Category: Uncategorized

Role-playing game historian Jon Peterson, who wrote Playing at the World and has a blog with the same name, gave an interesting History of D&D in 12 objects. Modelled after Neil MacGregor’s book, A History of the World in 100 Treasures, Peterson tells the story of the people and events who led up to Dungeons and Dragons by telling us the story of twelve obscure objects. It’s 12 minutes and 4 seconds of nerd-a-licious historical viewing, and perfect for celebrating the 40th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons.

By now, even most non-comic book fans know that what drives Peter Parker to help people as Spider-Man is that he chose not to stop a burglar who then killed his Uncle Ben:

One can only imaging how heartbreaking grocery shopping is for him:

Click the photo to see it at full size.

Now I’ll be tempted to do this every time I’m near a power outlet with a Sharpie.

And while we’re on the topic:

Click the photo to see it at full size.

When Brockett Parsons, Lady Gaga’s keyboard player, looked at the sorts of fancy designs available to his bandmate guitarist, he set out to create a fancy, yet useful and playable keyboard design. He recruited some friends from the keyboard manufacturing industry, and the end result is the PianoArc, a circular MIDI keyboard controller. It previewed at NAMM 2014, and Keyboard Magazine reports that “it’s surprisingly natural and very inspiring to play.” I want one!

It brings us a step closer to the funky instruments from that old Buck Rogers episode with the 25th-century band, Andromeda:

Whenever I’m out playing the accordion, sometimes people tell me that I should get a monkey as part of my act, and to help get coins from passers-by. Judging from the photos below, what I really need is an accordion helper dog:

Photo from The Travel Year. Click to see the source.

Photo from Let’s Polka. Click to see the source.

Photo from Fields of Cake. Click to see the source.

Photo by Denis Grzetic, found at Photo.net. Click to see the source.

Photo found at SFGate.com. Click to see the source.

Photo by Matt Doane and found at Fast Fifty. Click to see the source.

A handy flowchart that summarizes a penitential’s rules for sex.
Click to (ahem) engorge the image.

According to The History Blog:

Penitentials were handbooks listing many sins a confessor could be expected to encounter during private confession and the appropriate penances he should assign for each act (or the appropriate moneys the penitent should pay to commute a penance).

In essence, they were a set of violations and corresponding punishments not unlike the ones that Jasper from The Simpsons gave out when he became a substitute teacher during a strike. The History Blog cites an example from Corpus Christi College’s Corpus 190 of the Canons of Theodore, which I’ve bullet-pointed it for easier reading:

• Whoever fornicates with an effeminate male or with another man or with an animal must fast for 10 years.
• Elsewhere it says that whoever fornicates with an animal must fast 15 years and sodomites must fast for 7 years.
• If the effeminate male (bædling) fornicates with another effeminate male (bædling), (he is to) do penance for 10 years.
• Whoever does this unintentionally (unwærlice) once must fast for 4 years; if it is habitual, as Basil says, for 15 years if he is not in orders and also one year (less?) so as a woman does. If it is a boy, for the first time, 2 years; if he does it again, 4 years.
• If he is a boy, for the first time, 2 years; if he does it again, 4 years.
• If he fornicates interfemorally (between the limbs), he must fast for 1 year or the 3 40-day periods.
• If he defiles himself (masturbates), he is to abstain from meat for four days.
• He who desires to fornicate (with) himself (i.e., to masturbate) and is not able to do so, he must fast for 40 days or 20 days.
• If he is a boy and does it often, either he is to fast 20 days or one is to whip him.
• If a woman fornicates [with another woman?] she must do penance for 3 years.
• If she touches herself in the same way, i.e., in emulation of fornication, she must repent for 1 year.
• One penance applies to a widow and a virgin; more (penance) is earned by her who has a husband if she fornicates.
• Whoever ejaculates seed into the mouth, that is the worst evil. From someone it was judged that they repent this up to the end of their lives.

Under these rules, I would’ve spent my teenage years as a vegetarian.

The flowchart at the top of this article is one created by University of Kansas history professor emeritus James A. Brundage, and its appears in his book, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, and it provides an easy-to-parse summary of all the rules and regulations concerning sex as written by a group of people who “saw marital sex as a concession, not as a right or even a gift from God.”

Being my geeky self, one of my first thoughts was: “This might be fun to code up as an app.”