Friday Quick Hits and Varia

It’s wintertime here on the North Plains: a few days of flurries this week and temperatures in the 20s in the morning. I hope the low, grey clouds that have dampened my spirits lift today and give us back some of the amazing North Dakota sky.

In the meantime, I’ll remember this is how most people live in the U.S. and Europe (deprived of the most amazing sky in the world), and I’ll provide some quick hits and varia to make us all feel just a little bit better.

• Fall trips for the regular members of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

• If you haven’t checked out Eric Poehler’s blog or his contribution to our 3D Thursday series, you really should. Pompey never looked cooler.

• Oxford’s International Graduate Student Conference is called The City and the cities: from Constantinople to the frontier. Here’s the call for papers.

• The Greek financial crisis from the perspective of an ancient site. Stephen Miller is proposing an odd plan.

• Slaves in the Morea.

• Drought in the Bronze Age (but read this too).

• James Newhard of the College of Charleston appears on Gizmodo touting 3D and Drones in archaeology (and showing our 3D Thursday some love!). 

• Maps showing the most popular boy names and the most popular girl names over the past 60 years by state. It is a bit concerning that William is becoming so popular in the south. You can also check out the range of moods typical across the U.S., but state. 

• The long awaited Emily Dickinson Archive is now live.

• Save the Astrodome!

• Apparently it is problematic to bury your wife in your front yard in Alabama. How very unByzantine of them!

• Maybe the flipped classroom isn’t better.

• It’s nice to know that there is a chance that nature has a failsafe for a zombie apocalypse. 

• What I’m reading: …

• What I’m listening to: The Walkmen, Heaven.