Brian Price and Chivalry Bookshelf

A shameful tale.

Atlas Shrugged Should Not Be Filmed with 2011 Cars

I'm with Tyler Cowen on this. It needs a Sky Captain dieselpunk paleofuture treatment that recognizes how thoroughly the work is rooted in the middle of the twentieth century, a world in which steam locomotives are still common on main line railroads, the U.S. economy is dominated by smokestack industries, labor unions wield immense power, no-fault divorce doesn't exist, news media are monolithic and radio is the dominant news broadcast medium. Blacks are invisible and women are housewives, socialites, secretaries or Dagny Taggart. Rational people of the mind chain-smoke cigarettes, and why shouldn't they?

On top of this, Atlas Shrugged is set in an industrialist swashbuckler nerd revenge porn alternate reality that's disconnected from both the time it was written and the real world history that followed. In the Randiverse, all of Europe, India and South America have been taken over by communist people's states that teeter on the brink of impotent collapse shortly after the middle of the 20th century. In the Randiverse, leftists are simultaneously evil and incompetent, like the Nazis in Hogan's Heroes. It's not like they could actually do something dangerous while Rand's heroes are throwing the United States into economic collapse. Like building an enormous thermonuclear arsenal with ICBMs to launch it.

In the Randiverse, industrialists proudly treat the companies they manage as their personal fief, and stockholders be damned. If the industrialist wants to burn the enterprise to the ground and sow the ground with salt, so much the worse for the stockholders. They should have read the prospectus more carefully.

In the Randiverse, a philosophy-major pirate roams the Atlantic and Caribbean, immune to the sort of air search that eliminated surface commerce raiders by the middle of WWII. As a reverse Robin Hood, he redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich, using his throbbing enormous Objectivist brain to correct the obvious errors of the democratic process and determine who is actually truly deserving of a tax refund.

Tuckers. They should be driving CGI 1960 Tuckers.

Freimaurer-Templer

This site seems to be aimed at Freemasons and Templars, but offers what looks like some pretty decent reproductions of medieval buckles and other items, along with a lot of cheesy dreck. Worth a look if you know what you want.

The Portable Antiquities Scheme Database

An enormous searchable database of artefacts and coins.

Bodleian Image Library

A collaboration between ARTstor and the Bodleian Library to produce 25,000 images from 35mm filmstrip negatives and positive slides. Material includes medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts.

Collapsing Tents at Marquison

The Encampment of Henry at Marquison
18th c. copy of a 16th c. painting of Henry VIII's Boulogne campaign of 1544. Details.

The Pavilion of Heraclius

Agnolo Gaddi: The Dream of Emperor Heraclius
ca. 1385-87

This large fresco shows some useful details. Note how the upper part of the valence is a smooth cylinder in contrast to the the fringe and walls below it, which hang in visible folds.


The stabilizing ropes exit the tent just below the bottom of the upper part of the valence, and descend far too steeply to spread the roof. The shape of the valence and location and angle of the ropes strongly suggest a rigid internal hoop. The central pole is very thick: perhaps it is sunk into the ground and expected to take a bigger share of the tent's lateral stresses than usual.


A detail of the valence decoration.


Here is a detail of a horizontal band of gold decoration on the tent wall.


Here the gold leaf has flaked away from the ground of the band of decoration allowing you to more easily see the pattern. You can also see the pattern on the emperor's coverlet


A rectangular tent with a vertical end wall is visible behind the emperor's pavilion. As the angel appears to Heraclius, the banner atop his tent blows away from the angel, contrary to the wind direction shown by the other banners.

Pandolfo Malatesta III's Doublet

Here is an article on Pandolfo's doublet, in which he was buried in 1427. Here are additional photographs of the doublet and a reconstruction. Here is an additional picture of the doublet, and here are more details and a pattern. Here is another photo of the reconstruction, giving a clearer view of the pattern of quilting.

Here is an article in Italian.

Here's a book on the restoration:

Title: Redire 1427-2009 : Ritorno alla luce : Il restauro del Farsetto di Pandolfo III Malatesti [Back to the light. The restoration of the doublet of Pandolfo III Malatesta]
Author: Kusch, Claudia ; Patrizia Mignani ; Raffaella Pozzi (eds)
Price: $48.95
ISBN:
Description: Fano: Museo Civico, 2009. 24cm., pbk., 107pp. illus., most in color. Exhibition catalogue. (I quaderni del Museo, n. 2, 2009)

Towards Better Revolutionary Slogans

Steve Muhlberger observes of democracy in the Middle East:

Its prospects will be much brighter when the chant "Death to so-and-so" is no longer the routine display of opposition.

So I was pretty happy to see what I thought was a witty and satirical take on the 2008 Obama "Hope" poster.

Egyptians, I salute you! Well played!

Prices in England: 1259-1582

A History of Agriculture and Prices in England from the year after the Oxford Parliament (1259) to the commencement of the Continental War (1793)
1259-1400
1400-1582

More than just wheat and cattle! Textiles, locks and keys, carts, and sundry articles and services, from hammer and pincers to clocks to 11 quires of Bacon's Mathematics to gelding four pigs (price, one farthing).