The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

Varia and Quick Hits

Here are some varia and quick hits on a cold Friday morning (with just a threat of flurries)!

• More interesting internet observations from Pew.  Apparently no one blogs reads blog anymore (and no one told me?).  As always Pew gives us some food for thought on generational differences in web usage.
• As I think about ways to re-imagine this blog, I keep coming across the idea of "mindcasting".  Here is a very useful definition.  Typically, the term describes how academics or professionals use Twitter, but I think that it adapts well to a blog use.
• Some Corinthian-American friends have set up a company to sell Corinthian Olive Oil in the US.  Check it out!
• I haven't read Mediactive yet, but it is on my genuinely overwhelming Christmas break reading list.
• More DIY Book Scanning, Dan Reetz, former(?) NDSU student and renegade book scanner, has garnered more press coverage this past week.  He's a real bright guy with a firm grasp on common sense.  It's good to see people talking about his ideas.  More here too.
• This tongue-in-cheek post at the Chronicle about celebrating student failure has caused a bit of a fuss.  And it lead to this response.
• Some thoughts on Digital Humanities in Australia and New Zealand with a shoutout to the University of Sydney's Archaeological Computing Lab.  I worked with some exceedingly competent folks from the lab on the island of Kythera (where I met my lovely wife)!
• Some interesting thoughts on the gamification of learning.
• The actual mashups are just ok, but the visualizations are really amazing (via Crystal Alberts).
• When you don't make your sales figures, you get sent to Fargo.  This is post-ironic.
• This is a fantastic way to visualize the census.
• If you haven't stopped by Teaching Thursday, you should! We're celebrating out 100th post!
• What I'm reading: P. Sarris, Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian. (Cambridge 2006). R. H. McGuire and R. Paynter, The Archaeology of Inequality. (Blackwell 1991).
• What I'm listening to: Alvin Youngbood Hart, Big Mama's Door.

One more thing!  If you are going to be any where in South Florida in January, you owe it yourself to head up to Ft. Myers and check out the 3rd Annual Surf & Sound Festival.  It's going to be huge and it's produced by Fritz Caraher!

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

It's a cold and clear winter day for some quick hits and varia.

• This is a pretty cool way to see how the world used Google.
• This looks to be a pretty interesting report on who uses Twitter.
• Along similar lines, this is an interesting little blog post on how to write on Twitter.
• And here is a First Monday article on learning and social media technologies, and here is a Chronicle article in another company trying to integrate social media software and teaching.
• At Teaching Thursday, we had a not tech related blog post on the ethics of test making and cheating.
• Tuesday was December 7th.  Pearl Harbor Day.  And here is FDR's famous speech.
• What I am listening to: Jay-Z, The Black Album.
• What I am reading: James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of Peasant Resistance. (Yale 1985).

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

As we wait for the snow to arrive, a little gaggle of quick hits and varia to keep you entertained for the weekend:

• My friend and colleague Elizabeth Harris's translation of part of her friend and colleague Marco Candida's Dream Diary.  Allusions to dreams and excavations.
• A great new post on Teaching Thursday.
• A play by ply of the Mercury 6 mission.
• Two great blog posts from Duke University's HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) website: Why Doesn't Anyone Pay Attention Anymore? and Your Brain on Computers: Some Notes on Twitter as an Open Research Community.
• Kanye West's creative process.
• The text of Alfie Kohn's "The Costs of Overemphasizing Achievement".
• The Hand Drawn Map Association (via Kostis Kourelis).  This group must be an affiliate of the Village Green Preservation Society.
• Did learning to read really mess us up?
• A "conversation" between Dorothy King and David Gill.
• Your graduate students should learn to Skype.
• Two more blogs from Kostis: Dry Light (and this post on Washing Clothes in the Kastalian Spring at Delphi) and Field Notes from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.
• This is a pretty interesting idea for story telling.  I wonder how it would translate to an academic work?
• How important is the name of your Twitter feed?  Just ask TheAshes!
• Two nice arguments for liberal arts eduction: One here (which might be expected) and one here (which might not be).
• Transcripts from the UND Writers Conference Virtual Reading Room.
• Mass of material chart.
• What I am reading: G. Hall, Digitize This Book! (Minneapolis 2008) and A. Bowman and A. Wilson, Quantifying the Roman Economy. (Oxford 2009).
• What I am listening to: Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and The Go Team, Thunder, Lightening, Strike.

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

It's not the cold, it's the wind.  Some quick hits and varia on a windy Friday:

• The New York Times on digital humanities.
• The New York Times on clickers and other digital tools in the traditional classroom.
• Danny MacAskill's newest video is incredible. First, it approaches Scotland from a vaguely historical perspective and, then, the riding and stunts and skills are amazing.
• The video of abandoned and soon to be demolished Six Flags Amusement park outside of New Orleans is pretty much viral.  A blog post over at Savage Minds puts in an a provocative context.
• The Place Hacking blog has an interesting video and article on the culture of urban explorers.  It's brilliant that Geography Compass allows video articles.
• Eric Poehler responded to these thoughts from an ancient perspective on the Blogging Pompeii blog.
• Late Antique Summer School in Constantinople.
• Emory University's Samothrace project website is nice.
• Smashed Apple products.
• What I'm reading: R. Bagnall, The Administration of the Ptolemaic Possessions Outside Egypt. (Leiden 1976).  M. M. Mango ed., Byzantine Trade, 4th-12th Centuries. (Burlington 2009).
• What I'm listening to: Scott H. Biram, Graveyard Shift and John Legend and the Roots, Wake Up!

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

It's cold today, but sunny.  In other words, it's a perfect fall day for quick hits and varia:

• Marc Ambinder on why he no longer blogs.
• Herodotus is now tweeting here. A Roman soldier invading Britain tweets here.
• Yale published its 900+ page Anthology of Rap this week.  Check out the Slate review and what NPR has to say.
• Universities and technologies according Kevin Kelly of Wired fame.
• Cleveland Historical now has a App complements of The Center for Public History and Digital Humanities at Cleveland State University.  How cool is that?
• University College, London now has a one year MA/MSc in Digital Humanities.
• Classics, Religion, and Digital Humanities job at Iowa.
• I used Zamzar to convert a paper that a student submitted as a .wps file to something that a computer made in the 21st century could read.  It worked just as advertised.
• Some unpublished photos of JFK, now published.
• I was on the front page of the American School of Classical Studies webpage this past week thanks to my friends at Hesperia.

• Clay Shirky's rather unfavorable assessment of the Times of London's pay wall experiment.
• The last Formula 1 race of the year is this weekend. Let's see if Mark Weber can pull it off.
• What I'm listening to: Scott H. Biram, Lo-Fi Mojo.
• What I'm reading: David Harvey, Spaces of Hope. (Berkeley 2000).

Friday Varia and Quick Hits

A lovely fall day here in Grand Forks, so here are a little gaggle of quick hits and varia:

• This is a pretty nice little piece about advising graduate students.
• This is a great interactive video project on life in the Global Highrise.
• The 2010 National Survey of Student Engagement is out.
• A nice report on how students evaluate research information.
• The University of North Dakota and social media: A Soft Yes.
• More social media at the departmental level.
• Even more on social media.
• This is pretty depressing cricket (at least from an Australian standpoint).
• What I'm reading: Laura Salah Nasrallah, Christian Responses to Roman Art and Culture. Cambridge 2010 (via Dimitri Nakassis)
• What I'm listening to: Clinic, Bubblegum (via Kostis Kourelis)

Friday Varia and Quick Hits

It finally feels like fall here.  Cold.  So some various varia and quick hits for a cool and cloudy Friday:

• A cool GigaPan of the Cave Art of Niaux.  While you're GigaPaning, be sure to check out Scott "The GigaPanda" Moore's GigaPans from the Pyla-Koutsopetria.
• The good folks at the Center for History and the New Media rolled out the beta test of Omeka.net yesterday.  Here's the page.  Sebastian Heath already has a page.  We await his review!
• From the November 2010 issue of the American Historical Association's Perspectives on History: How is New Media Reshaping the Work of Historians?.  And more on a similar theme with the list of Digital History panels at the AHA Meeting in 2012.
• Some pretty clever posts on a brand new blog called The Aporetic: Googling Peer Review and Peer Review and the Public Sphere.
• The Geohistorian is a really cool place based history project.  Their really straight forward presentation "Using QR codes and mobile phones for learning" is the best of its kind that I've seen (here's a link to their powerpointer (.ppt))
• This little video has gone viral (in certain circles).  It's not my favorite thing ever, but its a pretty clever take on the challenges facing anyone interested in getting a PhD in the humanities (although the people who seem to find it funniest, mostly have jobs).
• This is a pretty cool little article-like thing on early telecommunications in Australia.
• Jay-Z in the Wall Street Journal: the very fine line between "blowing up" and selling out.
• The Awl in the New York Times.  See previous bullet point.
• More and more on student's use of eBooks and Apps.
• This is pretty cool: Arne G. Breke Bygdebok Collection (if you don't know what that means, it's not for you!)
• The American School of Classical Studies is (1) videocasting their lecture series this year and (2) inviting cartoonists to speak.  When I recorded a couple of presentations at the School for podcasting, there was interest, but some skepticism.  Now they have embraced the technology.  Imagine how much better a world we'll live in if scholars can't just give the same lecture over and over again, because they'll know it will be recorded and available for the public.
• What I'm listening to: The Clinic, Internal Wrangler and, in memory of Ari Up, The Slits, Cut. (both via my music consultant, Kostis Kourelis)
• What I'm reading: David Forgacs ed., The Antonio Gramsci Reader. (New York 2000).

Some Friday Quick Hits and Varia

Just a quick gaggle of quick hits and varia on a sunny Friday morning:

• Yesterday's Cyprus Research Fund talk was well attended.  Over 50 interested students, colleagues, and members of the community showed up for David Pettegrew's talk: Setting the Stage for St. Paul's Corinth: How an Isthmus determined the maritime character of an ancient landscape.  If you missed it, you can watch the presentation here.  And before too long we'll have the lecture up as an mp3 podcast.
• David directed to me his colleague, John Fea's blog: The Way of Improvement Leads Home.
• Dimitri Nakassis got some blog-press a while back venting his wrath while modifying the function of a plastic chair.
• I know this poem has made the rounds for years, but it's worth linking to again.
• Some interesting thoughts on Digital Humanities.
• The Council on Library and Information Resources and Tufts has produced an impressive report on the state of Digital classics:  Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day: Building a Cyberinfrastructure for Digital Classicists.  I haven't processed it, but it looks like an amazing compendium of digital humanities projects and initiatives.  They are looking for comments apparently.
• Some different views of the research library of the future.
• And some more thoughts on E-readers.
• Another interesting archaeology blog from the University of Sydney's Excavations at the Paphos Theatre, Cyprus.
• There is something profound about the Rent is Too Damn High Party.
• What I'm reading: George Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson. (New York 1970).

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

It right around freezing this morning, so fall must really have arrived after positively balmy temperatures earlier in the week.  So, some quick hits and varia on a crisp Friday morning:

• If you have some time today be sure to check out the Northern Great Plains History Conference taking place here in Grand Forks and hosted the University of North Dakota.
• And next week, if you're in the community here, I urge you to come and hear the incomparable David Pettegrew speak on Setting the Stage for St. Paul's Corinth: How an Isthmus Determined the Character of a Roman City.  David will be the 2nd Annual Cyprus Research Fund lecturer.
• Two new blogs: First, a new popular blog on Byzantium subtitled: "making Byzantium alive for people today" continues the remarkable new trend in pop-Byzantine history. It's a great blog that is far more informative and careful than sensational.  The same author also has a nice blog on life, work, and friends of Patrick Leigh Fermor whom the author asserts as the "Greatest Living Englishman".  For those who don't know, Fermor is an influential 20th century travel writer, observer, and in many ways participant in Greek history.
• The Oxford Centre for Late Antquity will have a colloquium next month on "Carnival and Cult from Caesar to Chrysostom".  When I was working on my dissertation, I was dismayed to find how little there was on festivals associated with Early Christian holy days, sacred spots, and architecture.  So it's great to a see a colloquium taking up this topic.
• Does anyone use Mailplane?  Is it worth the $25?
• On Monday, I offered a response to a post by Edward Blum: "Academic Blogging: Some Reservations and Lessons".  I wasn't the only one.  Here's a nice response by David McConeghy at his blog, A Lively Experiment.  He makes the great observation that with many graduate students today this isn't the case of academics becoming bloggers, it is sometimes the case of bloggers becoming academics.
• More Liberal Arts 2.0 stuff (which is a phrase coined Jason Kottke's iconic blog  kottke.org)  Wired has put together a short piece called "7 Essential Skills You Didn't Learn in College" and grouped them around a Liberal Arts 2.0 theme. I loved the little book called New Liberal Arts which grew out of a series of Snarkmarket posts a couple years back and this post carries along the same theme.
• There is a great project called: Writing History: How Historians Research, Write, and Publish in the Digital Age.  From what I can understand, it is going to be crowd-sourced book on on Digital History which will also be collectively edited and reviewed.  I'm excited to see how it will develop, and I wonder whether this might be a cool model for an archaeology and the new media volume and Sam Fee and I have bandied about over the last few weeks: Archaeology 2.0
• What I'm listening to: Harlem, Hippies (2010)
• What I'm (re)reading: Ann Marie Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean (2009); A. D'Ambrosio, Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer. (2004) - I was drawn to this mostly because of Chuck D's brief comments on Strummer and the Clash.

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

It's supposed to touch 80 degrees today here in beautiful and tropical Grand Forks.  So a few quick hit and varia on a sunny Friday:

• Another blog post on blogging in the academy.  Good grief.
• New York Magazine profile of Nick Denton of Gawker.
• Sam Fee has some good thoughts on Archaeology and the New Media over at Arranged Delirium.
• David Pettegrew's Corinthian Matters reports more on the Corinth in Contrast conference.
• Make plans now to come to the Northern Great Plains History Conference.  My paper is at 9 am on Thursday.
• Remember David Pettegrew will present the 2nd Annual Cyprus Research Fund Lecture at 4 pm on October 21 in the East Asia Room of the Chester Fritz Library.  Here's an abstract of his talk.
• The second test of India vs. Australia cannot be more exciting than the first.
• Big news today, apparently, from the University of North Dakota.  I have no idea what it is, but I hope they use the word "game changer".
• What I'm listening to: Lee "Scratch" Perry, Roast Fish, Collie Weed, and Corn Bread and with the Upsetters, Super Ape.
• What I'm reading:  Michèle Lamont, How Professors think: inside the curious world of academic judgement. (Cambridge, MA 2009).