Chronica Minora

Bill C-51: a good idea

2008-05-12T21:08:22Z

Brace yourselves, folks: I'm about to praise a piece of Conservative legislation. The End Times are surely near.

There's been a bit of a kerfuffle in the media recently about Bill C-51, an act introduced last month to update the Food and Drugs Act. Basically, it requires people who sell "therapeutic products" including herbs, beet juice, magnets and what-have-you to make sure that their advertising has some basis in reality. If you say that your garlic extract can cure cancer and give people a better sex life, you'd better be able to point to a double-blind clinical trial that proves it. As far as I'm concerned, this is an excellent idea that should have been implemented years ago.

Of course, this makes many of the shadier characters in the alternative health world very unhappy. They're now running around to the media claiming that the bill would force more than half of all natural health products off the shelves. I'm skeptical. I've read the bill and I don't see where the legislation says that any new products will be banned. What it does say is that alternative medicines have to work as advertised (see Section 14). So if you want to sell dandelion fluff, you can continue to do so. But if you're selling it in packaging that claims that it cures heart disease, you're going to have to change the packaging. That sounds eminently reasonable to me.

A few years back, I had a summer job writing up catalogue descriptions for a dot com firm that sold infomercial products on the internet. It quickly became apparent to me that the whole alternative medicine industry (and it is a multi-billion dollar industry) is seriously challenged in the ethics department. Herbal caffeine pills with additives linked to paralysis cases were being sold as aphrodisiacs. Dieting teas turned out to be merely diuretics that left their users dehydrated (which technically makes you a few pounds lighter, but no less fat). Magnetic bracelets were claimed to have all kinds of therapeutic properties, when a significant body of scientific evidence shows that even the powerful magnets in MRI machines have no effect on human health. If the government is finally moving to clean up that mess, I'm all for it.

Expect to see more nonsense about "banning herbs" in the news. When I worked at Queen's Park, various alternative health organizations had a lobbying presence comparable to the pharmaceutical companies, and a lot of them are going to be losing business over this legislation. I'll be interested to see what happens to the bill.

My students think I'm smart or something

2008-04-30T05:07:38Z

Another little trend I noticed in this term's papers was the tendency to throw around vocabulary I'd never seen before. To balance the impression created by the post below, here are five words I learned from my students this term.

adjuvant a.: tending to help.

indelt n.: I still don't know what this is, or whether the word was a typo for something else. From the context, it is some sort of financial or judicial transaction performed at the papal curia.

lubricious a.: sleazy in a slippery kind of way.

misogamous a.: marriage-hating.

scapulimancy n.: divination performed by examining cracks in the shoulder blades of sheep (as practiced by the Mongols).

Medieval history, according to my students

2008-04-30T04:33:58Z

The three most common punishments for crimes in the Middle Ages were hanging and mutilation.

It was not inconceivable for a monastic house to increase the number of sheep farming in this period.

The earliest recorded human dissections in Europe date from the fourth century B.Sc.

Collette of Corbie's biographer stresses that ... both in life and death her body gave off only sweat odors.*

Sadly, these may be the last additions to my student blooper collection. Next year I'm not going to TA.

*_{I'm aware that this last line is a direct (if mangled) quote from Caroline Walker Bynum's Holy Feast and Holy Fast}

Free medieval research resource

2008-04-25T22:37:40Z

The International Medieval Bibliography, the grandaddy of all research tools for medievalists, is offering free month-long trials in honour of its fortieth anniversary.

If there's an obscure topic in medieval history, literature or archaeology that you've always wanted to look up, but you don't have access, now is your chance to find out that there are five brilliant new articles in your field and they're all in Hungarian.

Malnourishing children = bad public policy

2008-04-18T07:26:48Z

Since I wrote the Monica Grenfell post a few of days ago, I've been poking around a corner of the Internet known as the fatosphere. It turns out that in recent months a lot of self-described fat people have been banding together and producing some very smart blogs. The main aim of the movement, apart from providing a support network, is to challenge the common assumption that everyone who is overweight must also be unfit, sloppy and undisciplined.

It turns out to be a rather refreshing community. Folks there talk positively about their bodies, which is something you don't hear that often from people of any size elsewhere on the Internet. In fact, when you lurk somewhere like Shapely Prose for a little while, you start to look around you and realize just how much toxic crap about body image our culture spews at us every day.

You also start to squirm when you realize that you may be contributing to the problem. I mean, we're all surrounded by fat people who work out harder and eat better than we do but aren't turning into thin people. Yet somehow there's this pervasive insidious belief that they must have some kind of moral failing.

My new favourite blog is Junkfood Science by Sandy Szwarc. It demonstrates that a lot of what we think we know about diet and nutrition is either oversimplified to the point of uselessness or seriously garbled. If Queen's Park had passed Bill 8, The Healthy Food for Healthy Schools Act last week instead of today, I would have applauded. Now, I'm not so sure it's useful except as a politcal placebo. In fact, stampeding to force limited diets of "healthy" foods on kids can actually do them serious harm. Swarc reports that a recent study found that British nursery schools were malnourishing toddlers in the mistaken belief that a low-fat, low-calorie diet would be good for them. See also her essay here.

All this is making me do some serious spring head cleaning. More later, perhaps.

An Invitation to Monica Grenfell

2008-04-14T02:57:33Z

Dear Monica,

It's been a bit of a challenging week, eh? Here you thought you'd get some good publicity for your crash dieting book by writing a piece in the British Daily Mail saying that plus-sized contestant Chloe Marshall doesn't deserve to be a finalist for the Miss England pageant because her size indicates that she has a "shocking lack of self-control" and she's obviously been overeating. Then all those nasty fat people tried to defame you by pointing out that you call yourself a dietician even though you don't have the academic or professional credentials to do so legally. How unkind of them.

Listen girlfriend, after a week like this, you probably need to unwind. So how about, next time you're in the Toronto area, you drop by the Fighting Arts Collective and have a few friendly bouts of Dog Brothers-style stick fighting. (Or would that be Bitch Sisters-style? Anyways...) You'd like the sport. It takes a lot of fitness and self-control, which you must have in spades because you're skinny.

I know a great partner you can spar against: there's this chick at the Collective who goes by the handle of henchminion. You'll cream her for sure. She must be slow and she'll surely burst into tears at the first hit because she's very nearly the same body mass as Chloe Marshall. Obviously she doesn't work out and she has no self control. Besides, everyone knows that extra body mass is a real disadvantage when it comes to giving and taking hits. That's why special forces soldiers and UFC fighters are all bony and stuff.

So yeah! Anytime, sweetheart. Have your people call my people and we'll set it up.

Love and hugs,

Henchminion

When knights and ninjas collaborate

2008-04-03T00:13:22Z

For lack of anything profound to post, I'd like to point out the video section of the Fighting Arts Collective's new website. It's a marvellous diversion from essay marking, especially the part with the AEMMA demo from last January's open house.

Fifteenth-century armoured combat = grappling with can openers.

The ninjas are also pretty good.

Do not want?

2008-03-29T04:01:48Z

I just ran across this nifty site, which lets you search the English translations of two dozen late medieval cookbooks online. Naturally, I went looking for the stranger recipes.

From the Goodman of Paris, a late fourteenth-century book of instructions written by a Parisian burgher for his young wife, here are a couple of miscellaneous delicacies.

Hedgehog should have its throat cut, be singed and gutted, then trussed like a pullet, then pressed in a towel until very dry; and then roast it and eat with cameline sauce, or in pastry with wild duck sauce. Note that if the hedgehog refuses to unroll, put it in hot water, and then it will straighten itself.

Squirrels are singed, gutted, trussed like rabbits, roasted or put in pastry: eat with cameline sauce or in pastry with wild duck sauce.

Another one, from the Liber Cure Cocorum, written in England around 1430:

Stewed pigeons. Take pigeons and hew them in small morsels. Put them in an earthen pot. Take peeled garlic and herbs anon. Chop them up small before you do anything else. Put them in your pot and don't leave out the good broth with white grease. Add powder and good verjuice. Colour it with saffron and some salt. Put all these things in your pot and you shall stew your pigeons.

The pigeons probably weren't caught on the street. Medieval people often kept domestic pigeons in cotes.

On the other hand, what to make of this recipe? (Warning: click at your own peril!)

Argh

2008-03-28T01:01:14Z

I gave the hockey tickets back to my student today. He was mortified, I was mortified, it was uncomfortable all around. Argh. Thing is, I'm quite sure he wasn't looking for better grades. I think he's taking the course for fun. He's a mature student and a successful businessman, and he probably didn't even consider it a large gift.

Too late I remembered that my politician bosses used to pass some of the swag they received on to local charities. Maybe I should have given the tickets to the Big Brothers or something, and made some kid's day.

A small ethical dilemma

2008-03-25T19:52:01Z

Holy %3@&! I just checked my mailbox at the history department, and one of my students has given me two tickets to a hockey game. They're worth $146 apiece. If I was still working for politicians, I would have to report a gift of that size to the Integrity Commissioner's office and get their permission to accept it. However, I don't think the University of Toronto has anything resembling an Integrity Commissioner or a policy on bribery.

The most expensive gift I've accepted from a student in the past was a box of chocolates. As I recall, that experience ended with me being twice as careful to give her paper a strictly justifiable grade, and her making a tearful complaint to the course professor because she got a B when she was expecting an A. So this could easily go sour.

What do you guys think? Should I accept the tickets? If I decline them, how do I do it graciously?

A minor identity crisis

2008-03-20T03:52:40Z

Today, for the first time in my life, I met someone with the same first name as me. It was disconcerting. When someone calls my name, I *never* have any doubts that they're looking for me--until now.

AEMMA on the Mercer report

2008-03-18T20:24:41Z

Last week, Rick Mercer dropped by the AEMMA display at the Royal Ontario Museum and got some footage of a bit of arming sword freeplay. Keep an eye on the Mercer Report tonight to see what he does with it.

Legal history geek love

2008-03-08T04:29:12Z

This wiki of medieval English legal documents has a lot of stuff that I didn't know was online. Very cool.

http://emld.usc.edu/tiki-index.php

Flying saints

2008-03-03T04:51:24Z

For the medieval weirdness collection: A Field Guide to Flying Saints

Pea soup

2008-02-23T03:56:41Z

For lack of anything profound to report, I give you a recipe for really good pea soup.

Ingredients

*About 500g of dried split peas
*A celery root
*Two fat leeks, or three thinner ones
*A handful of baby carrots
*Three cloves of garlic
*About half of a bunch of parsley, say two dozen stalks
*A smoked pork hock
*Two beef boullion cubes
*Some salt

Instructions

1. Put the peas in a big pot with the boullion cubes and cover them with about twice their volume of water. Start boiling them.

2. Clean the other vegetables and chop them fine. Put them in the pot too. You may have to add more water.

3. When the peas have softened and the soup is almost ready, add the pork hock for the last ten minutes. If it's added too soon, all the salt and smokiness gets boiled out of it.

4. After the hock has been in the pot awhile, take it out, cut the meaty bits off, and throw them back in the pot.

5. When the soup has cooled, you should be able to stand a spoon upright in it.

Makes five big bowls.

Exit, ----ed by a bear

2008-02-12T02:46:25Z

I think this one belongs in the medieval weirdness collection.

"One admired eleventh-century ludus histrionum (play performed by actors) is reported to have featured a tame bear, an actor's naked membra and honey!"

--John Southworth, The English Medieval Minstrel, p. 7, citing Richard Axton, European Drama of the Early Middle Ages, p. 18.

In other important news

2008-01-25T00:47:24Z

I almost spat out my coffee when I found this story from Virginia in the back pages of the newspaper.

State legislator Lionel Spruill introduced a bill last week to ban displaying replicas of human genitalia on vehicles, calling it a safety issue because it could distract other drivers.

I do believe that takes the prize for the most whimsically inane piece of legislation I've ever seen.

He said the idea came from a constituent whose young daughter spotted an example of the trail hitch adornment and asked her father to explain it.

"`I didn't know what to tell her,'" Spruill said the constituent told him before Spruill vowed to stop such displays.

Heaven forbid that Virginians should have to explain basic anatomy to their children. We can't have that now, can we?

What cracked me up was thinking about the conversation that must have occurred between Spruill and the poor lawyer in the legislative drafting department.

Spruill: I want to ban those dangly-whatsits on trucks!

Lawyer: Ban what?

Spruill: You know, those, um, things. That people hang from their trailer hitches.

Lawyer: Well first of all we're going to have to come up with a legal definition of dangly-whatsits. Can you explain what they are?

Spruill: No! I don't want to have to explain them. That's the point!

The article concludes with the following quote:

[Spruill] said he won't hesitate to bring a set of $24.95 trailer testicles with him for a legislative show-and-tell.

"I'm going to do it," Spruill told reporters. "I'm going to bring them out here and show them to you till they tell me to stop."

If I were a trailer testicle manufacturer, I'd be making a hefty donation to Delegate Spruill this year. You just can't buy that kind of publicity.

Medieval zombies

2008-01-24T21:01:56Z

I heard a lecture today on the horror/worship relationship that medieval sources had with lepers. Halfway through, as the prof was describing people's disgust at the sight of shambling beggars losing their extremities, I had sudden visions of a George Romero film set in medieval Europe.

I wonder if any of the common tropes from zombie movies have their origins in medieval literature? This calls for Serious Academic Research.

Why I love the Fighting Arts Collective

2008-01-13T00:04:42Z

Yesterday, I walked past a copy of Charles Stross' new novel The Merchants' War at the Bakka-Phoenix bookstore. It took me about half a minute to realize that the image on the cover is supposed to be surprisingly incongruous.

To me, men in medieval armour carrying assault rifles look like part of a typical Sunday afternoon at FACT, when the tactical airsoft guys start sharing their toys with the historical European martial artists.

This morning, as I was doing a Jeet Kune Do class on the mezzanine, Aldo and Jack were sparring with longswords on the floor, and some acrobats who have recently started renting space from the Collective were winding themselves up in scarves dangling from the high ceiling. It's a wonderful, surreal place.

This year the FACT open house will be on Sunday, January 27th starting at 2-ish. We've laid in a supply of straw mats, so unlike last year there will indeed be the opportunity to cut stuff up with sharp swords. There will also be demos by all of the martial arts schools, chili and beer, hopefully in that order. Come one, come all!

Squirrel armour

2008-01-05T23:16:12Z

This is for larkvi.

http://www.pitbullarmory.com/Squirrel-armor.html

Morbid but interesting

2008-01-04T01:15:48Z

I am perversely heartened by the the summary of the year's Toronto-area murders published in the Star yesterday. Looking through it, I conclude that if you're not connected to the underworld and you're not dating or related to anyone with violent tendencies, your odds of being killed by another human being are very, very slim in this city. If you want something to be paranoid about, you're probably better off worrying about dying by falling down the stairs.

The other datum I glean from the summary is that the gang- and mob-related murders seem mostly to have been carried out with firearms, while the others are mostly stabbings and strangulations. I think this raises an interesting question about gun control.

Critics of various firearms safety regulations like to point out that gun control is useless because criminals don't acquire and register their guns through legitimate channels anyway. This seems to be true if we're talking about the gangland murders. However, it's interesting to note that the murder weapons in the domestic slayings are mostly something other than firearms. Are the current laws and regulations keeping guns out of the hands of the kinds of murderers who don't belong to larger criminal organizations? If that's the case, then I would say that the current laws are still useful.

On a related tangent, supposing that violent independent criminals are being prevented from buying guns, how much is that affecting the murder rate? Is there a way to quantify whether someone is less likely to die if the same would-be murderer attacks them with a knife rather than a gun? My gut feeling is they're safer without the gun in the equation, but only marginally so in the kind of close indoor environments where domestic violence usually takes place.

My conclusion from all this is that firearms issues should really be seen as two separate problems: how to deal with gang violence and how to deal with the more independent kind of behavior. Public policy solutions to one problem may or may not work for the other one, and vice versa.

Medieval technology and social continuity

2007-12-19T00:16:02Z

Histories of technology (*cough*) tend to treat the breast-strap horse harness as something that was rendered obsolete by the padded collar and disappeared by the year 1200 AD. However, it turns out it's alive and well in Romania and it has certain advantages over the padded collar. Transylvanian Horseman has an interesting photo-filled post on the relative merits of both harnessing systems over at his blog.

Nine Inch Noëls

2007-12-02T23:40:32Z

You can blame night__watch for bringing this to my attention.

http://badgods.com/nineinchnoels.html

New ways to put off essay marking

2007-11-28T01:35:23Z

I have a marvelous new source of distraction: Stephen Tomkins' regular web column Loose Canons. It's a miscellany of some of the more bizarre characters from church history. All your favourites are there: the pillar saints, the Cadaver Synod and good old Saint Wilgifortis.

See also The Twelve Days of Kitschmas on the same site.

On monkeys

2007-11-22T01:42:45Z

Monkeys show up quite often as pets in the Middle Ages. I wonder why they're no longer popular? Are they hard to housetrain?