Morning Medieval Miscellany

Here are just a few of the things that might deserve your attention:

• Got Medieval has a post on medieval depictions of midgets, dwarves, and babies.
• Heavenfield's Person of the Week is St. Egbert of Iona, and Michelle also has a post on verse hagiography.
• The Weird Medieval Animal this week is the ant-lion.
• Heroic Dreams offers the Top Five Fantasy Series of All Time. Go there and argue with him.
• Loreena McKennitt pops up over at In the Middle. Why have all the planets come into alignment to make her suddenly ubiquitous?
• Looking at urine might be useful.
• Matthew Gabriele gives CNN a well-deserved rant about their use of "medieval" to describe a shrimp factory. We all remember how Alcuin wrote that sermon condemning the conditions in medieval shrimp factories, don't we?
• Some chick over at The Naked Philologist posts about the word "bird."
• Mary Kate Hurley responds to the David Brooks article about medieval astronomy/astrology.
• Jeff Sypeck does too.
• Michael Drout has a close encounter with a crossbow.