“There is nothing more arresting than a disciplined course of instruction,” he said abruptly.

I must have rolled my eyes or grimaced, because he shook his head, stood up and shoved the thing — an impressive two inches thick — into my hands.

“I’m serious. Is there anything more glorious than a professor? Forget about his molding the minds, the future of a nation — a dubious assertion; there’s little you can do when they tend to emerge from the womb predestined for Grand Theft Auto Vice City. No. What I mean is, a professor is the only person on earth with the power to put a veritable frame around life — not the whole thing, God no — simply a fragment of it, a small wedge. He organizes the unorganizable. Nimbly partitions it into modern and postmodern, renaissance, baroque, primitivism, imperialism and so on. Splice that up with Research Papers, Vacation, Midterms. All that order — simply divine. The symmetry of a semester course. Consider the word themselves: the seminar, the tutorial, the advanced whatever workshop accessible only to seniors, to graduate fellows, to doctoral candidates, the practicum — what a marvelous word: practicum! You think me crazy. Consider a Kandinsky. Utterly muddled, put a frame around it, voila — looks rather quaint above the fireplace. And so it is with the curriculum. That celestial, sweet set of instructions, culminating in the scary wonder of the Final Exam. And what is the Final Exam? A test of one’s deepest understanding of giant concepts. No wonder so many adults long to return to university, to all those deadlines — aahh, that’s structure! Scaffolding to which we may cling! Even if it is arbitrary, without it, we’re lost, wholly incapable of separating the Romantic from the Victorian and our sad, bewildering lives…

I told Dad he’d lost his mind. He laughed.

“One day you’ll see,” he said with a wink. “And remember. Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids, because, trust me, there will always be some clown sitting in the back — somewhere by the radiator — who will raise his fat, flipper-like hand, and complain, ‘no, no, you’ve got it all wrong.’ ”
Pessl, Marisha. Special Topics in Calamity Physics. New York: Viking, 2006, pp.11-12.

In addition to these large rules there are some little ones.  These require that the author shall

12.  Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
13.  Use the right word, not its second cousin.
14.  Eschew surplusage.
15.  Not omit necessary details.
16.  Avoid slovenliness of form.
17.  Use good grammar.
18.  Employ a simple and straightforward style.

Twain, Mark. “Fennimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.” In Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches and Essays, 1891-1910, edited by Louis J. Budd. New York: Library of America, 1992, 181-182.

The Times has a good collection of documents regarding re-authorization.

I’ve long complained about the impossible situation librarians are put in within Philadelphia’s wonderful system of free libraries.  Here,a librarian from Salt Lake City lays it all out.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

Mark Twain.
(digging for citation).

“Money can’t buy you class, character, or salvation.”

Realizing as I grade a series of midterms for a class where I did not assign a comprehensive textbook that a “bad” reading of a textbook produces much more than a “bad” reading of a monograph or a provocative article.

In other words, students still get something from the time they spend with a textbook — no matter how badly written or tediously designed — but it appears as though the rewards of genuine readings can only be realized if the “reading” is done well.
Scary, I think.  I hoped that giving provocative, well-written academic articles would create better discussions and lead to more interesting mid-term exams.

It appears that I erred.

“Whenever I’m about to do something, I think, “Would an idiot do that,” and if they would, I do not do that thing.”

E.H. Carr, What is History 1961.

Much of what has been written in English-speaking countries in the last ten years about the Soviet Union, and in the Soviet Union about the English-speaking countries, has been vitiated by this inability to achieve even the most elementary measure of imaginative understanding of what goes on in the mind of the other party, so that the words and actions of the other are always made to appear malign, senseless, or hypocritical. History cannot be written unless the historian can achieve some kind of contact with the mind of those about whom he is writing.

Re-write 2007 ?
Much of what has been written in English-speaking countries in the last ten years about the Middle East, and in the Middle East about the English-speaking countries, has been vitiated by this inability to achieve even the most elementary measure of imaginative understanding of what goes on in the mind of the other party, so that the words and actions of the other are always made to appear malign, senseless, or hypocritical. History cannot be written unless the historian can achieve some kind of contact with the mind of those about whom he is writing.

Man, writing is hard.

Self: en dash is the short dash. It’s used for closed range things and for linking things together.

An em dash is the long dash. Quoting from the wiki:

The em dash indicates a sudden break in thought—a parenthetical statement like this one—or an open range (such as “John Doe, 1987—”). The em dash is used in much the way a colon or set of parentheses is used: it can show an abrupt change in thought or be used where a period is too strong and a comma too weak. Em dashes are sometimes used in lists or definitions, but this is not considered correct usage^{[citation needed]}: a colon should be used instead.