Who Were the Sea Peoples?

My article is online at The Freeman .

And I'm annoyed again! It's the phrase "body of work", or, worse, "overall body of work", as used in talking NCAA basketball, that I'm talking about. Here's an example from Andy katz : "If the Boilermakers keep winning without Hummel, then why wouldn't Purdue get judged on its overall body of work?" The reason it annoys me is that we had a perfectly good word to use in place of this longer, more pretentious phrase: "season". What Katz is saying could be re-written as, "why wouldn't Purdue get judged on its entire season?" I believe in every use I have ever seen "season" could be used in place of "body of work". Hey, but everyone is saying body of work, so maybe I'd better say it as well.

My class on The Great Transformation has been going through The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism the last two weeks, which has led me to think about the work in some depth. One thing that has struck me is that most of the criticisms of the work that I have run across are fairly shallow (I'm not saying deeper ones don't exist, only that there are plenty of shallow ones out there), in that, often, their critiques are things that Weber already addressed in the original book ! There is a good history of thought paper to be written here, with a target journal like the AJES. I'd like to find a co-author who would want to help with the research into popular critiques of Weber's thesis. Get in touch with me in the comments section at my blog, on Facebook, or via e-mail if you are interested.

Providence coach Kemo David on the idea of expanding the NCAA tournament from 65 to 96 teams: "That's why there has been a lot of discussion about getting more teams in the NCAA tournament. There are a lot of bubble teams that couldn't just win one game but could win a few." Because, you see, with only 65 teams, there will be some teams just marginally left out of the tournament, who might win a few games, but with 96 teams in... hmm, never mind.

I heard a spokesperson for Mt. Airy Resort and Casino claim "It doesn't get any better than this!" That is the best case for suicide I've ever encountered. If it doesn't get any better than some cheesy, cutrate Pocono resort filled with gambling addicts, I'm out of here.

Because God stuck my birthdate right in the number Pi ! (Starting at digit 236,679.)