The Book Meme


Lillie Yifu tagged me with the book meme. For those few who haven't seen it yet, the rules are:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

"Coup D'etat", Edward Luttwak, 1968, Penguin.

The page doesn't have 5 sentences, so I'll start with the first complete one.

If we can set up efficient defensive road blocks at the appropriate places we should be able to deny their entry into the capital city for the short period required, that is, until we have established ourselves as the government and received the allegiance of the bulk of the state bureaucracy and military forces. Thus, by the time the forces of intervention have reached the scene of the action they will be the isolated band of rebels. The most suitable place to block a road with a small number of men and limited equipment, as well as the techniques and implications of such actions, are discussed in Appendix B and also in Chapter 5 where we deal with the direct neutralization of the identified loyalist forces.

Tagged: Sean Paul (he's played before, but I know he wants to play again). Stirling Newberry. AJ Rossmiller. Numerian. Scarecrow.

What are you reading? Tell us in comments.


Ian Welsh March 12, 2008 - 3:38am
( categories: Miscellany )

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.


"The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Escher Sketch March 12, 2008 - 4:15am

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.

Rick March 12, 2008 - 7:17am

Great prose, great history, great suspense and drama.

adrena March 12, 2008 - 8:52am

"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.

adrena March 12, 2008 - 9:13am

of actually writing novels the last several years. I think highly of her, but her politics-vis-a-vis the US have grown very tiresome. Her agitation in India is very worthwhile, however.

“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

Sean Paul Kelley March 12, 2008 - 9:31am

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."

Fraud Guy March 12, 2008 - 9:32am

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.

adrena March 12, 2008 - 9:38am

Talk about lowness! Any dog´s quantity of it visibly oozed out thickly from this dirty little blacking beetle for the very fourth snap the Tulloch Turn-bull girl with her coldblood kodak shotted the as yet un-remuneranded national apostate, who was cowardly gun and camera shy, taking what he fondly thought was a shortcut to Caer Fere,Soak Amerigas,vias the shipsteam Pridewin, after having buried a hatchet no so long before, by the wrong goods exeunt,number desh to tren,into Patatapapaveri´s,fruiterers and musical florists, with his Ciaho,chavi!Sar shin,shillipen? she knew the vice out of bridewell was a bad fast man by his walk on the spot.
John´s is a different butcher´s. Next place you are up town pay him a visit. Or better still come tobuy. You will enjoy cattlemen´s spring meat. John´s is now quite divorced from baking. Fattens, kills, flays,hangs, draws, quarters and pieces. feel his lambs! Ex! Feel how sheap!Exex! His liver too is great value, a spatiality! Exexex! Communicated!
Note: When reading the word sheap it should be pronunciated with a bleat, to properly complete the sneeze.

John K. Riggs March 16, 2008 - 9:45pm

"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

nihil obstet March 12, 2008 - 10:31am

"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?

nymole March 12, 2008 - 12:42pm

Except for the dead wife part.



Turn back to the Constitution - and
READ it.

Rick March 12, 2008 - 12:44pm

eom


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?

nymole March 12, 2008 - 12:46pm

"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.)

Petronius March 12, 2008 - 1:30pm

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...

Syrynx March 12, 2008 - 2:18pm

Welcome, btw. I kind of like the idea of "group tagging", as long as gordon stays away from his porn stash.

The nearest book to me is a manual. It is numbered in the dreary manual standard, by section and page, so I opened it at random:

In the case above, we are adding a data row for a diagnosis substitution. The Display Text field is a required item, and allows you to change the name that appears to the user who sees this Order Set. You may choose to shorten the name or eliminate the ICD-9 code from appearing with the order.

z-z-z-z-z-z-z



Turn back to the Constitution - and
READ it.

Rick March 12, 2008 - 2:25pm

Usually, the first thing to do with any share point is to configure its perissions. You first need to decide whether or not to use ACLs. I'll show you how to set permissions for a share point using both POSIX permissions and ACLs

.

The interesting stuff is downstairs, near the comfy chair.

I'm not telling you where my porn stash is, 'cause you'll just steal it.

update: Actually, a couple days ago I had a MelBay book on Gypsy Jazz Guitar near the computer. That would've been interesting, because it was obviously written in French and translated by a Romanian with no French-English dictionary.

Gordon March 12, 2008 - 9:39pm

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

Pilot March 12, 2008 - 4:19pm

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.

trob March 12, 2008 - 4:44pm

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."

Scott M March 12, 2008 - 7:43pm

"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."

BradMajors March 12, 2008 - 8:43pm

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

Sean Paul Kelley March 12, 2008 - 9:18pm

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

Gordon March 12, 2008 - 9:41pm

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?"

neuhausr March 13, 2008 - 12:38am

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.

Bolo March 13, 2008 - 2:38am

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."

graham March 13, 2008 - 6:32am

"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.

pembeci March 13, 2008 - 7:04am

...read it. Years later, I realized they make a whole lot of stuff a whole lot more complicated than they need to.

Gordon March 13, 2008 - 11:37am

I recall being sent a review copy in the 80s when I was part of a team writing a compiler for a supercomputer. It reminded me of a fellow I once knew who would order lunch with the words "Consider a language, λ1..." I think I gave it away--at any rate, I don't have it any longer.

It's a great deal for the authors, publisher and bookstores, however.

Petronius March 13, 2008 - 1:33pm

...used a Radio Shack Model 101 to help him write compilers for Cray. Apple subsequently used Crays to help write compilers for Apples. Small world.

Gordon March 13, 2008 - 2:19pm

and a whole bunch of PCs.

Petronius March 13, 2008 - 6:18pm

known over the pond as a Timex Sinclair 1000 to process a parish census in 1982. As the video memory was shared with the system ram, the screen flickered everytime a key was pressed. With only 1K of ram, the statistics were entered as a matrix. Tight programming times indeed. But give me a book anyday compared to programming! :)

graham March 13, 2008 - 8:46pm

... after reading it 10 years later. I guess lexical analyzer and parser generator tools like lex, yacc, antlr make most of the book over complicated after its first edition.

pembeci March 16, 2008 - 7:09pm

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