08:04 – Barbara’s dad is doing well, all things considered. They admitted him to the hospital late yesterday afternoon. At first, they tried to release him, but Barbara wasn’t having any. He has pneumonia. She pointed out that the last time he was in the hospital, it was for MRSA pneumonia, and that may well be the problem now. So they agreed to admit him. He’ll be there for at least three days.
We’ve started watching World Without End on Netflix streaming. It’s the sequel to Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, and it’s not bad unless you’ve read the book. If you have, you quickly realize that this mini-series is the Readers’ Digest Condensed Books version. It’s simply not possible to compress a large book into eight hours of video. Doing it properly would have required more like 40 to 50 hours of video, so this mini-series is just hitting the high points.
The amusing part is how they’ve literally cleaned things up to suit modern sensibilities. The series is set in the mid-14th century, but all of the actors look as squeaky clean as if they’d just gotten out of the shower. The real 1300’s in Europe were characterized by filth and squalor. Most people, including the wealthy, bathed once a year, if that. The dialog also reflects modern sensibilities. Women argue with men, and peasants with nobles. In real 14th century Europe, women and peasants were just one small step above livestock. I take it back. They were one step below livestock. Livestock was valuable; women and peasants weren’t. Women and peasants who were foolish enough to argue with their superiors had very short life expectancies. That famous scene from History of the World: Part I where Mel Brooks as King Louis was shooting skeet with the peasant as the clay more accurately reflected the relative importance of peasants and the upper classes.
Oddly enough, I ran across “World Without End” last night while browsing Netflix and having seen “Pillars of the Earth” earlier, gave it a whirl; everything Bob says is correct; a cleaned-up Reader’s Digest version of the filth, violence and squalor that characterized a lot of the “Middle Ages” for most people, including royalty; interestingly, I had just explained that in pretty much the same language to a couple of siblings.
I’ll watch another episode or two, but not sure if I’ll continue.
Also saw Mel Gibson’s “Get the Gringo” recently, which I found enjoyable. As I did his “Apocalypto.” He may be messed up pretty bad but he can tell a story.
Snowing lightly this morning at the Lake, but thirty miles south here at the Plantation it’s a balmy 41.
Ah, but things are about to change. When the Black Death arrives, they quickly go from having too many peasants to having too few. The migration to the cities begins, and landholders can’t hold onto enough peasants to work their land. The power begins to shift.
I also thought the clothing was amusing. Artificial dyes hadn’t been dreamed of yet. The only dyes available were natural ones. The inexpensive ones, like woad and madder, gave very subdued colors (brownish blue and brownish red, respectively) and even the expensive ones were impermanent and subdued. Few peasants could afford cloth dyed even with woad or madder, so most wore clothing of rough cloth in natural colors.
It wasn’t until Perkins in the mid-19th century that brightly-colored artificial dyes became available. Perkins (accidentally; he was trying to make synthetic quinine) synthesized the first real artificial dye, mauvine, which became wildly popular and gave its name to a decade. All of this was 500 years before the 1300’s, which were a very drab time, even for the wealthy.
I’ll give WWE a pass having read the book, and liked it.
Snowing heavily (6″ on the ground with another 6″ expected) here at a somewhat less balmy 28°F. Kind of wish I had a snow blower at the moment…
“…very subdued colors (brownish blue and brownish red, respectively) and even the expensive ones were impermanent and subdued. Few peasants could afford cloth dyed even with woad or madder, so most wore clothing of rough cloth in natural colors.”
This continued right up into colonial New England, as the Pilgrims and Puritans preferred to wear their “sadd” colors, “sadd” not meaning the same then as now, but “somber” or “subdued.” For the dye expense and availability reasons mentioned above. And the new dyes would have come into existence 500 years AFTER the 1300s, small typo above….or momentary lapse as Colin demands to be played with or the UPS person rings the doorbell.
I sit corrected. Not sure how that sentence was in my mind before it ended up on screen.
The really interesting thing–to me, at least–is that the search for brighter, more permanent dyes in many colors drove organic chemistry through the 19th century and into the 20th. Synthesizing new dyes, let alone new classes of dyes, was a way to great wealth. And, as an almost accidental byproduct, dye scientists created the synthetic pharmaceuticals and plastics industries.
“Synthesizing new dyes, let alone new classes of dyes, was a way to great wealth.”
Unless you were one of the drones, usually female, beavering away in the textile mills up here in Nova Anglia; many of which ended up moving down to the Carolinas and then into oblivion or overseas. My hometown of New Bedford had begun as a fishing seaport and then the “Whaling Capital of the World,” but when that disappeared it became a center of textile manufacturing and the mills were still there but fading away when I was a little kid in the Fabulous Fifties. Dyes and dye by-products and wastewater simply got drained off into the groundwater systems, watersheds, and estuaries back then, and among my family members who stayed in the area, many contracted various forms of cancer and died of it eventually. Others ended up with dementia and Alzheimer’s.
My siblings and I had long since moved away to other Maffachufetts mill towns by the time the textile factories had gone South. (along with our furniture industries). Three of us have since been working lo these many moons in the “high-tech” industries, spawned from MIT and Route 128, “America’s Technology Highway.” It will be interesting to see what we end up with; two others are already cancer survivors.
Years ago, I remember one particular criticism of movies set in the Middle Ages, or indeed more or less any time before say 1900: The peasants all had perfect teeth.
A thing that grates on me is that the non player characters in medieval Azeroth have these syrupy American accents.
Yeah, it always annoyed me when we were watching Inspector Cadfael (set in 1135 to about 1145, when Stephen and Maude/Matilda were contesting the throne) to hear all the characters speaking RP English rather than Olde English.
Rest assured, fanboys, if I ever make a movie or tee-vee series, the actors will be filthy mongrels with hardly any teeth at all and if set in Perfidious Albion in those years, will be speaking Middle English, a mongrelization of Ye Olde English, Norman French, some Old Norse, and some medieval Latin. And the women will not look like Hollywood starlets.
Just saw the second episode of “World Without End,” don’t know if I can keep watching. I note the female tramp had a knife at one point to get her dad off her, but apparently not when she had been traded for the cow and was being led away on a rope. Yo, wussup widdat? It’s called “continuity,” people, learn it. Also, unless done correctly, people being hanged usually just strangle, and it can take a long time. In these things they are always instantly dead. One could go on and on…
I’ve been trying not to weigh in. Trying not to give off creepy vibes. So much for good intentions…
Even if you do a hanging right, with the neck snapping, the body is likely to twitch, kick, or flail a bit. I speak from experience in killing by breaking necks. If someone dies of being unable to breathe, they’re 100% likely (in my experience) to struggle a bit at first, then be quiet for a moment, then really flail for a few seconds. Even “clean” deaths by gunshot or knife are usually messy, with blood, kicking, and screaming. Let’s face it, death is usually really messy and unpleasant, and there’s a reason it is viscerally feared by every normal person who isn’t a pathetic, sheltered hothouse flower.
In the early Eighties there was a really wonderful film called Gorky Park:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorky_Park_%28film%29
in which most of the major characters speak very nice English. I don’t have a problem with that, but one of the characters, Pasha, played by Michael Elphick, had a strong Cockney accent. It was a bit out of place but I love the film and the accent was kinda amusing and endearing, so I overlooked it.
“…Even “clean” deaths by gunshot or knife are usually messy…”
Naw, they die instantly and painlessly. I saw it on the tee-vee!!
“…a pathetic, sheltered hothouse flower.”
I see you’ve found me out. Drat!
I don’t buy SteveF’s self promotion of himself as some sort of homicidal maniac. I’m sure he hasn’t killed anyone in the last six months, perhaps more.
Heh. Several years, in fact. I have a small child I’m responsible for, so I have to (pretend to) be somewhat responsible. Besides, most of my, ah, adventures have been self-defense or defense of others, and anyway I don’t acknowledge rapists and other subhuman scum to be human, so “homicide” is not the proper term. Parasiticide, maybe.
You know you’re getting old when you yearn to be “respectable”… 🙂
Just wait until you see the part where they hang the guy by pushing him off a balcony with a 25-foot drop. I almost blew my Coke out through my nose. As I said to Barbara, even a 10-foot drop would have ripped the guy’s head off.
I used to have a copy somewhere of the US Army drop table for hangings. IIRC, the proper drop for a heavy man was under five feet and even for a light woman was something like 7.5 feet.
Might I suggest you spend some time talking to non-human NPCs?
If the accents seem out of place in medieval Azeroth, what about the firearms that hunters have? Especially since they’re the ones that never run out of ammo?
It’s not just the NPCs, when I try to re-use a power I get something like “that spell isn’t ready yet”, and I can easily hear the reprimand in the speaker’s voice. And that same syrupy accent.
There are days when I hate this game and other days when I almost like it. A bit. It’s nothing like City of Heroes. Damn NCSoft.
I forgot about that because I’ve turned off the audio for that message on my PC. I have a macro set up in WOW that has the side effect of frequently producing that annoying error message.
“…the proper drop for a heavy man was under five feet…”
Good memory!
j. Determine the proper amount of drop of the prisoner through
the trap door. A standard drop chart for normal men of given
weights is given below. Variation of the drop because of physical
condition may be necessary. A medical officer should be consulted
to determine whether any factors, such as age, health, or muscular
condition will affect the amount of drop necessary for a proper
execution.
120 lbs or less 170 lbs 6′ 0″
125 lbs 175 lbs 5′ 11″
130 lbs 180 Ibs 5′ 9″
135 lbs 185 lbs 5′ 7″
140 lbs 190 lbs 5′ 6″
145 lbs 195 lbs 5′ 5″
150 lbs 200 lbs 5′ 4″
155 lbs 205 lbs 5′ 2″
160 lbs . 210 lbs 5′ 1″
165 lbs 220 1bs and over 5′ 0″
http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/procedure_dec-1947.pdf
I’d prefer the execution by “musketry” all things considered, and afterwards?
“g. The escort, with the band playing a lively air, will return to
their parade ground and be dismissed”