-celled eukaryotes, so it's not correct to gloss prokaryotes as "single-celled organisms" or eukaryotes as "multi-celled organisms". This one isn't on the level of "anyone who understands the metric system should know that it's wrong", and I can see how once this snuck in it could slip past editing. But still, no!

I just noticed something interesting about the organization of the New Testament.

The Acts of the Apostles ends with Paul having arrived in Rome. The next book is the Letter of the Apostle Paul to the Romans.

I wonder if there's any intention to that organization. It's obviously not chronological - while Paul was in Rome, he didn't need to write to the Romans. But it seems a bit ... thematic?

I had some buttermilk to use up so I tried out this recipe.

The first time I tried it, I forgot the baking powder and reduced the sugar slightly, to 1 cup. It was still way too sweet - I had to drink unsweetened black tea with it to counteract the sweetness. The texture without the baking powder was fine.

The second time I tried it, I reduced the sugar to 1/2 cup. I also forgot the vanilla, which was noticeably less good than including it. And I was going to add baking powder, but I realized mine had gotten old so I used 1/2 teaspoon baking soda. (Also I don't know why the original recipe calls for baking powder rather than baking soda. The buttermilk is perfect for activating baking soda, why would you use baking powder?)

The third time I tried it, I did the same as the second time but with the vanilla.

So here is my version:

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup salted butter, melted
3 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix dry ingredients in a small bowl. Mix eggs, melted butter, buttermilk, and vanilla extract in a large bowl. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix together. Pour into a 9x9 inch baking pan, or a 9 inch pie plate. Bake 45-50 minutes.

My next step would be to try it again without the baking soda and see how I like that. But I have successfully used up most of the buttermilk and don't have enough left for another batch.