Mmmmmmm.... Pi

From Richard Preston's new book Panic in Level 4:

"What is the point of computing pi... since an expansion of pi to only forty-seven decimal places would be sufficiently precise to inscribe a circle around the visible universe that doesn't deviate from perfect circularity by more than the distance across a single proton."

Preston's ability to put concepts like pi into terms that even a dolt like me can understand is why his books are so readable.

Another Dave Mallett gem from YouTube

Times they change, sort of

Check out this article from the June 2, 1980 Time. I was sorting a pile of local history for cataloging here at the library, and couldn't resist leafing through this magazine with a cover story about Mt. St. Helens (The Big Blowup). You could literally change the price of gas from $1.20 to $4.00 and re-run this article today. The only real difference is that we are now on the downslope of the 'peak,' so things won't ease up as they did in the mid 80's...

Farewell, Sweet Reference

The OED will likely never be printed again. Makes sense from a business standpoint, but still this is sad news. Thanks again to my Uncle Terry for footing the bill for my own set. Here is a nice lament from the New York Times Magazine.

Always a pleasure

...to remove The Lost Grizzlies by Rick Bass from the building I work in. As of today, I've been able to do so three different times. Especially gratifying was that it showed up on a weeding list because it hadn't been checked out in over 4 years.

Old or Grown-up?

Either way, two things happened yesterday that made me think it's one or the other. First, I was approached by two mormons while doing some yardwork. Not only was I polite to them, but I didn't go with my usual response, which is to tell them I'd be happy to chat with them if they would come in and have a beer with me. Maybe I can chalk this up to the fact that I work in a public library now... you know, I had on my reference desk face.

Second, and perhaps more distressingly, while driving Keegan and Griffin back from watching the Eugene Marathon go by at the park, I failed to turn off the radio or change the channel when Hootie's Only Wanna Be With You came on. I wasn't singing along or anything, but for the first time since 1994 or so that it didn't trip my gag-reflex. Yikes.

Interesting Exercise

Stolen from a blog where it was borrowed from another blog...
Humbling to realize I haven't read nearly as much as I like to think I have.

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. Here's the twist: add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend. Even if you read 'em for school in the first place."



The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay*
American Gods*
Anansi Boys*
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir*
Angels & Demons
Anna Karenina
Atlas Shrugged
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbury Tales
The Catcher in the Rye
Catch-22
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon*
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time*
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Emma
Foucault’s Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
The God of Small Things*
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity’s Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian : a novel
The Hobbit*
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Iliad
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
The Inferno
Jane Eyre
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell *
The Kite Runner
Les Misérables
Life of Pi : a novel
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex*
Mrs. Dalloway
The Mists of Avalon
Moby Dick
The Name of the Rose*
Neverwhere
1984*
Northanger Abbey
The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
The Once and Future King*
One Hundred Years of Solitude
On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Oryx and Crake : a novel
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel*
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice
The Prince
Quicksilver*
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
The Satanic Verses
The Scarlet Letter
Sense and Sensibility
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
The Sound and the Fury
A Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Time Traveler’s Wife
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
The Three Musketeers
Ulysses
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
Watership Down*
White Teeth
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values