Believe it or not, I was asked at the recent Scottish blogmeet by a fan of the irregular Dewey Decimal updates on this blog if we weren’t overdue for a new post. Well, fans of three digit numbers optionally followed by a decimal point and more digits, you’re in luck today!

There’s plenty of source material from here, here, here, here, here and indeed here, so let’s get started with a bumper selection.

• The Democrats retaking Congress: American Dream – 306.0973
• Most delicious number: Bakeries – 664.752
• What top-up fees don’t help: First-generation college students – 378.1982
• “And then it hurt a bit more, but then it hurt a bit less”: Headache patients’ writings – 808.89207
• New word for your vocabulary: Txalaparta – 786.843
• “My name? J. R. Hartley”: Streamer fly fishing – 799.124
• Most like a Doctor Who book: Father Time (Symbolic character) – 398.33
• Inking about inking: Tattooing in literature – 808.803559
• John Reid’s wet dream: Youth curfews – 364.4
• **Most “I’m Spartacus” number: Chariot racing in literature – 808.803579
• Soap operas, basically: Interpersonal relations on television – 791.456552
• Sportiest number: Strikes and lockouts—Hockey – 331.89281796962
• A big one for Julia Goldsworthy: Moor (Falmouth, England) – 711.55220942378
• “I buy it for the crossword, dear”: Women athletes in literature – 808.803579
• New word for your vocabulary: Klebsormidiales – 579.83
• Number you have to get permission to protest in: Parliament Square (London, England) – 711.550942132
• “Is that an original Diebold?”: Voting-machines in art – 704.94932465
• Kids getting high: Adolescent psychopharmacology – 615.780835
• “Yes, Muffin, I’m sorry too“: Muffin the Mule (Fictitious character) – 791.4572
• Readers of this blog: John Q. Public (Symbolic character) – 306
• Funniest number: Satire, Colombian – 867.00809861
• Most comical number: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Fictitious characters) – 741.5942
• Where the rangers come from: Sloane Square (London, England) – 711.550942134
• Where the rangers come from: Spermatozoa–Physiology – 571.8451
• People who don’t pay enough attention to the Dewey Decimal System (“That means you, McFly*!”): Slackers – 174
• Long number: Caregivers’ writings – 808.899213620425

** Update: It has been pointed out to me by a local Smartacus that I perhaps meant Ben Hur. And perhaps I did. Alas, I seem to have mislaid my collection of Charlton Heston’s back catalogue. 🙂

*Not the band

It’s the Dewey Decimal Classification number for Pluto, sitting happily in the “Planets of the Solar System” schedule. So there are more implications of Pluto being demoted to dwarf planet. The folks are Dewey Towers have noticed:

We’re still looking at what this means for 523.4 Planets of solar system and for 523.48 Trans-Uranian planets in Dewey. In particular, we will need to decide exactly where Charon and other KBOs (“Plutonian objects”) go in the classification, and whether “Trans-Uranian planets” is still the best caption.

Of course, Trans-Uranic Heavy Planets may not be used where there is life.

To celebrate the successful completion of the latest major software upgrade of our library management system, my boss brought in a cake. But not just any cake…

If you want one for yourself (and who wouldn’t?), they’re apparently available at Asda. The object at the top right is a little sound box – no prizes for guessing what it says when you press it.

I ate the eyestalk and the “ears”. Mmm, eyestalk.

Of course you are – it’s been almost a week since he popped up on The Ultimate West Wing Challenge.

Fear not – your Oaten appetite can be sated via a podcast. Not his own, thankfully (although I confess some surprise that he and his wife aren’t running a Darbyshire style blogspot confessional) but a British Library panel discussion entitled – surprise, surprise – “Prurience or privilege: are politicians entitled to a private life?”

Now don’t all download it at once…