textiplication.com

"…[the longbow] was six feet long and three inches in circumference, made of yew, and required a force of one hundred pounds to draw it.  (When the body of an archer was recovered from the dredged-up Mary Rose, lost in 1545, the bone of the left arm was noticeably thicker than that of the right, and his shoulder and spinal bones were noticeably deformed) …"

Think about that.  Longbowmen had thick, muscular left arms - I think we can assume that they were all shooting right-handed, since it would be difficult to arrange lefties and righties together in formation - so much so, you could probably tell by looking at them.  Longbowmen probably stood crooked, left shoulder high, spine twisted up between the scapulae. 

If they shot enough that their arm bones thickened on the left side, can you imagine what their right hands looked like from pulling back the string?  Probably, something like this guy’s hand:

  Imagine shooting a longbow for hours during a battle.  Could anyone do that, pull back a draw of a hundred pounds, over and over again, throughout a battle?

This from By the Sword, by Richard Cohen, who was selected to fence for the UK in the Olympics in 72, 76, 80, and 84.  He would have been hit by the boycott in 80, I suppose.  By the Sword is a fun read, and a fascinating history.  Highly recommended.

Just because I haven’t posted any in a while, and this selection is beyond bizarre, and I’m trying to think if there’s likely anyone in the world who might be interested in all of these services:

Mr. CollateralDamage is a writing partner and a friend.  He came to my mother’s memorial service.  Until I saw a sign on his car last night, I didn’t know that he had a brother in the military in Iraq. 

Now Mr. C has written this, which you should read:

http://collateraldamage.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/iraq-my-10-lessons-learned/

You have nothing to lose but your descenders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo

Members of the club who are dead are excused from attending meetings.  So Italo Calvino is off the hook.  I mean, he was already like totally off the hook, but he’s also clear on the Oulipo meetings, as well.
Also, pataphysics, sourcing a line from "Maxwell’s Silver Hammer" that always puzzled me, but not enough to look it up.

I’m surprised that I’ve never heard a Lent joke about this stuff.  You know, "I’m giving up lipograms for Lent," that kind of thing.

In the Boston area, where Catholics assume that everyone is Catholic, including Jews, this is the time of year for giving up stuff.  My wife’s hairdresser solemnly assured my six-year-old that he was going to have to give up meat on Fridays, "except for chicken.  It’s just red meat that counts." 

My wife’s family are Unitarians.  Unitarians give up committees for Lent, or will, once they reach consensus.

As an atheist, I gave up a long time ago.

According to Pew, I’m a Connector.  Or, as we say it around here, I’m a Connecta.

http://www.pewinternet.org/quiz/results.asp?c=1

I was baffled at not being an Omnivore - it’s really, really hard to use more technology than I do, or at least, so I had thought.  So I gamed the survey - if you max out technically on all other questions, you still need either to have a webcam or send instant messages on your phone.  Pew dudes, I have an iPhone - I send e-mail on my phone.

Fah.  It’s ageism, pure and simple.  E-mail is for old folks, you know, IM for kids.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=125890

This is really interesting.   Three-year study compares buying patterns of people with DVR’s (TiVo is mentioned in particular) to those of people without. 

People with TiVo’s bought five percent less of new products than people without, and 20% of all brands lost volume in DVR households. 

Food products took a big hit:

Among IRI’s top-selling Pacesetters … All of the impact was on food brands, which allocated more of their budgets to TV and saw new-product trial volume decline 7.5%

This was my favorite observation from the story:

…Research has shown that when ads mesh with a program’s subject matter, e.g., do-it-yourself fare on HGTV, they tend to get fast-forwarded less often.

Go figure - if I’m watching a  home-improvement show, I’m likely to watch an ad for the new Black & Decker whatsit.  If I’m watching The Office, I’m likely to fast-forward over an ad for Hot Pockets.  For the first time, I understand how Google’s foray into TV advertising might be able to succeed, by making it possible to dice ad placement logic more finely than this obvious cut.

It’s obvious from show content alone that advertising goes with home-improvement television like Gorilla Glue goes with, well, anything.  DVR usage patterns suggest that traditional entertainment programming may suffer badly if ad viewing becomes a uniform choice

Match it for Pratchett - and I - would like you to contribute to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust to help match Terry Pratchett’s million-dollar donation. 

Terry Pratchett, a writer of astounding humor and humanity,  is two years into his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. 

My father’s mother was destroyed by Alzheimer’s long before her death. 

Let’s all do what we can.

SK

http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/03/daily-lego-worl.html

Photo by Hirotaka Hatayama.

If only Gaudí had had access to Lego…

Lots more of the collection here.

Made a little progress this past week.

1. The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant
2. Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel, Frances and Joseph Gies
3. The Secret History of Moscow, Ekaterina Sedia
4. The Echo Maker, Richard Powers
5. Ha’penny, Jo Walton
6. The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson
7. In the Forest of Forgetting, Theodora Goss
8. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
9. My Mother the Cheerleader, Robert Sharenow (my wife went to school with him, his best friend is married to my wife’s best friend)
10. Johnny and the Dead, Terry Pratchett (probably on my son’s list more than mine)
11. Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen (new edition, substantially updated, and, so far, the only Book Every American Should Read)
12. Ptolemy’s Gate, Jonathan Stroud
13. Bear Daughter, Judith Berman (one of my favorite con panelists)
14. Impostors, George V. Higgins
15. Stranger Things Happen, Kelly Link (actually, I’m about halfway through)
16. Skin Hunger, Kathleen Duey
17. The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear, Walter Moers (halfway through, so far, it’s no Rumo)
18. Trial of Flowers, Jay Lake
19. The Guin Saga, Kaoru Kurimoto (I have no recollection of ordering thisTheo brought this back from BEA)
20. The City of Dreaming Books, Walter Moers
21. Lowlife, Luc Sante (halfway through)
22. By the Sword, Richard Cohen
23. The Curve of Binding Energy, John MacPhee
24. Ragamuffin, Tobias Buckell
25. Black Sheep, Ben Peek

Low Life is a history of the poor and the criminal classes of New York City up through 1920, focusing mainly on the Victorian era.  Profuse and spectacular in detail, engaging and fascinating in character study, Low Life is also one of the the most beautifully-written books it has ever been my pleasure not only to savor, but to read aloud to anyone I can manage to trap in his cube - hello, Theo!  Take this, for example:

…The district grew up helter-skelter in a malodorous environment of slaughterhouses, soap and glue factories and waterfront effluvia, in patches that bore names like Poverty Lane and Misery Row.

Or this:

The tenement is the basic facade in New York, the face of the slums, a slab of tombstone proportions, four to six stories, pocked by windows.  Above is the towering tin cornice, a confection of scallops and curlicues, with foliaceous brackets, often topped by a semicircular peak, a disk enclosing a rayed sun.