Friday Varia and Quick Hits

It feels like the end of fall here in North Dakotaland. The leaves are off the trees and everything feels dry. For my students, any interest in football has turned to ice hockey. We are counting down the end of the semester.

I’m happy to cling to fall for few more weeks and enjoy the business end of the college football season and F1 calendar. This week, OSU heads west to face a scuffling, but game UCLA team. The F1 guys are en route to the US to race at Las Vegas next week. The Eagles face the Lions on Sunday night and the resurgent (and suddenly interesting) Sixers face Detroit.

I’ll spend the weekend finishing a manuscript review and trying to get my classes sorted so that when I head off to the ASOR annual meeting at the end of next week, everything goes smoothly.

In the meantime, here are some quick hits and varia:

• Pasts Imperfect.

• Ancient History Round Up.

• Hesperia 94.3 (2025)

• Insights from the Molyvoti, Thrace.

• Refining collection-unit survey methodology: the Maharal Valley project case study

• From the Blogs:

The Naming of Parts.

Weekly Varia.

• Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, The Jewish Jesus, and the Problem of Supercessionism.

• The Track Girl.

• More on the Marbles.

• More on The Bellman.

• What I’m reading: Kim Bowes, Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent. (2025). To be honest, this is aspirational. What I’m really doing is reviewing a manuscript, reading a dissertation, and contemplating finishing Pynchon’s Vineland (1990). If I can’t aspire on my blog, when can I though?

• What I’m listening to: Otherlands Trio, Star Mountain.