Gibbon and Scholarly Prose Style; Also, Running

My head hurts like no other today; I wonder if I've been drinking enough water? It could also be too much watching a computer screen, but at least today I have a much better excuse than usual: proof-reading a 58-page paper for two hours straight.

That proof-reading was actually pretty interesting, in part because I've also been reading Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This is not a slight against the paper I was helping with or against its author; the paper just contained a lot of quotes from other academic writings. The contrast is fascinating. Gibbon's remarkable breadth of knowledge is what makes his work valuable even now, after more than two hundred years, but his prose style is part of what makes his master work such a joy to read. His passion for the subject matter, his strongly held opinions about various questions within the field, and his great ability to organize facts and details into a larger, fascinating narrative are on display on every page. Unfortunately, most modern scholarly works are dull: composed in a language seemingly intended to shut out all but a handful of specialists, removed from any sense of enthusiasm or of meaning in the real world. Modern scholars may know the ingredients, but that does not mean they know how to cook.

Speaking of enjoying food a lot, I went running today. (Nailed that segue!) I expected it to be arduous, as the temperature and humidity have remained about the same and I know I haven't gotten enough sleep lately. But my expectations were thwarted; I was able to run one of my just-over-a-mile routes in about eight minutes and a quarter. In the interest of adding perspective, I used to be able to run a mile in six minutes, seven seconds, and I used to be able to run three consecutive miles in seven and a half minutes each. Even so, I was both proud of myself and reminded to add a new factor to my records: how many days of rest I've taken in between running. That factor shouldn't matter too much as I begin to run five days a week--I'm planning on taking Wednesday and Sunday as regular rest days to let my body recover--but for now I can see a good correlation between days since running and average speed. To sum up, I was pleasantly surprised by today's run.