March 2015 - Sam Harrelson

But It’s In the New York Times, So It Must Be True…

March 20, 2015 March 20, 2015

Incredible Editor’s Note following Thursday’s article by New York Times “tech” writer Nick Bilton… The Disruptions column in the Styles section on Thursday, discussing possible health concerns related to wearable technology, gave an inadequate account of the status of research about cellphone radiation and cancer risk. Neither epidemiological nor laboratory studies have found reliable evidence …

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R.I.P. Terry Pratchett

March 12, 2015 March 12, 2015

I first encountered the Discworld books as a young reader trying to find something interesting at our public library, and they changed the way I thought about science fiction, satire, and our own world. I’m sad there won’t be more from him (his daughter might continue the series), but what a legacy (and a good …

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Colonizing the Colonials

March 11, 2015 March 11, 2015

To get the full implication of this piece, you have to listen to the Thinking Religion that Thomas Whitley and I recorded yesterday. Great show and the thought piece at the end regarding post-colonialism and the import of valuing plays in nicely with this… In the same period, American public diplomats tried to influence education reforms …

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Dura Europos Looting and Devastation Update

March 10, 2015 March 10, 2015

Tragic. “There is a complete and massive change to this site,” Wolfinbarger says, comparing the pre-war images to those collected in 2014 of the renowned archaeological treasure. British soldiers discovered Dura Europus in the 1920s. They hit on the wall of the ancient city while digging a trench during World War I. Excavation revealed a …

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GigaOm or How Not to End A Great Tech Site’s Existence

March 9, 2015 March 9, 2015

I started reading and writing about GigaOm way back in 2006 or 2007 with the advent of CostPerNews. When Arrington sold TechCrunch, I was glad that at least sites driven by their creators such as GigaOm were still there (post Read/WriteWeb etc etc). I was sad to see that GigaOm and company are now shutting …

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Writing Is Dead

March 8, 2015 March 8, 2015

Beautiful (and horribly depressing) read: It is not just that people with degrees in English generally go to work for corporations (which of course they do); the point is that the company, in its most cutting-edge incarnation, has become the arena in which narratives and fictions, metaphors and metonymies and symbol networks at their most …

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Is the Original New Testament Lost?

March 7, 2015 March 7, 2015

House of Cards is fun, but take a few mins to watch something a little more substantive this weekend (like this): As you might expect, I argue that even though we have thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament, we do not have many *early* ones — and hardly any *really* early ones. That is …

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Arrrggghhh

March 4, 2015 March 4, 2015

Columbia weather in March.

My Tweets, Links, Music, and Books

March 4, 2015 March 4, 2015

I’ve put together a page here on my blog to aggregate all of my updates, music listening patterns, bookmarks on the web, and books I’m reading: Twitter: updates etc Music: iTunes / Spotify / Google Play Music / Pandora / Last.FM Bookmarks: Pocket and Pinboard Reading and Books: Goodreads I was pretty proud of myself. …

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Dura Europos as a “Moonscape of Craters”

March 4, 2015 March 4, 2015

More sadness regarding ISIS and looting at Dura Europos in Syria… “I am fearful that there will be mass looting as in Syria,” said Katharyn Hanson, a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Cultural Heritage Centre and a specialist in Mesopotamian archaeology, who is visiting Erbil. She says that Nineveh, Nimrud and other cities of …

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Dura Europos and Its Art

March 3, 2015 March 3, 2015

Just received my 1938 first edition copy of M. Rostovtzeff’s Dura Europos And Its Art today. I’ve now been able to secure every first edition of books about Dura (outside of the Final Reports, which I’m working on). Good day.