Saturday, December 27, 2014

Middle Eart on SFS - Fail!

Source.

And I cite.
However, I much prefer Bilbo Baggins’ approach to dealing with trolls. Instead of ignoring them, trick them into talking so much that sunlight, the best disinfectant, gets them into trouble.
Agree in principle - but Bilbo had nothing to do with it!
The correct citation is,
“Dawn take you all, and be stone to you!” said a voice that sounded like William’s. But it wasn’t...
“Excellent!” said Gandalf, as he stepped from behind a tree, and helped Bilbo to climb down out of a thorn-bush. Then Bilbo understood. It was the wizard’ voice that had kept the trolls bickering and quarreling, until the light came and made an end of them.
Detail detail!

And I cite again!
In a cave in the Lonely Mountain there lived a dragon.... it was a dragon-cave, and that meant gold. At least it did, until a nasty band of poachers found Lonesome Smaug, the last of his species, alone, asleep, threatening none, and smote his genus from the red ledger, stripping Middle Earth of critical biodiversity....
Gandalf the Grey, one of the more powerful, though among the least conservation-minded, of the wizards would remark: “It has been said that dragon-fire could melt and consume the Rings of Power, but there is not now any dragon left on earth in which the old fire is hot enough.”
The Grey Wizard failed to mention that, were it not for his callousness, there would be.
Absolutely not!
That was not a dragon-cave, it was the Great Hall of Thráin under the Lonely Mountain where Smaug was hoarding the gold that he had robbed from the Dwarves, see at top. And far from being some useful native apex predator worthy of protection, Smaug had been bio-engineered by Morgoth and was thus an invasive, eminently ecologically disruptive, albeit already functionally extinct super-predator with no legitimate role in the ecosystem and that urgently needed to be dealt with! Far from precipitating a trophic cascade, his demise finally re-balanced the biodiversity of Middle Earth and allowed the native predators to fulfill their ecological roles undisturbed!
Be it as it may, his demise is not attributable to the Company of 14, let alone Gandalf who was not present when those events unfolded. Smaug was killed by Bard the Bowman from Esgaroth – and this not upon instigation by Gandalf but clearly in self-defense and helped by a thrush.
 
As for Gandalf not being conservation minded.
Of the five Wizards that were sent to Middle Earth, two departed to the East;  Radagast was close to the animals and the plants and may have protected them - but there is no record of him actually doing so; Saruman turned Isengard into an industrial wasteland, and he sent Orcs to cut down the trees of Fangorn.

Gandalf on the other hand made it his life's mission to defeat Sauron and was instrumental in demoting and eventually, evicting Saruman from Isengard. Through his actions, he was the single most influential individual in the removal of the two worst perpetrators of ecological crimes in Middle Earth.
 
As Gandalf himself explains - The Return of the King, "Minas Tirith", talking to Denethor, Steward of Gondor.
But I will say this:
the rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. As for my part, I shall not wholly fail in my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?

And one more!
Like the grey wolf, wargs were extirpated during the Third Age–they were captured and domesticated to serve the Mordor war machine. When Thoren (sic) Oakenshield and his band fled the Goblin tunnels, they were set upon by goblins and barely-domesticated wargs. When the Fellowship marched, decades later, they saw no wild wargs.
Thus, the domestication of the warg is so complete that they are are no more wild wargs in Middle Earth. At the Battle of Five Armies, there was still enough ecosystem resilience to withstand the gradual removal of wargs, but by the battle of Helms Deep, these magnificent creatures had been fully extirpated for six decades and the environment had fallen apart around them.
Without the massive carrion the wild wargs leave behind, the Great Eagle populations declined. As their numbers dwindle and resources become scarce, eagle colonies destabilize and social hierarchies fall apart. 
Hell, no!
The Fellowship was attacked by rider-less Wargs in Eregion prior to entering the gates of Moria; and there were warg-riders (from Isengard not Mordor!)) at the Second Battle of the Fords of Isen, and wolf-riders in Helm's Deep!
And anyway, the Wargs were never tamed or domesticated, let alone by Mordor from where there is not a single account of any Warg. Rather, they were somewhat intelligent, had an own language, and chose to consciously ally themselves with Orcs - and thus the "wild" Wargs were never extirpated like asserted!
Furthermore, due to the fact that the bodies of the killed Wargs from the skirmish of Eregion were gone the next morning, it is believed that they may have been demonic much like Hellhounds and Darkhounds and if so, may not have needed to hunt for food and thus would not have left behind any carrion. With that in mind, the postulated trophic cascade affecting the Great Eagles is, at best, highly speculative - but it matters not since the extirpation of the Wargs never occurred in the first place!

Long story short?
Far from engaging in the required research, the SFS dudes don't know what they are talking about and instead, belittle, besmirch and defame the greatest of Wizards and come up with the very same pulled-from-the-arse effects we all had such a hard time getting rid of a couple of years ago!

A pox on them!

1 comment:

One Ring to RULE Them All! said...

C'Mon Southern Fried Science People!

Posing as, "Cheeto Eating Science Geeks" and yet failing basic Tolkien does little to enamor the rest of us on them Internets.

If you can't even get Tolkien right, what are we to imagine your endless treaties on things like global warming, shark conservation, James Bond and the like?

My world has been rocked.

Down is up, cats and dogs ARE living together, and the old saying, "Back off Man...I'm and Scientists!" carries little meaning anymore.

You have been schooled.

You need street cred...Quick, to the, "look at me next to a big shark with a hook in it's face!" database.

Time for a SFS reboot!