Friday Quick Hits and Varia

After a week or so of some pretty intense heat, it looks like we’re in store for some cooler days. While I’ve enjoyed the heat, I think the early dismissals from school have put some pressure on my colleagues with kids. Plus, we’ve shut the house up and are running the air-conditioning for the first time ever hear in Grand Forks. I miss the sounds of the street and the neighborhood.

As we endure one day of very un-North Dakota heat, I’ll send along a little list of quick hits and varia to help you keep cool.

• Looting in Egypt.

• The fight to protect the antiquities of Gaza.

• Here’s a Google Ngram of the use of the word “Byzantine” that I prepared for my Byzantine Civilization class. Notice the three spikes. The 19th century spikes are Finlay’s 1853 publication of Volume 1 his History of the Byzantine Empire and Volume 2 in 1877. The post-1945 spike is the activity of displaced scholars in the U.S. and England and the Cold War.

• Along similar lines, commemorating Manzikert.

• The U.N. puts Pompeii on notice.

• The interior of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul in 1983.

• Constantine Manos’ photographs of Greece in the 1960s.

• Architectural history textbooks.

• Want to be an Executive Director? Now might be your chance!

• During tough economic times, sometimes you just need to build a 4 m tall statue of Aphrodite. 

• Read while reflecting on our work in the man camps of the Bakken.

• To be fair, a 4 m tall statue of Aphrodite is better than fighter jets.

• Whatever the problems with the government, the Greeks are clever. 

• I love stuff like this: a time capsule.

• Sacred ground. Read down to “Fellow spinner Monty Panesar was recently fined by police after being caught…”

• Why teach English.

• How to treat freshmen in the 15th c.

• Return on Sustainability: Workforce Housing for People, Planet and Profit (.pdf). The nice and grey margins of the North Dakota Man Camp Project.

• Along similar lines, the edges of the oil boom in Crosby, North Dakota.

• Some amazing images of ecological issues from space.

• Farewell to a campus legend.

• Smells Like Teen Spirit.

• I will always love you.

• This is funny and so is this.

• What I’m reading: D. D. Maringolo, Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Toward a New Genealogy of Public History. University of Massachusetts Press 2012.

• What I’m listening to: The Clean, Vehicle; Crocodiles, Crimes of Passion.

My new toy: A functioning Marantz 2235B. Don at Don’s Television and Stereo is a Marantz guy and he replaced the speaker relay and balanced the output. Now I have to decide whether and when to get it recapped. It sounds good-ish.