Huter, Jörg Wilhalm: Fechtkunst - BSB Cgm 3711
Bayerische Staatsbibiothek dates this to 1523
A high resolution scan is available here.
Here is the Wiktenauer entry.
Pretzel product placement here.
My thanks to Hugh Knight for finding this.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
The Invention of Glory: Afonso V and the Pastrana Tapestries
The Pastrana Tapestries—among the finest surviving Gothic tapestries—will be on view together for the first time in the United States at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from September 18, 2011, through January 8, 2012. The Invention of Glory: Afonso V and the Pastrana Tapestries will feature the recently restored set of four monumental tapestries that commemorate the conquest of two strategically located cities in Morocco by the king of Portugal, Afonso V (1432–1481).
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Friday, September 09, 2011
What Is This?
I have a theory, but I don't want to prejudice you.
The owner was born in 1852 and died in 1931. The head is iron or steel.
The handle seems to be silver, and is engraved with the owner's name. While it resembles a box tool, it is much smaller.
The wear is consistent with being used as a letter opener.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
The Incandescent Hypocrisy of Mike Griffin
The former NASA head that brought you the failed, ill-conceived Constellation project does not like NASA's current approach to human space flight.
He complains:
Well, it certainly makes sense that cost and schedule of a multi-billion dollar project would be highly sensitive, and thus kept from the eyes of mere taxpayers.
Griffin, incidentally, misleadingly quotes the inaccurate headline, which does not reflect the content of the article. The article describes a $29-38 billion range to pay for not only the rocket, but the capsule to ride it.
To explain why the NASA plan is bad, Griffin himself leaks like a sieve:
We need to compare this with NASA's budget request for 2008, when Griffin was still in charge, and his Constellation program was asking for $3 billion. Or what was actually enacted, when Constellation was funded at $2.7 billion and the full exploration program at $3.3 billion, with about $1 billion of that for Ares I, Griffin's contemporary version of the shuttle derived SLS. This is, of course, a funding level Griffin now claims is clearly inadequate.
This should be compared with NASA's 2012 budget of $3.9 Billion for exploration, plus an additional $1 Billion for space technology, a category not itemized in Griffin's 2008 budget.
Griffin might respond that his own exploration budget for 2012 was much more generous, at $7.1 Billion. He achieved this in part by shrinking the share of NASA's budget devoted to science from 28% in 2007 to 24% in 2012. Also, he made optimistic assumptions. His budget assumed that the Shuttle would be retired by the end of 2010, that 2012 STS shutdown costs would be minimal, and he significantly underestimated the cost of crew and cargo resupply for ISS. Also, he assumed that a NASA owned launcher and manned spacecraft would be able to reach LEO no later than 2015, so there was no reason to for NASA to fund a commercial alternative to take crews to ISS
Griffin was wrong on every single point.
Why should he be given credence on other questions?
He complains:
On Aug. 5, the Orlando Sentinel cited internal NASA documents detailing a $38 billion estimate for a “new NASA moon rocket.” This estimate is entirely out of line with previous projections and good management practice. Even if correct, such documents would normally be extremely sensitive and available only to NASA leadership. Their release offers yet another example of the tiresome Washington game of leaking a highly biased story in order to set the terms for an upcoming debate.
Well, it certainly makes sense that cost and schedule of a multi-billion dollar project would be highly sensitive, and thus kept from the eyes of mere taxpayers.
Griffin, incidentally, misleadingly quotes the inaccurate headline, which does not reflect the content of the article. The article describes a $29-38 billion range to pay for not only the rocket, but the capsule to ride it.
To explain why the NASA plan is bad, Griffin himself leaks like a sieve:
NASA’s internal documentation shows the SLS budget assumed by the administration would spend only $1.2 billion per year through 2025, far below the $2.65 billion peak authorized in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act and the $1.8 billion appropriated by Congress in 2011.
But as the program stretches out, it still must absorb its share of the cost of running NASA, an agency with 10 centers and some 24,000 employees (including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory). These fixed costs consume approximately $7 billion per year. This is what it costs to own our national space agency. These internal taxes, when applied to a program that has been slowed to a crawl, maximize cost growth at the expense of hardware development. Under the administration’s scenario, the entire exploration budget would be capped at $3 billion for the next 13 years — including SLS, MPCV and ground operations
We need to compare this with NASA's budget request for 2008, when Griffin was still in charge, and his Constellation program was asking for $3 billion. Or what was actually enacted, when Constellation was funded at $2.7 billion and the full exploration program at $3.3 billion, with about $1 billion of that for Ares I, Griffin's contemporary version of the shuttle derived SLS. This is, of course, a funding level Griffin now claims is clearly inadequate.
This should be compared with NASA's 2012 budget of $3.9 Billion for exploration, plus an additional $1 Billion for space technology, a category not itemized in Griffin's 2008 budget.
Griffin might respond that his own exploration budget for 2012 was much more generous, at $7.1 Billion. He achieved this in part by shrinking the share of NASA's budget devoted to science from 28% in 2007 to 24% in 2012. Also, he made optimistic assumptions. His budget assumed that the Shuttle would be retired by the end of 2010, that 2012 STS shutdown costs would be minimal, and he significantly underestimated the cost of crew and cargo resupply for ISS. Also, he assumed that a NASA owned launcher and manned spacecraft would be able to reach LEO no later than 2015, so there was no reason to for NASA to fund a commercial alternative to take crews to ISS
Griffin was wrong on every single point.
Why should he be given credence on other questions?
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
What a Pas d’Arms Was and Was Not
The Pas d’Arms was a very specific format for medieval deeds of arms. It always involved a specified number of defenders agreeing to meet all comers on terms specified in advance. It sometimes, although not always, included considerable ceremony.
For those who currently recreate medieval deeds of arms, “Pas” is often used as a shorthand description of any recreation of medieval deeds that attempts to come closer to medieval models than the standard double elimination tournament of the SCA, that places less emphasis on objective competition, and that involves considerable ceremony.
This is not what a Pas was in the Middle Ages. It was only one format among many: other formats, for example, arranged both comers and defenders in advance. The rules of a Pas could be designed to yield an objective winner to a highly competitive contest, and sometimes ceremony and speeches were clearly less important than a briskly arranged series of combats.
For those who currently recreate medieval deeds of arms, “Pas” is often used as a shorthand description of any recreation of medieval deeds that attempts to come closer to medieval models than the standard double elimination tournament of the SCA, that places less emphasis on objective competition, and that involves considerable ceremony.
This is not what a Pas was in the Middle Ages. It was only one format among many: other formats, for example, arranged both comers and defenders in advance. The rules of a Pas could be designed to yield an objective winner to a highly competitive contest, and sometimes ceremony and speeches were clearly less important than a briskly arranged series of combats.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus
At the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Well worth seeing if you live close enough. For me the high points were two different versions of the Hundred Guilders Print, showing how much Rembrandt varied his inking from print to get different effect of light and shadow, the virtuoso drypoint of the late Ecce Homo print, and the scumbled luminosity of his late portrait of Jesus, the final painting in the show.
Endeavour Crater
Image : NASA
Opportunity has reached the rim of Endeavour Crater, 14 miles in diameter. Click on the image for a larger view.
I wrote this years ago, when both rovers were rolling on Mars. Remarkably, Opportunity is still moving forward and showing us new things
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