Wednesday Post

Your weekly dose of news and interest.

Let’s start off with more rock art from LiveScience:

The masterpieces, which feature both human and animal motifs, are prominently located along the Upper and Middle Orinoco River, which snakes through this region of South America. Researchers think the placement was intentional and was meant to be seen from a distance, since it was along the path of an important trade and travel route known as Atures Rapids, according to a study published Tuesday (June 4) in the journal Antiquity.

China’s latest space probe has landed on the far side of the moon:

Chang'e 6 launched on May 3 with a bold and unprecedented task: haul home samples from the moon's far side, which always faces away from us. (The moon is tidally locked to Earth, completing one rotation on its axis in roughly the same amount of time it takes to orbit our planet. So observers here on Earth always see the same side of our natural satellite.)

A look at how changing fortunes in shipping can affect the people on board:

Shipowners often abandon crew members when they are hit by rising fuel costs, debt or unexpected repairs they can’t afford. Some owners vow to pay when their finances turn around. But those promises can mean little to the men on board, who often resort to handouts for food and basic supplies. Many are also supporting families back home and risk losing everything if they step off their ships.

Read a short excerpt from David Roman’s new book on Western and Estern philosophy:

The pagans, meanwhile, were often mystified by the Christians. Some, probably misled by the Christian emphasis on preaching to the poor, believed that Christians were Sophists at their core, with a dangerous strain of populism about them. In his extraordinary work “On the Death of Peregrinus,” which recounts with malicious relish the career of a strange guru-like figure who committed self-immolation after the Olympic Games of AD 165, the satirist Lucian refers to Christians, as Peregrinus was for part of his life, as a sect which worshiped “the notorious crucified Sophist.”

From Antigone, a discussion of Roman coins and the concept of money:

Of course money is no Roman invention – but the English word itself comes from the name of the location of Rome’s first mint (a word which also derives from it): the temple of Juno Moneta. This epithet reflects local worship of a goddess called Moneta, who was gradually assimilated into the deity Juno, wife of Jupiter. What started as a remnant of religious worship gradually became synonymous for a mint and later, after the Roman period, for money itself.

For anybody who reads poetry - here are some new poetry collections to look for:

Poets often talk about poetry in their poems, and what they say can hold a mirror up to reality in a way that blissfully convolutes the folds of a reader’s brain. With a lifetime of honorable service to poetry, Robert Pinsky is a formidable contemplator of poetic paradoxes and influence, writing in his new book, “I want to publish a book with on every page / The one same poem, all not by me but mine.”

And finally….are people lonely when they read fiction?

As a lonely reader, I found this theme of loneliness to propel the plot. It was the emptiness or lack that narrative promised to fill. It was the problem that characters, and myself, were ostensibly trying to resolve. And it was the experience that I probably felt I could offset by reading, either by learning from the characters’ actions or by distracting myself temporarily from what I felt.