There probably should be a law prohibiting octogenarians with COVID-19 from posting anything on the internet. The latest strain of the disease, which I believe targets seniors who have had all the shots, has some extraordinary symptoms: extreme fatigue, non-stop sneezing, nodding off, and an enormous appetite for pepperoni pizza along with the rationalization to justify it as curative. I’m sitting here now at four in the morning picking the pepperoni off of the pizza and letting Alexa decide the music. (Fewer calories if you eat the pepperoni and pizza separately – no brain fog here). Every minute or two I nod off: a super-short nap, the kind with two seconds of REM and a magically good short dream, the naps 80-year-olds have at traffic lights as the light turns green and people behind start to blow their horns, the types of naps I have during homilies on Sunday when my wife is there to kick me awake.
I just dreamed they had just redone the carbon dating, with a new 200 page protocol designed by Hugh Farey using sample locations picked by Joe Marino. The result, written on an electronic blackboard, was 650 AD! Everyone, medievalists, authenticists and the undecided alike, was able to find a way to say, “I told you so.”
And Alexa was singing, “I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name. It felt good to be out of the rain . . . La la la la la la,”
Are we beyond the point when we can be rational? I don’t think so. Hold your horses. We’ve got a significant posting by Colin Berry coming soon. Stay tuned. And in the meantime, read Hugh Farey’s latest posting, With Friends Like These… at the Medieval Shroud Blog
What would happen if such a date, 650 AD, resulted from new tests?
*According to the song’s composer, Dewey Bunnell, the folk song is a metaphor for getting away from life’s confusion into a quiet, peaceful place.
“What would happen if such a date, 650 AD, resulted from new tests?”.
Unlikely, methinks Dan.
The radiocarbon dating by three different labs (Tucson, Oxford, Zurich) operating independently btw, flagged up1260-1390
Mean value? 1325.
Significance? Just 30 or so years prior to the first reported sighting of the TS at Lirey (1356 plus or minus), with the Lirey Pilgrim’s Badge displaying holders’ coat of arms recording the unique details of that TS for the very first time (i.e. frontal v dorsal body images, aligned head-to-head etc). That’s to say nothing regarding “bloodstains in all the right places”.
I say forget 650AD. Move forward about 700 years or so!
(Yes, my promised posting is now at an advanced stage of preparation. It’s the “de-clutterization” that takes time when attempting to compose in a way that sums up concisely the current status quo. ).
PS to the above: it’s some 3 days since I sent the final part of my invited posting to Dan. Sadly he’s down with Covid,19, so there’s a not surprising delay in seeing myself appear right now..
While we wait for Dan to recover , I thought I’d flag up a key feature of what I’ve focused on in the completed posting. It’s a hugely neglected feature of the STuRP investigation from 44 years ago, i.e. that week of intense investigation in Turin.
No, it focuses on what I now consider to be an incredibly sidelined, nay ignored feature of the STuRP ’78 findings, unreported in its1981 Summary. Which? Answer: Mark Evans’ low power microscopy of the native TS body image threads and fibres, pre- Ray Rogers’ somewhat questionable deployment of sticky tape for sampling image fibres. .
What precisely you may ask?
Answer: those two mysterious features described as (a) the so-called body image
fibres “half tone effect” and (b) the sudden and abrupt “image chromophore discontinuities”.
I now believe (after 6 years or more of home-based TS modelling) with cheapo microscopes that they can both be accounted for. I will briefly say how and why in my soon-to-arrive posting to this site.
Wishing you a speedy recovery, Dan.
PPS: why do I describe Ray Rogers’ deployment of sticky tape for sampling the TS as “questionable”?
Answer: one can, had one been recruited to STuRP 78) have explored in depth and detail the part one is stripping off.
But what is one leaving behind (given the massive tear-away operation, one that separates not just fibres from threads, but – arguably – body image too from its attachment – firm or otherwise- to fibres?