Friday Varia and Quick Hits

It is well and truly fall here on the Northern Plains with temperatures barely getting out of the 50s and the trees starting their autumnal pyrotechnics. It is football weather, of course, especially with the Ashes securely retained (although the Aussies seem intent on actually winning the Ashes as well).

More importantly, tomorrow night sees Tyson Fury defend his lineal heavy weight championship (Fury is the guy who beat the guy). There’s something about the lineal heavy weight championship that appeals to historian of Early Christianity in me. Despite the relatively recent proliferation of championship belts – mostly heretical to my mind – there is only one lineal champion who is the successor of all the other champions going back into the mists of time (or John L. Sullivan). Of course, it’s never quote that simple, but neither are all the belts and competing promotional organization and all the other things that have accumulated around boxing. (The best primer on boxing that I’ve read recently is Joyce Carol Oates little book of essays on the sport (h/t to Diana Wright).

Whatever your plans this glorious fall weekend, do enjoy some quick hits and varia:

• Wool and Rubble Walls: Domestic Archaeology in the Medieval Peloponnese.

• Sinai’s Century.

• Greenwood on Kronman’s “The Assault on American Excellence.” (H/t my entire Twitter feed).

• This olive oil could be your life.

• Material Culture in Early Christianity.

• Translating the Hebrew Bible.

• Gender, Subject Preference, and Editorial Bias in Classical Studies, 2001–2019 (pdf).

• ASA reconsiders student evaluations.

• Actual learning versus feeling of learning.

• Adorno is the fifth Beatle.

• Liberty University.

• Apocalypse Chic. (Another version from the New Yorker.)

• Librarians and Ebooks.

• Roadside America.

• What I am reading: Andrew Culp, Dark Deleuze. (Minnesota 2016). 

• What I’m listening to:  Wadada Leo Smith, Kulture Jazz.