Librarians who save the world If information is power, then there's no hero mightier than a librarian. Librarians are superheroes, adventurers, explorers and invaluable guides to other heroes.
The Cheshire Cat in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series
Renamed "the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat" due to changing boundaries, this cat is the overseer in the Great Library, a library within the book world, which contains every book ever written.
Rex Libris in the Rex Libris comics
Rex Libris is the "tough-as-nails Head Librarian at Middleton Public Library," who strikes fear into recalcitrant borrowers — and also battles "loitering zombies" and alien warlords who refuse to pay their late fees.
See other powerful librarians at:
http://io9.com/5671047/20-heroic-librarians-who-save-the-world

The Librarian Who Measured the Earth
Eratosthenes (AIR-uh-TOS-thuh-neez) was born in Cyrene, a Greek city in the country now called Libya in the third century B.C. At six, he went to school, called the gymnasium. Between questions, the students learned reading, writing, arithmetic, music, and poetry. They learned to play the lyre and recite poetry at the same time. At 30, Ptolemy III, ruler of Egypt, asked him to serve as tutor for his son Philopator in Alexandria. At the Alexandria Museum, there were laboratories, libraries, dining halls and private studios. Here the first dictionaries and enclopedias were written, the scientist Herophilius recognized the connection between heartbeat and pulse, and discovered the artieries and veins. Here Ctesibius invented the first water-driven clock and the first keyboard musical instrument. Here punctuation and grammar were invented by Aristophanes. Eratosthenes was appointed head librarian. He wrote the first complete geography book and measured the circumference of the earth. Kathryn Lasky

Pennsylvania Mineral Rights have a rich history all the way back to 1859 in Titusville, PA when the first successful oil well was drilled in America. The Drake well was drilled by Colonel Edwin L. Drake. More recently, the most active oil and gas formation providing value for Pennsylvania mineral rights has been the Marcellus Shale. Find link to other short articles about mineral rights by state at: http://www.mineralweb.com/mineral-rights-by-state/pennsylvania-mineral-rights/ Please note that MineralWeb is the online presence of The Oil and Gas Mineral Service Company. The company provides consulting, advice, and intelligence to America’s mineral owners, in addition to owning and managing oil and gas mineral and royalty interests. http://www.mineralweb.com/about/

A pending case in Pennsylvania considers whether Marcellus shale is a mineral.
The answer could determine whether contracts transferring mineral rights to Marcellus shale also transfer rights to Marcellus natural gas, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/regional/s_758065.html "For anyone who's played the game 'Animal, Vegetable, Mineral,' it might seem obvious that the Marcellus shale isn't alive and doesn't grow—it's a rock layer in the ground, so it's a mineral," the story says. "In the Pennsylvania courts, the answer is not so clear." Under the state’s so-called “Dunham rule,” Pennsylvania courts have held that a grant of mineral rights in a deed generally does not mean that the parties intended to grant or reserve oil or gas rights, according to a summary by the law firm K&L Gates. In a ruling earlier this month, a Pennsylvania superior court asked a Susquehanna County court to decide whether the shale is a mineral and, if so, whether anyone who owns the shale also owns the shale gas, according to a summary by McGuireWoods. The superior court ruled in an action to quiet title filed by John and Mary Josephine Butler. Their deed gives them the rights to half the minerals on their 244 acres of property, the Tribune-Review says. he case is now pending in Susquehanna County. “If the Marcellus shale is not a mineral,” the newspaper says, “it could change everything drillers have assumed about the state's oil and gas laws.” http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/is_marcellus_shale_a_mineral_pa._courts_answer_will_affect_gas_rights/

Quotes
I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.
It is by way of glass that sunlit space as a reality becomes the most useful servant of the human spirit.
The house of moderate cost is not only America’s major architectural problem but the problem most difficult for her major architects.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) U.S. architect

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, on June 8, 1867, and died in Phoenix, Arizona, on April 9, 1959, at the age of 91. (He often gave his birthdate as 1869, but records indicate that he was actually born in 1867.) His father was William Carey Wright, a preacher and a musician. His mother was Anna Lloyd Jones, a teacher whose large Welsh family settled the valley area near Spring Green, Wisconsin, where Wright later built his home, Taliesin. Wright had two sisters, Jane (1869) and Maginel (1877). His family life was nomadic and unsettled in the early years. Before arriving in Madison in 1878, Wright lived in Rhode Island, Iowa, and Massachusetts, in addition to Wisconsin. At age 11 Wright also began spending summers with his uncle James Lloyd Jones on his farm located near the Taliesin hill. Those early years in the Wisconsin countryside had a profound effect on Wright: "As a boy," he wrote in his autobiography, "I learned to know the ground plan of the region in every line and feature. For me now its elevation is the modeling of the hills, the weaving and fabric that clings to them, the look of it all in tender green or covered with snow or in full glow of summer that bursts into the glorious blaze of autumn. I still feel myself as much a part of it as the trees and birds and bees are, and the red barns." Find links to more information at:
http://www.franklloydwright.org/fllwf_web_091104/Biography.html

Q: Are there $3 bills?
A: The government never has printed a $3 bill. But, during the early 1800s, banks with federal or state charters issued $3 notes printed by contractors. U.S. Treasury Department.
http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Oct/JU/ar_JU_103111.asp?d=103111,2011,Oct,31&c=c_13

Larking about: Play the fool, in a childish or careless manner.
Origin: There are several possible derivations of the word 'lark' in this context. 'Larking about' or 'lark about' (sometimes used as 'larking around' or 'lark around') has been used to mean 'getting up to mischief; playing the fool' since at least the middle of the 19th century. At source its origins may well be somewhat earlier than that; how much earlier depends on which of the proposed origins proves to be correct. The principal theories are that either:
'Larking' derives from the Yorkshire dialect word 'lake', meaning 'to amuse oneself' ('The Yorkshire pronunciation of 'lake' sounds like 'laik', which could be mistaken for 'lark' outside the county) or: 'Larking' derives from 'skylark' and alludes to the well-known aerial acrobatics of the European Skylark. When they are on the ground these inconspicuous little birds look like what birdwatchers disparagingly call SBJs - 'small brown jobs'. In the air and singing they are transformed into one of nature's wonders - spiralling upward and trilling an exquisite song. Of course, skylarks were the inspiration for the UK's favourite piece of classical music - Ralph Vaughn Williams' The Lark Ascending. They also appear to have inspired sailors to describe lads who played around in the rigging of ships as skylarks. This term appears to have been coined with reference to the earlier name 'mudlarks' - the children who played and scavanged about the shoreline. Skylarks were first defined in a rather unlikely source, The Student's Comprehensive Anglo-Bengali Dictionary, Kanta, 1802:
Skylarking, the act of running about the rigging of a vessel in sport; frolicking. The use of 'lark' as a verb begins soon after that, as in an entry for 1813 in the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Peter Hawker: "Having larked all the way down the road." The first mention that I can find of 'larking about' in print comes from an edition of the American magazine The Living Age, 1844: One of the young genelmen was called Mr. Larkins, and I'm blessed but the name he hailed by tallied exactly with the cast of his figure-head and the trim of his craft, for he was eternally larking about somut or other, and his very face displayed a mixture of fun and mischief. Of the two theories presented above, it does seem that the 'skylarking' origin is by far the more likely. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/lark-about.html

An asteroid that is 400m (1,300ft) wide has passed by Earth, much to the delight of astronomers. Although invisible to the naked eye, scientists said they spotted strange structures on its surface as it spun past at 30,000mph (48 280.32 km/h). Asteroid 2005 YU55's was the closest an asteroid has been to Earth in 200 years, according to Nasa. It is also the largest space rock fly-by Earth has seen since 1976; the next visit by a large asteroid will be 2028. The aircraft-carrier-sized asteroid was darkly coloured in visible wavelengths and nearly spherical, lazily spinning about once every 20 hours as it raced through our neighbourhood of the Solar System. Nasa said it had been no closer than 201,700 miles (324,600km), as measured from the centre of the Earth. The rock reached its closest point to Earth at 23:28 GMT on Tuesday. It will now trace a path across the whole sky through to Thursday. The asteroid often travels in the vicinity of Earth, Mars and Venus, but Nasa said this fly-by had been the closest the asteroid had come to Earth in at least 200 years. Earth has several regular visitors like 2005 YU55 - most famously the Apophis asteroid. Apophis has in the past been claimed as a possible future impactor when it returns to our neighbourhood in 2029 and again in 2036. There is, according to the latest calculations, no danger from Apophis either. However, it will pass much closer to Earth on 13 April 2029 - at a distance of 18,300 miles (29,500km). See picture plus links to related stories at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15572634