Friday's Notes

Jennifer Gruden's"Academic blogs: Our picks," More.ca, nd, gives top billing to Claire Potter's Tenured Radical, Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, and Chronicle Review's Brainstorm.

Tom Holland,"Emperor Hadrian, YouTube hero," TLS, 6 August, reviews"Hadrian: Empire and Conflict," an exhibit at the British Museum.

Per Caritatem is hosting the First Annual Augustine Blog Conference. Papers are posted serially, but are sure to be there for only two days. Thanks to Brandon Watson at Siris for the tip.

Jon Savage,"Vinyl Ventures," Guardian, 2 August, reviews Travis Elborough's The Long-player Goodbye: How Vinyl Changed the World.

David Goldblatt,"Spinning the Olympics," TLS, 6 August, reviews David Miller's The Official History of the Olympic Games and the IOC.

Finally, two political notes: 1) when John McCain's"Straight Talk Express" bus had an accident in Miami on Wednesday, the impact hurled a staffer's chocolate birthday cake into Senator Joe Lieberman's face; and 2) yesterday, Representative Steve Cohen overwhelmingly defeated Nikki Tinker, a Democratic attorney who based her primary campaign largely on appeals to racial and religious bias in a largely African American Memphis, Tennessee, congressional district. And you said there is no g_d! Hattip.