Retiring Guy Takes a Last Look at the 60s-Era Madison Central Library

The Madison  Central Library closed to the public on November 11 and will open in an interim location at 126 S. Hamilton St. in early December.   A new Central Library is expected to open in the summer of 2013.

Here's a visual record of my final walk-through.

Banner at main entrance.

Public entrance.

No entry, please.

If nothing else, Barb, please make sure that Institutional Green, which I'll blame for the photo's fuzziness, is not part of the interior design color palette.

Peering over some reference books.

Getting a head start on moving the periodicals collection.

Peering over the CD collection.

Making an association.  (At the entrance to the Fiction/Audio Books Department.)

On the second floor, in front of one of the meeting room entrances.

The Friends Store.

Descending the stairs.

Another exterior view.  (I attended numerous meetings 1n the second floor conference room.)

The "push-out" brick design.

At the corner of West Mifflin and North Henry.

All pictures taken by Retiring Guy on 11/11/11.

Now we have this to look forward to.

Why Do Fools -- and Everyone Else, for That Matter -- Fall In Love?

Love, Lies, and What They Learned. (The New York Times, 11/13/2011)

Excerpt:   There are millions of Americans seeking love on the Internet. Little do they know that teams of scientists are eagerly watching them trying to find it.

Andrew T. Fiore, a scientist at Facebook, said online dating provides “true to life” data.
Like contemporary Margaret Meads, these scholars have gathered data from dating sites like Match.com, OkCupid and Yahoo! Personals [Oops!!] to study attraction, trust, deception — even the role of race and politics in prospective romance.

They have observed, for instance, that many daters would rather admit to being fat than liberal or conservative, that white people are reluctant to date outside their race and that there are ways to detect liars. Such findings spring from attempts to answer a broader question that has bedeviled humanity since Adam and Eve: how and why do people fall in love?



Some of the numbers in this article.

21%
Heterosexual couples who meet online.

61%
Same-sex couples who meet online

Andrew T. Fiore, data scientist at Facebook and a former visiting assistant professor at Michigan State University.




81%
People who "misrepresent" their height, weight or age in their profiles.

• Women subtract 8.5 pounds
• Men subtracts 2 

Catalina L. Toma, assistant professor, Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison.



80%
White dating service members contact other white members.

3%
Whites contact blacks.  (Blacks 10 times more likely to contact whites.)

Gerald A. Mendelsohn, Professor, Psychology Department, University of California, Berkeley.

Jim Buehner Takes the Blame for Society's Ills

Letters: Retired teacher accepts blame for problems. (Oshkosh Northwestern, 11/11/2011)

Drug use

Teen pregnancy

Dropout rates.

Teen drinking.