In the previous post, I told the story of my friend Kelly and the Baader-Meinhof that occurred this afternoon. When I post something like that, I like to include links for more information (as you may have noticed), so I needed to find a link that would adequately explain that phenomenon. So, like a good librarian, I "googled" (I used Yahoo!) the phrase and found several sites. I surveyed a few, looking for the best for my fine friends, until I came across one that was damn interesting. Yep, it was www.damninteresting.com. Sidebar: I added the link to this page to my sidebar. Go check it out (as Meg says, an overused library pun).  Ok, we're back on track (get it? train of thought...)

Once I found Damn Interesting, it was hard to resist the lure to wade through the thought provoking, humorous, wacky, strange, convoluted information that can be found there. I was instantly hooked. I detoured from the site only long enough to add it here on my blog. I then went back and played some more. I read an article about "The Birthday Paradox" that floored me, because only a few days ago I was playing trivia with mom and dad when a similar question came up. Something along the lines of "If there are 30 people in a room what are the odds that two of them will share the same birthday?" There were choices to go along with it and I got it drastically wrong. I assumed, incorrectly, that the odds were infinitesimal and, well, read the article. So, whammy, there is another Baader-Meinhof.

Then, I wanted to know just who these folks are that came up with this kickass site, so I click on the "About" tab at the top of the page. I read the bio information and at the bottom, I see a plug, recruiting new writers. This is something that appeals to me. I love quirky things like this, that exploit the inherent uniqueness that makes up the world around us. I could see myself coming up with a topic that is of fascination to me and submitting it to this site. Who knows? I noticed that the site is heavily peppered with articles of a scientific bent, which is cool, but my mind tends to stray more toward the literary sect. Something that has always intrigued me is the use (or misuse) of language; such as, malapropisms, spoonerisms, and some of the best, Yogiisms. Along those lines, I started playing around with different sites that talk about these literary and linguistic occurrences. The second site I see (after Wikipedia) is one created by a guy named Dr. Bill Long. Well, this incredibly well educated professor has a page relating to the use of words and language. In it, he includes spoonerisms, malapropisms, and many others that I was familar with, but did not know the actual names for. (See, I learned something!).  One of them is "Tom Swifties", in which he explains the character of Tom Swift who was written by Edward Stratemeyer.

Okay, you're saying, but where are you going with this? Well, in between all of this dancing and dashing between fun websites, I had to do some actual work. I am at Hamline tonight and an off-campus student called with a reference question. She was unable to access a computer and wanted some information on the creation, use, and criticism of serial writing in children's ficiton. Alright, great, so we did that for a bit and I found her some great books. Still, she was not satisfied, so she asked me if I could see if there was any research on this guy who wrote a bunch of children's serials, among them, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. The guy's name is Edward Stratemeyer. Yowza, Baader-Meinhof.

So, aside from sharing this incomparably long blog post with all of you (betcha never wanted to know my thought process that badly, hmm?) I can't help but wonder; can you have a Baader-Meinhof of Baader-Meinhofs? Three times in one day, heck, inside of three hours, I experienced a phenomenon that explains the phenomenon of noticing something you were recently made aware of. That, my friends, is one of the truly beautiful quirks of life.