The Last Bell
Read The Last Bell by Donald McRae. A thoughtful and moving book about boxers and boxing, worthy of the William Hill nomination that drew me to it. McRae is a veteran sports journalist, and writes about grief and death in his personal life and in boxing bouts that end in tragedy.
The case of Patrick Day is particularly poignant. His brothers remark that he had so many qualities that boxing didn't value. I was already conflicted and ambivalent about the sport, but no longer think noble champions, even Oleksandr Usyk, can justify or redeem it.
RIP Patrick Day.
The Church of Reason
Reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I didn't expect so much relevance to academia (though new little about the book):
The real University is not a material object. It is not a group of buildings that can be defended by police. He explained that when a college lost its accreditation, nobody came and shut down the school. There were no legal penalties, no fines, no jail sentences. Classes did not stop. Everything went on just as before. Students got the same education they would if the school didn’t lose its accreditation. All that would happen, Phaedrus said, would simply be an official recognition of a condition that already existed. It would be similar to excommunication. What would happen is that the real University, which no legislature can dictate to and which can never be identified by any location of bricks or boards or glass, would simply declare that this place was no longer “holy ground.” The real University would vanish from it, and all that would be left was the bricks and the books and the material manifestation …
The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location. It’s a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real University. The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself.
Tags: reading, academic, philosophy