The Week in Links (Antibacterial Edition)

I've been laid up with pink-eye and some kind of Victorian-era respiratory infection, so this week it's going to be a short roundup.

The discussion of peer review continues over at Flavia's:

The Sorrows of Peer Review

***

"At this point, a crisis of conscience ensued. Should I hoof it off the library to see if I could track it down, or should I get on with finishing and fudge it a bit, with a reference to some website. You'll be pleased to know I decided on the library."

With emphasis on that excerpt, I'm going to share this column by Mary Beard with my freshmen tomorrow when I return their annotated bibliographies, some of which were excellent and some of which cited sources like www.history.com and www.spain.com.

Enoch Powell and the Chatty Barber

***

This is the top-books-of-2013 list that most and most-consistently appeals to me:

Best Books 2013: Slate Staff Picks

An interesting subject, but really not very good photographs:

Behind Closed Doors with the Women of Saudi Arabia

Whoa. That is all:

The Chalice that Helped Make Possible the Iran Nuclear Deal

And the Twitter conversation of the week, selected because they manage to touch simultaneously upon humorous manuscript marginalia *and* the vagaries of the peer review process:

"I spell it Chanukkah" said the red dragon, "Well I spell it Hanukah" said the blue: http://t.co/pxuBWio5XC (@BLAsia_Africa @BLMedieval)
— Shamma Boyarin (@ShammaBoyarin) November 28, 2013

@ShammaBoyarin I'm just wondering how these Britons and Saxons ended up in a Hebrew manuscript? @AdrienneBoyarin
— Sjoerd Levelt (@SjoerdLevelt) November 29, 2013

@SjoerdLevelt @AdrienneBoyarin I think this points to a lost Hebrew translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Want to co-publish our findings?
— Shamma Boyarin (@ShammaBoyarin) November 30, 2013

@ShammaBoyarin @AdrienneBoyarin Absolutely! (God knows more speculative Arthurian hypotheses have made it into press as if fact)
— Sjoerd Levelt (@SjoerdLevelt) November 30, 2013