Friday Varia and Quick Hits (on a Thursday)

I know it’s only Thursday, but I couldn’t resist sending out a small gaggle of Friday varia and quick hits for your reading pleasure. I’m booked into Prairie Foliage Tour tomorrow and will be out of the loop

… no not really…

I’ll be at a meeting of the North Dakota Humanities Council in Bismarck.

Before the usual list, here’s the link to John Oliver’s piece on North Dakota from his Last Week Tonight show on HBO. I thought it was funny, but perhaps not as nuanced as it could have been. The reality, of course, is both far more terrifying and not nearly as bad.

•  The work of the University of Sydney Archaeological Excavations at the Paphos Theatre.

• A fancy gold wreath excavated near Soloi in Northern Cyprus. It always surprises me a little that Archaeology Magazine will promote the results of excavations that many would consider illegal. I recognize that it’s a complicated issue, and I’m sure they’ve given it careful thought.

• Is it really true that periptera are going to be shut down in Greece? 

• Something on ruin porn. (Here were my thoughts on a related topic).

• 19th century Ottoman hats.

• Oxford and Syrian academics.

• Crowd-sourcing the ANZAC experience.

• Patti Smith at the New Yorker Festival. (Here’s the video).

• The Computer Show.

• The Achievement Beard.

• The Pulitzer Center’s most recent ebook: Refugee Stories.

• Luminosa. University of California’s open access book initiative.

• Even when filtered for the Republican rhetoric, this is a remarkable achievement in digitization.

• 50 K-mart shopping soundtracks from the 1980s and 1990s.

• What I’m reading: Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke 2007.

• What I’m listening to: Ahmad Jamal, At the Pershing, but not for me. Ahmad Jamal, Ahmad’s Blues.

Milo’s View of NASCAR