Once again, this catches me offside - I generally don't read near my computer.

And the nearest "real" book within ten feet - Cormac MacAirt's "Counsels", translated from the Old Irish by Thomas Cleary - only has fifty pages.

by Khaled Hosseini last week (courtesy of my daughter). I will head to the library after work today to reload.

_{Turn back to the Constitution - and READ it.}

"The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy

She uses the most wonderful metaphors. The postman in the movie "Il Postino" would have loved them.

Here's one: "Like a question mark that drifted through the pages of a book and never settled at the end of a sentence". She's describing the puzzled look of one of the characters.

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

"Some who seek their own interior direction, like the radical gnostics, reject religious institutions as a hindrance to their progress. Others, like the Valentinians, willingly participate in them, although they regard the church more as an instrument of their own self-discovery than as the necessary 'ark of salvation.'

Besides defining God in opposite ways, gnostic and orthodox Christians diagnosed the human condition very differently."

I wonder how many actually pick page 123 and how many pick a paragraph that is so meaningful to them that they wish to share it. Either way is fine with me.

The three sentences on page 123 in my book wouldn't make sense to anyone.

"And then, feeling that he, too, was almost about to drown in this whirlpool of memory, Paul resurfaced blinkingly into the present as the full meaning of tonight's discovery broke upon him. Rolf was a powerful man, now. He sat on the board of BMW--the same firm where his father Gunther used to work."
--The Closed Circle, Jonathan Coe

"Suite Francaise" (In the English version)a novel by Irene Nemirovsky, (written but never published until 2004) during the Occupation of France in WWII.

Amazingly I was up to page 122. So on the next page, 123: on a demented old man accidently left behind by his family in a torched village but rescued by strangers, and put in a nursing home:

"He tried to take a few sips, but spat it out immediately; it ran down his white beard. Suddenly he became extremely agitated; he was groaning, shouting orders:" Tell them to hurry...he promised...as soon as I called...please...hurry, Jeanne!"(He no longer thought he was talking to his daughter-in-law, but to his wife, who had been dead for forty years).

a fairly dull paragraph in a really good book.

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

"Leland Stanford, big as life. Christ, look at you; you didn't waste any time tearing inta the groceries, did you?" Cool and matter-of-fact, because I don't want him blowing a gasket.

--Ken Kesey, "Sometimes a Great Notion"
Penguin, 1963

(I read in rehearsals during long tacet movements. It beats staring at the ceiling--or at the conductor.)

The nearest book is Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia, which I've already finished (and found to be strikingly relevant to our time). It's not clear to me whether we're supposed to post the fifth through seventh sentences, or the sixth through eighth. Either seems unfair to both the author and you, so I quote from the beginning of page 123:

There followed a flurry of shots and a rush of horses, in which three men died and forty were wounded. (Journalists counted thirty-six puddles of blood.) The police claimed self-defense and also unearthed seditious leaflets written in Hebrew, which they used to pin the disturbance on the plague of Russian nihilists, whom a slack immigration policy had allowed to pollute the country. In Argentina, the words 'Russian' and 'Jew' were synonymous.

The second act took place later the same winter. Scornful of armed guards, Colonel Falcón was driving from the funeral of his friend, the Director of State Prisons. With him was his young secretary, Alberto Lartigau, who was learning to be a man. At a corner of the Avenida Quintana, Simón Radowitzky in a dark suit was waiting with a parcel. With perfect timing he tilted it into the car, jumped back to dodge the explosion and ran towards a construction site.

I'm new here, so I'm reluctant to tag anyone...

Book is Edward R. Tufte's "Visual Explanations."

P. 123 is a page from Christopher Scheiner's book "extravagant book about sunspots," "Rosa ursina sive sol," completed in 1630.

Pilot

Sidney Dekker's _Ten Questions About Human Error_

Page 123 is the first page of Chapter 6, "Why Do Operators Become Complacent?" The fifth through seventh sentences read:

"As the Royal Majesty example in chapter 5 showed, most high-tech settings are actually not characterized by a single human interacting with a machine. In almost all cases, multiple people -- crews, or teams of operators -- jointly interact with the automated system in pursuit of operational objectives. These crews or teams have to coordinate their activities with those of the system in order to achieve common goals."

Dekker has the reputation for re-thinking, through systematic research, how to reduce safety errors across a wide range of organizations and activities. A fellow consultant that spearheads "lean construction" recommended this book.

currently reading Dr. Barbara Rossing's book "The Rapture Exposed", and am enjoying it. However, the nearest book would be any of quite a large number of Scifi novels so I will spare you.

_{"I beseech you in the bowels of christ think it possible you may be mistaken."}

"With control over markets they gained powerful influence over tribal polices and activities throughout a vast area. But the Dutch were not quite sure what to do with their influence according to any general plan. They dealt with each tribe separately, and each situation pragmatically, as it arose."

I very much love.

The mere story of their adventures, which to them were no adventures, on their road to and from school would have crisped a Western boys hair. They were used to jogging off alone through a hundred miles of jungle, where there was always the delightful chance of being delayed by tigers; but they would have no more bathed in the English Channel in an English August than their brothers across the world would have lain still while a leopard snuffed at their palanquin. There were boys of fifteen who had spent a day and a half on an islet in the middle of a flooded river, taking charge, as by right, of a camp of frantic pilgrims returning from a shrine; there were seniors who had requisitioned a chance-met Rajah's elephant, in the name of St. Francis Xavier, when the rains once blotted out the cart track that led to their father's estate, and had all but lost the huge beast in a quicksand.

Oh man, that's heady stuff.

^{“Is not our first thought to go on the road? The road is our source, our vault of treasures, our wealth. Only on the road does the ‘traveller’ feel like himself, at home.”
Ryszard Kapuscinski}

...Autumn of the Patriarch, or anything by Thomas Mann.

I'm reading Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi. It's a graphic novel of her years growing up in Iran during and after the revolution.

"Since they shut down my publishing company, I've been printing fake passports. Big sellers. You want one?"

Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South" by Robert D. Lassiter.

During the 1950s and 1960s, while the busing crisis remained beyond the horizon, metropolitan Charlotte celebrated the rapid economic expansion and sustained demographic growth that marked the Cold War boom across the Sunbelt. The former textile capital emerged as a high-tech magnet for white-collar professionals and cemented its reputation as one of the top banking centers in the nation, a gleaming advertisement for the latest New South. The ongoing construction of two federally funded highways promised to bring even more commerce through the major interstate trucking hub and more automobile commuters from a sprawling metropolitan region.

I tell you, 'twill I led that woman to the altar she was the meekest-mouthed creetur that ever wiggled away from a kiss. Why, when I stepped on her train jest as I swung her up the aisle, if you believe me,all she said was," I hope you didn't hurt yo' foot" bless my boots, ten minutes later, comin' out of church, she whispered in my year(sic), 'You white-livered, hulkin' hound, you, get off my veil!' Well, well it's sad how a ceremony can change a woman's heart."

"Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools" by Aho, Sethi, Ullman (aka the Red Dragon book) page 123:

The start state of N(s) becomes the start state of the composite NFA and the accepting state of N(t) becomes the accepting state of the composite NFA. The accepting state of N(s) is merged with the start state of N(t); that is, all transitions from the start state of N(t) become transitions from the accepting state of N(s). The new merged state loses its status as a start or accepting state in the composite NFA. A path from i to f must go first through N(s) and then through N(t), so the label of that path will be a string in L(s)L(t).

I hate book meme when I am in school. It makes me look like a geek.