Dumpling in a Hanky

Certain old law books are very, very expensive (like this one ). Certain new law books are also very, very expensive. This book has slipped from its original publication date by about 3 years so far, so there's no guarantee that it will actually be coming out in November this year, as currently promised. But just look at that price. £785. Yes: that's not a typo. It actually costs £785 for a single volume of a single book. It has 568 pages.  That's £1.38 per page . Law book prices are just insane sometimes.  

Unfortunately, lawyers get it too...and one of the best (for best, read "irritating and patronising") ones is the Legally Blonde female lawyer. Y'know - that attractive yet dumb blonde girl who floats through life, until an major event makes her re-evaluate everything, and then she works her socks off to show everyone how smart she really is? Seems like the BBC have been watching a few too many repeats of that film recently, judging from their reporting of this story  (although Legally Blonde isn't specifically mentioned in the report). Look: she's blonde! Look: she's pretty! Look: she used to work in a beauty-based job! That means she must be stupid! Look: she went to court to battle on her Mum's behalf! Isn't that an unexpected event! Look: she's studied to become a lawyer! And excelled at her studies! Look: she's actually really, really smart! Who could have imagined? Dear god - all it needs is her bust size, and a hint that she...

Edinburghshire has regressed (or progressed) to Autumn in full on 3D mode (Damp, Dark, and Dreich), so I'm cheering myself up with a reminder of a sunny day. Feel free to make full use of this for self-cheering purposes too. Make a wish!

5 candles on my blog birthday cake, on its fifth anniversary*! I've done quite a bit since I started this blog up: Chartered, (hopefully) Revalidated, been a Committee member, been a Convenor, organised training events, gone to training events, formally and informally mentored other information professionals (and been mentored by them in return), set up the UK Library Bloggers wiki, pottered about the edges of interesting projects like the Library Routes and Build India A Library initiatives, been involved in the setting up of various wikis for various purposes, taken part in a course of online study, attended formal conferences and informal unconferences (that is such  a horrible word!), and along the way, found a ton of entertaining book-related gifts on Etsy. In other words - good lord, I got professional! And it didn't even hurt! Keeping the blog going (despite long periods where I've thought "I really have nothing to talk about", or "I have loads to ...

So, while trying to find out what the difference between a megawatt and a gigawatt is, I had a thought...how much power, in gigawatts, did it take to power the Delorean in "Back to the Future"? According to the esteemed  Doc Brown , it was 1.21 gigawatts, the power being provided by the nuclear reaction of plutonium, unwisely stolen from terrorists. According to the Scottish Government (p3), as at July 2011, Scotland had 4.2 gigawatts of installed capacity from renewable sources such as wind and wave power. We could send Marty Back to the Future three times over. And completely avoid the need for stealing plutonium from bad guys. Nice!

Scheduled to come into force on 2nd July , the new regulations for the Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2010 will move Scottish law firms one step closer to the ABS model currently in place in England and Wales . From 2 July 2012, the Scottish Government will be able to begin accepting applications from those bodies wishing to become approved regulators, presumably the Law Society and other legal professional bodies. Legislation referred to in the Scottish Government press release is linked to below: Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2010 (Ancillary Provision) Regulations 2012  (draft) Licensed Legal Services (Specification of Regulated Professions) (Scotland) Regulations 2012   (draft) Licensed Legal Services (Complaints and Compensation Arrangements) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 (SSI 2012/153)  Licensed Legal Services (Interests in Licensed Providers) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 (SSI 2012/154)  Licensed Legal Services (Maximum Penalty and Interest in respect ...

I had a few minutes of fun today checking my reading speed on this site . Probably a not very accurate test, but it does check your understanding of the text you've just read, by questioning you on aspects of it at the end of your reading time. I got 100% accuracy each time I tried it, and a very fast reading speed each time. I wanted to average out my speed, but there were only 3 sample texts, and repeating them wouldn't be very accurate, so I had to settle for the average of the 3 texts: 754 words per minute.That seems to put me above "college professors", and below "high-scoring college students" (ok - that seems slightly back-to-front, but hey-ho!) on their scale.  Now, although I'm actually generally a very fast reader anyway, I think that years of doing legal research has actually trained me to be a more accurate skim reader. I may not necessarily understand the details of what I get asked to research (I'm not a lawyer, so the esoteric point...