Friday Varia and Quick Hits

I’m off traveling in the Bakken Oil Patch today avoiding my usual frenzy of activity immediately before I head to Cyprus for my field season. I’m hoping that we have lovely weather and see new and interesting way that people have adapted to live and work in the oil patch.

Since I’m off having adventures, I feel obligated to keep my loyal blog readers at least somewhat entertained.

• Yersinia pestis is the 6th century Justinianic plague.
• 3D Uruk.
• Videos created by the Byzantine Institute in the 1930s and curated by Dumbarton Oaks.
• Alice E. Kober’s contribution to the decipherment of Linear B.
• A cool TED talk on Roman Women by Ray Laurence.
• Humans of New York goes to Iran.
• Some Star Wars themed abandonment porn.
• Rothaus on the Society of Architectural Historian’s blog.
• Five things you should know before starting a Kickstarter project (like this one)!
• A very detailed map of the internet.
• What Ali Wore.
• Perhaps the most over-posted, over-tweeted video on the internets right now: David Foster Wallace’s commencement address at Kenyon College 2005, “This is Water”.
• What I’m reading: Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge, and Description. New York 2011.
• What I’m listening to: Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires of the City.

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

It’s another bright, beautiful, and cool morning here in North Dakotaland. The last final exams are done and the stacks of grading grow smaller which each passing day. The long spring and summer days in the town of Grand Forks will be quieter now.

So as we begin our new summer routines, it seems like a good time for some quick hits and varia.

But, before you go any further, go and check out Joel Jonientz’s Kickstarter to fund the completion of his student-developed video game (and read an interview with him here and here). It’s over 20% funded and I have it on good authority that it will be awesome.

• Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections in Washington, D.C. this fall.
• Steven Ellis talks about retail space in the Roman world in an interview with the good folks at the American Academy in Rome.
• The Monumenta Germaniae Historica is now available online and free.
• Some great photos of the rock-hewn churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia on Good Friday (last week).
• Some interested goings on around the Byzantine monuments of Turkey.
• You can compare Sue Alcock’s trench sounds with my original trench sounds.
• Thorncrown Chapel, one of my favorite buildings, is under threat.
• This game is really fun.
• John McAfee interviews are always guaranteed to bewilder and amuse.
• Richard Rothaus and Andrew and Andrew Reinhard talk about their 100 Miles of Wild in the North Dakota Badlands on Prairie Public Radio’s Main Street.
• American University is rethinking MOOCs.
• The House of Collective Repair.
• Life lessons from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
• Michael Hussey has the Orange Cap in the Indian Premier League.
• Some notes on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s stay in Wilmington, Delaware.
• The closer you live to the Bakken the more money you make, and this is especially true if you’re the Dean of the Medical School at UND.
• What I’m reading: 18 chapters from the textbook written by my Scale-Up History 101 class, PKAP Survey Data, and various recent articles in the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology.
• What I’m listening to: Mikal Cronin, MCII; Pete Murray, Feeler.

Friday Varia and Quick Hits

It’s a sunny, but cool spring Friday in North Dakotaland. It is also reading and review day, and this means that I survived yet another semester. It also means that I’m just that much closer to my summer adventures in North Dakota, Greece, and Cyprus, and my summer to-do list. These are all fun and exciting things.

So, while I try to balance my fatigue and excitement, I’ll pass on a little list of quick hits and varia to get the end of your week going right.

But, wait, before I start my weekly list, I need to include a brief advertisement. Fellow digital adventurer, Joel Jonientz, has launched his first Kickstarter campaign yesterday. Joel is a professor in the department of art and design and I’ve linked to his amazing blog more than a few times (he also designed the fantastic Punk Archaeology poster). He is using Kickstarter to raise money for a fantastic student project. They are designing a video game that infuses old school gameplay with artistic and musical sensibilities. It’s called Rhythm Planet and you should definitely support it and get everyone in your social network to support it. You’ll definitely hear more about it.  

Ok, now back to your regularly scheduled quick hits and varia:

• This before and after image of the looting around the site of Apamea in Sypria is insane.
• Archaeological sites from the air.
• These are some amazing tv programs from the 1950s and 1960s on the BBC. Many of them feature archaeological luminary Mortimer Wheeler.
• Qatar was offended by the nudity of Greek statues.
• The cat at Hagia Sophia.
• The team reports after the 100 Miles of Wild Adventure.
• I bet this study on sexual harassment among students doing anthropological fieldwork could be replicated among archaeologists.
• This is the ultimate tool for converting HATT (the Greek projection) to a system compatible with Google Maps.
• Check out ASOR’s new email newsletter The Ancient Near East Today.
• The Society of Architectural Historian’s call for papers. 
• A Pew Survey focusing on the beliefs and attitudes of the world’s Muslim population.
• Fear not, it seems like North Dakota has more oil than anyone expected.
• As the web turns 20 years old today, we should all admire the first website.
• The Subversive Festival!
• A massive, awesome rubber duck.
• This guy’s photographs are awesomely archaeological. Check out all the galleries.
• Reflections on a year without the internet.
• A spirited critique of the spread of for credit MOOCs and some interesting thoughts on why MOOCs have not been adopted by the Digital Humanities project.
• Women of Punk.
• A clever pedagogical ploy (although I am not sure that I completely understand what he was really truing to accomplish).
• I meant to post this earlier.
• What I’m reading: D. Katz, Solid Foundation: An Oral History of Reggae. (2003). (What I should be reading: B.D. Weaver, OilField Trash: Life and Labor in the Oil Patch. (College Station 2010).
• What I’m listening to: The Men, New Moon; Big Scary, Vacation; Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Mosquito.

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

Today is supposed to be the day that we break the mythical 50 degree barrier here in North Dakotaland and we should be in the 60s tomorrow. It feels like we might be entering that strange liminal zone between winter and summer. I don’t remember what it’s called, but I know it involves cruel months, lions, lambs, and perhaps unicorns.

As we begin to once again feel blood circulate freely in our veins, I can offer some quick hits and varia to energize the arrival of “flood and mud” season. (You can check out the flood cams here.)

• Abandonment in modern Greece (although I do wonder how many of these photographs reflect the recent economic crisis, and how many of them reflect decades old building practices.) Here is an even more dramatic and unintentional example of abandonment. This is even more cool, an entire Soviet mining town somewhere north of the article circle, abandoned and documented by intrepid archaeologists. I haven’t seen this book yet, but I want it.
• Congratulations to Big Joe Rife for winning the CAMWS book award for his magisterial Isthmia IX: The Roman and Byzantine Graves and Human Remains. Princeton, N.J.: American School of Classical Studies 2012.
• Mapping the Jewish Communities of the Byzantine Empire Project.
• Someone just encountered the “undergraduate slash”. (I noted its conspicuous decline as early as December 2011).
• Chris Gayle scored a century in 30 balls on his way to 175*. He hit 17 sixes and 30 boundaries from 66 balls. All of these things are records for T20.
• More cricket. I am super excited to see Chris Rogers named to the Australian team for the Ashes. This is the same Chris Rogers who dismissed early buzz about his selection with the quote: “I’d like to play but, as people keep reminding me, I’m very old.”
• Jan Chipchase chimes in on Google Glass.
• This is mostly funny.
• I am impressed, but unconvinced by this guy’s headphone system. 
• I know that I shouldn’t laugh at other people’s misfortune, but since this guy has capitalized on it and it is a funny way to start your broadcast career.
• Joel Jonientz recommends that we check out Neil Gaiman’s keynote from the digital minds conference.
• An argument for the big class.
• This is a pretty cool map of the covers of Joy Division’s “Love will tear us apart”.
• An old computer that still works just fine, and the story of Steve Jobs’s visit to XEROX that transformed how we interact with personal computers.
• My blog post from yesterday, Ten Tips for a New Graduate Student, has been read over 650 times in the past 24 hours. This is by far my most popular post in its first day on the web. 
• What I’m reading: D. Hayden, A Field Guide to Sprawl. (New York 2004).
• What I’m listening to: Frank Turner, Tape Deck Heart. Young Galaxy, Ultramarine. 

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

Apparently Grand Forks is well on its way to break a 109 year old record for the longest winter. We are not forecast to break 50 degrees before April 21st which is the latest date on record. Winters like this make me wish that this global warming business was just a myth cooked up by the liberal press. 

Hopefully the routine of Friday Quick Hits and Varia will bring a burst of banal normalcy to the chaotic days in the U.S.

• A conference on the Middle to Late Byzantine transition on Paros in Late May hosted by Athanasios Vionis and Maria Parani of the University of Cyprus.  
• Latin is here to stay according to a letter to the editor in the New York Times.
• An interactive atlas of early printing.
• April 22nd. 4 pm. Gorecki Alumni Center on the campus of the University of North Datkoa. D I G I T A L  L I G H T N I N G. Pure, Uncut, Amazingness. If you want to experience this and don’t live in The North Dakota, here’s a link to the livestream.
• Kourelis on Cavafy (pdf).
• Awesome archaic plurals. 
• Righteous anger from an artist.
• Good on Zimbabwe! Bowling Bangladesh out for 134!
• Australian James Gulliver Hancock is trying to draw all the buildings of New York.
• The North Dakota oil boom in Time Magazine.
• I have no idea how anyone could NOT support this.
• This continues…
• Check out Tito Mouraz’s “Open Space Office”.
• A fire breathing bridge and a crazy movie by Greta Alfaro. (via Richard Rothaus) 
• Type writer and type writer.
• What I’m reading: L. H. Inge, R. Hodges, and S. Leppard, Butrint 4: The Archaeology and Histories of an Ionian Town. Oxford 2013.
• What I’m listening to: Shuggie Otis, Inspiration Information/Wings of Love.

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

It’s snowing here in North Dakotaland with more on the way this weekend. While I’m ready for winter to be over, I also know that every day of winter in April gives us another day of fall in November. I remember sitting outside in fading spring sun last year at this time, but I also remember sitting outside without a jacket on Halloween. There is a rhythm to these kinds of things.

So, try not to fret too much and sit back and read some quick hits and varia.

• The recent excavation in Olde London Towne have been pretty cool. 
• Some cool Byzantine Things at the Menil Collection curated by the remarkable Glenn Peers from University of Texas – Austin.
• Monmouth College’s Archaeology Day featuring yours truly.
• Congratulations to Eric Poehler for receiving a National Endowment for the Humanities Start-Up Grant for his Pompeii Bibliography and Mapping Research Project.  
• Filmmakers in both Greece and Cyprus are documenting the rise of right wing parties.
• The most recent Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey is now available.
• If you missed me and Bret Weber’s radio broadcast on Prarie Public’s Main Street this past week, check it out here.
• My wife got me an ALO headphone amp and it didn’t work, but they worked quickly and efficiently to ship me a replacement. Good customer service is so important.
• The origins of <blink>.
• Congratulations to Michael Clarke who was named Wisden’s Cricketer of the Year in the 150th Edition of the Wisden Cricketers Almanack. 
• Settlement Pattern Change: A new city in Williams County.
• Ethnography of elevator users.
• A little abandonment porn: Border crossings after Schengen.
• Congratulations to the most recent crop of Dumbarton Oaks Fellows including University of North Dakota Alumnus Nathan Leidholm (University of Chicago).
• Crowd sourcing ebook editing at Project Gutenberg and crowdfunding archaeological research. 
• If you love Joel Jonientz’s stuff (and let’s face it, who doesn’t these days), you can now buy your very own piece of Jonientz. 
• Digital History Project Management at Stanford over at HASTAC. 
• Adweek reflects on Wired Magazine’s 20th Anniversary.
• The Great Gatsby in covers.
• What I’m reading: J. Davis and N. Vogeikoff-Brogan, Philhellenism, Philanthropy, or Political Convenience? American Archaeology in Greece. Hesperia 82.1.
• What I’m listening to (it’s quite a list!): The Gospel Whiskey Runners, Hold On; Bim Sherman, Miracle; Kurt Vile, Walking on a Pretty Daze; Freddie McGregor, Bobby Bobylon.

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

Family is in town this week, so the quick hits and varia will be a bit spare. To make up for that, they’ll be of exceedingly high quality (or whatever).

In the meantime, please remember that Prof. Sam Fee will be speaking at 11 am in the Working Group in Digital and New Media’s Lab in O’Kelly 203. He will have a conversation titled “Making an App for That” that will focus on his work to create a web based table application for in field data collection.

• A nice digital map of the Roman Empire.
• Some good links at the Mediterranean Palimpsest.
• The Museum of Brisbane is reopening.
• Saving the Coltrane House in Philadelphia.
• Apparently, North Dakota is the freest state in the U.S.
• Something on Hague, North Dakota.
• Hand-in-Hand is writers on writing written on their hands.
• A casting call for folks interested in history who want to be on reality t.v. 
• Richard Hell’s autobiography.
• Albums as books.
• Covers from the U.S. Space Program.
• What I’m reading: A. G. Frank, Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution. New York 1969.
• What I’m listening to: NOTHING (this isn’t good).

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

I am on the road today, so this is a quick hits and varia from beyond the travel zone. The good news is that we’re heading for warmer climes. The better news is that its thawing for Easter weekend here in Grand Forks.

So as you enjoy the luscious sounds of melting snow, please enjoy this little gaggles of quick hits and varia.

• Some photographs from atop the pyramids.
• I’m at this conference (pdf).
• What to eat after the apocalypse. And go and download her dissertation.
• Here’s one way to manage your MOOC.
• The art of drying whiskey.
• This is our D.A. Student Chris Price’s blog.
• The chess set, tastefully redesigned.
• Watford City Centennial coming in 2014.
• Yep, you have to subscribe, but some interesting thoughts on drones at UND.
• I’ve been badgering my colleague Bret Weber to get on Twitter. So here is one reason why. And here is another reason why.
• The Chancellor Shirvani of the North Dakota University System seems like he’s in hot water this time.
• Reason to support the North Dakota Man Camp Project.
• Kostis Kourelis on why the humanities matter.
• This is a very nice looking tube headphone amp.
• This week is the 55th anniversary of stereophonic LPs. Here are some of the amazing stereo recordings done in 1958: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
• If the world was 100 people, this is what it would look like.
• What I’m listening to: Shout Out Louds, Optica.
• What I’m reading: (TOP SECRET)

The return of the mud.

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

There are lots of changes taking place here at the Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Headquaters, so perhaps it’s nice to have just a little consistency like a little gaggles of hand-selected Friday Quick Hits and Varia. And a little less consistency with regard to the consistent -10 degree mornings…

• Gaston Maspero’s epigraphic notebooks have been scanned and are really nice to look through (even if you’re not particularly interested in Egypt or epigraphy (via the Ancient World Online).   
• I find scholarship on the possible relations between China and Rome just fascinating.
• Some free online guides for Greek museum and sites from the Latsis Foundation. 
• Early photos from the Middle East from Edinburgh.
• More recent photos from the Antikythera shipwreck.
• More on MOOCs.
• Urban explorers. And it’s nice to that both Istanbul and Athens are re-imagining their downtowns.  
• Undergraduate history illustrated. We need at least one image of the famous “pheasant revolt”. (Danielle Skjelver make this happen!)
• It is super important how a knob feels.
• I love articles about rejection rates and practices. 
• The second manuscript in the Grand Forks Neighborhood History Series has just entered review. Here’s the first volume in the series or you can buy a copy made of dead trees here. In the meantime, read some more on the next steps for traditional publishing.
• Now that we sold our lovely 19th century house, we’re looking to cut costs by moving into a place more like this.
• I told my wife this morning after reading the day one scorecard of the fourth India v. Australia test that I thought 17 was pretty good for Shane Watson. It tied his third highest total of the series. She told me to be nice.
• Nothing makes me happier than a list of someone favorite new fonts, although this useful graphic explaining the difference between serif and sans-serif gets pretty close. 
• The Bakken is not an area known for having lots of data driven studies, but this is one that is particularly depressing.
• How can anyone NOT support this?
• Wow. I feel pretty lazy when I see an job advertisement for someone like this.
• On the other hand, this looks like a cool job.
• The Bakken Magazine or another video essay on life in the Bakken for people not that into words and more photos, always more photos.
• If you’re into the experience of being in a man camp without being into work or the North Dakota of it all, this looks sort of close.
• A fancy stereo.
• What I’m reading: R. Harrison and A. J. Schofield, After Modernity: Archaeological Approaches to the Contemporary Past. Oxford 2010.
• What I’m listening to: The Clinic, Free Reign II; Phosphorescent, Muchacho (one of my favorite lines from any recent music review is “…listening to Muchacho often feels like being warmed by afternoon sun as it floods your window…”)

Friday Varia and Quick Hits

Today started out looking like a snowy drive to Fargo and then a roll of the dice whether I’d make it to beautiful Providence, Rhode Island, but after careful consultation with the local haruspices, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to spend some time in snowed into lovely Fargo, ND. So I decided to stay put and sent my paper along via the inter tubes. (For my friends in Fargo, I want you to know that this virtually ensures a sunny day with highs in the mid 30s.)

So rather than these quick hits and varia tiding you over until my triumphant return, they instead should stand as melancholy reflections on life in the antipodes. I will, however, spend some time working on this book review and trying to sketch out an article about teaching in the Scale-Up classroom for this issue of the History Teacher.

• I am a bit late on this, but here’s Hector Catling’s obituary. He had a tremendous impact on the archaeology of the Cypriot countryside and on our understanding of Late Roman ceramics.
• Some open access prehistoric Cyprus (via Ancient World On Line). 
• Some amazing photographs of Roman sites in Libya.
• A brief history of Google Streetview.
• Floor plans for Homer and Marge Simpson’s house and others.
• Everyday there are more photographs of the oil boom in western North Dakota. This is going to be the most photographed oil boom ever. (Oh, and here are some cool photographs of Iran and found photos on the National Geographic Tumblr.)
• The first two sections on a study of architects at Corinth Excavations.
• All ten test cricket playing nations are in action this weekend, but Australia v. India looks the most interesting.
• The Lebowski Cycle (linked here in celebration of the 15th anniversary of that film).
• If you don’t check out the Society of Architectural Historian’s blog on Fridays, you should.
• This is on of the best weekends for motorsports with NASCAR at Bristol and the opening of the Formula One season.
• Do check out the UND Writers Conference schedule for next week.
• A new journal: The Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies.
• Nicholas Feltron’s 2012 Annual Report.
• Everyone should go and buy little pictures of hummingbeasts by Kyle Cassidy. 
• What I’m reading: D.B. Monk’s An aesthetic occupation : the immediacy of architecture and the Palestine conflict. Duke 2002
• What I’m listening to: My Bloody Valentine, mbv.