It has been a hectic morning attempting to read and respond to the flurry of activity surrounding my column this week over at Forbes, which argues that scholars should remove their work from the for-profit platform Academia.edu. I am neither the first nor the last academic to harangue members of the academy to take this step, … More #DeleteAcademiaEdu: The Argument For Non-Profit Repositories
It was a great trip to the combined annual meeting for the Society for Classical Studies and Archaeological Institute of America (SCS-AIA) in Toronto, but it definitely put me behind on my blogging schedule. No matter! Welcome to a new year, pious readers, and with it comes a reflection on immutable actions over at Forbes. For … More January 10, 49 BCE: Revising The Tale Of Caesar’s Crossing of the Rubicon
Another year of blogging is almost in the proverbial books and I must say that while 2016 was a wretched year socio-politically, it was professionally quite satisfying. My first book, Trade and Taboo was published and I even began writing for Forbes regularly. There is no doubt that I have much to be thankful for as … More ‘Pie Zeses’: Toasting To A New Year
Over at the Forbes blog this week, I discuss the ancient and medieval history of falconry in the Mediterranean. After seeing the new documentary film ‘The Eagle Huntress,’ about a 13-year-old girl named Aisholpan learning to become an eagle hunter with her father in Mongolia, I went back to some class notes on Greco-Roman attitudes towards the … More ‘The Eagle Huntress’ And The Ancient History Of Falconry
This week over at the Forbes blog, I discuss the International Astronomical Union (IAU)‘s publication of an official catalog of 227 star names. The list was published this week in order to further standardize how we reference stars and constellations, since each one has had numerous monikers in Greek, Roman, Chinese, Arabic and many other languages over the many millenia that … More Numbering The Stars: Remembering the Contributions of Medieval Muslim Astronomers And Catalogers
I travel a lot in order to do Pleiades workshops and discuss the role of mapping in both research and pedagogy. The #1 question I am asked is: How can I map the city of Rome? This morning, I thought I would give a bit of a run-down on how you can begin to interact with … More Roma Aeterna: Open-Access Resources for Mapping the City of Rome
It has been a splendid week doing talks and research in southern California (you can see all my slides for the talks here). One of the highlights of this trip was a special visit to the Getty in L.A. to see two adjacent exhibits (one at the Getty Museum and the other at the Getty … More The Midas Touch: Alchemy in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras
