Friday Varia and Quick Hits

Our mild and sunny fall has given way to grey and cold to remind us that winter is on the way here in North Dakotaland.

To compensate for the failing sun, I woke up early this morning to get some sunshine and vitamin D by watching Pakistan v. Australia in Abu Dhabi. Unfortunately, Australia can’t get anyone out so my sunny morning involves watching Younus Kahn’s double century and Misbah-ul-Haq score a century. Oh well, the great thing about test match cricket is when a match is well and truly over, you still have three days more to savor the agony.

One more thing, if you haven’t checked out the first installment of my Tourist Guide to the Bakken Oil Patch, please click over to Medium to give it a read.

On to the varia and quick hits:

• Bronze Age street view at the site of Kalavasos-Ay. Dhimitrios on Cyprus.

• Democracy might be hard to understand.

• Gladiators drank ancient sports drinks.

• I am dismayed that scholars are rejecting the decipherment of Phaistos disk presented at TED on Crete. If we can’t believe a local TED talk, I am completely without a compass.

• This is super annoying, but fortunately, the AIA is dismayed. It’s funny, I discovered that in May, a letter I wrote to the local paper caused dismay. I can honestly say that I’ve never felt dismay. I’ve been disappointed, startled, and even bummed out, but never dismayed. Maybe this is a weakness on my part.

• A massive collection of scientific texts from the Islamic world at the Qatar Digital Library.

• James O’Donnell, Late Antiquitist, is the new director of libraries at Arizona State. 

• Atari ET games from Alamogordo are on display in Italy.

• Brett Ommen’s struggle with and without academia (a brutally honest read, but important).

• It must have been a boring assignment, but apparently MI5 spied on Eric Hobsbawm and Christopher Hill.

• Man camps in Texas. 

• A nice example of adaptive reuse of old Mac Pros.

• The new presidential palace in Turkey is looks pretty fancy.

• Milliner on Koons.

• Cincinnati’s Union Terminal is endangered.  

• What’s blooming at Dumbarton Oaks.

• What I’m reading: Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. (2013 edition). I really am reading it, but I’ll also admit (against the advice of several colleagues), that I’m going to read William Gibson’s The Peripheral.

• What I’m listening to: The Twilight Sad, Nobody Wants to be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave; Duke Ellington and Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins. I’m listening to both on TIDAL, which is CD quality streaming. If you love music, it’s worth the 7 day trial.   

Milo sez: The rug really tied the room together