This was supposed to be a thread about this weird scientific paper I found. Here's the abstract:

The Fellowship of the Ring were supposed to travel from Imraldis to the forges of Mt. Doom in order to destroy the One Ring of Sauron. For an ideal journey with all 9 members of the fellowship, using the metabolic rates for each species from [2], the total calorific consumption of the 92-day journey was found to be 1,780,214.59 kcal. If the elves of Imraldis had provided the Fellowship with lembas, this would equate to them having to carry a total of 675 pieces, or 75 pieces each. For the different species, this equates to 304 for the hobbits, 214 for Gandalf, Aragorn and Boromir; 99 for Gimli and 60 for Legolas.

I had this whole thing where I was going to point out the published mini-Balrog, query the social assumptions (lembas, from Rivendell?!), and say Look, This Is An Actual Journal!

Then I looked at the references.

So then this was supposed to be a thread about how these same nutters also published this delightfully wacky paper, which calculates the base metabolic rates of the races of Middle-earth by comparing them to various animals. Humans are calculated from foxes, because… I guess there's no data out there on human metabolisms? I'unno.

Anyway, then I was going to predict that their third paper would clearly be an attempt to work out what real-world food lembas most resembled, based on its calorific content. It was gonna be awesome.

But then I looked at the journal.

So now this is a post about how amazingly weird the University of Leicester is. The Natural Sciences/Interdisciplinary Science Department publishes the Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics. The articles are written and peer-reviewed by their undergraduates, as part of their course, and it's all published, open-access, on the internet. Amazing!

And the topics of their papers are glorious. "How many lies could Pinocchio tell before it became lethal?" "DNA Profiling: How Long is the Golden Snitch’s Flesh Memory?" "The Force Required to Stretch Elastigirl’s Arm." There's material here for a dozen threads, it's awe-inspiring!

So go find it. Pick out your favourite paper from the six volumes of the journal, and tell us what's in it! Can you top '675 lembas cakes' as a scientific result? Go at it.

hS