The Best of my Usenet Posts

I have decided that if my thoughts were worth sharing on Usenet, it's probably worthwhile to put them somewhere where they can be found on a more permanent basis as well. Therefore, I have assembled a collection of some of what I consider to be my best posts below. This is only a sampling, unfortunately: I haven't really gone through looking carefully for things, and at this point I don't have much here that I posted between August 1999 and December 2001. I'll sort through for good stuff when I've got time, but that could be a while. (I've occasionally added other decent material, but not at all systematically.)

• 13 Nov 1994: Final note on eagles into Mordor: One of my earliest posts, noteworthy primarily because of my comments about making arguments within Tolkien's sub-created world rather than outside of it. Also because I was very proud to get a complimentary response to a post of my very own.
• 01 Dec 1997: Bombadil and the Flame Imperishable (was: ID of Bombadil): The post in which I give my first justification for my opinion about Tom Bombadil. In particular, I spend most of this post demonstrating that my opinion has a valid place in Tolkien's world.
• 02 Dec 1997: The "Main Character": My first attempt to identify which character was the focus of the story at each point. Note the correction below.
• 07 Dec 1997: Re: The "Main Character": A response later in the same thread, in which I acknowledge that my earlier list was flawed, listing Sam in a period where Frodo was in fact still primary.
• 16 Apr 1998: Re: Simile vs. Metaphor [was: Re: Purely informal Balrog wings poll]: An attempt on my part both to understand Tolkien's description of the Balrog in Moria and to clarify a heated debate.
• 18 Apr 1998: Re: Simile vs. Metaphor [was: Re: Purely informal Balrog wings poll]: Later in the same thread, I try to clearly state the case in favor of treating the Balrog's "wings" as a simile.
• 20 Apr 1998: Re: Canon: My best-ever discussion of what the true Middle-earth "canon" really is, using a reasonably spiffy metaphor. Feel free to ignore the long second section consisting of my reply to the previous post.
• 12 May 1998: Re: Which order should I read the books?: A thread originating in the Angband (computer game) newsgroup, containing some misinformation about the authorship of The Silmarillion and other books. It also contains the beginnings of my recommended reading order (and the inspiration for listing the Appendices as a separate unit).
• 24 May 1998: Re: Giants in The Hobbit?: A clear statement of my opinion about Giants. (At least as of the time of writing; it has changed substantially since then.)
• 12 Jun 1998: Re: Ringlords Aplenty: A discussion of the "technology" of the Rings of Power, with an analogy to computers that (despite Michael's objections) works reasonably well.
• 15 Jun 1998: Ring Technology was Re: Ringlords Aplenty): My reply to Michael's aforementioned objections to my thoughts on Ring technology. This post does contain a good bit of useful discussion, but also includes me gently poking fun at Michael, which is a tricky thing to do without starting a flame war, let me tell you.
• 08 Sep 1998: Re: The Invisibility of the Ringwraiths: My thoughts on how the invisibility caused by the Ring may have operated (not the mechanism, but the behavior).
• 15 Sep 1998: Re: Balrogs: In a more recent incarnation of the Balrog wings thread, I refer to the two most frequently cited passages about Balrog wings (one of which comes from the HoME series), and construct a possible explanation for their apparent inconsistency.
• 17 Jul 1999: Summary of the War of the Wing: Consensus! My summary of the last incarnation of the Balrog Wing thread, in which I discovered that most of us agree on the mening of the passage and are simply using different words to describe the same thing. Michael Martinez, the most vocal "pro- winger", expressed agreement with the points of consensus in this post.
• 28 July 1999: Druedain and the Watchers: exploring the idea of a connection between the "animated" statues of the Druedain and the Two Watchers of Cirith Ungol.
• 15 May 2000: Ring Scent: a discussion of the way in which the Nazgul may have sensed the Ring (the behavior, not the mechanism).
• [gap: I haven't collected much from this period]
• 10 Jan 2002: Gothmog as a Human: an overview of why I believe Gothmog (the Lieutenant of Morgul) was a normal human (rather than a Nazgul).
• 10 Jan 2002: How much did the conspiracy know about the Ring?: a discussion of what exactly Sam shared with the other conspirators after he was caught. (Busy day!)
• 25 Jan 2002: Minas Morgul's Chain of Command: A discussion of various possible command structures for Minas Morgul, intended in large part to gather evidence for the "What race was Gothmog?" debate. (At least one variation not listed here was suggested by John Brock later in the thread, in which all the Nazgul were "floating" commanders ranking between Sauron and his top commanders.)
• 31 Oct 2003: What if Balrogs had wings?: A fairly recent discussion about Balrog wings, featuring my ASCII-art renditions of two different perspectives on the Balrog. (For anyone confused by that, my followup post might address some questions and concerns.)