Studying archaelogy by making pottery the ancient way — at the University of Wisconsin.

With Professor Mark Kenoyer at the outdoor UW–Madison Experimental Archaeology Lab near Picnic Point:

The students had produced pottery using a variety of historic techniques and were preparing to fire it in a kiln Kenoyer built at the outdoor lab nearly 15 years ago. They were to load the kiln using traditional methods, seal it with clay produced on site and attempt to produce a fire without modern technology.

Alina Boyden, a graduate student who studies prehistoric projectiles in Stone Age Africa, volunteered to climb barefoot into a pit dug several feet into the ground and add water to the loess soil dug out from the pit walls. Using her feet, toes and a substantial amount of lower leg strength, Boyden mixed the water and soil into a thick, slurping clay....

"Monica had to be sacrificed for the greater good of the Clintons and feminist ambitions."

"Hillary was furious at Bill — stories were leaked that he was sleeping on the couch — but she also had to protect her political investment. If he collapsed, she was done. And she was going up — to the Senate and eventually the Oval Office."

Wrote Maureen Dowd in 2014, quoted by me in this blog post, which I'm reading today because I created the tag "sacrifice" yesterday and added it to 200+ old posts so I could see how the word — so important in American presidential politics right now — has been used over the past dozen years.

Here's a more recent example of the use of the word "sacrifice," from June 8th of this yea:

"The first time in our nation's history that a woman will be a major party's nominee."

Said Hillary Clinton, last night, proclaiming her individual historicity and immediately including everyone else:

Tonight's victory is not about one person.

It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible....

"Sacrifice," as I was saying yesterday, simply means giving up something of value to obtain something of higher value. You sacrifice because you think you'll be better off in the long run. In ancient times, a lamb might be burnt up instead of eaten out of a hope of winning blessings from God. In common modern parlance, parents sacrifice so that their offspring will have a good start in life, conceptualized as a benefit for the family the parents would like to see prosper.

It's one thing for a person to decide to sacrifice, to give up X for Y, but quite another for someone in the political arena to call what somebody else did a sacrifice. That's rhetoric, propaganda, and we need to analyze not what the person doing the sacrificing hoped to gain, but what the person using the word is trying to do to the minds of those who are listening. If a political orator says that the war dead sacrificed their lives, we should contemplate what the speaker hopes to gain. It's no sacrifice to say "sacrifice"! It's a way to elevate the loss and ease the pain, perhaps, or, ignobly, to distract us from the line of responsibility that traces back to our political and military leaders.

And we may very well be distracted, because there is social pressure to stop all other thinking and honor the war dead and empathize with their families. That's built into the power of the propaganda. We're getting some stern discipline this week — as Trump is pilloried for failing to perform the usual honor ritual. Never, ever, do anything but stop, honor, and empathize. Submit to the pressure or become a social outcast like Trump.

Now, back to my 2 examples above. The word "sacrifice" is used as other people take losses so that Hillary Clinton may gain. The Dowd quote is sarcastic, and the person who loses — Monica — is not choosing to take a loss. She's more in the position of the lamb in the old burnt-offerings scenario. In the June quote, Hillary is pointing at hordes of people and declaring them to have sacrificed for "for the greater good of the Clintons and feminist ambitions." Funny how the sarcastic Dowd language slots right into Hillary's own rhetoric.

"My sister had a summer job on a farm in France throwing small amounts of earth on to trays of organic potatoes destined for the supermarket..."

"... presumably in order to make them look more 'organic.'"

BBC collects descriptions of the most boring jobs... and the jobs are interestingly boring, but I was surprised that they all involve repetitive physical motions. When I think of boring jobs, I think of jobs that draw on the mind.

"Every time I put them on, I am conscious of the fact that I am now being disobedient in my marriage."

Quote from a Wall Street Journal article titled "Nice Cargo Shorts! You’re Sleeping on the Sofa/Relationships are tested by persistence of 1990s fashion item; ‘a misshapen lump.'"

At the Pure Fluff Café...

... say what you like.

Nude photos of Melania Trump — née Knauss — are "a celebration of the human body as art."

"... nothing to be embarrassed about with the photos. She’s a beautiful woman."

Said the Trump spokesperson. There's also the alternate response, which is what Trump himself went with: The photo was "taken for a European magazine prior to my knowing Melania" and "In Europe, pictures like this are very fashionable and common."

WaPo Fact Checker gives 4 Pinocchios to Hillary Clinton's claim that the FBI director said her answers (about the email) were "truthful."

"As we have seen repeatedly in Clinton’s explanations of the email controversy, she relies on excessively technical and legalistic answers to explain her actions," Glenn Kessler says. "While Comey did say there was no evidence she lied to the FBI, that is not the same as saying she told the truth to the American public — which was the point of Wallace’s question."

That is, Comey was saying: As long as he doesn't know that she knows what she's saying isn't true, he has "no evidence" that she's lying.

And, in Kessler's view, Hillary was lying when she said Comey said she told the truth.

But I want Kessler to do a fact check on whether Comey was lying when he said that there was "no evidence." Evidence is anything that gets you closer to knowing a fact in issue, and there is a basis to infer that Hillary knew what she was saying was false.

Otherwise, how does Kessler know that Hillary was lying when she said what she thought Comey said about her? Maybe she really believes it. Who can know?

Did you notice what Trump refrained from saying when he was asked what he has "sacrificed"?

You've noticed, I'm guessing, that at the Democratic convention, a man named Khizr Khan asserted that Donald Trump has "sacrificed nothing and no one." Khan's son had, as he put it, "sacrificed his life."

"Sacrifice" means to give up something of value to obtain some higher value, and it's interesting to think about when we use that word — in religion, in baseball — but Khan used it in a way that's conventional in wartime: to elevate death.

There are reasons — good and bad — for using a word that makes it seem as though the dead person chose to die in exchange for a higher good rather than to say that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. A good reason is that it eases the pain of those who loved the person who died. A bad reason is that it cuts off the line of responsibility that runs to those in power who made the decision that put the person in the place where he died.

But Khan went further than to say that his son sacrificed. He went on the attack — attacking a presidential candidate (and not the one who had anything to do with putting the son in the place where he died) — and antagonized Trump, telling him, in a statement that purports to have knowledge that Khan could not possibly possess: "You have sacrificed nothing and no one."

It was memorable rhetoric, and it was not surprising that George Stephanopoulos used it to question Trump:

STEPHANOPOULOS: He said you have sacrificed nothing and no one.

Trump did not say, yes, I have. He examined the question:

TRUMP: Well, that sounds -- who wrote that? Did Hillary's script writer write it? Because everybody that went out there....

And then he didn't complete his thought, but I think he meant everybody who went out there on the convention stage. I guess he was considering saying that Khan's speech didn't sound like a private individual's personal thoughts, but like part of the convention rhetoric, that is, the Party's propaganda.

Trump switched to talking about General Allen, who "went out... ranting and raving." It's much better to attack the general than the private citizen. The DNC wanted you to empathize with the father, not to question the warmakers, so Trump re-aimed the question well. When Stephanopoulos brought up Hillary's line "you don't know more than the generals," Trump lit into the generals:

TRUMP: Well, I tell you, the generals aren't doing so well right now. Now, I have a feeling it may be Obama's fault. But if you look at ISIS, General MacArthur, and General Patton, they're spinning in their graves. The generals certainly aren't doing very well right now.

See my Patton quote above, in italics. Stephanopoulos refocused on sacrificing: "How would you answer that father? What sacrifice have you made for your country?" And this time, Trump offered an answer:

TRUMP: I think I have made a lot of sacrifices. I've work[ed] very, very hard. I've created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I've done -- I've had tremendous success.

Stephanopoulos needled him: "Those are sacrifices?" Is hard work a sacrifice? Trump seems to have swapped in the idea of doing good in this world. He makes no mention of giving anything up to pursue his line of work, though he could have. When people work long hours, they sacrifice leisure time. That's what the word means — giving up something of value for a higher value — but it's not politically wise to say that in response to a man who seems to be saying my son sacrificed his life for the greater good.

But there's something else Trump might have said, and it's something he says frequently, something that was expressed at the GOP convention — by Ivanka Trump:

In his own way, and through his own sheer force of will, he sacrificed greatly to enter the political arena as an outsider.

And Here's Trump himself (last May): "I’ve given up a tremendous amount to run for president. I gave up two more seasons of Celebrity Apprentice." And how many times has he said — at rallies — I didn't have to do this. I had a great life?

I'm not surprised Trump didn't deploy this theory when Stephanopoulos asked him the "sacrifice" question, but I'm rather sure he thought of it and chose not to say it. A lot of people seem to think he just blurts out everything that pops into his head, but it's hard to notice unsaid things like this one, and I want to give him some credit for restraint.

I had such fun... out among...

... the hymenopterans.

The ordeal of listening to Hillary explain what she meant by "The Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment."

Hillary Clinton sat for an interview today on "Fox News Sunday," and I watched it for you. I'm just going to focus on what she said when Chris Wallace confronted her with something she said last year, "The Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment."

WALLACE:  Now, in the 2008 Heller case, the court said there's a constitutional individual right to bear arms.  What's wrong with that? 

She responded and — forgive me — I've got to parse this pretty closely:

CLINTON:  Well, I think what the court said about there being an individual right is in line with constitutional thinking.  

Is the "constitutional thinking" she's referring to there wrong, in her view? She doesn't say. She repeats the majority's interpretation and essentially says that was an interpretation that existed out there in the legal literature.

And I said in the convention, I’m not looking to repeal the second amendment.  

So, yeah, you said that in the convention, but why did you say that? What relationship did that statement have to "The Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment"?

"Yeah, I don't think we're in New Testament or Old Testament, we're like in Dante's Inferno, we're in the seventh circle of Hell..."

Raved David Brooks on "Meet the Press" today. He looked weirdly wild-eyed. What set him off that badly?

The moderator Chuck Todd had brought up Trump's response to Khizr Khan — "I was viciously attacked by Mr. Khan at the Democratic Convention, am I not allowed to respond? Hillary voted for the Iraq War, not me." — and Doris Kearns Goodwin had recycled her idea that the question is "temperament" and Alex Castellanos seemed to think he was improving on that by saying "it's a choice between temperament and character." Castellanos honed his utterly dull distinction by redoing it as New Testament/Old Testament:

You know, is it a New Testament election where things are going swimmingly and we turn the other cheek? Or is this an Old Testament election where we could lose it all and an eye for an eye?

I keep hearing all these Trump antagonists portraying Trump as "dark," but calling someone dark is dark, and Brooks looked way too psyched about Hell. Meanwhile, Khizr Khan was on CNN declaring that Trump is "a black soul":

"He is a black soul, and this is totally unfit for the leadership of this country," Khan said. "The love and affection that we have received affirms that our grief -- that our experience in this country has been correct and positive. The world is receiving us like we have never seen. They have seen the blackness of his character, of his soul."

At the Reverse Side Café...

... are you so sure your point of view is best?



There are all those things you've forgotten to think of saying.

"Cecil memes happened as a response to Cecil outrage, but Harambe memes happened in anticipation of Harambe outrage."

"Harambe became a referendum on and a satire of social-media-outrage culture, his name a stand-in for everything wrong with the way social media reacts to news."

"The most metal word of all is burn, followed by cries, veins, eternity, and breathe."

"The least metal word is particularly, followed by indicated, secretary, committee, and university."

What you can infer from this is that the metal English is spoken from a timeless, elemental, and darkly ethereal space, while standard English is unremarkably deskbound. Perhaps this is why we hunger for metal in the first place.

Hillary wore a white suit, but what if a man wore a white suit... what if a man wore red pants?

There was the usual chatter about whether it's sexist to talk about what Hillary wore, but the visuals are part of a politician's message, and wearing a white suit is a loud message to the eye. Of course, we should talk about it. The day after the convention, I observed that a male presidential candidate appearing at the convention in a white suit would be considered a lunatic. And what if he turned up in cobalt blue — like Hillary on Day 3 — or pumpkin or mustard — as Hillary has seen fit to do on the campaign stage. He'd be considered a clown.

And yesterday, I was listening to Tom and Lorenzo's podcast about fashion at the convention, and they were talking about how narrow the range color range is for male politicians. They don't even wear black or gray suits. The suits are all dark blue. And the wearing of white shirts is so standard that a big deal was made out of Tim Kaine's wearing a blue shirt.

But somehow I'd missed Anthony Weiner (not that they let that man on the stage). Here's something that got my attention in Maureen Dowd's "lightning round" interview with Donald Trump:

On Anthony Weiner being in the convention hall in bright red pants, calling Trump’s convention “a Dumpster fire”:

“I think he’s a pervert. It’s dangerous to allow him on the convention floor.”

Weiner wore red pants? Yes. Here's a NYT report from Wednesday, "Anthony Weiner, Often a Democratic Outcast, Is Sticking Around":

Mr. Weiner wore bright red pants, recognizable to those who have encountered him at New York City parades and festivals....

So, yeah, wearing red pants has been a trademark for Weiner. He's an outcast, of course, but even before he was cast out, he was wearing the red pants. Here's an Esquire article from August 2013 about men in red pants:

So, is Weiner's predilection for red chinos supporting evidence of a justifiable public disdain for the vermillion-legged men of the world? Or does Carlos Danger's fondness for tomato-colored pants have no real bearing on the issue? We say the latter.

Here's why: In the UK, red trousers are bound up with matters of class — as noted in the Telegraph piece, they're generally considered the realm of the posh and elderly...

In the States, though, red pants of the sort that the Telegraph is concerned with — bold, saturated, bright — aren't subject to that same sort of associative baggage. Whereas sun-faded, salmon-hued Nantucket reds may speak to the idea of wealthy Northeasterners, the Kennedies...

Interesting spelling.

... and a specifically American version of "royalty," all those other red pants are just… red pants... So, should you do it? Yes. Go for it.... Provided, of course, that you follow this one, unbelievably crucial rule: Only wear one piece of red clothing at a time.

And here's a NYT article from August 2014:

“Once they were the preserve of braying poshos,” The Guardian observed in an anti-red-trouser screed in 2012, “now they are the hipsters’ choice.”...

Whether chino or skinny jean, however, the red pant demands comment, as Anthony Weiner, then a New York mayoral hopeful, found as he stumped at a 2013 same-sex marriage rally in salmon slacks (New York magazine asserted, “Anthony Weiner’s Gay Pants Are the Talk of the Town”).

So there are other colors for men. There's red. And while we're talking about bright-colored pants, here at Meadhouse, there's green. Remember this guy:

A dialogue about those terrible things Trump says.

Trump said: "I thought Chelsea did a nice job [at the convention]. You know, Chelsea likes Ivanka and Ivanka likes Chelsea. I wish they didn’t like each other, but they do."

Prompting this dialogue at Facebook (in which I am one of the participants):

X: Trump: bringing people together (except his daughter and her friend, who he'd rather keep apart).

Y: I wonder if I could get paid as a Trump translator. I know what he means!

X: What does it say about him if he needs a translator? It's important for the president to communicate!

Y: Seems he's done pretty well with his communicating, but people who oppose him are taking advantage of opportunities to act like they don't understand him. We'll see how these cross-purposes resolve themselves.

Z: This actually makes sense, even if on first hearing it, it doesn't sound right. A lot of what he says, though, just can't be translated into anything a decent person would ever say.

Y: You reverted to pointing at all those other things after you were prompted to observe what makes sense of this one. I challenge you to focus individually on the other things and put them, one by one, through an equivalent effort. There must be a name for the logical fallacy you are committing here. Think about it. You believe there is a pile of evidence that X is true, and when you examine one item, it doesn't show X is true, so you point to that pile. It's over there....