Pharyngula::We are all lemmings, we bloggers

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Saturday, February 19, 2005

We are all lemmings, we bloggers

PZ Myers • 56 Comments (last page)

Grab the nearest book.

Open the book to page 123.

Find the fifth sentence.

Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

As you command.

The book is Concepts of Genetics by WS Klug and MR Cummings (definitely uncool, it's the text for my course this term.) Page 123 is the end of chapter 5, "Quantitative Genetics." The magic sentence is:

That the allele for small fruit is partially dominant to the large fruit allele suggests that the genetic alteration between the two alleles is involved in the regulation of floral development, ultimately determining carpel number.

Trackback url: http://pharyngula.org/index/trackback/1935/EHGD6Dhl/

Comments:

#16405: — 02/19 at 09:24 AM
I tried the first book, but it didn't have 123 pages. The second only had two sentences on page 123. The third book finally gave me my sentence. It is the AutoCAD LT 97 Getting Started Guide. The fifth sentence is from the sixth chapter "Drawing with Precision" and it says "This is a good way to specify a line length quickly."

Am I even uncooler than you? Horrors!

#16406: — 02/19 at 10:00 AM
And, coming from a different academic field, we find:
"Institutional environments are, by definition, those characterized by the elaboration of rules and requirements to which individual organizations must conform if they are to receive support and legitimacy."
(an essay by Dick Scott and John Meyer in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, Powell and DiMaggio, eds.)

I think it's funny that all three of these in this thread so far are about "determinants" of one sort or another.

#16407: — 02/19 at 10:04 AM
Tim Krabbe's The Vanishing only goes up to 115 :(

#16408: — 02/19 at 10:07 AM

Remember that by the associative and commutative properties for addition, we may add numbers in any order that we want. Prealgebra, 4th edition, K. Elayn Martin-Gay.

It was either that, or the Word 2003 book. There are no cooler books on my computer desk right now.

#16409: — 02/19 at 10:10 AM
In practice, when a sorting algorithm permutes the keys, it must permute the satellite data as well.

From Introduction to Algorithms, 2nd Ed by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein

#16411: — 02/19 at 10:41 AM
"New Syon House was some sort of government office." From Kage Baker's The Graveyard Game, the fourth in her series of novels about Dr. Zeus, Inc.

#16412: profgrrrrl — 02/19 at 10:45 AM
Who knew I had such power! ;)

I could play again, here at the airport. One book in my bag.

Interactive Qualitative Analysis.
Page 123 puts us in the middle of some description of waht appears to be an evaluation of a classroom environment (??? This is a methods book and has examples)

Emotional environment represented the affinity that the group said they needed in order to succeed in the class.

#16414: CJ — 02/19 at 11:09 AM
Klug and Cummings? Why would you select that textbook when colleagues (Michael Simmons and Pete Snustad at the St. Paul campus) in your system have routinely put out a high quality intro text though perhaps not as 'simplistic' as K and C. My comparison is, admittedly, based on recollection of an older version of K and C that I taught from as a grad student at the U of M though.

#16413: Ken Cope — 02/19 at 11:09 AM
In a box carted home from work (otherwise the nearest books would be in my library; the nearest case contains my collection of antiquarian Oz books and Oziana) is a book in transit back to its lender: Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

"Comparing it to other religions, they appreciate how satisfying Buddhism is intellectually."

Trackback: To the Cliffs! Tracked on: Thoughts From Kansas (72.9.234.70) at 2005 02 19 10:45:32
Directly underneath the laptop is Untangling Ecological Complexity : The Macroscopic Perspective by Brian A. Maurer. The appropriate sentence is: The observed distribution of total biomasses was more negatively skewed than the random expectation. U...

#16415: PZ Myers — 02/19 at 11:18 AM
We've been using K&C for some time, so one reason is inertia; another, though, is that it is a good match for the content of the course, which has emphasized classical transmission genetics. We're beginning to rethink our curriculum, though, and want to go more molecular in our treatment…I'm favoring switching to the Griffiths text, myself.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#16416: — 02/19 at 11:22 AM
Since G-Do already has quoted Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen et al, I'll choose the book 2nd closest to me.

Accounting issues are technical enough to confuse many juries; expensive lawyers make the most of that confusion; and if all else fails, big-name executives have friends in high places who protect them.

Paul Krugman The Great Unraveling, paperback edition.

#16419: coturnix — 02/19 at 11:45 AM
"Skipping breakfast, Dave"?

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

This is the only sentence I have ever read from this book (it's my wife's), but now I am intrigued.

Trackback: Another Blog Meme Tracked on: the Greater Nomadic Council (216.234.247.110) at 2005 02 19 11:46:17
Since I always find these fun and passed the last time this one (or some variant thereof) came around, I'll bite: 1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open the book to page 123. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post...

#16420: — 02/19 at 11:46 AM
"The doors fly back, the figures enter--
It's Lensky... with Eugene!"

From Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, translated by James Falen; this is chapter 5, stanza 29.

#16421: WolverineTom — 02/19 at 11:51 AM
"Why do you think hares have evolved to reproduce as rapidly as possible, while lynx appear to have intrinsic or social growth limits?"

It's actually a review question at the end of a chapter. From my Environmental Biolog text book titled Environmental Science, 8th ed. by Cunningham, Cunningham, and Saigo.

#16424: — 02/19 at 12:38 PM
"How could the Perfect One, from whom everything ultimately emanates, permit this kind of imperfection to exist among human beings?"

-From Philosophy: History and Problems, Stumpf and Fieser.

BTW, thanks for the link to Horowitz' witch hunt site. Makes my decision b/t NC State and UNC Chapel Hill easier, since UNC-CH made it on his shit list. But NCSU has the veterinary school, but UNC-CH has cool bio research . . . but Duke made it on the list too, and they have some great philosophs . . . dammit dammit dammit.

#16425: — 02/19 at 12:50 PM
"Go back three thousand years, not to speak of and indefinitely more recent period, there was no knowledge of assembly of facts, discovered by careful processes of induction; nor any persistent exploration of nature." William George Ward (1812-1882), "Philosophy of the Theistic Controversy" (1882), in The Ethics of Belief Debate, McCarthy ed. (1986).

#16427: — 02/19 at 01:05 PM
' I was the Queen o' bonnie France,
Where happy I hae been.'

The Works of Robert Burns

#16428: coturnix — 02/19 at 01:14 PM
This game will grind to a halt once it reaches the Christian blogs. They will all post the very same sentence from the only book they have. I have a large personal library (est. 4000-5000 depending on the inclusion of cookbooks and kids' books) but I do not own a Bible. Can someone check out what is the sentence that all Xtian bloggers will post?

#16429: coturnix — 02/19 at 01:19 PM
Hey James, what kind of research are you interested in? NCSU has recently become a confident top-tier research university (i.e., shed its A&T complex and started hiring the best). For a small sample, look at these people:
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/beh_bio/researchfaculty.html

#16430: — 02/19 at 01:23 PM
From Antipode: seasons with the extraordinary wildlife and culture of Madagascar, by Heather E. Heying.
"Earlier, a tanker had spilled oil in the bay, and for a week I went to sleep in my tent with the acrid taste of oil in my nostrils."
Taste in nostrils? Oh, well.

coturnix:
different formats and versions of the bible will have different text on page 123

Trackback: More blog silliness Tracked on: Creek Running North (65.58.240.229) at 2005 02 19 13:34:26
I suppose it's about time I got around to this one. Via Pharyngula; Grab the nearest book. Open the book to page 123. Find the fifth sentence. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions....

#16433: paperwight — 02/19 at 01:51 PM
From Neil Gaiman's Stardust:

The lady in the scarlet kirtle stood up then and placed the bowl which had contained her portion of hare into the fire.

#16435: PZ Myers — 02/19 at 02:05 PM
Coincidence! If I'd done this in my bedroom, I'd have had the same sentence: I was reading Stardust just last night.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

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