PRIDEAUX JOHN SELBY1

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

1. The arms of this notable family, five members of which had been knighted by King James I, are “Barry of Eight or and sable; crest a Saracen’s head proper, with a wreath around the temples, knotted behind or and sable” (nowadays when this family crest is presented, you are given only the eight bars of alternating gold and black and this politically incorrect Saracen’s head is elided): HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1788

July 23, Wednesday: Prideaux John Selby was born into the “Beal and Twizell House, ” branch of the Selby family in Bondgate Street, , near Alnwick Castle in Northumberland (think Harry Potter), near the coast of the North Sea. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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(This scion would be educated not at Hogwarts but at University College, Oxford.)

On this day an acknowledgement document was being crafted in Cambridge, Massachusetts, testifying to the transfer of ownership of Bob and Patience, who had been the Negro slaves of John Manning, to Sinnickson Tuft, a dealer in slaves: Cambridge 23rd July 1788 Paid of Sinnickson Tuft his note of hand conditionally for sixty pounds dollars at seven shillings and six pence each payable in nine months from the date hereof, for the Negroes SOLD HIM known by the names of Bob and Patience, which Negroes I warrant to be in good health and perfectly sound and warrant Bob does not exceed forty three years of age and further warrant and defend them from any person or persons claiming or pretending to claim whatsoever. Witness James C. Bryan Signed John Manning

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

Prideaux John Selby was educated at Durham School, where his fellow scholars included a future geologist, Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 1st Baronet, and a future Bishop of Chester, John Graham. At an early age he became fascinated by natural history and in his teens he would begin to write on birds.

Prideaux John Selby “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1804

Prideaux John Selby succeeded to the substantial Selby family estates at Beal, Northumberland, on the road to a short distance inland from the coast of the North Sea.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Prideaux John Selby HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1806

May 2, Friday: Upon completion of the Durham grammar school plus a period of private tuition, Prideaux John Selby entered as a gentleman commoner at University College, Oxford (he would depart without a degree).

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Prideaux John Selby HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1809

After being expelled from Yale College as the result of a junior-year prank, James Cooper had entered the merchant marines and gone on to become a midshipman in the United States Navy. At this point, however, his father died, bequeathing him a sum that would enable him henceforward to adopt the lifestyle of a gentleman of means and leisure.

Leaving University College, Oxford without a degree, Prideaux John Selby went to occupy a 643-acre estate near Belford, Northumberland purchased for him by his father George Selby — a place known as Twizell House.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Prideaux John Selby HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1810

December 17, Monday: Professor Carl Phillip Gottfried von Clausewitz got married with Countess (Gräfin) Marie Sophie von Brühl.

Prideaux John Selby got married in Northumberland with Tabitha Lewis Mitford (AKA “Lewis Tabitha”), daughter of Bertram Mitford of Mitford Castle. This union would produce in about 1813 Lewis Marianne Selby in Bamborough, who would marry Major Luard Selby, R.A., in about 1816 Frances Margaret Selby who would marry the Reverend Edmund Antrobus, and in about 1818 Lady Jane Selby who would marry Sir Thomas Tancred, Bart. There never being any male issue, this branch of the Selby family, five members of which had been knighted by King James I, would become extinct upon his death and no-one any more would be able to make use of its distinctive coat of arms, with “Barry of Eight or and sable; crest a Saracen’s head proper, with a wreath around the temples, knotted behind or and sable” (lately truncated to only the eight bars of alternating gold and black minus this politically incorrect “Saracen’s head”):

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 17 of 12 M // Read this evening in the journal of our Ancient friend David Hall, by which my mind was a little quickened with life ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1812

Prideaux John Selby ran for Parliament to represent the borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland, as a reformer, but lost to Henry Heneage St Paul.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

Prideaux John Selby “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1817

Prideaux John Selby became deputy lieutenant of Northumberland. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1821

The initial volume of Prideaux John Selby’s ILLUSTRATIONS OF BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY (its 19 parts would not be completed until 1834), amounted to the 1st set of life-sized illustrations of British birds (many of the illustrations were drawn from specimens in the author’s own collection). BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1823

Prideaux John Selby became High Sheriff of Northumberland. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1833

Prideaux John Selby joined the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club (he would be, twice, the group’s president). He joined with Dr. Robert Graham, Professor of Medicine and Botany in the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Robert Kaye Greville, and others touring Sutherlandshire.

Volume II, “Water Birds” of Selby’s ILLUSTRATIONS OF BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY:

BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

Prideaux John Selby “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1834

The final volume of Prideaux John Selby’s ILLUSTRATIONS OF BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY (begun in 1821).

The previous year’s tour through Sutherlandshire had been so productive of information on the fauna and flora of the north of Scotland that Dr. Robert Kaye Greville, Mr. James Wilson, Sir William Jardine, and Selby organized a more extensive expedition. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1835

Prideaux John Selby, Esq. of Twizell House’s THE NATURAL HISTORY OF PIGEONS: ILLUSTRATED BY THIRTY- TWO COLOURED PLATES AND NUMEROUS WOODCUTS for Sir William Jardine, Bart. F.R.S.E., F.L.S., &c. &c’s THE NATURALIST’S LIBRARY (Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars, Volume 9 of 40). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1836

Prideaux John Selby’s volume on THE NATURAL HISTORY OF PARROTS, illustrated by Edward Lear, for Sir William Jardine, Bart. F.R.S.E., F.L.S., &c. &c’s NATURALIST’S LIBRARY (Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1837

In conjunction with Sir William Jardine, Bart. F.R.S.E., F.L.S., &c. &c and with Dr. George Johnston, Prideaux John Selby founded a Magazine of Zoology and Botany. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1838

Prideaux John Selby became one of the editors of the Annals of Natural History, Or Magazine of Zoology, Botany, and Geology (new name for the Magazine of Zoology and Botany). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1839

The University of Durham conferred on Prideaux John Selby an honorary degree of Master of Arts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1840

Prideaux John Selby expended some £14,000 to add land to his family’s estates at Beal in Northumberland, on the road to Lindisfarne near the coast of the North Sea. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1841

June 6, Sunday: Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau went boating on the Concord River.

Prideaux John Selby and Lewis Tabitha Mitford appeared in the census in Twizell House, Adderstone, Northumberland, . HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1842

Prideaux John Selby, F.L.S., M.W.S., Etc.’s A HISTORY OF BRITISH FOREST-TREES: INDIGENOUS AND INTRODUCED ... ILLUSTRATED BY NEARLY 200 ENGRAVINGS (London: John van Voorst, Paternoster Row). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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BRITISH FOREST-TREES HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1850

Prideaux John Selby sold the Selby family’s landholdings at Beal, Northumberland, on the road to Lindisfarne near the coast of the North Sea, some 1,450 acres in extent, for £47,000. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1851

March 30, Sunday: Prideaux John Selby and Lewis Tabitha Mitford appeared in the census in Adderstone House, Lucker Village, Adderstone, Northumberland, England.

It is clear from the content of Henry Thoreau’s journal that he has been reading in Thomas De Quincey’s THE CÆSARS (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851, one in an extended series of volumes of DE QUINCEY’S WRITINGS that would not to be complete for any number of years): THE CÆSARS

March 30: Spring is already upon us. I see the tortoises or rather I hear them drop from the bank into the brooks at my approach– The catkins of the alders have blossomed The pads are springing at the bottom of the water –the Pewee is heard & the lark.

“It is only the squalid savages and degraded boschmen of creation that have their feeble teeth and tiny stings steeped in venom, and so made formidable,” — ants, centipedes, and mosquitoes, spiders, wasps, and scorpions. – Hugh Miller. To attain to a true relation to one human creature is enough to make a year memorable. The man for whom law exists –the man of forms, the conservative– is a tame man. CARRYING OFF SIMS

A recent English writer (De Quincey), endeavoring to account for the atrocities of Caligula and Nero, their monstrous and anomalous cruelties, and the general servility and corruption which they imply, observes that it is difficult to believe that “the descendants of a people so severe in their habits” as the Romans had been “could thus rapidly “have degenerated and that, “in reality, the citizens of Rome were at this time a new race, brought together from every quarter of the world, but especially from Asia.” A vast “proportion of the ancient citizens had been cut off by the sword,” and such multitudes of emancipated slaves from Asia had been invested with the rights of citizens “that, in a single generation, Rome became almost transmuted into a baser metal.” As Juvenal complained, “the Orontes ... had mingled its impure waters with those of the Tiber.” And “probably, in the time of Nero, not one man in six was of pure Roman descent.” Instead of such, says another, “came Syrians, Cappadocians, Phrygians, and other enfranchised slaves.” “These in half a century had sunk so low, that Tiberius pronounced her [Rome’s] very senators to be homines ad servitutem natos, men born to be slaves.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1855

April 6, Friday: Charles Eliot Norton wrote James Russell Lowell endorsing free-soil politics because this would “confine the Negro within the South.” This Harvard College professor wasn’t against slavery, rather, he was against the enslavable race, which for obvious reasons shouldn’t be allowed to exist, or at the very least, shouldn’t be allowed to exist here.

Get this: he was antislavery because of his racism.

April 6 [1855]. It clears up at 8 P.M. warm and pleasant, leaving flitting clouds and a little wind, and I go up the Assabet in my boat. The blackbirds have now begun to frequent the water's edge in the meadow, the ice being sufficiently out. The April waters, smooth and commonly high, before many flowers (none yet) or any leafing, while the landscape is still russet and frogs are just awakening, is [sic] peculiar. It began yesterday. A very few white maple stamens stand out already loosely enough to blow in the wind, and some alder catkins look almost ready to shed pollen. On the hillsides I smell the dried leaves and hear a few flies buzzing over them. The banks of the river are alive with song sparrows and tree sparrows. They now sing in advance of vegetation, as the flowers will blossom, — those slight tinkling, twittering sounds called the singing of birds; they have come to enliven the bare twigs before the buds show any signs of starting. I see a large wood tortoise just crawled out upon the bank, with three oval, low, bug-like leeches on its sternum. You can hear all day, from time to time, in any part of the village, the sound of a gun fired at ducks. Yesterday I was wishing that I could find a dead duck floating on the water, as I had found muskrats, and a hare, and now I see something bright and reflecting the light from the edge of the alders, five or six rods off. Can it be a duck? I can hardly believe my eyes. I am near enough to see its green head and neck. I am delighted to find a perfect specimen of the Mergus merganser, or goosander [Common Merganser Mergus merganser], undoubtedly shot yesterday by the Fast-Day sportsmen, and I take a small flattened shot from its wing, – flattened against the wing-bone apparently. The wing is broken, and it is shot through the head.2 It is a perfectly 2. The chief wound was in a wing, which was broken. I afterward took three small shot from it, which were flattened against the bill’s base and perhaps (?) the quills’ shafts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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fresh and very beautiful bird, and as I raise it, I get sight of its long, slender vermillion bill (color of red sealing- wax) and its clean, bright-orange legs and feet, and then of its perfectly smooth and spotlessly pure white breast and belly tinged with a faint salmon (or tinged with a delicate buff inclining to salmon). This, according to Wilson,3 is one of the mergansers, or fisher ducks, of which there are nine or ten species and we have four in America. It is the largest of these four; feeds almost entirely on fin and shell fish; called water pheasant, sheldrake, fisherman diver, dun diver, sparkling fowl, harle, etc., as well as goosander. Go in April, return in November. Jardine has found seven trout in one female. Nuttall4 says they breed in the Russian Empire and are seen in Mississippi and Missouri in winter. He found a young brood in Pennsylvania. Yarrell5 says they are called also saw-bill and jack-saw; are sometimes sold in London market. Nest, according to Selby,6 on ground; according to others, in a hollow tree also. Found on the continent of Europe, northern Asia, and even in Japan(?). Some breed in the Orkneys and thereabouts. My bird is 25 7/8 inches long and 35 in alar extent; from point of wing to end of primaries, 11 inches. It is a great diver and does not mind the cold. It appears admirably fitted for diving and swimming. Its body is flat, and its tail short, flat, compact, and wedge-shaped; its eyes peer out a slight slit or semicircle in the skin of the head; and its legs are flat and thin in one direction, and the toes shut up compactly so as to create the least friction when drawing them forward, but their broad webs spread them three and a half inches when they take a stroke. The web is extended three eighths of an inch beyond the inner toe of each foot. There are very conspicuous black teeth-like serrations along the edges of its bill, and this also is roughened so that it may hold its prey securely. The breast appeared quite dry when I raised it from the water. The head and neck are, as Wilson says, black glossed with green, but the lower part of the neck pure white, and these colors bound on each other so abruptly that one appears to be sewed on to the other. It is a perfect wedge from the middle of its body to the end of its tail, and it is only three and a quarter inches deep from back to breast at the thickest part, while the greatest breadth horizontally (at the root of the legs) is five and a half inches. In these respects it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen. I suspect that I have seen near a hundred of these birds this spring, but I never got so near one before. In Yarrell’s plate the depth of the male goosander is to its length (i.e. from tip of tail to most forward part of breast) as thirty- seven to one hundred and three, or the depth is more than one third. This length in Yarrell’s bird, calling the distance from the point of the wing to the end of the primaries eleven inches, is about fourteen and a half inches of which my three and a quarter is not one fourth. In Nuttall’s plate the proportion is thirty-two to ninety-one, also more than one third. I think they have not represented the bird flat enough. Yarrell says it is the largest of the British mergansers; is a winter visitor, though a few breed in the north of Britain; are rare in the southern countries. But, according to Yarrell, a Mr. Low in his Natural History of Orkney says they breed there, and, after breeding, the sexes separate; and Y. quotes Selby as saying that their nest is near the edge of the water, of grass, roots, etc., lined with down, sometimes among stones, in long grass, under bushes, or in a stump or hollow tree. Y. continues, egg “a uniform buff white,” two and a half inches long. Sometimes carry their young on their backs in the water. It is common in Sweden and, according to the traveller Acerbi, in Lapland they give it a hollow tree to build in and then steal its eggs. The mother, he adds, carries her young to the water in her bill. Y. says it is well known in Russia and is found in Germany, Holland, France, Switzerland, Provence, and Italy. Has been seen near the Caucasus (and is found in Japan, according to one 3. Alexander Wilson, AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY, BY WILSON; WITH NOTES, BY JARDINE: TO WHICH IS ADDED, A SYNOPSIS OF AMERICAN BIRDS; INCLUDING THOSE DESCRIBED BY BONAPARTE, AUDUBON, NUTTALL, AND RICHARDSON, BY T.M. [Thomas Mayo] BREWER. WITH 29 PAGES OF STEEL PLATES OF NEARLY 400 BIRDS. 8vo. New York: H.S. Samuels, 1852. AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY 4. Professor Thomas Nuttall, AMANUAL OF THE ORNITHOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES AND OF CANADA, Cam bridge: Hilliard and Brown; Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 1832-1834. NUTTALL’S LAND BIRDS NUTTALL’S WATER BIRDS 5. William Yarrell, AHISTORY OF BRITISH BIRDS, 3 volumes, London: J. Van Voorst, 1843. 6. Prideaux John Selby, ILLUSTRATIONS OF BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY, Volume II, Water Birds (Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars, 1833). VOLUME II, WATER BIRDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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authority). Also in North America, Hudson’s Bay, Greenland, and Iceland.

Prideaux John Selby’s Goosander HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1859

May 24, Tuesday: Prideaux John Selby’s wife Tabitha Lewis Mitford Selby died.

Martin Robison Delany departed with others aboard the Mendi from New-York harbor toward Liberia. Is freedom going to be an option?

A great rally was held in Cleveland, organized by Joshua Reed Giddings, and featured as speakers the Rescuers’ black leader John Mercer Langston, and Ohio Governor Salmon Portland Chase. The rally was held in the jailyard and four of the prisoners were able to make speeches from cell windows. Until this rescue crisis, Chase had been a Republican moderate, opposed violence, and had been criticized for doing nothing in 1856 to help Margaret Garner who had tried to escape from slavery in Kentucky with her husband and parents and 4 children by crossing the Ohio River at Cincinnati. (When she had been caught, she had started to kill her children rather than allow them to return to slavery, killing one daughter before being stopped by the slavecatchers. When the steamboat she was being transported on collided in the river with another steamboat, one of her infant children drowned — and Margaret had wept with joy.)

May 24. What that brilliant warbler on the young trees on the side of the Deep Cut? Orange throat and beneath, with distinct black stripes on breast (i. e. on each side?), and, I think, some light color on crown. Was [IT] Blackburnian? or maculosa?? [Probably first.] Hear the wood pewee. Sand cherry flower is apparently at its height. I see (the 9th of June) that its fruit is an abortive puff, like that of some plums. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1867

March 27, Wednesday: Prideaux John Selby died at Twizell House near Bamburgh in Northumberland, near Bamburgh Castle on the coast of the North Sea, at the age of 79. There being only female issue, this line of the Selby family would no longer exist. The body would be placed in the local churchyard. Having spent down his estate, there was less than £6,000 to distribute among heirs. An immense collection of 1,400 foreign bird skins and eggs would be packed off to the alma mater from which he had parted without any degree, Cambridge University. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1885

The bird collections of Prideaux John Selby were sold and would become dispersed (the South African birds collected by Andrew Smith, however, would wind up at the Museum of Zoology of Cambridge University).

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Prideaux John Selby HDT WHAT? INDEX

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: December 10, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.