Phoenix Lander Passes Turing Test...

..but is suspected of cheating.

Phoenix Descending

Here is a dramatic picture of Phoenix descending against the backdrop of the six mile wide, snow frosted Heimdall crater. Here is a larger image. Here are images of the lander, parachute, backshell and heat shield on the ground. All were taken by fellow droid MRO.

I'm so proud of our robotic proxies.

Phoenix and Companions

This picture reminds me that we humans are steadily building up robotic infrastructure on and around Mars; three orbiters, two rovers and a lander, all still functioning, chirping to each other in binary and taking photographs of each other for the folks back home. That makes me happy.

Jesseraunts

Also spelled jessera(u)nd, jesseraunce, jestraunt, gessera(u)nt, gesorant, ges(s)eran, gesseren, gessero(u)n, gestrant, gestran, gestrone, chesserant. In Old French jazerenc, jazerant, jas(s)erant, jazeran.

Very possibly the jesseraunt derived from the Arab kazaghand, which the 12th century memoirs of Usamah ibn-Munqidh describes as mail (in his case a short mail shirt over a long one) covered and lined with fabric. Fifteenth century references to jesseraunts repeatedly describe them as made of mail, but imply that they differ in some way from the ordinary haubergeon. The Howard Household Books record a “gestron keuvred with blake velvet” and “a gestron of my Lordes, keuvered with damask”. King René's Tournament Book describes mounted valets armed in jazerants, and the accompanying illustrations of these men are also consistent with fabric covered haubergeons. They are generally covered with a trellis pattern of lines which may represent a pattern of stitching uniting the fabric and mail.

Cleaning Mail

The barrels, which are mentioned among the Shipley goods, may have been used for the simple process of cleaning armour by rolling it in a barrel with sand and bran, as is still the practice in the East. Such an article is found in the inventory of Dover Castle, 1344 : " 1 barelle pro armaturis rollandis;" and in that of Hengrave Hall, as late as 1603: " 1 barrel to make clean the shirts of maile and gorgetts." — See Arch. Jour., xi. 382, and note, p. 386. In the Monasticon, vi. 625, some land is held " by the service of rolling a coat of mail once a year."

Sussex Archaeological Collections relating to the History and Antiquities of the County. Published by the Sussex Archaeological Society, 1857 p. 255

I have experimented with rolling mail to clean it, using play sand, corn cob pet bedding or litter, and a 50/50 mixture of the two. I used a small 1.25 cubic foot cement mixer from Harbour Freight. You can buy tumbling barrels designed for the purpose, but one big enough for a mail shirt is a lot more expensive than the small mixer.

Any of the above will eventually clean off rust after several hours of rolling. Play sand leaves a clean but somewhat dull matt finish. Corn cob leaves a significantly brighter polish. A 50/50 mixture is unsurprisingly somewhere in between.

Walnut shells are also sold as pet litter. Both corn cob and walnut shells are used as polishing media by ammunition reloaders, and their suppliers also sell those media, more carefully graded for particle size and more expensive than the pet litter. There seems to some debate among reloaders over the relative merits of corn cob versus walnut shell, and whether the specialized media marketed to reloaders works any better than less expensive pet litter.

Play sand is probably not ideal. References to tumbling barrels in late 19th and early 20th century texts often refer to “sharp sand” as a medium. Also, a lot of modern play sand isn’t silica, because of concerns about the risk of silicosis, and may not be as effective as an abrasive.

Some of the texts mentioned above suggest that you should use about as much medium by volume as the metal you are trying to polish, and that you want the barrel full enough that the work will tumble rather than slide.

The same texts describe a variety of polishing media. Emery, pumice or sharp sand is relatively aggressive. Leather scraps or shavings are often used for a final polish. Hardwood sawdust is often described as an intermediate medium, sometimes with a modest amount of emery or rouge added. If bran and sand were still used to clean mail in the 19th century East, perhaps the mixture used mostly bran with a small amount of sharp sand.

Update: Bertus Brokamp found a reference in the accounts of the count of Holland, 1360-61, to bran purchased for, among other things, "to scour the armor with"

Another update "Paid, the xv daye of Julye, at the campe at Dunglasse, by th’andes of George Ynglyshe, for tow urynalles and one skeyn of threed, vjd.; for canvaus to make a bagg to scowre my Lordes shyrt of meale in, xiiijd.; and for brane to the same, ijd.;" 1549

Great Britain, Charles Manners Rutland, John James Robert Manners Rutland, H. C. Maxwell Lyte, Richard Ward, Robert Campbell, and John Horace Round. 1888. The manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Rutland ... preserved at Belvoir castle. London: Printed for H.M. Statioery Off., by Eyre & Spottiswoode.

Gawain and the Green Knight in Pop Culture

Jeff Sypeck includes some links to an award winning Irish animated version as well as a performance by paper bag puppets. The last is funnier to think about than watch.

Online Medieval Research and Recreation Resources

Pertaining to the 14th or 15th century:

Living History Groups:
La Belle Compagnie
Others

Medieval Recreation
The Society for Creative Anachronism
The Company of St. Michael


Suppliers
Other suppliers:
Thorthor's Hammer: Copper alloy and silver dress accessories
The Compaignye Store: Coin replicas, Ceramics and Haberdashery
Lorifactor Dress accessories, arms and armor, camp equipment
Reenactors Shop
Medievaldesign
Grunal Moneta Hammered coin reproductions. 650 BC to 1660 AD

Digitized Libraries, Museum Collections or Manuscripts
The National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) offers an excellent online resource for the study of medieval manuscript illumination. Manuscripts of particular interest to students of arms and armor are noted here.
Gallica
Mandragore
British Library
Getty Museum
Digitized Manuscripts Containing Middle English
Google Books is a really powerful tool for material which has been digitized. There’s a surprising amount that has been. These include Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrimage, with itemized expenses for the Asteley/Boyle combat of 1442, a French account of the Pas de Bergere and a Spanish account of the Passo Honoroso.
The University of Chicago is celebrating the acquisition of a manuscript of Le Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose) and its reunion with Le Jeu des échecs moralisé (The Moralized Game of Chess), a manuscript that has been in the Library’s collection since 1931.
Online Searchable Museum Collection Databases
Image Use Contacts
UCLA's catalogue currently indexes 3,048 digitized medieval manuscripts.
Index of the Landauer and Mendel Hausbuchs
Index of Images of the Forme of Cury
Manuscript Miniatures: a database of miniatures depicting armored figures

Other Image Databases, Galleries and Collections
Armour in Art

Karen Larsdatter's site has a lot of images and articles related to medieval material culture from acrobats to zibellini. And it's searchable.
Effigies and Brasses
Kornbluth Photography Archive
Roel Renmans' Photostream: a great collection of photos of surviving armor and armor in painting and sculture, arranged chronologically.
Dmitry Nelson's Photo Gallery: armor, weapons, doublets, arming and otherwise, with some reconstructions.
The Complete Works of Albrecht Durer

Other Resources
Tales from Froissart
Deeds of Arms A Collection of Accounts of Formal Deeds of Arms of the Fourteenth Century edited by Steven Muhlberger
De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History
Primary Sources on Warfare in the Middle Ages
Primary Sources from External Websites
The Soldier in Later Medieval England

The online database currently holds just under 90,000 service records. These are taken from muster rolls, housed in The National Archives (TNA), for the years 1369 - 1453.

I find it rewarding to browse this site by muster roll. Go to a particular year, select one of the references and do a search on that reference. Then sort the result by membrane. You can then scroll through that muster by parchment. You will continually encounter small retinues, each on their own strip of parchment, often consisting of one or two men at arms and a handful of archers. More than once you encounter Chaucerian retinues with a knight, a squire with the same surname and a few archers.

Accounts of Medieval Literacy and Education
This site has a variety of maps of Europe and Japan in the 14th century. Mostly modern, but includes links to the 14th century Catalan Atlas
The Electronic Middle English Dictionary
The Geoffrey Chaucer Website
Richard II's Treasure
A Preview of Purses in Pieces: Archaeological Finds of Late Medieval and 16th Century Leather Purses, Pouches, Bags and Cases in the Netherlands
by Olaf Goubitz
Using and Working with Horn
Steel and Iron Needles
Medieval Archaeology: The first 50 Volumes are available online for free.
Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330‑1500)
Francais Dictionnaire Ancien
Dictionary of the Scots Language
Google Search Tips
Reverso, a Free Online Translator

Blogs
Medieval Material Culture Blog.
A Commonplace Book
Unlocked Wordhoard
Muhlberger's World History

William Wallasky

Over in the comments at Megan McArdle, Braveheart was suggested as suitable viewing for Libertarian Movie Night. It is to laugh.

Da, Gibson does scream Freeeeeeedom, even if he delivers line better in Chicken Run. But really, Braveheart is patriotic epic of defense of motherland from foreigners that come to rape our women and mince about in crushed velvet. Is about collectivist virtues of people united shoulder to shoulder against invader, except for traitorous splittists who are justly liquidated through nighttime visit from patriotic security forces in necessary breaking of eggs to make omelets. Is about heroic guidance of Great Leader, who wisely teaches laboring class to use pointed sticks against decadent feudalists, a tactic they were unable to deduce for themelves because only Great Leader can think of such a thing. Is about revolutionary overthrow of foreign authoritarian overlord and replacement by Scottish authoritarian overlord, which is of course wonderful improvement. Is about putting inconvenient historical events down the memory hole. Is movie that could have been made by Eisenstein for Lochnessfilm if he had had color stock and less talent.

How on earth do you find these things?

A friend asks how I find things like 17th century archery rules. Good question. In this case I started with a local Boy Scout troop that wanted to include medieval diversions in a series of upcoming events. I realized that I didn’t know much about how archery was practiced as a sport in the Middle Ages

I knew that Robert Ascham wrote about archery in the 16th century, and found a copy of his Toxophilus on line. He mentioned butts, pricks and rovers as contemporary forms of sport archery, without giving much detail on the rules. I did a google search on those terms plus archer. That eventually led me to Roberts, T. The English Bowman or: Tracts on Archery, to which is added the second part of The Bowmans Glory London 1801, among other sources. Roberts wrote when the 18th century was living memory. That wasn’t the middle ages, but it was a lot closer to it than the 21st.

Roberts described archery rules based on Aime for the Finsbury Archers, “rules annexed to Shotterel and Durfey’s Poem on Archery”, and the traditions of the Finsbury Archers. Searching on full view in Google Books, I found that the The Shotterel poem was published in 1667, and Ayme for the Finsburie Archers was published in various editions with different spellings of the title from 1594 to 1737. I could not find the text for either of those rules in Google Books, but did find those for the Aime for the Archers for St George’s Field, published in 1664.

I then was able to find a used reprint of the 1628 Ayme for the Finsburie Archers through Amazon.

A few general observations:

In trying to recreate the Middle Ages, the 17th and 18th c. are useful places to look for hints if you can't find the information in a medieval source. It’s not perfect, but a lot better than using your enormous 21st c. brain to attempt to deduce things you don’t know from first principles. Diderot’s Encyclopedie was a great help to me in trying to recreate medieval scabbards, for example.

Google Books is a really powerful tool for material which has been digitized. There’s a surprising amount that has been.

However, print on dead trees and pulped rags is still your friend.

Lengthening copyright terms are a net obstacle to the diffusion of human knowledge, and I say this as a copyright holder. 95 years from publication is plenty, and a lot easier to figure out than 70 years after death. Obviously, Disney would like to hold rights to the Mouse until the sun is a cold dark cinder, but it’s bad law for the rest of us. Write your legislator.

Works on the Medieval Tournament at Google Books

These include Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrimage, with itemized expenses for the Asteley/Boyle combat of 1442, a French account of the Pas de Bergere and a Spanish account of the Passo Honoroso.