As convicts, staff swelter, prison system buys ‘climate-controlled’ pig barns

[malthaussen]

1. A true classic...

Reminds me of something I read in an old history, might have been one of Braudel's books.

There is a biblical injunction, "Do not bind the mouths of the kine that tread the grain." The idea being that the cows that marched around and around in circles operating the old grain threshers that worked like capstans should be allowed to gobble up a bit of the grain as they trudged along.

Well, in some very poor French communities in the Middle Ages, they couldn't even afford cows to operate the windlass, so they used people. And yep -- they bound their mouths so they couldn't eat the grain. 'Cause people aren't kine, y'know.

-- Mal