In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Book Meme

Lauren

From several at Feminist Blogs:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

From my CSS design manual, “This effect can be achieved by using two span elements and a couple of CSS rules.”

Why, that was thrilling.

39 thoughts on Book Meme

  2. According to Tawney, he was to the bourgeoisie of his time what Marx was to the proletariat of ours: he provided the organization and the doctrine.

    From Bataille’s The Accursed Share

  4. “You would in vain object to me the difficulty, and almost impossibility of deceiving the world in an affair of such consequence; the wisdom and solid judgment of that renowned queen; with the little or no advantage which she could reap form so poor an artifice: all this might astonish me; but I would still reply, that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature.”

    From ‘Of Miracles,” by David Hume. Nothing like Scottish Enlightenment philosophy to put a spring in your step. (*sigh* Some days I just can’t believe this is my life…)

  5. “The explorers knew that the success of their endeavor depended on the goodwill of Native Americans.”

    from Gunther Barth, ed., The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Selections from the Journals Arranged by Topic

  6. well, since no one’s actually posting to their journal & seems to be posting here instead here’s my contribution to this little discordian exercise:

    Talking about fear took a lot of courage.

    from David K. Shipler’s “The Working Poor: Invisible in America”

    — —————–

    Sina, why do you sigh…? that was a great fifth sentence! Davy “Homeboy” Hume rocks da house! or, at least, i remember his critiques of notions of causality to be real knee-slappers… 😉

  7. “173. Boyd AS, Neldner KH. Lichen planus. J. Am. Acad. Dermatol. 1991, 25: 593-619.” bibliographic entry on p 123 of Ackerman’s Surgical Pathology.
    But I am at work. 😉

  8. From Discoveries And Opinions of Galileo:
    “God bless you.”
    Apparently, somewhere in his discussion on sunspots, Galileo heard someone sneeze.

  9. “While most of the guys weren’t completely satisfied with or prepared for my answer, they seemed to feel it was a step in the right direction.”

    -“Getting off on Feminism,” Jason Schultz. From To Be Real

  10. “Rather, discussion fixates on the ostensibly private realm of individual values and behavior, pivoting specifically on images of male criminality and female slovenliness and compulsive, irresponsible sexuality.”

    from Adolph Reed Jr.’s Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era

  11. “Then the brutal minions of the law fell upon the hapless Toad; loaded him with chains, and dragged him from the Court House, shrieking, praying, protesting; across the market-place, where the playful populace, always as severe upon detected crime as they are sympathetic and helpful when one is merely ‘wanted,’ assailed him with jeers, carrots, and popular catch-words; past hooting school children, their innocent faces lit up with the pleasure they ever derive from the sight of a gentleman in difficulties; across the hollow-sounding drawbridge, below the spiky portcullis, under the frowning archway of the grim old castle, whose ancient towers soared high overhead; past guardrooms full of grinning soldiery off duty, past sentries who coughed in a horrid sarcastic way, because that is as much as a sentry on his post dare do to show his contempt and abhorrence of crime; up time-worn winding stairs, past men-at-arms in casquet and croselet of steel, darting threatening looks through their vizards; across courtyards, where matiffs strained at their leash and pawed the air to get at him; past ancient warders, their halberds leant against the wall, dozing over a pasty and a flagon of brown ale; on and on, past the rack-chamber and the thumb-screw-room, past the turning that led to the private scaffold, till they reached the door of the grimmest dungeon that lay in the heart of the innermost keep.”

    From Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows” — and I am not kidding, that was actually just -one- sentence. Yikes.

  12. “The introduction of these new media has fostered higher standards of accuracy and an interest in interactional details that would have been overlooked in the past.” – Alessandro Duranti, Linguistic Anthropology

  14. “All three of the major organizations were highly conservative in orientation, anti-alien in ideology, pro-business and anti-union in their politicoeconomic bias.”

    From World War I and the Origin of Civil Lberties in the United States by Paul L. Murphy

  15. “Any creature reduced to 0 or fewer hit points by this spell is disintegrated, leaving behind only a trace of fine dust (though it’s equipment is unaffected).”

    From The Completed Aracane D&D Player’s Manual…I revel in my geekness.

  16. London certainly had a bishop in 314, but a martyr should have suffered earlier than that.

    From Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West.

    I’m geekier than thou!

  19. “Dag, betweeen the toilet seats left up all the time, and the spitting thing, eeew,” Damali said, finally taking a real breath.”

    the Awakening, L.A. Banks

  20. To continue the Geekfest:

    Each one of these messages has a probability Pm of being requested by a customer (m = 1 to M, say).

    From Feynman Lectures on Computation by Richard P. Feynman, edited by Tony Hey and Robin W. Allen.

    Unfortunately I was unable to put the m in Pm in a subscript.

  21. Oh, man,I love this game. I feel so much better. hee!
    You cannot stop our geek brigade! With your two span elements and CSS rules, with your higher standards of accuracy, or with your phony notions of causality; not even with a bishop of London! You will be disintegrated, leaving behind a trace of dust.

  22. Farts. The nearest book had only two sentences on page 123, as it was a page mostly taken up by a big picture and its caption. At least they are somewhat weird. To wit:

    Thirty-three colorful mohair panels flap in the breeze like clothes on a line. In its entirety, Debbie New’s “Labyrinth of Rebirth,” featured in her book _Unexpected Knitting_, traces the mystery of fetal development, from conception to birth.

    From For the Love of Knitting: A Celebration of the Knitter’s Art.

  23. I don’t have the book here but it’s on the election of 1800 between Jefferson and Adams and I can guess that whatever is on page 128 the fifth sentance will most likely be Hamilton calling Jefferson a slob, or vice versa. (things haven’t changed much in politics)

  26. From Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows” – and I am not kidding, that was actually just -one- sentence. Yikes.

    With sentences like that, how did he fit as many as five on a page? 🙂

    Mine was “exists!” A PHP manual. But it was in boldface, perhaps to underscore the subtext.

  29. A story, perhaps apocryphal, says that when the British subsequently besieged Moultrie and his men at Charleston, Laurens vowed to run his sword through the first civilian who proposed surrendering the city and further refused to carry terms of capitulation to the enemy.

    From Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

  30. “The hydrophilic so-called ‘head’ groups interact with the water and create a wall to protect the hydrocarbon chains from the water.”

    From _Microbiology and Chemistry for Environmental Scientists and Engineers, 2nd ed._ by J.N. Lester & J.W. Birkett

  31. “And though I am a card-carrying-contemporary woman:”

    from the poem “Mata Hari Blues or Why I Will Never Be a Spy” from the book “Bum Rush the Page” (edited by Tony Medina & Louis Reyes Rivera)

  32. Lady Elizabeth Clinton, in The Countesse of Lincolnes Nuserie (1622) on why she didn’t breast-feed but thinks that every mom should:

    “I knowe and acknowledge that I should have done it, and having not done it; it was not for want of will in my selfe, but partly I was overruled by anothers authority, and partly deceived by somes ill counsell, and partly I had not so well considered of my duty in this motherly office, as since I did, when it was too late for me to put it in execution.”

  33. “The boy was taken aboard Swan’s ship and despite the tearful pleas of a parent, the pirate would not return him.”

    From Sodomy and the perception of Evil: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean, by B.R. Burg.

  35. “The giraffe, by its lofty stature, much-elongated neck, fore-legs, head and tongue has its whole frame beautifully adapted for browsing on the higher branches of trees.”

    Darwin’s Origin of Species

  36. “During production, I can function much more fully and efficiently if I move full blast.”

    Clint Eastwood
    by Stuart M. Kaminsky C 1974
    A Signet Book – New American Library
    ISBN 0451061594

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