Friday Varia and Quick Hits

It’s a bracing Friday morning in North Dakotaland. It’s been a long week, but I still have enough energy for a few quick hits and varia…

• There is so much being written about Greece lately that it’s hard to filter or even process it all. The New York Times Magazine article seems decent. This seems like a reasonable cautionary tale. The museum at Olympia was robbed last night (one wonders whether there is a political message to this). Apparently there was an earthquake just east of the Isthmian canal yesterday. Finally, this short “punk economics” video gives a nice overview to the current Greek financial crisis.
• Tom Tartaron lectured on the Ötzi iceman (via Richard Rothaus)
• If you haven’t checked out Chris Cloke’s three part post on the Nemea Valley Archaeological Project (NVAP) survey data and manuring over at Corinthian Matters. Do it now. It’s the best possible use of archaeological blogging.
• Zotero 3.0 is out of beta and ZotPad is now available to let you run Zotero on your iPad.
• Some more writing tips, this time from Henry Miller.
• Some good PR for the Working Group in Digital and New Media via UND’s College of Arts and Sciences Cornerstone magazine. One thing that I hate is when official media from UND insist on calling me William “Bill” Caraher. Who does that in the normal press? Page 12 has a nice little article on Kostis Kourelis visit to UND in the fall. In general, Working Group members dominated the February Cornerstone. You just have to check out the Maya language cartoons that my buddies Paul Worley and Joel Jonientz have put together. They are amazing.
• Some abandonment porn Soviet Afghanistan style.
• Awesome digital reconstructions of the temple at Mons Repos, Corfu by Phil Saperstein.
• It would be fun – in a profoundly depressing way – to run a similar analysis on the funding on campus here for libraries.
• Man, I really like Piezo for recording streamed music tracks to mp3. Cheap, fun, and simple. Plus it works.
• A public (history) Ph.D.
• The Kills cover of VU’s Pale Blue Eyes.
• This is pretty funny (especially to my Australian friends) (via Susie).
• North Dakota bees and California almonds (via Whit).
• Andrew “Roy” Symonds is retiring from all forms of cricket. While he did plenty of amazing things with a cricket bat (and was an amazing fielder), I’ll always remember fondly when he took out the streaker in a ODI at his home pitch.
• This is a very thoughtful blog post on whether digital humanities and digital history are “game changers”.
• Why it’s sometimes good to lecture. And even the highest tech faculty can learn something from great old school lecturers.
• It so happens that work/life balance may be bad for you (especially if you really like your job and are kind of ambivalent about most parts of life). On the same topic, a short article on burn out (or as we call it on PKAP, blow out).
• What I’m reading: Y. Lolos, The Land of Sikyon (ASCSA 2011). It’s really long!
• What I’m listening to: Crime, San Francisco’s Still Doomed; The Jazz Crusaders, Live at the Lighthouse ’66.

Isn’t it cool that we have local businesses here in North Dakotaland called Odin’s (and it’s not a place to get all your neo-pagan supplies or comic books! It’s a service station.)