allrighty, then.
Part 22 is in the bag. On SHWI, anyway. Need to get it up on the web site, probably tomorrow. I type EA up on Notepad, turn off the line breaks when I am ready to cut and paste onto Usenet, run the spell-check, then send it off. The only way I have figured out not to have the formatting screwed up. Unfortunately, this means that I have to repeat the process to get it on the web. It is actually correcting my many misspellings that takes most of the time. So usually the web site lags a day or two behind.
I freely confess that I have been looking forward to taking the timeline back to Ultima Thule. I haven't calculated the sheer weight of words, but I bet there is more Europe now than I origionally intended. But we are back on track.
Some notes: I did my best not to turn the megafauna brought to Europe into a gimmick, but I figured it was worth a mention. Thus, the use of mastodons in a seige works out about as well as one could expect. They are a big fat target for a trebuchet or ballistae. Might work better against fortifications that are not as well-defended as Milan.
Siger de Brabant was a lucky find. Been doing some reading about the "13th Century Renaissance." Again I discover that there is a lot more going on in the Middle Ages than I would have guessed before I started in on this. I haven't finished it yet, but at this point I highly recommend 'Aristotles Children' by Richard Rubenstein. Covers the rediscovery in the West of Aristotle's works. Very interesting story, very well told. That is where I plucked Siger from.
Also definitely worth a read is 'The Ornament of the World' by Maria Rosa Menocal. Al-Andalus - "How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain." Good, good stuff.
Slower going has been "Buddhism in the Sung," edited by Peter Gregory and Daniel Getz, Jr. Interesting to be sure, but pretty darn scholarly for a novice to eastern religions like myself. But, Mu-lan-P'i needs to be developed as a setting and Buddhism and Confucianism play big parts.
So that's it. Next we have a North to South, East to West survey of the settlements in the New World. Christian, pagan, Cathar, Muslim, and Chinese.
And I need to get to work on a map ....
I freely confess that I have been looking forward to taking the timeline back to Ultima Thule. I haven't calculated the sheer weight of words, but I bet there is more Europe now than I origionally intended. But we are back on track.
Some notes: I did my best not to turn the megafauna brought to Europe into a gimmick, but I figured it was worth a mention. Thus, the use of mastodons in a seige works out about as well as one could expect. They are a big fat target for a trebuchet or ballistae. Might work better against fortifications that are not as well-defended as Milan.
Siger de Brabant was a lucky find. Been doing some reading about the "13th Century Renaissance." Again I discover that there is a lot more going on in the Middle Ages than I would have guessed before I started in on this. I haven't finished it yet, but at this point I highly recommend 'Aristotles Children' by Richard Rubenstein. Covers the rediscovery in the West of Aristotle's works. Very interesting story, very well told. That is where I plucked Siger from.
Also definitely worth a read is 'The Ornament of the World' by Maria Rosa Menocal. Al-Andalus - "How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain." Good, good stuff.
Slower going has been "Buddhism in the Sung," edited by Peter Gregory and Daniel Getz, Jr. Interesting to be sure, but pretty darn scholarly for a novice to eastern religions like myself. But, Mu-lan-P'i needs to be developed as a setting and Buddhism and Confucianism play big parts.
So that's it. Next we have a North to South, East to West survey of the settlements in the New World. Christian, pagan, Cathar, Muslim, and Chinese.
And I need to get to work on a map ....
posted by Doug Hoff at 2:43 PM
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