Friday Varia and Quick Hits

It’s been unseasonably warm in North Dakotaland this week and so I’ve managed actually to enjoy the first few outdoor runs of the season. Not only do I feel slightly more fit, but my later afternoon shuffles have given me plenty of time to reflect on my sabbatical year.

Such reflection was not particularly productive, so to prevent anyone else from wasting good thinking time this weekend, I offer a little gaggle of quick hits and varia.

• Lots of articles on the antiquities situation in Syria. I wonder how much of the recent handwringing about antiquities reflects a sense of helplessness among the global middle class when confronted with something as difficult to understand as ISIS (which is to take nothing away from the genuineness of the sentiments expressed)?

Some don’t feel that they deserve antiquities.

Others feel differently (scroll down to read James Cumo’s strange little letter to the New York Times.)

Plundering by satellite.

Syrian efforts to save antiquities.

Racing to save antiquities.

• The Archaeology of Salt.

• A few thoughts from a fiction writer on Linear B names.

• Do not carve your name on antiquities. 

• A crisis of archaeological storage is at hand.

• Slow Reading. 

• Hoarded maps to the rescue!

• The closing of Sweet Briar college is very sad for all involved. I did not realize that Ralph Adams Cram designed many of the key buildings on campus. I wonder if the campus needs an intensive pedestrian survey to document its material history before being transformed?

• Some more media coverage of our work in the Bakken oil patch. 

• A predictable review of the NYT’s profile of Kevin Carey and his book The End of College.

• The highend headphone maker Audeze had its factory burgled.

• What I’m reading: a dissertation.

• What I’m listening to: Donald Byrd, Chant; Donald Byrd, At the Half Note Cafe.

I look so sad that I obviously deserve a treat, and you can hardly tell that my cage door is open.

One long paw.