Bilbo is impressed, but also bewildered. (Photo: Gossip Cop)

Do the infinite wonders of the Internet know no bounds? We've just been alerted to the magnificence that is the Lord of the Rings project, an extensive catalog of every character in J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle Earth, including both a family tree and an entire section of the project devoted to number crunching.

There's even an Android app. For once, you iPhone owners can only look on in envy.

It's enough to satisfy even the most enthusiastic of hobbit genealogists (and hobbits are well known to be almost as fond of genealogy as they are of snacks and pipe-smoking). 

Nor is this the work of some mere dilettante who read The Hobbit, watched the Peter Jackson trilogy and called it a day. Included in the dataset are books published after Mr. Tolkien's death, including the interminable Silmarillion. The work of an chemical engineering student named Emil Johansson, he's been working on the site since last November and has since added and classified 923 characters. The process apparently hasn't always been a bed of roses, either:

Via LOTRproject.com

But thanks to Mr. Johansson's diligence, we now have an authoritative source to which we can point and say that hobbits have a life expectancy of 96 years, as opposed to the 195 years a dwarf can count on. Not all the numbers are fun, though: We were very sad to learnt that a mere 19 percent of characters named were female. Says the blog's authors: "The low number of females is not due to lack of females in Middle-Earth but due to the fact that Tolkien did not describe many of them."

Our only questions is this: When will noted Tolkien fan Peter Thiel step up with the grant this organization so richly deserves?

YOUR GOD CAN'T SAVE YOU NOW. (Photo: Screencap)

Is no Internet community safe from the outrageous depredations of the hackers? The latest victims of their villainy: World of Warcraft. Forbes reports that, on Sunday morning, a mysterious attack swept through the game, slaying thousands of avatars.

It was as swift and terrible as the coming of Ringwraiths.

Forbes reports on the terror:

“It was really weird. I was [away from keyboard] for like one minute, and when I came back I was dead and so were everyone else,” wrote one player on a World of Warcraft forum. “Really creepy. I wonder what happened.”

There's footage of the killing fields here; be warned, however, that the video may disturb you.

In the forums are even more tales of the wholesale destruction. One player reported that, "Today at 14.30 Orgrimmar got nuked, killing almost everything except for a few NPCs, all players and most of the NPC civilization died including Garrosh and Gamon, our two greatest douchebags." Betabeat has literally no idea what that means, but it sounds serious, like it was the Black Death meets the Rapture with a little Alas, Babylon thrown in for good measure.

Other players, after listening to the speculation, decided simply to light out for the territories and wait out the troubles. One noted that, "All I can suggest is that we stay outside the cities for now," while another proclaimed, "I think I'll go back to questing, Orgrimmar ain't safe right now as I see it..."

Blizzard HQ offered what looked a little like condolences, if you squint:

“We apologize for the inconvenience some of you experienced as a result of this and appreciate your understanding.”

Fortunately all the lost souls can be resurrected because World of Warcraft is, after all, a video game. (Excuse us, an MMORPG.)

(Photo: The Weather Channel)

Winter is coming, at least according to every Game of Thrones fan on Reddit. This year, the witty folks at the Weather Channel have decided to name every winter storm. As it turns out, whoever was tasked with writing these names is kind of a huge sci fi nerd.

D is for Draco--perhaps as a nod to Mr. Malfoy in the Harry Potter series? Lord of the Rings fans will recognize the G name--it's Gandolf; for Star Trek fans, there's Khan for K and "Q," the devious God character who drives Captain Picard insane, for the letter Q.

The best part is that the Weather Channel refuses to cop to the fact that the names are ripped out of sci fi/fantasy lore. For each name, they provide context to demonstrate where it's from. Gandolf is "a character in a 1896 fantasy novel in a pseudo-medieval countryside," they reason. Q is "the Broadway Express subway line in New York City."

We hope this season's biggest Nor'easter comes in time for the letter K so that we have an excuse to clench our fists and scream KHAAAAAN at the angry sky.