Somebody read this and give me the jist, eh?

R LIBRARIANS CRAZEE...AND Y

In a world where there are two kinds of people...

There are two kinds of librarians; the librarians who love the library and the librarians who love the patrons.

No one person can be both…not successfully.

The librarians who love the library want to protect it from the grubby patrons who will tear up the materials, take things off the shelves and not put them back, or worse...put them back...in the wrong place!

These are the librarians who generate copious and strict rules that must be followed without exception. They are also the librarians who keep the shelves orderly and who keep the materials where they can be found.

The librarians who love the patrons want to give the patrons everything they want...even if the materials suffer, and the collection is left in disarray...even if the patrons don't know they want it, these librarians give it to them.

These are the librarians who chase patrons into the parking lot yelling, "Wait! I have more SEE ALSOs for you!"

These librarians consider the rules to be suggested guidelines which should be ignored if they might interfere with a patron's needs.

Libraries need both kinds of librarians.

With just the first kind of librarian, the library will be a shiny toy kept in the box...a sofa covered with plastic wrap...a beautiful lawn with a 'keep off the grass' sign.

With just the second kind of librarian, the library will be piles and piles of books and such, scattered all around the building.

Good libraries are run by people from opposite ends of this philosophical spectrum…and we drive each other insane…AND…that's why librarians are crazy.

Well truthfully, we are a little gone around the bend before we even start, but that's another story...


...and it begins with Melville Dewey (spelled Melvil Dui) who founded library science as a way to pick up chicks and along the way invented the Dewey Decimal System which still confounds library users to this day; it is a mixture of genius and madness that attempts to contain the infinitude of knowledge within a finite boundary, and succeeds, sort of, in an elegant juggernautical way.

But don't take my word for it...you know what to do...it's Google time!

...search on "Melville Dewey"

Use the quotes. It's the librariany way.
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If the past tense of Google is Googled, is the future perfect tense...Giggled?

I googled once yesterday, but I will have giggled three times by tomorrow.

The Complex Motions of the Earth, and Me, Through the Universe

I was recently asked to fill out form for an office party...a funny trivia kind of thing...what's your favorite color, car, etc.

We were also asked to tell the farthest distance we had travelled. I ended up writing New York on the form, but the question took my mind back to a late night party when I used astronomy to try and measure how far I had travelled in my life.

After a few drinks at that late night party...many years ago, I found myself alone, sitting on the roof, and watching the stars twirl around.

I started figuring directions...

The Earth is spinning around it's axis at 0.5 kilometers a second.

The Earth is revolving around the Sun at 30 kilometers a second.

The Sun is revolving around the Milky Way Galaxy at 250 kilometers a second.

The Milky Way Galaxy is revolving around with the Local Group of galaxies at 300 kilometers a second.

Total rate of distances traveled … 580.5 kilometers a second
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There are 31,536,000 seconds in a year.

My age is 52 ... 31536000 seconds X 52 years = 1,639,872,000 seconds

So I have lived (roughly, so far) 1,639,872,000 seconds ...
(1.6 billion seconds).

1639872000 seconds X 580.5 kilometers = 951945696000 kilometers

951,945,696,000 kilometers = 591,511,632,000 miles

So, in my life, so far, I have traveled...

(roughly, and in circles mostly)

...about 591 billion miles.

I didn't put that figure on the form for the office party. They think I am odd enough already.
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But many years ago at that late night party, in a meditative state, after a few drinks, I was sitting on the roof of my shed watching the stars twirl around, and I completed all of the calculations.

I included the widening gyres caused by the Earth's rotational tilt, 23 degrees, and the tilt of the Solar System's orbit relative to the Sun's movement though the Milky Way.

I guessed at the direction of the Milky Way's orbit within the Local Group of galaxies.

And lastly I included the direction of the Local Group moving away from the point of the Big Bang (another estimate to be sure).

While I was figuring and estimating and "feeling" the various directions, all of a sudden the equations came together in my mind.

I looked toward a point in the sky and quietly said: "There."

Suddenly my head smacked back against the asphalt shingles. My cheeks were stretched back towards my ears. My spine flattened. My vision darkened and blurred.

The acceleration pressure nailed me to the roof.

I was crushed by my new found discovery of Universal Velocity.

It only lasted a fraction of a second...or a lifetime.

And then I lost consciousness.