Links (non-medieval)

A swiss road safety campaign on speed
I was too afraid to listen... The beard... the wings... the white suits...
And via the same report I was forwarded the above link through, the winner of the unfortunate acronym of the year award:

The recent Swiss road safety report “SINUS” indicates that, in 2008, 147 people died and another 1,109 were seriously injured because of speeding.

(via Speed Monitor ETSC’s Newsletter on Speed Policy Developments in the EU November 09 NUMBER 06)

And on a completely different topic (yay variable star observers):
An interview with the very delightful Albert Jones. He does amazing astronomy in his back yard, is still finding comets and other cool stuff and is in his late 80s. And is a really nice guy.

Mornings

Medieval link... For the medieval Manbag.

After seeing the very cool pouches that argentbear and talkingfrog were each working on in the weekend, and drooling over the copy of "Purses in Pieces" - Archaeological finds of late medieval and 16th-century leather purses, pouches, bags and cases in the Netherlands
by O. Goubitz, (especially the wax tablet cases) I did some poking of some blogs of people who do very nice such pouches mikkelf84 and maxlu179 who I have linked to before), and realized that one of them had given this link (1.33?mb pdf) which is the 1st 30 pages of said book, which Oxbow was offering as a lure/enticement. Gives you the introduction and most of the first chapter on girdle purses. Unfortunately not the wax tablet section but with nice books like that, you take what you can get.

I especially like the purse in figure 4 (pg 11), with the equivalent of the cell phone section at the front, for storing your wax tablets in.