- Jeff Sypeck gives a positive report on his mini-trebuchet.
- Sypeck also has a "Best-of" round-up from 2007.
- In the Middle has a "Best-of" round-up too, helpful organized by poster.
- Highly Eccentric reports on Roger Bacon's Mega Ray of Death.
- Michelle of Heavenfield tagged me in a meme, which I'm not so much ignoring as responding to very slowly.
- She also gives us this picture of St. Genevieve in a boat filled with giant sausages, flipping people off on the shore.
- I've missed two Weird Medieval Animals during my blogging lacuna, the hydrus and the Cynocephali tribe.
- BBC tells us that medieval diets were healthier. If so, that's a happy coincidence. Without refrigeration, the diets were whatever grew within a reasonable distance. h/t Per Omnia Saecula.
*That's X-mas, with an inside joke for medievalists, who know that X-mas was not a proto-Festivus aggressive secularization of Christmas, but was instead a typical scribal abbreviation of "Christ" in manuscripts, with the Greek Chi-Rho (which I can't figure out how to reproduce in Blogger) truncated down to "X".
As successful as my trebuchet was, you'll be pleased to know that I doubt it could put a dent in the Fisher-Price castle--although I'll bet it could chuck one of those Little People at least 25 feet.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like the subject matter of a lost Mythbusters episode!
ReplyDeleteThere's one important thing that the BBC article omits: famine. In the best of times, the diet sounds approximately right, although poorer peasants would not have been able to afford that much ale, weak or not. But crop yields weren't nearly that reliable.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if this'll work in Blogspot comments -- but try this: Χ Ρ.
ReplyDeleteOr: ☧
And some related stories on the medieval diet appeared in The Telegraph and The Guardian, too.