We're diving right into summer with a heat wave. Actually I think it started the day before the Solstice. But yeah, it's been hot and humid all over the place.
On the plus side, I've made a discovery. If you're, say, at the computer and your arm is going to be resting on varnished wood for a while, you can lessen the unpleasant sweaty sensation by laying a washcloth underneath. A small but welcome comfort.
Recently borrowed The Romans: From Village to Empire (Mary T. Boatwright, Daniel J. Gargola & Richard A. Talbert: Oxford Press). There is, of course, a pretty full plate of stuff to talk about where the Romans are concerned, especially if you start at a point before it was a real city, as is the case here.
One interesting topic involves the Romans themselves writing history:
Roman historians only rarely undertook what a modern historian might recognize as research. Undoubtedly, Romans of a later age had access to information regarding earlier centuries that was, in modern terms, reliable. Some documents did survive, although later Romans found them difficult to decipher and interpret...
However, few Roman historians seem to have consulted the old texts directly. Instead, they relied on interpretations of them (not always accurate) encountered in the work of earlier writers.
The history of Rome by the time it had reached its imperial phase was already quite long. Long enough for the Latin language to mutate and evolve. We understand Shakespeare because actors have worked to keep him contemporary and he's been quoted by thousands of other authors, but dropped in a sixteenth century English village we'd scarcely understand a word. anyone was speaking. Later Roman historians had a similar problem, running into a Latin that was already archaic. Not too surprising that they chose to copy what had already been written. Especially since originality wasn't really what was selling. (Is it ever?)
I did a crossword today compiled by a guy from Brazil. Yes, it was an English-language puzzle. But that leads into an interesting point. I read him saying somewhere else that he creates puzzles in Portuguese and Spanish as well as English.
Writing a crossword in Spanish would be a special challenge, If you have "banana" crossing "El Niño" at the second "n" in English no one will really call you on it. The situation is different in Spanish, where they're considered to separate letters.
When the COVID thing first started I gradually started following some different publications. More right-aligned than I had read much of before, often labeled as "heterodox." The thing was, I sensed my previous sources were leaving out inconvenient bits of the story and perhaps couldn't be trusted, so I had to look outside of them.
What has become apparent since then is that a lot of the "heterodox" media aren't, really. They're not really independent, and their editorial stance is oriented to currying favor with power just as their rivals do.
Generally I still do at least look at Spiked, Tablet and Quillette, but don't expect to find much of interest most days. UnHerd has a higher success rate, and Compact is interesting because it was founded by Trump fans who actually do favor a non-interventionist foreign policy (which for the most part The Donald himself doesn't.) But the ultimate lesson is that you need to continue taking things with a big grain of salt.
The Ring of Brodgar. The name sounds operatic. It's a henge, like Stonehenge, and if it isn't as well-known, it's still something to make you sit up and take notice when you do find out about it.
The Ring of Brodgar stands in Orkney. Orkney is a chain of islands that sort of bridge the British Isles and Scandinavia. They were administered by Norway for a time and are now considered part of Scotland. But the Ring dates far earlier than that, during the time of the Picts. The time it dates from was about the boundary of the Neolithic Era and the Bronze Age. Not, of course, that there was a single instant where one became the other.
Construction must have taken years of effort. So why did they do it? Likely it had something to do with their conception of the heavens. The ancients were more complex than we generally assume.
