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As the world keeps coming
1. What a lovely portrait of Leslie Howard this is. And proving my point that he was basically a weird-looking man, here's another—same artist, same subject, so much more off-kilter. I rather like this photo, too. Geekily taking notes is a fascinating way for anyone, but especially an actor, to represent themselves.
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sartorias is currently moderating a really interesting discussion about the literary descendants of Percy Blakeney over at Book View Café, so I'm all over that.)
2. The world's earliest known erotic graffiti has come to light on the Greek island of Astypalaia. Νικασίτιμος οἶφε Τιμίονα. And in addition to the fifth-century phalloi, there are "carvings depicting oared ships, daggers and spirals—all still discernible despite exposure to the erosive effects of wind and sea." That's pretty cool. Now I should like to read more about those cemeteries.
(It's interesting: if you tell me that a cemetery is unique for containing nothing but the pottery-buried bones of thousands of children under three years old, I assume we're looking at a pattern of sacrifice, even knowing that there are still scholars who argue stillbirths and infant mortality rather than ritual infanticide as an explanation for the Carthaginian tophets—Mary Gentle has one alt-Carthaginian character in her novel Ilario: The Lion's Eye (2006) rebuke the alternative as a blood libel. In the case of the Kylindra cemetery, it may be that there are clear archaeological markers of death by natural causes, or at least an absence of evidence for death by anything else. I don't doubt the value of sacred ground to lay a lost child in, whether it was just learning to walk or a miscarriage. I still wonder every time why it is that people have such a difficult time accepting human sacrifice in "civilized" cultures. Carthage is not an outlier in the ancient world. The Romans practiced it explicitly in times of extremity and casually in gladiatorial combat—funeral games, the lives of the gladiators dedicated to the di manes, the ancestral gods of the underworld. The Etruscans sacrificed prisoners taken in war, not unlike the Aztecs or Maya; their tomb art is full of bloodshed. Cahokia's population numbered in the tens of thousands at its height and its mounds are full of sacrificed bones. And that's without even touching the question of less direct forms of sacrifice: whom we cherish, whom we allow to die. It is not some barbaric, alien rite in which our ancestors never of course engaged (although yours totally did). I have a hard time thinking of a culture that at one time or another has not.)
3. We did not watch 1776 (1972) for our anniversary, but we did cook. We made barbecue mac and cheese. We'd encountered something similar on the late-night menu at jm Curley's a few weeks ago, umami-bombing a peppery white cheddar sauce with pulled pork. We had leftover, very rare steak tips. Spoiler: it came out great.
(We made the sauce according to my family's recipe, substituting as needed with the ingredients actually available to us—minced galangal instead of ginger, fire cider instead of cider vinegar—and completely faked the chili powder because it turned out we don't own any.derspatchel dubbed the results "Helljam" because it started with six crushed chiles pequin and came out a deep simmering syrupy red. I love my mortar and pestle so much. Cheese sauce, mostly two kinds of cheddar with a little Pecorino Romano and some American because it was in the refrigerator. White pepper and a little paprika, without which I always think noodles and cheese tastes weird. Shells, because it didn't need to look exciting, just retain the two sauces really well. We steeped the finely chopped tips in the helljam and then laid little pockets of spicy meat within the mixed shells and cheese, topped with crumbled Romano, and baked until the whole thing was bubbling. Then ate half of it between us while the cats played dinner theater in the living room.)
Today I am underslept and have deadlines! No regrets.
(
sartorias is currently moderating a really interesting discussion about the literary descendants of Percy Blakeney over at Book View Café, so I'm all over that.)2. The world's earliest known erotic graffiti has come to light on the Greek island of Astypalaia. Νικασίτιμος οἶφε Τιμίονα. And in addition to the fifth-century phalloi, there are "carvings depicting oared ships, daggers and spirals—all still discernible despite exposure to the erosive effects of wind and sea." That's pretty cool. Now I should like to read more about those cemeteries.
(It's interesting: if you tell me that a cemetery is unique for containing nothing but the pottery-buried bones of thousands of children under three years old, I assume we're looking at a pattern of sacrifice, even knowing that there are still scholars who argue stillbirths and infant mortality rather than ritual infanticide as an explanation for the Carthaginian tophets—Mary Gentle has one alt-Carthaginian character in her novel Ilario: The Lion's Eye (2006) rebuke the alternative as a blood libel. In the case of the Kylindra cemetery, it may be that there are clear archaeological markers of death by natural causes, or at least an absence of evidence for death by anything else. I don't doubt the value of sacred ground to lay a lost child in, whether it was just learning to walk or a miscarriage. I still wonder every time why it is that people have such a difficult time accepting human sacrifice in "civilized" cultures. Carthage is not an outlier in the ancient world. The Romans practiced it explicitly in times of extremity and casually in gladiatorial combat—funeral games, the lives of the gladiators dedicated to the di manes, the ancestral gods of the underworld. The Etruscans sacrificed prisoners taken in war, not unlike the Aztecs or Maya; their tomb art is full of bloodshed. Cahokia's population numbered in the tens of thousands at its height and its mounds are full of sacrificed bones. And that's without even touching the question of less direct forms of sacrifice: whom we cherish, whom we allow to die. It is not some barbaric, alien rite in which our ancestors never of course engaged (although yours totally did). I have a hard time thinking of a culture that at one time or another has not.)
3. We did not watch 1776 (1972) for our anniversary, but we did cook. We made barbecue mac and cheese. We'd encountered something similar on the late-night menu at jm Curley's a few weeks ago, umami-bombing a peppery white cheddar sauce with pulled pork. We had leftover, very rare steak tips. Spoiler: it came out great.
(We made the sauce according to my family's recipe, substituting as needed with the ingredients actually available to us—minced galangal instead of ginger, fire cider instead of cider vinegar—and completely faked the chili powder because it turned out we don't own any.
derspatchel dubbed the results "Helljam" because it started with six crushed chiles pequin and came out a deep simmering syrupy red. I love my mortar and pestle so much. Cheese sauce, mostly two kinds of cheddar with a little Pecorino Romano and some American because it was in the refrigerator. White pepper and a little paprika, without which I always think noodles and cheese tastes weird. Shells, because it didn't need to look exciting, just retain the two sauces really well. We steeped the finely chopped tips in the helljam and then laid little pockets of spicy meat within the mixed shells and cheese, topped with crumbled Romano, and baked until the whole thing was bubbling. Then ate half of it between us while the cats played dinner theater in the living room.)Today I am underslept and have deadlines! No regrets.
no subject
(And any argument based on "but human sacrifice of the sort the Mesoamericans did is different because the effect they hoped it would achieve didn't really take place" can be answered with the stack of literature showing that capital punishment isn't very effective, either.)
no subject
What I was thinking was, I think your argument works entirely for the death penalty as a presumed deterrent: clearly, it's sacrificing people ritualistically for the sake of a desired future state (lower capital crime rates). However, insofar as there's an individual-punishment element ("you have committed a crime that's punishable by death, and so we are going to kill you"), I think it's a different thing. Societies that acknowledged what they were doing as human sacrifice in one realm (e.g. Aztecs) presumably also had ways of dealing with criminals that involved, in some cases, execution, but they made a distinction between the two sorts of killing. (I'm saying presumably, but I may be entirely wrong: I don't know anything about Aztec society beyond vague public knowledge, much of which, I realize, is likely to be wrong.)
I guess what I'm saying is, for the thing to truly be human sacrifice, I think the intention of the doer does matter. I think killing people for crime deterrence is human sacrifice, but killing them as punishment is not--so I see capital punishment as partially human sacrifice and partially not.
Otherwise, all acts of sanctioned killing become human sacrifice--and maybe we want to call them that, but if we do, then I think we're back to needing to distinguish the different flavors of them. Ogod, and now I'm thinking about all the sorts of sanctioned and awful killing there are. Ahhhh, gotta pull back a bit….
ETA: sorry to send this to you multiple times. Discovered typos -_-
no subject
Then there's the deaths of soldiers in war, which is another fuzzy border case. "Nobody ever won a war by dying for a cause; he won it by making the other bastard die for his" -- but generals know their tactics will carry a death price, and pay it in order to potentially achieve the desired end. One difference there, though, is that specific individuals are not targeted for death; another is that if the end is achieved without death, that isn't a failure of the concept, but rather a great victory. Plus questions of the instrumentality of the death: I think it needs to not just be incidental to the actual process, but the means by which the process is meant to be enacted. If that makes any sense.
(Sorry if I dragged you back down a morbid rabbit-hole, here.)
no subject
And yes, absolutely, what you say about instrumentality: deliberate, and where the death is the thing being offered for the accomplishment of the goal …. which, yeah, disqualifies mass shootings. The death penalty remains the best example, on that score.