Othalion writes: Tickets for the Emiliana Torrini Concert at Nalen, Stockholm are available now. The concert is on Friday March 18. Go to ticnet.se for more info.

The Star Online has called IBM Malaysia’s recent winning of seven awards at the recent Computerworld Readers’ Choice Awards a ‘Peter Jackson’, meaning they swept the award show. Could this be a new verb on the horizon? When someone wins all the awards possible in one night? Or perhaps if you are on a winning streak you could say you are ‘Pulling a Peter Jackson’…who knows…try it out with your friends..see who gets it. [Article in Question]

Find out more about what motivates a knighted thespian to take on a cross-dressing role, when Sir Ian McKellen fields audience questions at a special Question and Answer event from 5pm at The Old Vic theatre. [More]

Kathy writes: It’s my pleasure to inform TORN that Houghton Mifflin recently posted online secondary school lesson plans (grades 9-12) for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. These curriculum units were written by my husband James Morrow and myself. [More]

Kathy writes: It’s my pleasure to inform TORN that Houghton Mifflin recently posted online secondary school lesson plans (grades 9-12) for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. These curriculum units were written by my husband James Morrow and myself.

Click here or go to houghtonmifflinbooks.com, click on the LOTR icon, then pull down the Librarians/Teachers menu and select Lesson Plans.

My husband, a former educator, is also a novelist (so he was especially interested in highlighting Tolkien’s achievement as a writer); I’m an English-major-bookseller type with a lifelong interest in folklore, myth, and epic (including, of course, 30+ readings of LOTR and familiarity with most of the critical works). We also enlisted four talented young teachers as consultants.

We designed the course to last for nine weeks. As you might imagine, we would have liked to include a great deal more content, but lesson plan structure (perhaps like filmmaking in that respect) has demands of its own.

There are still a few data-entry errors sprinkled throughout the plans, but since these are rather obvious — misplaced attributions, typos, and the like — we don’t think anyone will be led seriously astray before the corrections are made.

As you might imagine, this was a real labor of love, and we emerged from it with more admiration than ever for JRRT and his accomplishments!