The Science and Technology Lady: LOTR

Friday, May 7, 2010

Playlist Middle Earth: Rock On With Your Bad Elf!

For those of you who haven't followed my blog, I am not only the Science and Technology Lady; I am also the co-advisor for the club Middle Earth at my school, which celebrates "all things Lord of the Rings". This week, we listened to music inspired by the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy that I compiled in a most-excellent YouTube playlist. I found most of the titles in a Wikipedia entry that included the popular culture influences of the work.

There's something for most (not all) people here from Led Zeppelin's "Misty Mountain Hop" and Black Sabbath's "The Wizard" to the more tame Enya "May it Be" (in Elvish/English with subtitles) and operatic compositions from the Tolkein Ensemble.

Oh, there's also a little clip of Liv Tyler at a press conference, speaking Elvish.

Enjoy!

Monday, February 22, 2010

One Club to Rule Them All--Middle Earth

This post has very little to do with science, and just a little more with technology. However, I really wanted to share about my "club". Like many middle or high schools, my school has "activity" or "club days" every few weeks. The intent of this is to foster non-academic relationships student-student and student-teacher.

Over the last few years, for scheduling reasons, "club days" as they are called in my school have felt burdensome. More work for me, and less fun for the kids.

NOT ANYMORE!

A genius faculty member who happens to be a friend of mine started a club called "Middle Earth: One Club to Rule Them All". It revolves around most things Tolkien, and all things Lord of the Rings.

Today, our activity was Discovering our Lord of the Rings Names. Mine, since I am trying to embrace my inner orc is "Ufshash, the Devastator". My students (in and out of class) may call me Ufshash, or Mrs. Devastator as they wish. To find your LOTR name, use these name generators:

http://www.barrowdowns.com/middleearthname.php--here you can find what you were according to the Red Book of Westmarch, as well as Elvish, Hobbit, Dwarvish, Orkish and Adunaic names.
http://www.myprecious.us/name_generator.php--here you can find Wizard, Dwarvish, Elvish and Human names for yourself. The human names are great! Mine is Melian, Queen of Doriath.