TITLE: Leading the League in...
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: April 16, 2005  5:51 PM
DESC: A little levity for a weekend near semester's end.  But there is a lesson: keep good company, and you can learn from them.
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BODY:
Scott Hastings, a journeyman NBA player from
a decade ago, used to joke that, no matter
how good Michael Jordan, Isiah Thomas, and
Magic Johnson were, he himself always led
the league in millions.

Huh?  Consider Hastings' typical line in the
daily box score.  He would get into the game
at the very end, play a minute or two, shoot
0-0 from the field and 0-0 from the free-throw
line, grab 0 rebounds, and have 0 assists.  So
his stat line always read something like this:

<BLOCKQUOTE>
<TT>1 0 0 0 0 0 0</TT>
</BLOCKQUOTE>

And there's his million.  Michael, Zeke, and
Magic could only dream of such a stat line!

I claim bragging rights locally for another,
perhaps less dubious, statistical feat, this
one in the
<A HREF="http://www.library.uni.edu/">
   university library</A>:

I almost certainly lead the UNI community in
most times checking a book out for the first
time.

I can't tell you how many times I've gone over
to pick up a book only to find it in mint
condition, not a blemish to be seen, with no
stamps on the Date Due slip.  This experience
always gives me a little buzz, a sense that I
am on the frontier.  False pride, I know, but
mostly a harmless diversion during a busy day.

Just as Hastings owed his good fortune to the
coaches, who put him into the game for garbage
minutes each night, I owe my good fortune to
colleagues like
<A HREF="http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~pattis/">
   Rich Pattis</A>
and the many bloggers I read, who suggest
hot and important books to me.  By having
well-read and deeply interesting friends and
colleagues, I come into contact with books and
ideas I'd otherwise only stumble across much
later.  I'm often surprised to find these books
already on the library shelves -- a testimony
to the good work done by by our bibliographers,
both technical and general.

Now, I just need a catchy name for this feat,
so that I can impress unsuspecting friends
and colleagues with a passing remark.  Any
suggestions?

(In a similar vein, on Friday I checked out
a book that had been on the shelves unread
since 1971!  A first-time reader, but only
in the last two generations.)
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