Friday Varia and Quick Hits

It’s cold and there might be some flurries, but at least it’s only -7 this morning not -20. So I’m going to score this as a win for the kind residents of North Dakotaland.

For my academic readers, the balmy weather makes a nice end of the semester treat as classes give way to final exams, end of the year deadlines, and the hectic grading period at the end of the semester.

So as we count down the days to the end of the year, I offer some quick hits and varia to speed time along

• An update on the conversion of museums to mosques in Turkey.

• Mapping the Jewish communities of the Byzantine Empire. 

• Medieval diseases and deformities in 3D!

• How the Lion Gate at Mycenae was made.

• Volunteers with good Latin needed!!

• An interactive map of Chronique des fouilles from the BCH. 

• Eric Kansa on Neoliberalism, Open Data, and Academia. This is important.

• The case for boycotting top journals in science.

• A very good travel and research blog.

• Some Ryan Stander.

• The climate of Middle Earth (pdf).

• Workforce housing from the air.

• Don Bradman in North America.

• What is the Medium for?

• Antifragile Libraries.

• I’ve always argued that the future is in BLIMPS.

• Audiophile or placebophile?

• UND’s next head football coach?

• What I’m reading: Brent Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine. Cambridge 2011.

• What I’m listening to: Francis and the Lights, It’ll be better; Bad Religion, Christmas Songs.

This is what happened when the Ghosts of North Dakota Facebook page featured one of my posts: