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Monday, September 30, 2013

It's Academic

Throughout the history of American higher education, the academic library has supported the university in its academic mission, Dr Stephen E. Atkins writes in The Academic Library in the American University. Noting its evolution over three-and-a-half centuries, the former president of the American Library Association continues, The academic library has become a depository of materials that support faculty and graduate student research in an almost infinite variety of disciplines.” For my part, I shall be forever grateful to the academic libraries of Brazil for that is where I found my beloved wife, a reference librarian in the humanities.

Friday, September 06, 2013

The Mass Grave of Reflection

Whether it is through the ascending drumbeats for war or the steady drone of mindless advertisements, the empty slogans that assail our senses are constant reminders that we live in a time when critical thinking was never more needed or practised less often. As Carl Jung observes in The Undiscovered SelfThe mass crushes out the insight and reflection still possible with the individual, and this necessarily leads to a doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional State should succumb to a fit of weakness.” The day America´s Constitution dies, her once noble experiment as a democratic republic dies with it. Sic transit gloria Americae.